Transcript
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: How do you define beauty?
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: In society, there's so many things that we call beautiful. We could call a baby's face beautiful. Sometimes we describe movies as beautiful. Certainly landscapes and natural elements strike us as beautiful.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Paintings, sometimes ah a goal in an overtime game, it can be described as a beautiful performance or comeback. Dancing, architecture,
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Even a spreadsheet, I think, has been described as beautiful. So what really is beauty? With all these discrepant definitions, I think that's why we've come to the often heard colloquialism, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. We like to say it's an individual choice and often informed culturally.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: But then how do we explain the fact that facial symmetry is ranked as beautiful across all continents, across all cultures?
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: So perhaps it's not quite as simple as the things we learn culturally. Today, we're going to take on the origins of beauty, and we hope that you guys come along for the ride.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Well, there's nothing like a second take on a show because we fucked up the first take.
Jeff Hein: I'm like, that's a cake on a shelf.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: This is Woodworking is Bullshit, your favorite podcast about why we do the things we do, not how we do the things we do.
Jeff Hein: Fuck it.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: I'm your host, Paul Jasper of Copper Pig Woodworking. And of course, I got my boy in the chair across the screen, Eric Curtis, fine furniture maker and content creator.
Mr Beauty: You're killer Taco Bell, motherfuckers. yeah ah
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: You came in early, Eric.
Mr Beauty: Sorry, sorry. You paused in a weird way. I thought that was my opening.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: No, wa you you were like loving on your dog and you were just...
Mr Beauty: I messed up the intro. Fuck!
Mr Beauty: I'm sorry.
Jeff Hein: Speaking a beautiful, man, that's a nice looking dog.
Mr Beauty: He was loving on me. He's a good boy.
Jeff Hein: yeah
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: The other voice that you hear is none other than painter extraordinaire, our good friend, Jeff Hein. Jeff, thanks for joining us on this topic.
Jeff Hein: Oh, man, i'm I'm excited to be back.
Mr Beauty: For a third time, unofficially.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: So,
Jeff Hein: For a third time. Second time on air, yeah.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: as I said... We tried to record this show. It didn't quite work out for a number of reasons that we're not going to get into, but this is our.
Mr Beauty: Listen, we've we've said it before on the show, we take creative risks and sometimes those don't pay out.
Jeff Hein: ah
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: ah
Mr Beauty: You know, that's the that's the definition of risk.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: It. So this is our second crack at it, which means I think we'll have a little bit of a different tone than perhaps the first try, but maybe it's better.
Jeff Hein: Yeah.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: But I am going to start off the same way, which is to say this episode is about the idea of beauty. Is it inherent to the human condition? Is it part of who we are genetically?
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Is it culturally learned? Is it both? This was a question that Jeff came up with. Jeff, can you give us... ah an example of why you thought of this question in the first place.
Jeff Hein: Well, I would add one more category. Were we created with a certain collective appreciation for beauty? um And that that's what I think about. I mean, anyone who knows me knows that I'm a biblical painter, so I'd be quite a hypocrite if I wasn't didn't believe the things I painted.
Jeff Hein: But I will say i'll i will say i don't know anything. I
Jeff Hein: um about this topic. I mean, I know something about it, but I don't know what we're going to discuss, what the what the prognosis is. you know It's just interesting to think about. and And throughout my entire career doing paintings, I've often thought to myself, why do I study design if there are so many rules of design that I have been taught appeal to the masses I myself being one of the masses, technically, if it appeals to me on a root genetic level, then I shouldn't have to be trained. I should just know what's beautiful when I see it and paint it. i
Jeff Hein: I shouldn't need training. So I've thought a lot about it because I am kind of instinctual artist. I use artists loosely because I i feel like it's a a label I don't like to put on myself, but...
Jeff Hein: but a maker maybe. um I'm very intuitive and I don't have a lot of great training, but I know a lot of the rules of design. And I often think that I don't pay attention to them as much as I pay attention to my intuition. And so I've thought, I've wondered how much is ingrained in me and everyone and how much is taught through just nurture or literally academically taught in school and so on.
Mr Beauty: So Paul, I know you want to get into the science behind things because that's who you are and and that's why we love you. But um I do just, I want to push back on the intuition component of it a little bit, Jeff, just from a personal ah perspective, because I don't think I have that intuition.
Jeff Hein: Yeah.
Mr Beauty: And I understand like your, your argument is perfectly logical. You're like, if I am human and human, there is an understood, like,
Jeff Hein: Yeah.
Mr Beauty: universal beauty that human can access, then I should just be able to access beauty, right? That is a perfectly
Jeff Hein: Well, and that's a big if. That's what we're talking about right now.
Mr Beauty: Sure, sure, sure.
Jeff Hein: Yeah.
Mr Beauty: But like that is a perfectly legitimate line of logic in theory.
Jeff Hein: Yeah.
Jeff Hein: Yeah.
Mr Beauty: But then you have clowns like me who I can build like the the the mechanical building of things has always made sense to my brain and to my hands. I can do that. I pick it up very easily.
Mr Beauty: You see it and you go like, OK, there's the triangle. Like from from the time I was like seven years old to be like, I could figure out how to make that. That makes sense. But what I couldn't do was intuit what made a thing look beautiful and how to achieve beauty.
Mr Beauty: What I could intuit was that the things that I was making were not beautiful. So there is.
Jeff Hein: You recognize the lack of beauty. You just didn't know.
Mr Beauty: yes
Jeff Hein: You didn't know the, the, I don't, for lack better word, the formula to get to beauty.
Mr Beauty: Yeah, yeah. Well, that's exactly what it was, right? And we've we've talked about this in prior episodes, and especially in the the episode with Jack about the elements and principles of design. It wasn't until I discovered the elements and principles and that formula, that equation, that math ah equation that like allows you to add and subtract elements and principles to get too beautiful.
Mr Beauty: That was when it started to make sense to me.
Jeff Hein: Wait a minute. so you So when you design a piece of furniture, you literally go through a checklist of rules of design in order to make sure you're not going down an ugly road.
Mr Beauty: It's well, yeah, to some extent. Yeah, yeah. to Like still to this day, the I cross reference the elements and principles constantly to be like, what is the one that I am focusing on?
Jeff Hein: Really?
Mr Beauty: Is the focus clear on that? Or am I doing too many things? Is it too distracting? How do I minimize the distractions of all of the other principles that I'm utilizing to make sure that everybody knows like I'm using rhythm in this piece or I'm using texture in this piece?
Jeff Hein: Yeah.
Mr Beauty: because it doesn't naturally occur to me that like that is the direction the piece is headed.
Jeff Hein: Huh.
Mr Beauty: And I and I have to math it out, which is ironic because I'm shit at math, you know, but.
Jeff Hein: Yeah, but that's simple math, right?
Mr Beauty: Sure, sure. It's addition and subtraction, right?
Jeff Hein: Yeah. Yeah, it's not complicated.
Mr Beauty: So so again, i think your your logic, your logic holds water, even in the example that I use, because what I'm saying is I could intuit that it's not right. but i couldn't I couldn't figure out how to get to write until somebody broke it down for me in ah in an accessible way.
Jeff Hein: Yeah.
Jeff Hein: So the thought that comes to my mind is maybe if it is sort of a divine thing, maybe God just has his favorites, you know? And so...
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: And you're not it, Eric.
Mr Beauty: i was i was half a second away from a spit take on that, buddy. Yeah.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: So, Eric, oh my goodness. Eric, you're obviously not the favorite.
Mr Beauty: I mean, we I'm a middle child.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: So...
Mr Beauty: Of course I'm not the favorite.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: So, Eric, you said, I'm going to push back on you, is what you said to Jeff. And I'm going to push back on you pushing back on Jeff because...
Mr Beauty: It's a real circle jerk of pushing. Goodbye.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: ah o um
Mr Beauty: ah
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Please don't. i I didn't know the elements of art and principles of design until about two weeks ago.
Mr Beauty: Sure.
Jeff Hein: What?
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: i i had no idea.
Mr Beauty: Yeah.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: No, I had never heard of them.
Jeff Hein: Oh, that's re you've got some serious intuition then because your designs, well, so are Eric's, but he claims to be doing it mathematically.
Mr Beauty: Mm-hmm.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: It...
Jeff Hein: Dude, you got some good instincts.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yeah. It's just, it's pure instinct all the time. There's no thinking. There's no aptitude. I didn't even know what they were until two episodes ago.
Jeff Hein: And you're not even, you're not, you're from, you're from a scientific background.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: And,
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: I know. I didn't go to art school. i didn't none None of this. it just it's just I just kind of made it up as I went along.
Jeff Hein: Interesting.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: And I was like, but I know what I like. And Jeff, I think it's what you're talking about. Like, I just follow my gut and my gut knows.
Jeff Hein: Yeah.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: I know very, very quickly if I like something or I don't like something, meaning something I'm making. ah And I know it instantly and I know why. i can put my finger on it.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: So there's something in my brain, there's something in my brain that's guiding my decisions on what is beautiful versus what is not.
Jeff Hein: So I got to push. Oh, go ahead. Mm-hmm.
Jeff Hein: Yeah, and I would argue that, Eric, you got the same thing.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: But I don't, yeah.
Jeff Hein: It's just... Because if you recognize ugly, you recognize the lack of beauty. which How is that different than recognizing beauty?
