Useless Beauty

"Remember that the most beautiful things in the world are the most useless; peacocks and lilies for instance."

-- John Ruskin

Usefulness is highly overrated. We fail to see that the uses that so many useful things are put to create a slew of negative consequences. Take guns, for instance. Sure, they can be used to protect, but too many times they are used to kill, both animals and humans, that don't deserve to be killed. Never heard of a peacock offing anybody.

We've got hundreds of models of useful cars that burn up fossil fuel like it's going out of style, which, come to think of it, it is! We've got all kinds of appliances, contraptions and electronics that suck electricity like a twenty dollar whore, all because we're too friggin lazy to do the simplest acts of daily living without electrified assistance! We've got a whole lot of useful stuff alright, and its usefulness is helping drive us to the brink of economic collapse.

Time to simplify. Time to return to simple beauty. Time to quit making productivity into a god, and instead relax and enjoy the beauty of nature, the beauty of people, the beauty of life.

Where in the hell are we all going so fast? I'll tell you where we're going -- down a slippery slope into a great depression, both economic and psychological. Once it begins to dawn on us that we've traded productivity and ease of use for beauty, simplicity and quality of life, we're going to wake up with a giant technological hangover! It won't be pretty, but maybe it will help us value useless beauty for a change.

So, today, you're the Beauty Detective. Your mission is to go out there and discover the beauty in all the useless things of life -- from dandelions to swimsuit models, from bright red sunsets to children's art, from cotton candy to mystical visions. Seek out the useless. Revel in its beauty. Enjoy a life free of striving, free of meaning, free of goals -- if only just for a day.