Beauty Is Truth

The Romans had a term for it, in vino veritas, "in wine [there is] truth", which, to a certain extent, I agree with.

Though only to an extent.

I know that it’s an aphorism which some people put quite a lot of credence in, but I really don’t.

(To whit, don’t trust anything I say when I’m drunk. Not a single word. It’s invariable untrue and profoundly pointless. This goes doubly for any bets, 10 pence or otherwise, I might make. Stop taking advantage of me).

For instance, my cousin Linley reckons that when people are drunk they are their honest truthful authentic selves, just ‘with the volume turned up.’

And there might be something to that, in that all of us, to greater and lesser extents maintain certain facades which we rarely, if ever let drop. However, those facades, no matter how practiced and expert we are in maintaining them, become more and more difficult to keep up when we’re drunk.

And when those barriers fall it might be that what we’re left with is authenticity. Which is to say truth and the lack of mitigation and mediation in and of that truth.

I can see how that would be a reasonable hypothesis, and it does make some sense  – but what it doesn’t take account of is the fact that without our barriers and facades what’s left underneath is a jumbled incoherent mish mash of any number of unaligned, undefined, unmediated, uncogitated (if it’s a word), illogical neurosis’, emotions, character traits and fears.

That’s not authenticity. That’s chaos. Authenticity is considered. It’s built carefully over the course of a lifetime through the thousands of things we do and think everyday. In other words then, authenticity lies in being the person you want and try to be. Not necessarily the person you are in nature or in essence.

I suppose the question revolves around what you consider truth to be.

Anyway, that’s just something I was thinking about. Jump in with your thoughts.