Mr Beauty: well That's it. And and again, i admit that your argument, I'm not saying that your argument is wrong. It's perfectly sound and logical. What I'm saying is, I think i i think i think the gap in the argument as it stands is that like you can intuit what is beautiful.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: His argument's right.
Jeff Hein: It's, yeah.
Mr Beauty: And I don't think without the help of of somebody else who could break it down and teach me how to get too beautiful, i couldn't I couldn't bridge that gap. So there's something, there is something very human about like looking at beautiful objects, looking at the objects that I had made up to that point and going like those two things, qua qualitatively, those two things are not the same, but I don't know how to get from a to B.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yeah.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: But Eric, that's just a personal that's just like saying every human is different.
Jeff Hein: Yeah.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Some have more aptitudes towards something in some, you know, we're all obviously, you know,
Mr Beauty: I don't know.
Jeff Hein: Yeah, let me tell you a story about.
Mr Beauty: I don't know what that sentence was, Paul.
Jeff Hein: no yeah
Mr Beauty: that That was four different sentences that you ended and they just went, you know.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Sorry. Sorry. What I'm saying is it's not about Jeff's argument. Jeff's argument is correct. It's just like some people have it in in a more raw, natural form and others learn it. And that goes to all of us about different things. Like I had to learn certain things that didn't come natural to me.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Like music, music is not a natural fit. And I practiced the fuck out of it to be able to do it. And I still wasn't that good. So it's like i lack an aptitude for like, i don't have the it factor for music. I've tried. I tried for 12 And I don't have it.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: But apparently I do have it for just recognizing when something looks good or doesn't and why, it at least in my own work, and how to make things.
Jeff Hein: Mm-hmm.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: that just That's just in my brain automatically. I never had to learn a thing about it. It just it just was there.
Mr Beauty: So what do you do when in in this line of argument or this line of thinking, what do you do when somebody comes to the conclusion that something is beautiful that you disagree with, that it is beautiful?
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yeah.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Oh, that's a good question.
Mr Beauty: Because we're starting from the assumption that there is a universal beauty standard.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well.
Jeff Hein: Let me back up a little bit because I got to tell you an anecdote here. that Because I don't, you guys keep saying my argument is right. at least Paul does for the most part.
Mr Beauty: Yeah, don't put those words in my mouth, Jeff.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: and Jeff's the chosen one and I want to be on his good side.
Jeff Hein: it's not an It's not an argument though.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Mm-hmm.
Jeff Hein: It's a question. i don't I'm not even standing behind it really.
Mr Beauty: Okay.
Jeff Hein: It's a question. And this is why it's a question.
Mr Beauty: Hmm.
Jeff Hein: Because when I was a kid, so as you two know, I'm also a maker, right? I like to make lots of things.
Mr Beauty: Hmm.
Jeff Hein: But my dad, I think I get that genetic component from my dad. he could make anything. I mean, I idolized my dad. He could just build anything and he built it amazingly well. And he seemed to know everything about everything.
Jeff Hein: But one day I remember I was like 12 years old, maybe even younger and I'm standing in his shop and he's making a cabinet and for my mom, I think it was mother's day or something. And I'm looking at the cabinet he's putting the doors together and he had all the rails and styles, all the same width.
Jeff Hein: And I'm 12 years old, i have no I know nothing about cabinets. And not only that, but he had the reveal between the door and the edge of the cabinet, the face frame of the cabinet, the same all the way around.
Jeff Hein: And i thought, well, that looks okay, but I feel like it needs more weight on the bottom. you know And I remember thinking that at 12 years old, and I said it to my dad, and he's like, no, I think it's fine.
Jeff Hein: and And I remember at that point recognizing that while my dad is a great craftsman, um he wasn't he didn't have the aesthetics that i later realized that i had naturally um so i don't know that it is like i i yeah it's not innate at the same level for everybody i know that for a fact
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: That's right.
Jeff Hein: But it still leaves an open question of whether or not it is programmed in us in general, right? Because clearly we're programmed to do a lot of things as human beings, but some people do them better than others, but it's part of our programming, right?
Jeff Hein: It doesn't mean it has to be equal across all humanity.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Jeff, this is a wonderful segue into the science of beauty.
Jeff Hein: ah
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: So ah what is what is part of the human condition with regards to beauty and what is not? Science has studied this for a long period of time.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: And the way you study it is to rule out the cultural conditioning we have. You would do this study about whether something's beautiful or not across all cultures or many, many cultures across many continents.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: And if they all agree that this thing's beautiful, it largely is not a cultural, but rather a genetic bias.
Jeff Hein: Right.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: You can also use children who have are pre-cultured. like if If you can detect brain activity or you see certain behaviors in children who have not yet been cultured, perhaps that speaks to a genetic basis. So there's a wide there's a big literature about the science behind beauty. And there are really, would say there's four main studies and conclusions that have come up from the research literature about what humans instinctively, genetically, heritably find beautiful.
Jeff Hein: Mm-hmm.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: The first that we could talk about that I already mentioned in the in the pre-show is facial symmetry. So facial symmetry is across all cultures, across all groups, something people find beautiful. And in fact, when you see good facial symmetry,
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: ah pleasure centers in your brain show activity by um MRI. So it's not it's not just like a feeling.
Jeff Hein: Hmm.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: There is brain activity that doesn't happen if it if there is not good facial symmetry. So your brain is genetically programmed to recognize that symmetry.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: And there's a universal preference for that.
Mr Beauty: Can I ask a question, Paul? um Is that, and I don't know if you have this information, is that study or is that ah data specifically about facial symmetry?
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yeah.
Mr Beauty: Because i I'm assuming that that it's just symmetry in general, right? Like something feels at home in at and at ease in ah in ah in a place of stasis that it's symmetry in general.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Uh, well,
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: yeah.
Jeff Hein: Oh, I would have assumed it's just facial.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: I'm sure the the literature probably has a thousand or more papers in it about symmetry and our reactions to it. I'm sure they've studied both. I know it's facial symmetry for sure.
Mr Beauty: OK.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: i know that is like the result, but I wouldn't be surprised if in general, I mean, look, look how symmetrical so much in the, the world.
Mr Beauty: Yeah.
Mr Beauty: the The world is, right?
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: I mean, our,
Mr Beauty: Yeah.
Jeff Hein: I'd actually would be surprised, but I,
Mr Beauty: Yeah, yeah, yeah. If people prefer general symmetry over asymmetry?
Jeff Hein: No, I think, well, I'm getting ahead of my getting ahead of myself.
Mr Beauty: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jeff Hein: So so i'll just I'll just quickly just say this and then we'll get to it later, I'm sure.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: all right, so.
Jeff Hein: But I mean, I think that the rule of thirds is generally when we're dealing with paintings, buildings, furniture, people tend to prefer asymmetry.
Mr Beauty: Mmm.
Jeff Hein: But it makes sense with a human being. Maybe not, I don't know, something to talk about.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: It does, it does.
Jeff Hein: But with a human being, it makes sense. And I'm sure you're going to explain why.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yeah, no, I don't know why. You know, it' just it's just there. The data suggests, supports that we love facial symmetry. But I think we also like symmetry in our bodies too. Like one short arm um and one long arm or big arm looks kind of fucked up, right?
Jeff Hein: Yeah.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: I mean, i and...
Mr Beauty: That's been my problem 38 years, man That's why i can't get a date.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: ah
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: All right, so facial symmetry is one thing that's been proven out of the scientific literature. Another one is the savanna hypothesis. I think this is fascinating. When you show yeah when you show people images of landscapes, it could be like a Yosemite landscape, it could be a rainforest, it could be a desert, it could be a tundra, it could be a savanna.
Jeff Hein: This one throws me off a little bit. Yeah.
Jeff Hein: Yeah.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Humans across cultures, across continents, always show a strong... significant statistically significant preference for a savanna landscape. And what that means is like wide open NIST fields, some trees, a water element, usually some animals and even a path that tends to be what most groups prefer, even even groups, Jeff, that don't live in savannas.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: And that's hard to explain.
Jeff Hein: I find that one so strange.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: But it hold it holds up to scientific rigor, apparently. There's a big literature on the Savannah hypothesis.
Mr Beauty: Why do you find that strange, Jeff?
Jeff Hein: what about you two?
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: And...
Jeff Hein: What about you? Well, for one, I don't find it beautiful. I mean, I, I find it, I find the whole planet beautiful, but relative to other landscapes, not the whole planet.
Mr Beauty: You don't find the Savannah beautiful?
Jeff Hein: i mean, Nevada got that.
Mr Beauty: was going to say, yeah, you've been to some places, brother.
Jeff Hein: That's yeah. i like God did the whole rest of the planet.
Mr Beauty: ah
Jeff Hein: and then the seventh day he forgot about Nevada, went to sleep.
Mr Beauty: Have we been to Nebraska?
Jeff Hein: Yeah.
Mr Beauty: Like, for fuck's sake, come on. Hmm.
Jeff Hein: No, no, I don't. i mean maybe it's from, well, you guys are from the east. What are your thoughts? I mean, I, when I'm in the mountains surrounded in the middle of a forest and particularly when there's moisture and it's just, I feel like this coziness inside the canopy of trees to me, that's the most beautiful, but a lot, but I've, I've met a lot of people that just want wide open spaces And so I really, that's just personal.
