The Inherent Beauty of Human Thinking

To think in 21st century Western society is no easy task. The cognitive phenomenon of human thought is distinct from that of habitual practice, emotional reaction, established belief, or group identity. A thought is prompted by the emergent realization of human difference. It requires an experience of rupture between the way I perceive the world and the way my neighbor perceives the world.

When we engage in the practice of thinking, we allow the otherness of a person or collective of people to penetrate our own sense of self. Therefore, if we understand the beautiful (similar to the harmonious) as any vessel with the capacity to hold the tension between two or more distinct entities, then we will see the emergence of human thought as an inherently beautiful phenomenon.

see: empathy

Thinking, however, is not the same thing as believing. To the degree that a person believes something, they accept it as established truth despite any accumulation of evidence to the contrary. Beliefs lay the groundwork for ideas, and ideas are the basis of all notions of human identity. A phenomenological understanding of human identity is quite distinct from that of human being. In practice, however, the difference between a thought and a belief cannot be ascertained by another until it is reconciled with a shared material reality (e.g. environment).

When a thought is reconciled with the material world, it becomes an action. When a belief is reconciled with the material world, it becomes an identity.

One place to look for empirical evidence of a collective’s tendency toward a specific type of cognition is in the aesthetic beauty of shared living environments. This is because, to the degree that a group (e.g. community, society) has a proclivity toward a certain type of thought, it will be reflected in the material condition of their shared environments. This is because the type of cognition a person is engaged is not made known until it culminates in specific action tendencies that alter the material existence of shared living environments. 

The type of cognition most commonly engaged in at the collective level is evidenced in the material and aesthetic states of shared community environments.

It follows that where rational and creative thinking abound, shared living environments will flourish in harmony. Indeed, this is the basic premise of human civilization. (Civilization is the organized effort of a collective of human beings to create and preserve ever greater and more complex forms of life). On the other hand, where rational and destructive thinking abound, the shared living environment will collapse by force.* The atomic bomb is humanity’s crowning achievement in rational destructive thinking. Finally, where belief flourishes shared material reality will collapse not by force, but through neglect.

We can expect that, as the natural cycle of growth and decay plays out over multiple levels of system organization, the type of cognition a collective is engaged in will be reflected in the beauty, destruction, and/or neglect of their shared living environments.

Articulated by Herbert Marcuse in one of his final interviews, the question posed to 21st century society today is this:

“What actually has gone wrong in Western civilization is that at the very height of a technical progress we see at the same time the opposite as far as human progress is concerned. Dehumanization, brutalization, torture as a normal means of interrogation, the wasteful development of nuclear energy, destructiveness everywhere, environmental degradation. How has this happened?”

I will not attempt to answer this question here or pretend to know the one and only truth of the matter, but I do know this: An individual’s belief in human superiority and inferiority — whether on the basis of class, race, sex, gender, sexuality, political ideals, educational attainment, aesthetic appeal etc. — is not enough to destroy the structures, institutions, and material existence of human beings. It is only when these beliefs become consolidated in shared identities used to demobilize, ex-communicate, or otherwise eliminate the “undesirable” manifestations of difference in others that harm and violence is wrought against human beings and their environments.

*There are empirical differences between authentic beauty and counterfeits constructed to mimic its aesthetic.