All ascetics, including most post-modern theorists, are deeply suspicious of beauty. I wonder why.
Joanna
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I've got a theory on this one. Well, I have a theory on everything, but...Here's an answer even if the thread seems to have fizzled out.
Beauty bares no resemblance to any stereotype, precisely because a stereotype is completely and comfortably known. And, since post-modern theorists specialize in hermetic figurations of known narratives and images, the question of what is beautiful never occurs. It has been erased in advance.
On the other hand, what is beautiful is often frightening, strange, and unexpected. It dissembles the mind like the fixed stare of a carnivore. And, it seems for a moment or two to be some state between fear and desire that holds the mind in complete suspension.
When one sees another person in this state, they appear to have the expressionless void of a child's face.
Chuck Grimes