Hey, it's my Mom's 75th birthday! One of her favorite quips inspired by Gregory Bateson is -- "Despite all the ugliness in the world, beauty persists." Picked up the copy of Bateson's Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity (1979) I've been carrying around for years and started through it for only the second time since it came out. It's an added treat now because my mother's underlinings are in it, and it didn't take long to find this, highlighted:
". . . and the vulgar and hateful will always displace the beautiful. And yet the beautiful persists" (page 6).
Am once more thoroughly enjoying Bateson's ideas -- they're right down my alley. Everything from Darwin to sacraments, cybernetics to optical illusions. What's not to love? And let's not forget his Steps to an Ecology of Mind (1972). As my Mom pointed out on the phone today, Bateson (1904-1980) was for a long time married to Margaret Mead (1901-1978). How cool is that?
Today's Rune: Fertility. Happy Birthday to Barbara Marie Shaffer France! The beautiful persists.
4 comments:
May you have a wonderful Birthday Barb, have an extra slice for me! Be well and many more to come.
The only way beauty overcomes the substantially larger disgusting is to simply be beauty. No darkness ever is able to overcome color.
Happy Bday to your mum!
hello... hapi blogging... have a nice day! just visiting here....
Obviously I read the latter post-- you mentioned his marriage to Meade.
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