Mr Beauty: So
Jeff Hein: But if I looked at the study, just because i am not one of those people that would have chosen the Savannah over what I just described, I'm assuming it's not a hundred percent agreement in the study.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Oh, of course not. Of course not.
Jeff Hein: Yeah.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yeah.
Jeff Hein: Yeah. Um, yeah, go ahead.
Mr Beauty: aye I imagine that... but So first of all, I agree with you 100%. To me, one of the most beautiful landscapes on the planet is a lush mountainous landscape.
Jeff Hein: Yeah.
Mr Beauty: Like it is it is being in in a higher elevation, it's pine trees, it's deciduous trees, it's water, it's it's that yeah that coziness that you described, right? Like I have, but but so in that circumstance, I know, like if we're thinking,
Jeff Hein: Mm-hmm.
Mr Beauty: early hominids a million years ago. I know I have fuel for fire. I know I have running water, presumably clean water that's not stale, stagnant, full of parasites and whatnot. um I know I have ah materials to build shelters with.
Mr Beauty: It's also what I grew up around. I grew up in upstate New York, right so I personally find it beautiful, but it's a resource-rich area.
Jeff Hein: Right.
Mr Beauty: The the Savannah, if you include things like the streams, like a couple of animals roaming, a couple of trees in the distance, is there are resources there to be utilized and survive.
Mr Beauty: Whereas if you show ah a photo of ah of a desert, you immediately are like, oh boy, that like that's going to be a struggle. You know, so I wonder how much that that kind of mentality of of resource acquisition plays into what we find beautiful.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Eric, Eric, you nailed it. If you go deeper into the Savannah hypothesis and the studies, it's not that they like the Savannah per se. It's that the elements that are typically placed in the Savannah, moving, running water, animals, open sight lines, and some trees and like resources, essentially so safety and resources are,
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Those are what people are preferring. It's not necessarily the biome of the Savannah. Do you see what I'm saying?
Jeff Hein: So open meaning nothing can come out from a behind a tree right next to you.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: So...
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: you could Exactly.
Jeff Hein: You can see. Yeah.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: You can see threats at a distance. You can see what's going on.
Jeff Hein: Right.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: You feel comfortable and safe. So Eric, you're exactly right. It could be a mountainous landscape, but if that has those same elements, which is food, water, shelter, safety, sight lines, that mountain example could very well be just as provocative as the savanna.
Mr Beauty: Well, and to go the other way, to to paint a dissonant picture in the other direction, I just said i find the mountains to be some of the most serene, beautiful places on the planet. And I have solo camped in the in the Rockies, in the northern Rockies and in open grizzly country.
Mr Beauty: And remember what I'll just use one particular night as an example. It is one of the most serene, most beautiful valleys I've ever been to northern Montana somewhere.
Jeff Hein: Mm-hmm.
Mr Beauty: I can't remember the exact location north of Paradise Valley. Like I was on my way up to Glacier. And I drive into this valley and over a course of, I think, eight miles, there are only six campsites. So there's nothing around. There is nobody four miles. And I drove the length of the road to see if anybody's around because I'm by myself and I want to know if I scream bloody murder or somebody going to hear me.
Mr Beauty: Right. Right. So I drive them like nobody's there. I set up camp. There's a creek like just on the other side of the road. I can hear it kind of matriculating down the mountain. There are birds around and I'm just sitting there on the camp chair, cooking dinner over the fire. The tent is set up. Everything is ready to go. And it is it is picturesque. Like it is the shit that people take photos and sell the Nat Geo over.
Jeff Hein: Mm-hmm.
Mr Beauty: And I'm sitting there. And that there's just this sense that comes over me of just like, I don't know if I'm safe. And I didn't see grizzly. I don't have any reason to believe logically, sight wise, sensory wise, that there was a predator there. But I just had that like sixth sense in the back of my like tingling down my spine.
Mr Beauty: And I sat with it for maybe five to 10 minutes. And I stood up at sunset and I packed up camp and I drove to a Walmart parking lot and I slept there for the night. Because there was just a thing of just like, so you're you're in a resource rich environment, you're in this thing that people like you post a bunch of stories on Instagram about.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Wow.
Mr Beauty: But you also recognize in that moment how vulnerable you are because you lack critically for the Savannah, the sight lines to know that there are no predators right around the tree.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: The sight lines. You can't see. Yeah.
Mr Beauty: Yeah.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: 50 feet away. You can't really tell.
Mr Beauty: Yeah.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yeah.
Jeff Hein: So it's interesting. So what you're suggesting is that, well well, from the beauty one, you didn't mention this, but I think I know what you were getting at. The beauty one, you're looking at symmetry because it represents a healthy mate, right?
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: It represents genetic health.
Jeff Hein: So... genetic health, right? And you obviously want to choose a healthy mate to produce offspring with.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: 100%. Yes. 100%. Correct.
Jeff Hein: And then the landscape, you prefer it because of resources, safety, shelter, and so on.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Correct.
Jeff Hein: So it's all about and some sort of ah evolutionary preservation type of thing.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Correct.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yeah, absolutely.
Jeff Hein: The question is, why beauty?
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yeah, go ahead.
Jeff Hein: Why does it, why, you know, a mountain pops up because of a series of earthquakes out of nowhere. It's just an arbitrary raising of the ground, right?
Jeff Hein: And then trees just pop up arbitrarily. Streams, you know, they dig their own paths and they end up wherever they end up. And yet somehow we interpret all that as not just safety,
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Well,
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: yeah.
Jeff Hein: but beauty, but yet nature is so arbitrary
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yeah. But Jeff, it represents so symbolically resources. Like you said, a tree represents like cover or shelter or resource.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Water represents something to drink, you know, and that represents that food will be around. Animals will be around, which means food, right?
Jeff Hein: Right, but the question is, from an evolutionary standpoint, why not just feel the sensation or the emotion of safety and comfort?
Jeff Hein: Why is it beauty? Why, when we're when we're sitting in the savannah, is it do we not just like, oh, this landscape looks safe, it looks like there's I can make shelter?
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yeah.
Jeff Hein: But no, we're like, oh, it's just picturesque. It seems like sort of a backdoor, yes.
Mr Beauty: Okay, can I can I posit a hypothesis?
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: I have an answer.
Mr Beauty: I hear I hear what you're saying. And again, i don't disagree with your logic.
Jeff Hein: Yeah.
Mr Beauty: Like that is a that is a scientific like this is resources and this is good, but it is not necessarily beautiful. I think that is and I'm pulling this out of my ass, but but I don't.
Mr Beauty: I think this is the fundamental basis of my argument is to where I stand like whether beauty is inherent or learned or cultural, etc, etc. If you if you have that environment, that is the type of environments that human humans have exploited over millennia to to to yeah, over.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Through, yeah, million years.
Mr Beauty: Yeah. To to settle and make community, to settle and bring civilization, to create culture and over generations.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Correct.
Mr Beauty: people aren't necessarily looking at that river and going like safety. People are looking at the Amazon river and going like, that's full of fucking predators. That's going to eat me alive. But because you have this thing where it is water, so I can make a settlement next to it.
Mr Beauty: And now my children grow up here. and my children grow older, and they start to create culture around the campfire. And then they tell stories of when we were younger. And as soon as you start to link place in nostalgia, like it it can it can teeter on beautiful very quickly. like It becomes a beautiful memory. And then over generations, it becomes the standard of like...
Mr Beauty: what is desired and the standard of what is desired is really all the beauty is, right? Like we, we, it is a thing to be desired beauty. So I think maybe, maybe it is just a generational thing where over hundreds and thousands and millions of generations, we go like this, this garden of Eden, as it were, was beautiful because it existed in perfection, but it only exists in perfection in our generational memories and all in our cultural, cultural memories.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: ah yeah Yeah, but Eric, that does
Jeff Hein: So the safety's innate, but the beauty is learned.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: That doesn't explain, Eric, your nostalgia your nostalgia argument doesn't explain the fact that people who have never seen those environments also found them preferable or or beautiful.
Mr Beauty: I think I'm linking the two.
Jeff Hein: Yeah.
Mr Beauty: we all came from those environments, though.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: right but yeah But the whole nostalgia part of your argument and storytelling and that part doesn't it doesn't pertain to people who haven't seen it or their cultures haven't heard stories about it.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Anyway.
Mr Beauty: Sure, sure. It's an imperfect argument.
Jeff Hein: What's your theory?
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Well, so let let me get the last two and then let's summarize the argument.
Jeff Hein: OK. Oh, I don't want to forget.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Okay.
Jeff Hein: This is good.
Mr Beauty: Okay.
Jeff Hein: OK.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: So the last two, so it was facial symmetry is beautiful across all cultures, across all you know countries. A Savannah hypothesis has some really provocative elements of that regard.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: ah Facial averageness, that the most attractive face is formed when you take, let's say, a thousand images and superimpose them on each other to get the quote unquote average face. This was performed a long time ago, I think in the seventies or fifties. And it was recently ah re reproven through, you know, modern technology that we tend to find the average face more more beautiful than say any of the individuals or most of the individuals. And they suggest that that is again, a genetic marker of diversity. We like a well-mixed outbred population of humans. And we find the more diverse populations,
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: the more diversity, which is the collapsing of all these influences swirling together, that that is beautiful. And that is, again, genetic health. We do not, humans die from outbreeding, right?
