American Beauty

O beautiful for patriot dream
That sees beyond the years
Thine alabaster cities gleam
Undimmed by human tears!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

America the Beautiful

It appears that the traditional traits quoted by humans to differentiate homo sapiens from the (lesser) animals no longer appear to be unique characteristics: other species (types of birds, chimpanzees) use tools as part of their daily routines; recently the New York Times ran an article on a pet dog who had developed a sophisticated vocabulary -on demand, he has the ability to pick out a yellow, or red or blue, ball from a room full of balls.

I would argue that the one unique trait that separates the human race from the other animals, with whom we're privileged to share this planet, is the appreciation of beauty. While definitions of beauty vary from culture to culture and individual to individual (though I suspect the variation in standards of beauty are less than one might think), the thrill experienced in the presence of beauty is a shared thrill. It could be a beautiful landscape, Shakespeare's Dark Lady, the curve of a lover's neck, the Song of Solomon, Zhang Yimou's Hero, Stephen Holl's Chapel of St. Ignatius Loyola in Seattle.

At the cutting edge of knowledge, where mathematics, physics and philosophy collide in Fermat's theorem, string theories and the quest for a Theory of Everything, it is accepted amongst the numerati that beauty = truth, that the degree to which an equation exhibits loveliness is the degree to which it is more valid than its less lovely competing cousins.

When evaluating our fellow human beings, it's useful to determine how or whether they pursue beauty. Robert Kennedy's campaign for the presidency of the United States of America was a process in which we -the denied electorate- watched the unfurling of a beautiful flower: Robert embracing fundamental truths plucked from the fogs and obfuscations of the tribal issues facing America, in those difficult times long ago when the nation was at war. The contrast between that beautiful man and the current inhabitant of the White House is a pain almost too much to bear.