Over the history of humanity, there have been many orthodoxies telling
people what kind of relationships to practice. These range from
Pashtuns claiming that a man who doesn't beat his wife isn't a man and
a woman who talks back to her husband ought to be doused with sulfuric
acid to American feminists claiming that heterosexual intercourse is a
patriarchial institution and ought to be abolished in favor of
artificial insemination. The recent psychological thought does
something perhaps not as gruesome as either of the preceding but
equally as oppressive: Demand that people practice relationships that
are cold, distant and harsh. But there is only one way to have a happy
relationship. That is to see the beauty in the beloved and strive to
maintain the beauty she sees in oneself - to love passionately and to
maintain the source of the passion. To make definitions and actions
favorable to sharing of beauty and passion. And to keep them alive
throughout the relationships.

The way we live - the way in which we direct our creative,
world-shaping thought and action - depends entirely on how we see the
world. If we see our partner as nothing special, or worse as inferior
or evil, then we will direct our actions toward them - the person
closest to us, the one over whose life we have the most impact - in a
way that is hurtful to them and ultimately to us. If we see them as
the most wonderful person in the world, then we make the life for them
and for ourselves beautiful. It is by adoring the partner, cherishing
her, treasuring her above all things on earth, that we create a world
for ourselves that's worthy of human habitation - a world that is, for
each couple, a paradise on earth.

When a Canadian magnate built a castle for the woman he loved, he
performed a service to his fellow citizens and to humanity as a whole.
He gave a shining example of beauty that can be accomplished by man
putting his mind, soul and body in service of love. He gave an
inspiration for men to love and to act on their love by producing
beautiful things for the ones they loved. To every woman, he wrote a
love letter; to every man, he wrote a sermon. Far better than anything
he could have done to expand his resources on humanitarian action, he
served mankind by inspiring it to expand its endless resources of
creativity and intelligence to make life beautiful for their beloveds.

As people, we have a choice - to order existents contained in our
minds in ways that lead to degradation, or to direct them in ways that
lead to improvement. We can use our inner resources to make the world
beautiful or to make it ugly, starting with our definitions about the
things in our environment. A worldview that sees beauty in the world
and in the beloved, and strives to produce beauty and rise to its
challenge, is a worldview that leads to people producing for one
another a paradise. When the majority of the population is capable of
doing the same, the result is paradise on earth.

The last twenty years resulted in impoverishment of the population.
Out of the oppressive, abusive emphasis on humility and mental
hygiene, both the left and the right robbed life of its color and
richness - of all that makes life worthwhile. Robbing people's minds,

and pursuant to them their actions, of all that is beautiful, they
left behind a population of broken, disfigured, undermined people -
of
people whose only remaining pleasure in life is to overeat.

The collectivist strives to make everyone work for the benefit of the
whole. But in assuming brotherhood of man, she attacks something that
goes far longer than brotherhood to make life beautiful: Romance.
Seeing everyone as equal, she cannot tolerate for someone to see
someone else as special and to act out of this vision toward making
for her a beautiful world. In this the collectivist impoverishes
humanity under the pretense of helping it.

It is up to us as shapers of the world we live in to apply our wills
and our minds to enhance the basic existents and structure them in a
way that makes for a beautiful world - to create a civilization that
is an improvement on nature and not a degradation and a man of
civilization that is an improvement and not a degradation on man. It
is up to us to shape our world in a way that is not degrading but
rather ennobling, using our wills and our minds to enhance life - to
enrich life - to make life beautiful. Sri Aurobindo said that the sum
total of moral endeavor is to live beautifully and make the sum total
of one's life beautiful. This ideal of beautiful living, when
performed on a large enough scale by enough people, can go a long way
toward making our world habitable.

Not everyone can afford to live in luxury, but everyone can afford
definitions and attitudes that are ennobling rather than degrading and
that see the beloved as wonderful and treats her as such. Everyone can
say at the doorstep, the definitions of the unchosen other stop here;
beyond this line, we have a paradise for ourselves. Every man can
afford to see the beauty in his marital partner and strive to make her
world beautiful. And every woman can afford to see greatness in her
man and strive to make his world wonderful too.

Ilya Shambat




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