Wheatfield Under Thunderclouds

So can we break out of these negative circles created by an all too powerful idea of “self”? We start to feel more free than we ever have while being unable to recognize any pitfalls with this freedom. Choosing to rid ourselves from the cooperative system, so as to not be inundated with the beauty if it can possibly come with pain. To accept a more uncomfortable road now for the potentially greater reward in the future—The allowance of others.

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How far then, can our own idea of beauty take just us? If we think of groups as nothing more than bureaucracy, indoctrination, or power grabs. Are we liable to be completely disillusioned of even the ones we wish to share ourselves with? It seems only a matter of time until the values we used to stand for are also the ones that are laughed at as naivety when we fail to procure them. I can’t get away then, from this nagging feeling, that the problem is simply the pieces that make up any group. The solo act. Not willing to find things simple, or beautiful, or together, for fear of blending in.

To make matters more difficult to parse, group authority, has never been particularly well intentioned. At least with our “personal authority” we can act as though the aforementioned naive traits never mattered to us anyways. It’s difficult to have failed if the goalposts keep moving! The philosopher Nietzsche insisted only a "slave ethic", a need to be told what to do, resides in the Christian fables where that authority had a chance to be something different. So we quickly find more questions that can't be solved and become calcified when we are told that both are fables— good authority and personal idealism.

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But… I continue to imagine those that find this painting beautiful when I cannot. I know there exists a people who, simply, find it beautiful. That this wordy excerpt is part of the problem. We can’t wish to be first seen, if our goal is to see through someone else.

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Frantz Fanon in The Wretched of the Earth says:

Self-criticism has been much talked about recently, but few realize that it was first of all an African institution. Whether it be in the Djemaas of North Africa or the palavers of West Africa, tradition has it that disputes which break out in a village are worked out in public. By this I mean collective self-criticism with a touch of humor because everyone is relaxed, because in the end we all want the same thing. The intellectual sheds all that calculating, all those strange silences, those ulterior motives, that devious thinking and secrecy as he gradually plunges deeper among the people. In this respect then we can genuinely say that the community has already triumphed and exudes its own light, its own reason."

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It is not a democratic hierarchies waiting to fold in on itself. The checks and balances that exist are ones we can’t bargain with or bribe. Our identity becomes more than what we could make it ourself. It’s genuineness… honesty… that there IS beauty. Something to be shared even if it didn’t originate with us. In this way we avoid the governance and our our ego. We become both the person to be trusted and one who trusts others. With humility, we hope this to be more common to find, as we… as I, try to find it in myself.

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So please, next I hear from you, tell me simply, that what you behold,‍

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Is Beautiful.