A battle for beauty

By Kevin Somers

There are no accidents. Everything we do, make, and create — the good, bad, lovely, and ugly — is by design. Like good versus evil or right against wrong, beauty and ugly are in an epic, timeless battle. Beauty is always within reach, so it seems absurd there is even a contest. Yet every time I drive a big, bleak highway bounded by subdivisions of cheap, expensive, identical houses lacking trees or significance, absurdity abounds. I die a little. God may have created Earth, but we’re rapidly rearranging it, and if beauty doesn’t prevail, we’re doomed.

Fortunately, humans are predisposed to seek beauty, so we know what it is. Our eyes find and then focus on flowers flourishing in concrete cracks. Looking at a beautiful building, or walking into one, can be as affirmative as admiring an island, or helping a stranger. When our eyes and brain recognize, register, and appreciate something beautiful, our life is enhanced, so we put a plant by the bed or use an ornamental artefact to dispense toilet paper. We appreciate flowering vines, towering pines, and hand-painted signs. Market Research 101: An attractive display means better sales.

Beautiful, of course, is more than looking good. The products I cherish most, the ones I consider the most beautiful, are well made to last a long time. Regardless of how stylish and attractive something is, if it doesn’t work, it’s landfill. Beauty endures.

Wouldn’t it make sense then, that we constantly, tirelessly, endeavour to make, build, and do everything as beautifully as possible? The answer seems obvious, but beauty doesn’t come readily; it requires time and hard work. We’re capable of great things, but humans constantly create and tolerate ugly, often on a large scale, because too many are lazy but ambitious. Ugly, ungodly shortcuts prevail because easy and greedy go hand in hand.

The auto industry, now schlepping for handouts, is responsible for a whole lot of ugly shortcuts. Thoughtless roadways scar and shred landscapes from coast to coast, pole to pole. Splattered across their pavement, like Jackson Pollack’s schlock, animals rot after being run over by rat racers. Rarely are they even considered when roads are designed.

Because it was easy and lucrative, the Big Three produced and sold billions of poorly designed, environmentally hostile, vanity beasts called sport utility vehicles, when they should have been designing and building better cars less dependent on oil (before it was trendy, that is). Whether it’s being drilled, spilled, or combusted, oil is a diminishing, dirty product. Watching Saddam, George W. Bush, et al. wage war over oil makes it even uglier.

Water — the antithesis of oil — is beautiful. For drinking, sinking, or thinking, there’s nothing like it. Yet water, giver of life, is treated worse than a child prostitute, beaten down with unfathomable amounts of garbage and sewage.

Like so many others, Toronto’s waterfront has been defaced for centuries. Industry and highways, and, more recently, condos endeavouring to scrape the sky ruin the shore and the shorescape. Driving the Gardiner/QEW is depressing beyond words, especially when one considers how beautiful the most beautiful part of Canada’s biggest city could be.

Buildings should always be beautiful, yet thoughtless, formulaic banalities abound. From birth to death, we enter structures and live, develop, and work inside them. With capable architecture and craftsmanship, a single creation can impress and humble millions for years. Buildings are the most imposing art form. From birdhouse, to outhouse, to courthouse, to my house, every structure should aspire to inspire and endure.

Technology can be beautiful. Simplicity can also be beautiful. Toronto, for example, could lead the world, save the planet, and stimulate local job creation if every building and car had to have solar panels within 20 years. Simple. Technical. Beautiful.

Beauty spreads. It’s the ultimate grassroots campaign: Everyone is capable of doing something beautiful.

But it takes work and working together, because ugly is never an accident; it’s all by design.

Kevin Somers is a Hamilton-based writer who tries to find beauty in life’s little details, material or otherwise.

Image courtesy of stock xchng.