Jeff Hein: So in other words, if you're mating with your cousins, if you have a massive nose and you're mating with your cousin with a massive nose, that's a problem.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: That's why we don't allow, or sorry, inbreeding.
Mr Beauty: Inbreeding. Yeah.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yeah.
Jeff Hein: And your baby's gonna have a massive nose and so on and so forth.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yeah.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Correct, but it's it's much more serious than a massive nose. If you have any genetic abnormality that has to do with health, ah you multiply that when you mate with someone you're closely related to.
Jeff Hein: Right, but the sign we're talking about is outward beauty.
Mr Beauty: Yeah. Yeah.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: The sign is is facial, yes, but that is a proxy for overall health.
Mr Beauty: yeah
Jeff Hein: Right.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: So the facial averageness, ah mathematically average faces being the most attractive points to a ah deep genetic preference for immune diversity over individual patients.
Jeff Hein: Right.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: inbred distinctiveness, right?
Jeff Hein: h
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: that's the That's the third one. The fourth one is rectilinear versus curvilinear. This is something we've talked about a lot. I know my whole experiment with Stadia Box is it comes up out of this literature.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: People prefer curves. in general, over sharp angles and sharp lines. Now, that's not it's not 100 and zero. it's It's a slight preference, but it's statistically reproducible across culture, across generation. And you say, why do we prefer curves? And there's two hypotheses, one of which Eric raised the last time we tried this. ah The first hypothesis why we prefer curves curves over sharpness is safety. Sharp things are dangerous. They cut us, they hurt us, they maim us. Teeth, ah claws, ah glass, anything that can hurt you is typically sharp. That's one hypothesis. The other is that, well, the human form,
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: ah you're You're brought into this world against your your mother's bosom, right? And like the human figure is very beautiful, a lot of us would agree, and very curvilinear.
Jeff Hein: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Mr Beauty: Yeah, it's all very Freudian, man.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: And perhaps that explains it. So those are the four, the Savannah hypothesis, facial symmetry, facial averageness, and rectilinear, curvilinear.
Jeff Hein: hu
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Now, each of those maps to, I think, what is a basic human drive. The savanna is food and shelter and safety. The facial symmetry is genetic health, facial averageness, genetic health,
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Right. ah And you avoid inbreeding and curvilinear versus rectilinear is safety.
Jeff Hein: Mm-hmm. hu
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Or ah again, i don't know how to couch the the whole human figure. Maybe that's some sort of sexual, um you know, there's some some sort of sexual basis to that. But all of these map onto the human The human thrusts, which is food, safety, shelter, and sexual reproduction procreation.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Now, if if we accept, and there's more, this is not exhaustive, guys, right?
Jeff Hein: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: If we accept that those are kind of the pillars at the bottom, those are like the inescapable fundamental pillars of what all humans and the data suggests this, all humans find preferable or beautiful. Like it's hard to know like how how to define it, but certainly there's a human inclination for these things across culture, across distance.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Then the question becomes, all right, so that's the those are the foundational pieces. And there's more. I'm sure we're missing a whole bunch.
Jeff Hein: Mm-hmm.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: But let's let's set that aside and say, well, now we have culture.
Jeff Hein: Mm-hmm.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: We learn a lot of what's beautiful. we We're affected by culture, right? ah Let's think of some um in Western culture, what? Having a tan, ah tan skin.
Mr Beauty: So, get,
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Oh boy, right? Some cultures love it ah pale and some love it super tan. Eyebrows, facial hair, body type, right?
Mr Beauty: I was just going to say, Paul, very, very briefly, ah an anecdote.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Go ahead, Eric.
Mr Beauty: I think I've mentioned on the podcast before that I spent a semester in Uganda when I was in college. I was over there for six months living with a family. um
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Is that when you almost got eaten by a hippo?
Mr Beauty: And yeah, twice in the same day.
Jeff Hein: Stop. That really happened?
Mr Beauty: Oh, that was 100%.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yeah, he almost got.
Mr Beauty: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll tell you that's like a 20-minute story.
Jeff Hein: Oh, I got to hear about that later.
Mr Beauty: It's a great story.
Jeff Hein: I want to hear about that later.
Mr Beauty: Maybe, is that the after show story?
Jeff Hein: Sheesh.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: After show, how Eric almost almost got killed by a hippo.
Mr Beauty: Oh, boy. It's a banger. It's a banger. Okay, so, but anyway, what I was going to say, as soon as you brought up ah tan and skin color, immediately I went to the the facial average statistic because, yes, we often do the thing in this culture of like, oh, you know, you're looking tan.
Jeff Hein: chase
Jeff Hein: Yeah.
Mr Beauty: You look like you got some sun. Like, you're looking good. You're looking healthy. And ah whilst I was over there and I remember it so starkly because it was so i was 19, 20, it was so unexpected that a lot of the beauty standards, at least in that particular region in 2007, were about getting paler, African women getting paler, because that meant that you weren't out in the sun all day doing manual labor.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yeah.
Mr Beauty: And you had the the luxury to be inside or in the shade out of the sun. And it's so funny how just like wherever you are, your goal is to get somewhere you're not, you know, or or in that case toward the average.
Jeff Hein: Oh, interesting. Well, because, yeah, in Western culture, out in the sun means you can afford vacations.
Mr Beauty: Right, exactly, exactly.
Jeff Hein: You can afford luxury.
Mr Beauty: Uh-huh.
Jeff Hein: Yeah.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: So are these cultural signs of beauty ah more like signaling to the members of your community about your wealth and your power?
Jeff Hein: Hmm.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Because that brings us to a Chulian hand axis. Because I did want to bring this up. One of the earliest ever um cited...
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: um Parts of beauty in human precursors are these so-called Achulian hand axes. Dude, Jack brought this up. I don't know.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Was it like eight shows ago?
Mr Beauty: I think about these all the time. Yeah.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Okay. if Jack out of nowhere goes, do you guys know what Achulian hand axes is? And Eric and I were like, what the fuck are you talking about?
Jeff Hein: How do you spell that again?
Mr Beauty: A-C-H-E-U-L-E-A-N. a c h e u l e a n
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: ah
Jeff Hein: L-E-A-N, handaxe.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: I think L-I-A-N. But anyway, unless I spelled, I may have spelled it wrong.
Jeff Hein: Maybe Google will fix it.
Mr Beauty: Oh.
Jeff Hein: OK, go ahead.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Okay, so Achulian hand axes. These were discovered by the thousands across multiple continents, Africa, Asia, Europe.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: They are these, what seem to be tools that evolved in our human precursors. So this is a million plus years ago.
Jeff Hein: so i'm only getting I'm only getting the actual axe head.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Like,
Jeff Hein: So there's no handles?
Mr Beauty: Yeah, yeah.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: because that's all that, that's all that...
Mr Beauty: So it's a hand it's a hand axe, right? So you're you're using, it's it's a sharpened stone, and they're using this to chop wood.
Jeff Hein: That's the only thing that's preserved? Okay. I was picturing like a handle. Okay. Okay.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: yeah So about 2.5 million years ago, there are examples of choppers, like hand-based stones that were used to chop things that they found in the Old Vyge Gorge in Tanzania, Africa, made by Homo, I'm not even sure what, Homo erectus, Homo...
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: ah One of our you know um precursors, one of the hominid precursors to humans, 2.5 million years ago. Guys, they think humans as a species, Homo sapien, arrived a few hundred thousand years ago, maybe 500,000, 400,000.
Mr Beauty: Mm-hmm.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: We're talking million years ago We're talking like Neanderthal, ah you know, You know, these hominid precursors are not that many steps away from a monkey, let's say.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: ah They were making these choppers two and a half million years ago that we've been finding, of course, carbon dated. And then what they found is these big choppers that showed evidence of a lot of use evolved into Acheulean hand axes over time. And as I said,
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: they This is now about a million, a million and a half years ago, and they found so many of them by the thousands across multiple continents. And what why they think this is important, and it comes to our conversation about signaling to other humans desirable traits, is that these Achelean hand axes, they were made of beautiful materials,
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: They had unbelievable workmanship. ah Like you can't believe how well made some of them are.
Jeff Hein: Hmm.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: And they show ah many of them show no evidence whatsoever of use on their delicate razor sharp edges. And so, The hypothesis is that these were these began as a functional element that then evolved as the earliest works of art. So function trans transversing into fitness signals. Now, what do I mean by fitness signals? I mean some bad mojo who's going to make an Achillean hand act, right? Some bad motherfucker out there a million years ago is like, check out my ax.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: It's made of the rarest materials. It's got virtuosic craftsmanship, and it's way bigger than that other guy's. So it shows, it smaller as the case may be, but that that is is is basically signaling to members, this is even before language developed, they think, this is before spoken language, that this signaled intelligence and
Mr Beauty: ah As are some other things, you know what I'm saying? what What?
Mr Beauty: Hmm.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: find motor control, perseverance, traits that are desirable among mates, but are not necessarily genetic per se. Well, no, I guess those can be genetic, but do you see what I'm saying?
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Like, these are symbols, like I'm a catch and here's what, check this out. So I just found this whole conversation about a Chilean hand axes to be very compelling.
Mr Beauty: I love everything about it. um
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: oh
Jeff Hein: that's crazy.
