We live in an age where what has been universally understood as beautiful is now derided as ugly and where we are told that we must embrace and celebrate the ugly as beautiful.
We live in an upside down, backwards, world of what Orwell described as “blackwhite.”
Listeners of Sovereign Nations will not be surprised to find this critical approach to aesthetics is sourced in concepts derived from Hegel, Marx and Herbert Marcuse.
In his book, The Aesthetic Dimension, Marcuse stated the following:
“A work of art can be called revolutionary if, by virtue of the aesthetic transformation, it represents, in the exemplary fate of individuals, the prevailing unfreedom and the rebelling forces, thus breaking through the mystified (and petrified) social reality, and opening the horizon of change (liberation).”
As with all aspects of human life, Marcuse and the radical revolutionaries have worked hard to turn nearly every accepted view of both beauty and ugliness upside down.
Is beauty worth fighting for?
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