Ugly Beauty

Have you ever seen a work of art that you find beautiful, yet its message is simply wrong? I have had quite a few occurrences of such cognitive dissonance recently. It may be nationalist poetry, extolling the virtues of my nation above all others, it might be religious music or film that underneath it all spreads a judgemental and unhealthy worldview. But even being aware of these underlying themes, I catch myself admiring these works of art. Even connecting to their message on some level when it is sufficiently elegantly put, before realizing the content of my thoughts and bringing myself back into line. However the fact that I am able to drift away to what at its core is vile propaganda elegantly masked, is a reality that i cannot help but be troubled by.

One explanation would be that these messages are communicated in a way that bypasses reason and reaches straight to my emotional centers. From there it is able to generate an experience that will attempt to convince my mind to adopt and justify these ideas. After all they seem so beneficial to the overall well-being of the bearer. They make me feel good about my self. The fact that they lack in correspondence with reality is something that is of little concern at that moment. Soon afterwards, a fight unfolds between reason and emotion. Essentially reason cannot win unless it evokes an even stronger emotion. I may have an emotional principle of truth, a deeply held belief that only by accepting beliefs that can be demonstrated to be true can I hope to reach long-term peace. If then I am able to identify the candidate belief as suspect, logic can prevail by resolving to the emotional foundation that that principle is built on. However even if things are thus and if in the end logic prevails, my emotion has still served as a beachhead for irrational ideas to make their stand. So I am troubled as to why. I do not consider emotion to be irrational, it simply seeks to fulfil my needs and many times is more intelligent and reactive than my conscious mind.

The only answer I can provide is that emotion is acting as a proxy for other beliefs I have previously internalized. Some internal inconsistency in my own worldview. If this is the case, the cognitive dissonance I experience when facing ugly beauty should be a cause for concern. What are the beliefs inside me that are supporting such ideas? I need to search inside myself and reevaluate my very foundations if I am to follow my determination to be aligned with truth above all else. In this context, ugly beauty can serve as a valuable hint, a red flag if you will. As long as I am vulnerable to it, my conversion is not complete. I still partly support my world lies and self-delusions, even if my willingness is to be free from them.