Mr Beauty: I'm wondering, Paul, where this example falls, like for you to make an argument about whether beauty is inherent.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yeah.
Mr Beauty: So so is this the type of thing that like somebody who wanted to attract a mate knew intuitively that they had to make a more beautiful hand axe.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yeah.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: That, yeah.
Mr Beauty: So they they set about making it and they, like you said, you have the ability, Jeff, like you said, you had the ability, could intuit that this was just better proportioned, that the line was straighter, that the curve was a little more sensual and it worked.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Hmm. Hmm.
Mr Beauty: And so therefore it drew I don't know how to phrase it, like higher quality mates, you know, like more desirable mates, whatever you want to phrase it, or just more mates, whatever it is.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yeah.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Well, Eric, is it?
Mr Beauty: or or Or is it a cultural thing where like they knew that to their culture, the sharpest edge was the most valuable thing?
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Oh, go ahead. Yeah.
Mr Beauty: ah Because and and now all we see are the remnants of like the one that happened to survive is the one with a like a very sensual curve at the at the hand component of it.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: That's a great question.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Great question, Eric, and I don't know the answer, but I do think it's sexual signaling. Like like a peacock, like peacocks evolved to show this incredible display, right, to mates. like And there's no other purpose for the colors and the extraordinary patterns than to attract a mate for sexual reproduction. So perhaps, flexing your skills as a maker.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: I can make this. I can bring in food. I can make weapons. Perhaps that was some sort of symbolic gesture to early hominid mates.
Jeff Hein: Oh, that's got to be oldest time. I mean, i think it's proven contemporary life that women tend to be more attracted to men who are competent, men who can provide, even though we're not in an economy where a man can provide anymore, really.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: That's right. And powerful.
Jeff Hein: but yeah But they're still attracted.
Mr Beauty: Well, nobody can.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: and
Jeff Hein: Nobody can, right?
Mr Beauty: Yeah.
Jeff Hein: But no, but that's not...
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: and And women can provide their own.
Mr Beauty: Well, that's what I'm saying.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: I got my own money, right?
Mr Beauty: Like, nobody can provide in this economy?
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: yeah But yeah.
Mr Beauty: Come on.
Jeff Hein: But the point is, I think, you know, I was talking to one of my students the other day and I'm gonna remember how it even came up. Oh, she was visiting her her new boyfriend's family and her boyfriend's family's rich.
Jeff Hein: And she was super nervous because she didn't feel like she comes from as a you know high class of a background. So she's like, oh they're gonna think I'm not classy enough. I don't have that but kind of money.
Jeff Hein: Apparently they were dropping money left and right, taking her places, nice restaurants, whatever. And I said, I said, look, you got to understand. um First of all, I asked her a question. I said, would you date a guy that worked at McDonald's?
Jeff Hein: you know?
Mr Beauty: Mm-hmm.
Jeff Hein: And she's like, no, no offense to everyone working at McDonald's out there. I'm just telling you what happened. And she goes, and I said, I would date a woman that worked at McDonald's. And I bet you nine out of 10 men wouldn't care where they're, where the girls they were into worked. But most women, I've heard studies about this. Most women won't, they want someone who's more got more,
Jeff Hein: um Prestige, resources, resources, right.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: resource, resource signaling and proceeds.
Jeff Hein: So this would be the this would be the ancient equivalent to someone who can provide, someone who can build a home, someone who can protect, you know, those sorts of things.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Hmm.
Jeff Hein: And and it would likely, my theory, would it would likely have been attractive to his mates.
Mr Beauty: So I agree with that 100 percent in in in my mind that like perfectly logical. My question, though, I guess to Paul, because Jeff, I i think I can guess where you stand on this is was the creation of the hand tacks, the more beautiful decorative ceremonial version of the hand tacks, was that intuited or was that learned by trial and error?
Mr Beauty: Was that a thing?
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yeah, great.
Mr Beauty: Was the beauty self-evident or did some random dude just make one and then he ended up boning a lot more chicks and then he was like, well, I guess that worked.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: ah
Mr Beauty: And then other dudes tried to copy it, you know?
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Well, no. So the dudes who were born also had that eye for beauty and they attracted girls. Right. I mean, it's so what what I'm saying in a global context, the best summary I can give is the following sentence that beauty or our preference for beauty is a Darwinian adaptation that served us well through evolution.
Mr Beauty: So
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Right. Just like disgust keeps us away from eating things that are going to kill us.
Jeff Hein: Hmm.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: When you smell a certain smell, you know, don't eat that. That is genetically encoded.
Jeff Hein: Yeah, but there's some beautiful poison plants out there.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: No, no, no. But Jeff, yeah yeah it's true.
Mr Beauty: Well, there are.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: It's true. But but our our our sense of fear and disgust are evolutionary traits that have served us well.
Jeff Hein: Right.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Just like are the our... ah Sorry, our... The things we find beautiful are Darwinian adaptations that served us well.
Mr Beauty: Okay.
Jeff Hein: So go ahead, Eric.
Mr Beauty: Well, I just want to ask because i i feel like I'm constantly playing devil's advocate to both of you right now because I agree with you both, but I also agree with the other one. And this is maybe this is maybe the tricky part of like having a degree in religion and philosophy and then also being...
Mr Beauty: more in the camp of atheism than in the camp of theism. But like, so Paul, to your point about, I think it's a totally fair comp to say that our genetic hatred of disgust has kept us alive in the same way that like our genetic hatred
Jeff Hein: Yeah.
Mr Beauty: predisposition to be drawn toward beauty has allowed us to, to procreate.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yeah, right.
Mr Beauty: But I also like anybody who has experienced disgust, like you, it just means you don't want to eat that thing. It can be visceral. It can be like moving in a way just like, Oh, like I, I hate it.
Mr Beauty: Right.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Right.
Mr Beauty: But.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: It could be a vegetarian who's learned to hate meat.
Mr Beauty: And sure, sure, sure, sure. And I could be speaking out of my ass right now, but I, I think that,
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Hmm.
Mr Beauty: at least in my experience, there is there is something more deeply moving about beauty that really hits you like in the soul.
Mr Beauty: There's a thing that feels universal. There's a thing that feels bigger than the self that I don't know that I've ever experienced that with disgust.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Hmm. Hmm.
Mr Beauty: I've never felt disgust in a way that feels bigger than myself.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Okay.
Mr Beauty: Whereas I have, I have felt people create, I have experienced creations, I've experienced nature and gone like, holy shit, like I don't matter at all.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: see what you mean.
Mr Beauty: Like this thing that exists is so much more important than me.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yeah, I get you.
Mr Beauty: And how, how do you, how do you define that? Or how do you ascribe that to just like the genetic drive to survive? Because I feel like you also have experienced that same, like you have been moved to tears by a symphony.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Okay, I'll tell you what I think. I think that artists have identified these aptitudes for beauty that humans have genetically encoded and have started to exploit them.
Jeff Hein: I knew you were going say that.
Mr Beauty: It's all about resource exploitation.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: And i mean and and when i say exploit when I say exploit, I don't mean that in a bad way.
Jeff Hein: Yeah.
Mr Beauty: Hmm. Hmm.
Jeff Hein: no and i No, and I knew you were going to say that because I think it's very logical.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: I mean that in in a great way. they we
Jeff Hein: It makes it makes a lot of sense.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: look all of us artists know what's at the core of humanness. And we take those little knobs and we fucking turn it from a five up to a six, up to a seven, up to a fucking 12 until people are weeping.
Jeff Hein: Yeah.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Right?
Jeff Hein: Okay, what about music, though? He brought up music.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Oh, I cry all the time.
Mr Beauty: All the time, I've seen you.
Jeff Hein: But why? what what what How much? Yeah, but what does... that That doesn't seem connected to all these other things. What about survival? What about mating?
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yeah. I,
Jeff Hein: How is music related to those things?
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: I don't know, Jeff. Jeff, I also said, I think it's in in the exhaustive list. I think it's an incomplete list. Like just because science hasn't figured out how to test it.
Jeff Hein: Yeah.
Mr Beauty: i don't care about the science, I want to know what you think.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yeah, but about music?
Jeff Hein: Yeah, that's what I'm saying. What are your thoughts? Because I'm just, I just don't believe that everything is about sex and survival. I just don't. I mean, I get it. I think in part, yes.
Jeff Hein: And as a theist, you mentioned that you're sort of in the camp of kind of leaning toward atheist.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: I don't know.
Jeff Hein: And I know that Paul, you are, but as a theist, Like I, well, first of all, um I might be somewhat of a unique theist because I don't think evolution, I'm okay with evolution.
Jeff Hein: I think ah it um if God, okay, well, if God exists, which I believe he does, he could easily use the laws of physics to create the world and everything in it, right?
Mr Beauty: i don't I don't think that's super abnormal. Yeah.
Jeff Hein: I don't have a problem with that. um So all these things can simultaneously be true to me personally, right? But I also think that, I don't know, it's hard for me to believe with the experiences I've had, like Eric described, standing in a cathedral, that there's, that's just, I mean, I was in a cathedral in New York once and it brought me to tears.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: What's
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yeah.
Mr Beauty: Hmm.
Jeff Hein: I'm just like, I get it. It could be exploiting my, you know, my human desires to stay alive and and procreate and so on. I get that.
