Does anyone else see strange beauty, sublime excellence, in the weird, the uncanny, the anomalous?

A particular building on a college campus serves as the Home Economics and Physics Department. It's one of the oldest buildings on campus. Although its a beautiful building, lots of people find it creepy.

Old hospitals at one time were cutting edge technology. What is alien to me in architecture or transportation may not be strange to you if you live in a foreign country or culture.To you, it is the here-and-now, every day same-old. To me, however, it's quite strange.

A Russian lullabye learned in childhood may sound haunting, hostile, forlorn, but at the sametime indescribably sweet and otherworldly. I think some people may be drawn to certain spiritualities for this reason. Yet that sense of otherness is weirdly beautiful.

Its not just personal taste or cultural norm, its the "otherness" itself. I don't know a name for this quality or thing. But, does anyone else find foreign, strange, sometimes slightly creepy, weird things to be painfully beautiful?

Asked by Yellowdog 22 months ago Similar questions: strange beauty sublime excellence weird uncanny anomalous Lifestyle.

Similar questions: strange beauty sublime excellence weird uncanny anomalous.

I find the weird to be more enduring and endearing than the familiar, but then, that's true for all humans. The ones accorded "beauty" status obtain that status by the privilege of having been born (or photoshopped or plastic surgeried) into this rare form that would look weird or ugly to others.(Most people in Africa would find that thinness to be apalling as well as common. See The God's Must Be Crazy for an example).

I find much of Philip Glass's music to be haunting (good example is "Prophecies" which is from the Koyaanisqatsi soundtrack and was used in the movie Watchmen. Other people can't stand his stuff (a friend rightly summarized it as, "Tweedle tweedle tweedle tweedle thump.") The usual name of it is "uncanny. " In movies, the animators--especially the CGI folks, run into "the uncanny valley" where the likeness to a human is so close that it frightens others by looking unhuman enough to disturb (can't figure out what exactly is wrong, but something is very wrong here.

) The latest sex dolls are hitting that same wall (tho eyes will be closed, so who cares?) And that latter is when it becomes "creepy. " .

I see more beauty in character than in a contemporary model's features - to me they look bland and repetitive.

We may think on different planes. I find most of those things, sans hospitals, absolutely beautiful. I see beauty in faces that others don't.

I see more beauty in character than in a contemporary model's features - to me they look bland and repetitive.

2 Yelowdog, you write so well, so descriptively. And yes, I share your feelings.

Yelowdog, you write so well, so descriptively. And yes, I share your feelings.

3 I think if we take the time to view just about anything we can find the beauty of it. There was so much beauty in the Elephant Man and yet look how he suffered but his heart was open and he longed to be accepted as a man. If you have had to work with or be with many of the handicapped their spirit and hearts are so loving and giving.As they grow sometimes because of treatment they can become very mean and abusive it is what they have learned.

But their inner beauty often times is so developed from their inner self and not from the support and love of others. Sometimes what others view as Ugly is amazingly beautiful if we take the time to stop and smell the roses (so to speak). Good question.

This user has been banned from Askville.

3 I think if we take the time to view just about anything we can find the beauty of it. There was so much beauty in the Elephant Man and yet look how he suffered but his heart was open and he longed to be accepted as a man. If you have had to work with or be with many of the handicapped their spirit and hearts are so loving and giving.As they grow sometimes because of treatment they can become very mean and abusive it is what they have learned.

But their inner beauty often times is so developed from their inner self and not from the support and love of others. Sometimes what others view as Ugly is amazingly beautiful if we take the time to stop and smell the roses (so to speak). Good question.

I think if we take the time to view just about anything we can find the beauty of it. There was so much beauty in the Elephant Man and yet look how he suffered but his heart was open and he longed to be accepted as a man. If you have had to work with or be with many of the handicapped their spirit and hearts are so loving and giving.As they grow sometimes because of treatment they can become very mean and abusive it is what they have learned.

But their inner beauty often times is so developed from their inner self and not from the support and love of others. Sometimes what others view as Ugly is amazingly beautiful if we take the time to stop and smell the roses (so to speak). Good question.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.