01 October 2009

A Culture of Cynics

'You know, I think it's harder to create something that's life-affirming than something that is cynical.'

I heard this quote yesterday at the end of a story on WVXU about a new play "Superior Donuts". The thought is probably not original, but struck me as not just kinda true, but deeply true and indicative of the modern era we inhabit. It kinda relates to the "ugly is more interesting" discussion we had here a few months ago.

Since our life on this earth is ultimately a tragic, unstructured, uncentered non-story, is it even a worthwhile effort to try to create human centered beauty in our everyday surroundings? When we do this, are we creating a lie?

I don't think so.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Think about how hard beauty is to hold on to. Buildings crumble, gardens over grow, flowers shrivel, landscapes are ravaged, beautiful looking people get old and ugly. You have to constantly maintain beauty - it doesn't last. Photographs may be the best thing for capturing beauty, though they aren't exactly permanent. A beautiful soul? maybe, but probably not 24-7. Nothing lasts, everything changes and what is the point of it all? - selfishness and eating.

5chw4r7z said...

I thinks its because its easier for people to complain about life, than to actually go out and change it.
You don't have to look hard or far to see how hard it is to change in Cincinnati, its even harder when it will actually benefit people.
Maybe every time we do something life affirming, its holds a mirror up to everyone else's face, and they don't like what they see?

CityKin said...

Great comments guys. I'd like to start a recurring Friday post: "deep thought of the week"

VisuaLingual said...

...by Jack Handey?

CityKin said...

^something like that. Humour is truth after all.