Dostoyevsky let drop the enigmatic phrase: “Beauty will save the world.” What does this mean?
For a long time it used to seem to me that this was a mere phrase. Just how could such a thing be possible? When had it ever happened in the bloodthirsty course of history that beauty had saved anyone from anything? Beauty had provided embellishment certainly, given uplift—but whom had it ever saved?
Beauty is that which moves the affections and passions in a pleasing way. So when I say that I have an insatiable desire to experience beauty, that is to say, I long to be moved.
This longing has many levels met by varying degrees of beauty. Porn or romance novels, for example, are some of the lowest forms of beauty because they move a person's animal passions.
Moral beauty, on the other hand, is a higher form of beauty because it moves the soul's affections.
Thus displaying moral beauty is what separates a great movie from a mediocre one. The heroism in Schindler's List, the sacrificial love in Titanic, the grace shown to Valjean in Les Miserables are just a few examples of this.
This holds true in real life. Moral beauty is what separates a great experience from an average one. Seeing the embraces and kisses of nuns shown to full- blown AIDS patients in Cambodia, seeing a volunteer cradle and sing hymns daily to a blind toddler at an orphanage in China, seeing 300 firemen run up a burning tower to save others are some examples of this higher beauty that moves the soul.
The beauty is everywhere around us, starting with the smallest atom and finishing with the Universe, and we, as a part of this World, cannot fight it, because we are beautiful ourselves.Technological progress brought in our lives not only the development, but chaos too. We built a lot, but destroyed a lot too. And only the beauty is that factor, that can help us to maintain the balance in the world. In the chaos of destroyed nature, in the soulless mechanical civilization there isn’t beauty. And without beauty, there isn’t life. What is not beautiful, cannot have a long life, it doesn’t have a continuation. What is ugly has a deadline. The humanity has possessed the intuitive criteria of beauty given us by nature.Everything new in our life is checked by beauty. If it is nice it has to and will live. If it isn’t sooner or later it will die. The beauty generates harmony and soul comfort. We cannot bring and create beauty and harmony in our lives, if we don’t have beauty and harmony in our hearts. This is why I think, that if we want to change the world around us, we have to start with changing ourselves, with loving in ourselves what is good and trying to improve what is ugly. Not to hate this ugly things, but, with big patience and love, very carefully, not doing anymore harm, to change ourselves. You can have a perfect face and body, but if your soul is not beautiful, people won’t be attracted by you and you will feel lonely and unhappy. And you can be an average person, may be with some physical defects, but with a clean soul, ready to help people around and you will be welcomed into everyone’s life and people will think that you are a beautiful person. When there is harmony and beauty in your heart, you cannot pass with indifference near injustice or wrong things. And it is not because you told yourself that you have to do this, but because these things change the world’s harmony and you, as a part of the world, feel it, because it damages your inner harmony.If we orient ourselves to see only bad things in the life, to criticize everyone around us, to expect people to love us without us loving ourselves, we cannot achieve harmony in our souls.
This is why
IF YOU WANT TO CHANGE THE WORLD, START BY CHANGING YOURSELF
If you want to change the world, start by changing yourself
