There used to be a bumper sticker you’d see around here that urged everyone to “strive for excellence,” not a bad admonition, though I’d prefer “strive for beauty.”
No, better yet, “cleave to beauty.” In so doing, there might be less evil, less ugliness in the world, and that’s the truth.
In thinking of beauty, even though it’s said to be in the eye of the beholder, we might agree that harmony can be found in beautiful things and in beautiful, exemplary acts. I wonder why eating of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge was forbidden, for knowledge, insofar as it helps to extend Eden throughout the world, is beautiful, and thus ought not to be denied.
Call me a latter-day scientific animist, then — a believer in the efficacy of extending knowledge to further benefit humankind, and in the harmonious, thus spiritual, thoughts that nature evokes.
By contrast, all acts of human cruelty I’d define as evil insofar as they diminish harmony (there will always be heedlessness and accidents, of course; perhaps we were one) are destructive of beauty.
I almost forgot: pain and grief — and, oh yes, death. There is nothing beautiful about them, other than that there is much to be admired in those who bravely face reality and in the beautiful, exemplary acts that pain and grief can inspire.
Yes, strive for excellence (though not for tyranny). Be the best you can be, but happiness lies, I think, in the feeling that you’re moving in harmony with the creation, in balance with its cycles, with what is, all in all, beautiful.
I know I’m talking to the choir, for East Hampton, as far as I can make out, is in the neighborhood of Eden. Its surroundings are serene, and its people, whose varying opinions as to what best contributes to the greater good, are in the main concerned for this place and for those who live in it. You see that time and time again.