However smart it may be, an overwhelming portion of our idea-making is made suspect by its use for self-promotion and image-making. Well okay, self-promotion isn’t a bad thing, but it is if it’s exercised at the expense and, often, manipulation of others—done in the service, ostensibly, of some greater good (This is the classic excuse of the manipulator, who really just loves the accompanying power and control).
Even when exercise of the mind is as pure as it can get, even in the service of altruistic goals, there is something missing: What place for beauty (even allowing for a certain beauty in the pursuit of truth)? There is a kind of wisdom in beauty-in-itself that is beyond any other kind of meaning—“wiser than wise,” I claim. How to source this deeper wisdom? Turn from the heights of thought to the depth of one another’s eyes.
And so, I heroically (he says humbly, with a slight cough) attempt to express this in song:
https://open.spotify.com/track/2wVYgWDP4Ey0SklE0AONdu?si=3sHqNDGQTBK5gXjSvo3bUw