Jeff Hein: But it just, like Eric said, it just seems, it seems on steroids to just be that. It seems so above and beyond mere survival.
Mr Beauty: And you can you can have that same experience. You can have that same overwhelming feeling just being out in nature. And like sure, like you could you could make the argument that, like sure, nature is trying to manipulate us because every animal is trying to consume us. Venus fly traps know how to manipulate like insects to attract them so that they can eat them. I get that. That's fine. That's all very logical. But there is like...
Mr Beauty: I can't the thing I can't put to bed is that sense of just like whatever this is, is more than me. And that is like from an evolution standpoint, I feel like that shouldn't happen. Like it is just about me, my resources, my genetic material moving forward into the world. ah But when when you stand on the top of a mountain, and look out over a valley, when you stand in a cathedral, when you hear a song, when you hear like a perfect cadence into the end of a symphony and you just like, I am just grateful to be alive in a moment that I could experience that.
Mr Beauty: Like and it's it's so much it's so far apart from who I am that like my existence is insignificant ah in relation to the existence of this thing.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Guys, guys, I think what you're talking about is cultural, is now cultural, the cultural part of beauty. We have learned with mute with music with music and architecture, perhaps that's learned culturally.
Jeff Hein: I don't know, maybe. i don't know.
Mr Beauty: Sure, sure. Yeah, I think those are cultural, but i but I don't think, like, I do agree with you.
Jeff Hein: Maybe, maybe.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Could you take Yeah.
Mr Beauty: What I'm saying right now using those examples specifically is cultural because I grew up in a Western culture. but But I don't think that experience is isolated to, like, a person within the Western culture.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yeah.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: I don't know, Eric. Play music for someone not in a Western culture and see if they weep.
Mr Beauty: Well, play their own music for them. See what it means to them.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yeah, but play, no, play your music for them. Because if it's universal, you can play any music.
Mr Beauty: Well, they won't. no no No, no, no. Okay. All right. All right. That's fair. That's fair.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: It's cultural.
Mr Beauty: I'm not suggesting, I'm not suggesting that that Western music is universal.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yeah, yeah,
Mr Beauty: What I'm suggesting is like a person experiencing music is universal.
Jeff Hein: Music in general. Right.
Mr Beauty: Like whether it's a fucking drum line for the Neanderthal sitting around Stonehenge, right?
Jeff Hein: Sound. Why is sound beautiful?
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: yeah.
Mr Beauty: Like that is in and of itself a universal experience.
Jeff Hein: Right.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: I love it.
Mr Beauty: Take the cultural component out of it.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yeah. Fair.
Jeff Hein: Right.
Mr Beauty: Give me, don i don't give a shit.
Jeff Hein: Right.
Mr Beauty: Give me a five, four, one.
Jeff Hein: Cause it seems so arbitrary sound.
Mr Beauty: Like I don't, i don't give a fuck. Yeah.
Jeff Hein: Why sound?
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: That's a fair question. I don't know.
Jeff Hein: Yeah. Well, and ah and it would be an interesting experiment if we could find someone
Mr Beauty: You know.
Jeff Hein: um Do you know anyone who's pregnant? We could start this experiment right now. But if we could find someone and put them in a dark room for 20 years, just a minor experiment.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yeah.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Okay. Minor experiment.
Jeff Hein: Yeah, nothing big. and then and then And then take them out and put them in the most beautiful cathedral and see if they appreciate the bit of beauty.
Mr Beauty: Yeah.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: I don't think so.
Mr Beauty: Hmm.
Jeff Hein: you don't You really don't think so.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Nah.
Mr Beauty: I think they would just appreciate being out of a black fucking room for 20 years.
Jeff Hein: You think they'd be completely numb.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yeah, I mean, talk about an unethical experiment, Jeff.
Mr Beauty: Yeah.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: You're never gonna be a scientist after that comment.
Jeff Hein: no No, I was going have you do it. I'm not a scientist. That's...
Mr Beauty: Well, you know, i listen, I remember, i think what you're getting at is that feeling of being overwhelmed by beauty. And I do remember the last time I experienced that was the first time I walked into WTB woodworking at three 90 Pike road in Huntington Valley, West Virginia, the sponsor of this episode.
Jeff Hein: ah
Mr Beauty: Yeah. ah
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: There it is! There
Mr Beauty: I was overwhelmed by the the the power of the grace of Billy M.T. Burkle, our Lord and Savior, praise be.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: it is!
Mr Beauty: Let me tell you a few things about WCB woodworking, friends. Did you know that Memorial Day is the unofficial start of summer?
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: In nomine Patre, Filii Spiritus Santo, Omnipotenti!
Mr Beauty: ah
Jeff Hein: Yeah.
Mr Beauty: ah And ands Memorial Day is also the day that kicks off the newest giveaway from Jet Power Tools. So if you sign up for the new giveaway, which is going from May 25th to Thursday, July 24th, you could be eligible to win a Jet DC 1100 VXCK dust collector. No idea what any of of that means, but it is a dust collector and it's a horse and a half. I think that might be the dust collector I actually have in my shop and it's pretty fucking good.
Mr Beauty: ah And ah let's see, what else do we need to know? what It features a vortex cone, a higher velocityity velocity, high CFMs, and ah a two micron canister kit.
Mr Beauty: So that's $989.99 value. Get over there and sign up for
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: How much? Chad.
Mr Beauty: nine hundred and eighty nine point nine nine
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Chad.
Mr Beauty: I believe that's an imperial measurements. um Let's see. So the winner will be chosen Friday, July 25th at 10 a.m. on Instagram. So, I mean, listen, if nothing else, go sign up for this giveaway just so that we can artificially inflate Bill's numbers and he will continue sponsoring this episode because some of my favorite segments in the history of this podcast have been WTB ad spots.
Mr Beauty: Okay, Chad, Chad and Bryce.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: chad chad
Mr Beauty: ah All right. Well, Paul, let me ask you a question, buddy.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: It was.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Please.
Mr Beauty: How do you feel about gorillas?
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Well, it depends in what context. If we're talking evolutionarily, very interesting. The silverback and this little pod. Very interesting. Now, if you're talking about the glue, I also like that.
Mr Beauty: The glue that's made from gorillas?
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: It's not made from it's not made from gorillas, Eric.
Mr Beauty: Not legally. Legally speaking, it is not...
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Eric, Eric, you are going to literally get us canceled with them.
Mr Beauty: I was, hold on. We did not, in my defense, technically speaking, the ad read for Gorilla Glue has not started yet because we haven't said that this this is sponsored by, i was simply asking if you preferred hide glue made from gorillas.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: They are totally 100% going to cancel us.
Mr Beauty: the
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Eric, discontinue this this line of questioning.
Mr Beauty: I'm not, okay.
Jeff Hein: Yeah.
Mr Beauty: all right, let me ask you about Gorilla Glue's wood glue, their yellow glue. Tell me about it.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yes. I finally got a chance to use it in the shop and I thought it was great. ah Quick setup time. ah it The bond is obviously permanent as far as I can tell. ah You know, water cleanup, like great.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: I didn't even know they made a wood glue until recently. So it's it's a nice option to have in the shop.
Mr Beauty: They sure do. Have you used the wood filler at all?
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: I have not. That is your jam because you're the one who loves nails.
Mr Beauty: I do. i love to nail things.
Jeff Hein: That was a diss.
Mr Beauty: um So that was...
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: It was a diss, Jeff. Thank you.
Mr Beauty: Listen, there it we've been using nails for thousands of years just because one prick on the internet thinks he's better than nails.
Jeff Hein: You're using nails? What kind of woodworker?
Mr Beauty: Okay. Doesn't mean that I can't use Gorilla's wood filler, Gorilla wood filler on on things like pine.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: yep
Mr Beauty: And it's perfect for things like pine. I've used it multiple times. It's fantastic. It gives a ah very nice natural wood tone finish that was very easy to hide.
Mr Beauty: So,
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: I believe they sent you about five gallons of it, Eric.
Mr Beauty: Oh, it was roughly five metric gallons. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I just used the whole thing on the last project. There's no detecting.
Jeff Hein: Makes your dovetails look perfect, right?
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Oh.
Mr Beauty: no Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Ironically, though, they were made of walnut, those dovetails. So it doesn't make any sense to use that wood filler. So if you want to get either the wood glue or the wood filler or any other wonderful product from Gorilla Glue, you can go.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Polyurethane glue.
Mr Beauty: polyurethane glue. You can go to GorillaTough.com slash woodworking is BS. That's GorillaTough.com slash woodworking is BS. Tell them that that Paul sent you because they're going to cancel me after this ad read. And thanks to Gorilla Glue for sponsoring this episode.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Please don't cancel us because of Eric. Okay. all right. Moving on. ah So what I want to do is transition to the cultural learned part of what we think beauty is. I want to read to you guys a list of cultural things that I think, or sorry, cultural...
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: trends that that are considered beautiful at certain times or certain periods. I want to read you the list and then I want you guys to go hog wild and react, okay?
Jeff Hein: OK. Mm-hmm.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: All right, let's start. We're going to start with some Western examples, and then we're going to transition into across cultures. So Western examples, tanning, the global tanning idea.
