Deprivation of beauty depresses bodies as surely as material lack

Evidence

Ellis referred to beauty as a “strange necessity”, cutting through the binary of needs = biological and aesthetic = cultural luxury. Bodies deprived of attractive surroundings were as likely to be as depressed — or to use the superbly multivalent Rasta term, downpressed — as those deprived of anything they more obviously “needed”. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 344

Categorization

• ADDENDUM: Directly extends the ‘Grafting & Growth: On Trees as Infrastructure’ argument about underused aesthetics of the built and natural environment.
• SHARE: The Rasta concept of being ‘downpressed’ versus ‘oppressed’ is a term worth sending to someone interested in Caribbean language and theology.
• XREF: connects to: Mechanical reproduction of beauty destroys the unconscious idolatry that made beauty vital; Lack of beauty frees a woman from self-objectifying and toward pure intellectual life. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1950; Separating beauty from necessity shrinks human possibility by design — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 343 (+2 more)

Broader Connections

• Mechanical reproduction of beauty destroys the unconscious idolatry that made beauty vital #expands (0.80)
• Lack of beauty frees a woman from self-objectifying and toward pure intellectual life. #contradicts (0.80) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 1950
• Separating beauty from necessity shrinks human possibility by design #expands (0.75) — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 343
• Fashion restraints function less to beautify than to render women’s bodies powerless #expands (0.75) — Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex, 351