The Ugly

Sometimes the truth is ugly.

Da Vinci, 1502.

Sometimes, life is ugly.

What can we learn from the ugly? How should we relate to it? Should we seek it out, or avoid it entirely?

Throughout history, many great philosophers and intellectuals have described the truth as beautiful. To take one example, Plato famously argued that our imperfect world depends upon a world of perfect and true ideas which are themselves beautiful. The idea is simple. True ideas, unlike people, do not decay and lose their beauty. If the truth is beautiful, it is always beautiful.

I disagree. Sometimes the truth is ugly.

For the past several years, I have lived in one of the largest, and poorest, American cities. There is a lot of ugly.

I see ugly people. Teeth rotting, exposed wounds, ragged clothes.

I see ugly streets. Litter, dirt, damage.

I see ugly ideas. Hatred, anger.

Seeing the ugly everyday wears you down.

The ugly is paradoxical.

If you avoid what is ugly entirely, you cannot fully understand our world. You live in a false reality. You bring the ugliness of falsehood into your life. You may even make yourself unhappy.

Surrounding yourself only with what is beautiful can make you unhappy in unexpected ways. It can make you end up feeling worse about yourself and others, even if you, and your life, is beautiful. Ironically, this sometimes leads to the beautiful turning back into the ugly (ask a plastic surgeon).

On the other hand, if you spend too much time with the ugly, it can make you ugly. It can make you miserable, it can make you nasty, it can make you cynical. It can diminish your spirit and your ability to appreciate what’s beautiful about our world.

Plato might be right that transcendent truth is perfectly beautiful. But we don’t live in a transcendent reality. We live in this reality. It is a fact of our world that the ugly is never completely avoidable. We can choose to ignore it, but this provides only a temporary escape and brings the ugliness of falsehood into our lives.

If we can’t avoid the ugly in this world, then we need to think hard about our relationship to it. We need to face it with eyes wide open. We need to sit with it and think about it. We need to study it and appreciate it. We need to treat it in the same way that we treat the beautiful.