Mr Beauty: Uh-huh.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: It's come and go, whether their tan skin is beautiful or pale skin. Eyebrows, sometimes they're thin, sometimes they're thick and bushy, sometimes they're penciled in. Body hair, underarm hair, not underarm hair, hairy legs, no hairy legs.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Do you shave your bush? Do you not shave your bush? Also beard, no beard. You know, ah facial hair has come and had some huge swings. Now, into other cultures, these are some fascinating examples.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Ohaguro, O-H-A-G-U-R-O, Ohaguro. For over a thousand years in Japan, black lacquered teeth were the height of aristocratic beauty, making now universal preference for white teeth.
Jeff Hein: Whoa.
Mr Beauty: really oh ohaguru i'm googling it right now wow that's so viscerally upsetting to my western eyes
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: O-H-A-G-U-R-O. Google it right now.
Jeff Hein: That's wild.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: It's fucking wild.
Jeff Hein: Oh, wait, wait, OHA what?
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: O-H-A-G-U-R-O.
Jeff Hein: Can I pull it up my on my over my face?
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yeah, for those on who have, ah the patrons who have a video feed, Jeff just brought it on.
Mr Beauty: that's fascinating
Jeff Hein: Oh, that's frightening.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yeah, for over a...
Mr Beauty: So this is this is deeply cultural, obviously, right?
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: um'm andnna I'm going to read it. So for over a thousand years in Japan, black lacquer teeth were the height of aristocratic beauty, making the now universal preference for white teeth one of the most complete cultural reversals of beauty signaling in history.
Mr Beauty: That is bonnet. Like, so, and and I don't, I don't listen.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Bananas.
Mr Beauty: I don't want, I don't mean any of these things to be like culturally and says I'm not knocking their culture for it.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yeah.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Correct.
Mr Beauty: I'm just saying like, based on my Western upbringing, and And what I'm seeing, like the first thought that popped in my head is when you see like in pop culture demons, evil characters like their sharp pointy teeth, sometimes their black teeth, if you're trying to get like a visceral reaction out of something.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Correct. A Western. Yeah.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yep.
Mr Beauty: Yeah, like it's it gives that kind of it's so I recognize it's so just like viscerally confusing to my eyeballs.
Jeff Hein: Hmm.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: It's wild.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Amazing, right?
Mr Beauty: Hmm.
Jeff Hein: So is it does that, okay, you're making some good arguments, but does that prove that, oh, you got more?
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Okay, wait I have more. I have more. Jeff, Jeff, Jeff, please just just hold that question.
Jeff Hein: Okay.
Jeff Hein: Okay. Okay.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: ah In Maori culture, an untattooed face was historically considered incomplete and unbeautiful, right? Think about Maori
Mr Beauty: Mayori? I don't know what that says.
Jeff Hein: Yeah.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: m a o r i mayori tattoos because intricate facial tattoos ah was was not just a decoration, but part of a living record of that person's ancestry, rank, and identity.
Jeff Hein: Yeah.
Mr Beauty: ah group from new zealand okay okay oh yeah no these are these motherfuckers um
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: right. Next. Yeah. Next.
Jeff Hein: Dude, I gotta say, these guys look pretty sick, though. These are tough mofos.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: ah Okay, next, right? put put Padang, P-A-D-A-U-N-G, Padang neck rings. So women of Myanmar, ah and I think I think i also said Thailand, would install these neck rings at starting at age five, and it would elongate their neck to impossibly long lengths.
Mr Beauty: Hmm.
Jeff Hein: Well, they just fill with cartilage?
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Padang.
Jeff Hein: How does that even work?
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: i think it I think it makes it so that the neck can't support itself if you were to take them off.
Jeff Hein: Could you imagine?
Mr Beauty: Really?
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: I think so.
Jeff Hein: That would be horrifying.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yeah. i think I think they're on for life is my biological understanding.
Jeff Hein: Oh my gosh.
Mr Beauty: Wow.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Okay. Two more. Oh, my God.
Jeff Hein: Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
Mr Beauty: Hmm. Bananas.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: If you have the video feed, Jeff just put it on his video feed.
Mr Beauty: Yeah.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Oh, my goodness.
Mr Beauty: And if you don't, just Google it on your phone right now, because these are really like interesting examples.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yeah, absolutely.
Jeff Hein: That's wild.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Absolutely.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: All right. And then we have fat versus thin, which it transcends many cultures.
Mr Beauty: Hmm.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: So LeBlouh, L-E-B-L-O-U-H, in parts of Mauritania, girls were force-fed from childhood to become as large as possible because obesity was considered the pinnacle of feminine beauty and a mark of family wealth.
Mr Beauty: Hmm.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Now, In America, in what and in Western cultures, we've had, you know, Jeff, you could speak to this through paintings, right?
Jeff Hein: Yeah.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Cherubic examples. And then, you know, when when we were kids, you know, in the 80s and 90s, it was, you were, the hottest thing was to be stick thin, almost emaciated.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: So we've seen swings from everything over the map about weight.
Mr Beauty: Well, this one feels like the most ah blatantly resource driven the ones we've seen so far. Like this is this is whatever, if you're in a part of the world in ah in a time period of humanity that that struggles to find food resources, obviously being fat is a sign that you have the ability to gather resources, right?
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yeah.
Mr Beauty: And if you are in a place in a time in the world where obesity is born out of a lack of ability, and I'm not trying to, throw shade on anybody. i want to be clear of that I'm just thinking about this from like a broad cultural ah brush.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Right, right, right. Yep.
Mr Beauty: um If if the the most if the least expensive food resources available to a population are calorically dense, and ah overweight, obesity, etc, becomes rampant, then the thing that is, quote, more desirable by the people who have more resources is the ability to avoid that.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: yeah
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: is to be different. Okay.
Jeff Hein: I'm glad you brought up that weight thing because that brings up a point, maybe not a good one, but I'm gonna make it anyway.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Okay.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: ah
Jeff Hein: But, but you know, with the painting, the women that were painted Renaissance up till even the 20th century tended to be a little more fleshy.
Mr Beauty: Mm-hmm.
Jeff Hein: And, but frankly, maybe I'm the only one, frankly, I've, I mean, I haven't necessarily personally and followed those trends in the eighties and nineties. I've never found, I've always found more fleshy women attractive, right? And not the bony, bony girls that were on magazine covers throughout the eighties and nineties. I didn't ever find that attractive, but I understand, I understand that some men do. And, but I wonder just again, it's anecdotal. I get it. That's not evidence, but, but it is something. And so I wonder
Jeff Hein: if there can be an innate sense of beauty that we're programmed to have, but that can be influenced by culture and swayed by culture, right?
Jeff Hein: So, because I just don't think that, like this the whole thing with the necks, the ring around the neck, yeah, it might because people are seeing that as some sort of ah sign of wealth or I can't remember what you had said.
Jeff Hein: I think you said a sign of wealth or, yeah.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Long necks here are
Jeff Hein: Yeah. So yeah maybe maybe some people were taught to see that as attractive in an economical way, maybe, but deep down, did every man find that attractive? I mean, i don't know. i mean, does culture trump our intuition always?
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: That's such a great question, Jeff.
Mr Beauty: Oh, that is an interesting question.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: That's the question.
Jeff Hein: I mean, I know it does sometimes. I brought up in the last podcast, the mullet, right?
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: yeah
Jeff Hein: I had one. piece Paul, did you you never admitted to having a mullet.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: I never had a mullet. No, no.
Jeff Hein: How were you so cool that you avoided the mullet?
Mr Beauty: ah
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: No, no. I was so uncool I didn't have a mullet.
Mr Beauty: yeah You know the mullets are coming back, right?
Jeff Hein: Oh, man. Yeah, that's my point.
Mr Beauty: Yeah.
Jeff Hein: Like, so I had a mullet back in, I don't know, mid eighties. Um, you know, the whole racing stripes on the side and everything, not in my underwear, on my hair. And, um, and then now my son's 19 and he has a mullet.
Jeff Hein: And I'm just like, what the hell was I thinking back in the 80s? But I have to appreciate what he's going through right now because I went through it.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yeah. course.
Jeff Hein: And so I'm like, all right, if you love the mullet, whatever, I think it looks ridiculous. But then I look back at myself in the 80s and thought I look ridiculous. I think now that I looked ridiculous then. So, yes, so even I'm influenced by by culture.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: course
Jeff Hein: but But still, I'm not convinced that there isn't sort of an innate, either genetic or God-given undertone of beauty that is programmed in everyone.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Well, Jeff, isn't it both?
Jeff Hein: you know
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: You raised the question.
Jeff Hein: That's what I'm saying. I think it's got to be both.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: You said, yeah, you said what trumps and which what which one's more powerful. And I don't know that there's a strict answer to that. I think they're they're constantly interplaying with each other.
Mr Beauty: Well,
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: We have that genetic basis always, but we have so many learned opinions culturally. And like, they're probably swirling together in each of us to a different degree.
Jeff Hein: Oh, I'm sure they're swallowing together. I guess my point is, and you answered it, or my question would be, is there room for having it programmed into us, right?
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Hell totally.
Jeff Hein: Even though it's clearly affected by culture as well.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yep.
Jeff Hein: Otherwise, these things couldn't exist, in my opinion. Black teeth.
Mr Beauty: I wonder how many of these things, though, like, let's just let's just stick to to Western culture in Western culture in the last hundred, the post-war era, right, of the last whatever, 80, 90 years.
