Aesthetics of Everyday Life.

In Beauty, Roger Scruton talks about the aesthetics of everyday life. He states, "There is an aesthetic minimalism exemplified by laying the table, tidying your room, designing a web-site. Nevertheless, you want the table, the room, or the web-site to look right and looking right matters in the way that beauty generally matters--not by pleasing the eye only, but by conveying meanings and values which have weight for you and which you are consciously putting on display." (p9) He calls this minimal beauty.

A part of me feels like we, as human beings, overly obsess about how we look and how we come off to other people. We spend so much time trying to reach some sort of perfection which doesn't seem to exist. Appearance is more important to us than we realize. I'll admit I am a bit of a perfectionist. I really care about what I look like even though I don't want to. In my room, my bed has to be made every morning and all objects must be in their exact place. I'm constantly cleaning and fixing my surroundings. I do care about what other people think a little too much. Aesthetics are very important to me. Beauty is important. I do not like chaos or disunity. I like everything to be pleasing and inviting. When everything is in place, beautiful, clean, and so on, then I am satisfied. This got me thinking: How different would life be if I stopped caring about what I look like or what my room looks like? How different would the world be if everyone just stop caring about how everything looks? Hmmm.

My question to you is: If humans did not value aesthetics in their everyday lives, how different would the world look and be? Would life be more chaotic and possibly much more meaningless if no one cared about the visual aspects of life? Explain. :)

S.H. Lee's "The Garden Room."