Perception.
What we perceive as ugly or ordinary today could be perceived as beautiful and extraordinary in the future.
We find mundane buildings dull because we see them too often. Too ordinary. And for that, we exaggerate the dullness of the building. Just as people in the 18th century live around buildings that they consider familiar, but became extraordinary in our time.
What does it mean to look at an object and perceiving its inherent beauty? Your judgement of beauty is dependent on what you perceive as ugly. There is no beauty without ugly. When your sense of ugliness is very deep, then it is relatively easier to perceive an ordinary object as beautiful. For example, if you surround yourself in nature, you are surrounding yourself with beauty. Your sense of beauty becomes deep for a moment. Upon returning to city life, equipped with that new sense of beauty, it becomes easier for you to perceive ugly things as more ugly than they are, because they do not match up with the beauty that you have experienced earlier.
When we say that buildings or infrastructure made by humans are artificial, we are mistaken. I see such human infrastructure similar to how I see hives made by bees, and we can both agree that beehives are natural. When you do see the way I see it, you will be fascinated by all things made by humans, just as you are with the spider web made by the spider.
This is only possible if you see yourself as no different than a spider.
Should we venture out to space to search for a new home beyond the solar system?
No. Earth is our home. And will always be our only home. We came out from it like an apple that came out from an apple tree. The tree came out from the soil of Earth. If we find peace with ourselves and acknowledge that we are one with the universe already, there is no need to venture out into the unknowns. We will live in harmony with nature on Earth, just as how our ancestors did many thousands of years ago.
Nature will hit back at our rapid progression and warn us that our activities are not sustainable and disruptive to the unified system. Given our maturity in cognitive intelligence, we are responsible for protecting planet Earth to preserve nature. Nature has been sending messages to all of us. It is up for us to pick it up and acknowledge it. And our scientist has been doing so, we, citizens have the responsibility to endow ourself with such facts.
What if our sense of time changed, from what we see as seconds to seconds to a timelapse manner?
What if we see a change in any given landscape in a time-lapse way, i.e. that time moves not in seconds but minutes per minute or an hour per hour.
The answer is that we will see the bigger picture of how things change in that landscape. This apartment complex that I am living in did not exist five years ago. But now, its physical form has manifested. And I am a resident of this complex. To someone who has not been observing the construction of this building over time, I perceived that it exists instantaneously when I first see it.
Apply this thought experiment to every landscape that you see on the horizon. You will notice that changes occur in the background, but you can sense this because you are mindful that you observe it! It is the same with breathing. Breathing happens whether we want it to happen or not. But we only noticed that we are breathing when we are mindful of our breathing.
We are mindful of the changes in our environment only if we are mindful of the changes. Even with mindful observation, it is still difficult to see the changes, as our brain see changes on a second by second basis. And changes that occur in that timeframe isn’t so apparent to our senses.
Therefore, to observe change, we need to expand our sense of time.
Even if we did manage to grasp the changes of a landscape, we are only introspecting from a particular view — the vantage point matters. As a result, we will never get the complete picture.
Changes are happening everywhere. And to see the complete picture of changes means to introspect from all possible views. We can only introspect from a particular view at any given time. Therefore, it is impossible to get the complete picture.
And that is the beauty of nature. It cannot be known.
