Some years back I sat in on a lecture by a well-known photographer and one thing did stick with me. Somewhere between talking about lenses and light, he tossed out this thought about there being a connection between ethics and aesthetics. It landed and it stayed with me, quietly, like a note tucked in the back pocket of my mind.
That idea kept resurfacing over the years - just now and then, like a thought you can’t quite shake. But after Alan was born, it started showing up more and more, to the point where I couldn’t ignore it anymore. So I finally gave in and decided to look into it - figure out where it came from and why it kept tugging at me. Naturally, I did what any modern dad would do: I opened up ChatGPT… and boom, there it was. Mystery solved.
Joseph Brodsky, the Russian-American poet and Nobel laureate, in his Nobel lecture on December, 8, 1987, said:
On the whole, every new aesthetic reality makes man’s ethical reality more precise. For aesthetics is the mother of ethics; The categories of “good” and “bad” are, first and foremost, aesthetic ones, at least etymologically preceding the categories of “good” and “evil”. If in ethics not “all is permitted”, it is precisely because not “all is permitted” in aesthetics, because the number of colors in the spectrum is limited. The tender babe who cries and rejects the stranger or who, on the contrary, reaches out to him, does so instinctively, making an aesthetic choice, not a moral one.
Aesthetic choice is a highly individual matter, and aesthetic experience is always a private one. Every new aesthetic reality makes one’s experience even more private; and this kind of privacy, assuming at times the guise of literary (or some other) taste, can in itself turn out to be, if not as guarantee, then a form of defense against enslavement. For a man with taste, particularly literary taste, is less susceptible to the refrains and the rhythmical incantations peculiar to any version of political demagogy. The point is not so much that virtue does not constitute a guarantee for producing a masterpiece, as that evil, especially political evil, is always a bad stylist. The more substantial an individual’s aesthetic experience is, the sounder his taste, the sharper his moral focus, the freer – though not necessarily the happier – he is.
I’m no Joseph Brodsky - nowhere close. I couldn’t say it better if I tried, so I’ll just say this: I wholeheartedly agree. What he said hits even harder today. The more I look around, the more I realize how true it is.
Think about it - if a person truly sees the beauty in this world, how could they ever justify waging war on someone else? And take a man with all the money in the world - if his moral compass is broken, his mansion’s probably going to be as tasteless and ugly as his choices.
Good taste - real, grounded, thoughtful taste - isn’t just about matching colors or buying fancy stuff. It’s a reflection of values. And when those values are in place, there’s just no way you can look at the shitshow we’re in right now and say, “Yeah, that’s fine.” A person with a sense of beauty can’t turn a blind eye to ugliness - not in the world, not in others, and definitely not in themselves.
“Wait a minute - didn’t Hitler paint too? And look how that ended up!” - you might say.
First of all, yes - he did. And he also got rejected twice by the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, because, well, he sucked.
Second - come on, cut me some slack. The idea is solid. Sure, it’s not universal, but really, what idea is?
I’ve started thinking of good taste - not the snobbish kind, but the genuine appreciation for beauty - as a kind of extra line of defense. Like a shield, or a vaccine, against all the noise, chaos, and ugliness the world throws our way today. It won’t stop the bad stuff from existing, but it might just help our kids recognize it for what it is - and choose something better.
So do your kids a favor, dads: show them the beauty in this world. Not just the obvious stuff like sunsets or paintings in a museum, but the little, everyday moments too - a well-made sandwich, a song that hits just right, the way morning light falls on their cereal bowl. Teach them to notice, to care, to find joy in the details, to be curious. It might just help them grow up a little more grounded, a little more kind, and a little less likely to get lost in the ugly. A little - is enough, a little is more than many ever do, a little is, in fact, a lot.
Good taste is just like any other skill - it can be learned, it can be sharpened. And guess what, dads? Teaching it is part of the job now.