I listen to YouTube videos to help me fall asleep. It takes about five minutes and unless I set my timer, they will randomly play all night. One night I awakened from a deep sleep and overheard something so serendipitous, it left me astounded. It was an excerpt from the Q & A segment of a Jordan Peterson lecture entitled, Bilblical Series 1: Introduction to the idea of God.
How my brain was cued to wake up for this exclusive commentary is a mystery, but it coincided with my thesis about aesthetic beauty and its link to God. “Is it possible for something that is incredibly beautiful to evoke a religious or mystical experience?” asked a member of the audience who was curious about the connection between aesthetic beauty and religion. Dr. Peterson replied:
“I think that’s what they’re for in some sense …if you look at the structure of a Renaissance cathedral. If you’re going to house the ultimate ideal, you build something beautiful to represent its dwelling place… And it should be beautiful. And this is something that people do not take seriously… think about all the hundreds of millions of dollars that were invested into beauty in Europe … this spectacular excessive investment in beauty, and it’s paid back. God only knows how many multiples of times.”
“People make pilgrimages to Europe constantly because it is so beautiful that it just staggers you. Beauty is so valuable and we’re so afraid of it, and I think we’re afraid of it because it’s a pathway to the Divine. It’s not the only pathway to the Divine, there are other pathways to the Divine, love is one of them, but beauty — especially for people who have an affinity for beauty — it just hits you and it shows you the ideal, but it also shows you as though it is a vision of the potential future. Like music – it’s one of those things you can’t argue against. If we just got our act together and beautified things, that’s the place that we can inhabit, and that would ennoble us, and that is why Jerusalem, the heavenly city, is paved with gemstones.”
Dr. Peterson affirms my hypotheses about the dynamic trait of aesthetic beauty; it is a de facto catalyst for positive brain activity and meaningful religious experiences. Not unlike listening to beautiful music, beauty can stop me in my tracks, and leave me feeling awe inspired. Conversely, being surrounded by a disorganized array of clutter can be debilitating, leaving me in a perpetual state of flux, not sure if I am coming or going.
For example, last year I came across a particularly beautiful room in magazine that was so delightful, it left me wondering if the origin of aesthetic beauty was also divine. This also led me to consider if there was a scientific correlation between viewing something generally perceived as beautiful and dopamine activity in the brain, and so I began to investigate this possibility. I was stunned when I found scientific research that supported my theory.
This emerging field, known as neuroaesthetics, aims to understand the brain mechanisms that are engaged during aesthetic and similar encounters. Semir Zeki, who heads a research center called the Institute of Neuroaesthetics at London’s University College, has studied what happens in a person’s brain when they look at a painting or listen to a piece of music that they find beautiful and what happens when viewing something that strikes them as ugly. He discovered that when his study’s subjects experienced a piece of art or music they described as beautiful, their medial orbito-frontal cortex — the part of the brain just behind their eyes — ‘lit up’ in brain scans. Whereas art they found ugly stimulated their motor cortex instead. Zeki found that whether the beauty came through their ears, in music, or their eyes, in art, the brain’s response was the same — it had increased blood flow to what’s known as its pleasure center. Beauty gave the brains a dopamine reward.
Whether or not we are conscious of it, interior design influences human behavior. This fact has been vastly studied and documented. Dirty dishes, floors, and counters, for example, can trigger anxiety. Then there is tidy – organized rooms do have a calming effect. But beauty is in a class of its own.
Once again, I will defer to Dr. Peterson who dedicated one-twelfth of his book, Beyond Order – 12 More Rules for Life, to the subject at hand. “Cleaning your room is not enough,” he notes, before excavating Rule VIII – Try to Make One Room in Your Home as Beautiful as Possible.
“Who am I to tell people to people to clean up their rooms before attempting to fix the rest of the world when, apparently, I cannot do it myself? And there is something directly synchronistic and meaningful about that objection because I am not in proper order at that moment myself, and my condition undoubtedly found its reflection in the state of my office. More piled up every day, as I traveled, and everything collected around me. I plead exceptional circumstances, and I put many other things in order during the time my office was degenerating, but I still have a moral obligation to get back in there and put it right. And the problem is not just that I want to clean up the mess. I also want to make it beautiful: my room, my house, and then, perhaps, in whatever way I can manage, the community. God knows it is crying out for it.”
“Making something beautiful is difficult, but it is amazingly worthwhile. If you learn to make something in your life truly beautiful—even one thing—then you have established a relationship with beauty. From there you can begin to expand that relationship out into other elements of your life and the world. That is an invitation to the divine. That is the reconnection with the immortality of childhood, and the true beauty and majesty of the Being you can no longer see. You must be daring to try that.”
Without saying it, Dr. Peterson reinforces the primacy of the Pygmalion Effect with respect to the power of environmental changes to influence our mind, so much so, that it changes us interiorly, which leads to change in the community, and connects us directly to God. I don’t know how many of us are cognitive of this intrinsic link between beauty and human behavior. My children, now grown, always noticed any little thing I did to enhance the beauty of our home. They would walk in the door and immediately tell me how much they loved what I did. I observed that it helped them to relax and do their homework. Meals tasted better, they slept well, and awakened refreshed. Life was sweeter.
Beauty is the proper dwelling place for an enlightened conscience, and we ignore it at our spiritual and economic peril. There is almost nothing more valuable than beauty – economically and practically … Why [do] we experience gemstones, for example, as beautiful? It’s very mysterious, but there are deep reasons for it.
– Dr. Jordon Peterson
I applaud those who do understand this powerful link and promote the virtue of home by doing whatever they can to make their space more attractive. I have never understood how some can litter the MLS with photos of homes displaying ironing boards, cleaning products, laundry, and dirty dishes. This is not only disrespectful to buyers, but it is a great deterrent to selling a home quickly, and for top dollar since it is challenging to appreciate the potential of a home in a state of disarray. Yet it is precisely this contrast that helps those homes that are professionally staged to stand out among the rest.
When designing a home for yourself, or others to enjoy, it is not enough to declutter. Instead, go for the dopamine-inducing state of wonderment that will grant life-changing dividends for you, your family, and your community.
3 thoughts on “Beauty & the Brain”
Thank you for underscoring the importance of beauty in our lives and how the study of neuroaesthetics brings us back to order and a qualitative embrace of things, both seen with the eyes and lived in.
I had no idea what “neuroaesthetics” was until I read this article but it makes perfect sense that our brains are inherently receptive to beauty. As human beings, because of our higher faculties, our use of reason, we are naturally drawn towards that which is True, Good, and Beautiful. It is as spiritual as it is biological and more specifically neurological. Great article!
Ali, thank you so much for your thoughtful reflection!! It is so exciting for me to finally be sharing my passion for beauty, and all its metaphysical mechanisms at work behind the scenes. I am so happy it inspired you as well.