Everything Has Gotten Uglier

The deterioration of beauty explains our broken culture.

In the Holocaust survivor Victor Frankl’s classic book, Man’s Search for Meaning, he explains that one of the most important lessons he learned from his experience in a concentration camp was the need for beauty to continue living. He argued that creating beauty is not just about vanity, but is a gateway to finding meaning and purpose—especially when everything else is taken away. Beauty was one of the keystones for Frankl’s philosophy, known as Logotherapy.

Lately, I’ve been trying to figure out the disconnect between the relative prosperity that the Western world enjoys compared to previous generations, and the fact that it seems the majority of Westerners don’t actually enjoy it. My contention is that one of the main reasons for this is that there's less “beauty per capita” in the world.

A lack of beauty is a pervasive aspect in many facets of our lives, and it's leading to a subtle yet pervasive degradation in our society.

Cities & Architecture

In modern urban environments, we can cle…