Why Beauty Matters: Roger Scruton - YouTube

"Art once made a cult of beauty. Now we have a cult of ugliness instead. This has made art into an elaborate joke, one which by now has ceased to be funny."

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bHw4MMEnmpc[/embed]

Truth, goodness, and beauty were once the pillars of art, philosophy, intellectual discourse — society itself — in the West. Sadly, this is no longer the case. Now "pop culture" (its very name suggesting its throwaway nature) mocks all three.

Beauty is replaced by abstraction and intentional ugliness, truth by propaganda and political "spin," goodness by self-interest and utilitarian "ethics." Over all is sprayed a glittering but corrosive coating of irony and sarcasm. I pray the pendulum may soon start to swing back, before it's too late for Western culture ever to recover.