Jeff Hein: Like, wow.
Mr Beauty: We know that fashion is cyclical, right? And it tends to be roughly a 30 year cycle.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: no totally
Mr Beauty: It's getting a little shorter right now because TikTok and everything's got everything's got to be new. Everything's got to be trendy. But we know that it has a cycle. So ah I wonder how many of these I don't know that there are a lot of universal beauty truths, right? Like there, there are only a handful of things maybe that are like, regardless of time or culture, like you look at,
Mr Beauty: whatever the Taj Mahal you look at.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: A cathedral, the Taj Mahal.
Mr Beauty: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. yeah You look you look at St.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yeah.
Mr Beauty: Basel's and St.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yep.
Mr Beauty: Basel's is actually the first thing i want to come back to this later when when we talked about facial symmetry and Jeff, you brought up the rule of thirds in asymmetry. St. Basel's was the first thing that popped in my head because it's so deeply encapsulates both.
Jeff Hein: Yeah.
Mr Beauty: But but but you have these things that stand the test of time of like these are beautiful across language, across culture, and we appreciate them.
Mr Beauty: and And I don't think you get that many of those things. They're hard to come by. Whereas like the fashion things, ah whatever it is, whether it's fucking bell-bottom jeans or the mullet or or I had fucking frosted tips, okay, in the late ninety s all right?
Jeff Hein: Oh, I wish I saw that.
Mr Beauty: No, you don't. No, you don't.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Ha ha ha ha ha.
Mr Beauty: There's a reason i have never shown anybody a picture of that. ah But there's... Is it a thing of um
Mr Beauty: so many, and it doesn't necessarily have to be young people but because we're talking about Western culture the last 100 years in fashion. I'll pick on young people specifically. How many of those young people see those beautiful things and go like, okay, like maybe I'm Jeff. I can intuit why that's beautiful, but maybe I don't have the the restraint that,
Mr Beauty: to say to not say like, Well, I wonder if this other thing out here is also beautiful. Maybe they're missing a thing. Maybe maybe a mullet is fucking awesome looking and they just haven't realized it yet.
Mr Beauty: And then they go and they and then they go and they get themselves a mullet.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Eric, where are you going,
Mr Beauty: And then they realize that, like, oh, no, everybody's done that before. And in fact, it's not cool. It's not beautiful. Like maybe maybe there's a cycle of I haven't seen it in my lifetime, so I need to rediscover why it's not beautiful.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: can I...
Jeff Hein: Well, I don't know if that's necessarily the case because one thing i could be wrong, but I think you might be off on is that fashion is only recently cyclical.
Mr Beauty: Sure, sure. I was just limiting us to that example.
Jeff Hein: Right. it it It was right. It was very linear right up until like the seventies and then it became cyclical.
Mr Beauty: Yeah.
Mr Beauty: Well, it was very practical up until the 70s, until it became easy to produce garments on scale.
Jeff Hein: I just think we just ran out of ideas. Same with music. It was, it was very linear.
Mr Beauty: Hmm.
Jeff Hein: And then all of a sudden we ran out of ideas and now we're just repeating the same things. You know, I mean, I can't, when I, when I was a kid, my dad's music was so different than my music, but now my, I can't tell there's between my music and my kid's music.
Jeff Hein: Like it's, it's very different now, you know, there it's not, it but I mean, i guess I don't even know my point in that, but what, let me bring up a point though, that I did think about when you were talking is that,
Mr Beauty: Hmm.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Guys,
Jeff Hein: There are so many aspects of human behavior. And one of them that I think is kind of being thrown in here that might be kind of a a wrench in the chain is another emotion that's related to so-called beauty in style in particular.
Jeff Hein: um And that is this whole idea of this desire this desire to be part of the tribe, to be part of the group.
Mr Beauty: Hmm. Sure. sure
Jeff Hein: Right? So if, you know, a lot of these styles are, I mean, are very, I would expect are very motivated by that. You know, it's like, okay, this is our tribe. This is what we do. We tattoo our faces.
Jeff Hein: This is a way we label ourselves to be part of this group. You know, we make our teeth black because we are this group, right? We get mullets because we are cool teenagers. And if we don't get a mullet, we're not part of the group.
Jeff Hein: Right. And, and maybe we convince ourselves of the beauty or maybe somehow subconsciously, that's how we subconsciously justify the behavior. I don't know, but I don't think it's as simple as culture defining beauty. I think there's more to it than that.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: being part of the group is genetically, ah sorry, is evolutionarily advantageous because as, as part of the group, you survive.
Jeff Hein: Oh, absolutely.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: If you're cast aside, you die alone.
Jeff Hein: Right. Right.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: So I do Jeff, your point about bandwagon effect. What is the bandwagon effect really?
Mr Beauty: Hmm.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: And in, in high school, all the clicks that form and being part of the in group of the out group, that is all I think evolutionarily based on being an accepted part of a tribe which has deep, deep heritable origins, I would say, as humans.
Jeff Hein: Totally believe that. Yeah.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Okay, Eric, I want to come back to your your thing about culture and about mullets and they come and they go. And and ah the whole time you're talking about that, I can't help but think that the the question that kept coming to me through your last series of of sentences was, what makes something stand the test of time?
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: as beautiful as opposed to all of these fads
Jeff Hein: That's a good question.
Jeff Hein: What doesn't come in and out, what stays?
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: And what I come back to, I'm going to advance a hypothesis and you two can tear it up the fuck apart. My hypothesis is when it speaks directly to those genetically encoded pieces of us as humans, it stands, it tends to stand the test of time when it's highly cultural and doesn't really tap into those.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: It often fades away in 10, 20 years and
Jeff Hein: Oh, that's a great point.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: that's That's a hypothesis.
Mr Beauty: Okay.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Go ahead, tear it apart.
Jeff Hein: i think i think it's a great I think it's a great hypothesis.
Mr Beauty: I...
Mr Beauty: Oh, don't pat his ego out that much. Come on, let's tear it down a little bit.
Jeff Hein: yeah
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: I love you, Jeff.
Mr Beauty: i No, no, no i would ah I would agree with that on the whole.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: yeah
Mr Beauty: I i think as... I don't know that I would limit it to like what speaks to our genetic makeup, but like that's just I feel like we're going to get at the same thing, but see it from two slightly different vantage points.
Mr Beauty: I would suggest that maybe if it mimics something of the universal human experience, then people who transcend that culture, that language, that that time can see like its reflection on that human experience. And what what I'm trying to get at by that is like.
Mr Beauty: So if you're, let's go back to the cathedral example, just because it's a very easy example to use. You walk into a cathedral in Italy and Paul, I don't remember which cathedral it was, but I remember you, you seeing like black and white ah tile, like any, yeah, I talked to him on the phone.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: I cried.
Jeff Hein: Literally.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: I did. I cried.
Mr Beauty: I think maybe that day or as soon as you got back.
Jeff Hein: he he called you for comfort.
Mr Beauty: he Yeah, he wanted to he wanted to talk it through.
Jeff Hein: Wanted a verbal hug.
Mr Beauty: he's like He's like, I'm experiencing emotion and I don't know what to do about it.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: My... fit Eric, I love you.
Mr Beauty: he was He was in the middle of an acid trip.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: I need my boo. Where's my boo?
Mr Beauty: It was very strange.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: No, I was not.
Mr Beauty: But no, he was not.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: I was stone cold sober.
Mr Beauty: But but so like...
Jeff Hein: sure
Mr Beauty: you if you're looking up at a thing the cathedral is that big and tall to represent gods to represent the the dome the the waters above the universe right and then you go outside the cathedral and you look up at a night sky and what do you see but the tile work of the universe the stars kind of reflecting back at you in the same way that the inter and then you go to ah a a
Jeff Hein: Right.
Jeff Hein: Yeah.
Mr Beauty: the eye of Sophia, right? And you look up at the tile work in the mosaic work on the ceiling and on the walls. And what do you see? But that same, it's, it's the same, but different. There is a universality to like, you can see how one person went outside into the natural world, looked up into the night sky and drew inspiration for, for that particular cathedral. And I think maybe that is the type of thing that makes us stand the test of time. When when a person who grew up in Poughkeepsie, New York can travel across the planet to go to the Regas Dome and you look inside and you can see something that resembles the experience of a human in New York or in Latvia.
Mr Beauty: and you can And you can connect the two because we live on the same planet and we look at the same stars. we we Trees are are different but the same. like there's You know what I'm getting at?
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: i do
Mr Beauty: There's a thing in the natural world that is there that I don't necessarily think is genetic.
Jeff Hein: I think so. i think so.
Mr Beauty: I think might be coming back to my point from earlier, just bigger than us.
Jeff Hein: Yeah. So if you, this would be an interesting discussion in the comments. I hope people comment on this because I feel like every time i contribute, it's anecdotal. And so it'd be nice to have other thoughts on this, but I, I would assume that if you took someone out of the Amazon, someplace that never,
Jeff Hein: I mean, I'm probably wrong. ah Let me, let me not go that far. Let me not go that far. You take, I was going to say one these Amazonian tribes have hardly seen anything right in modern civilization.
Mr Beauty: Mm-hmm.
Jeff Hein: But let's say you take someone out of Japan and you put them in a Western cathedral and you take someone out of the West and you put them in, in this, they're, oh my gosh, Japanese woodworking and, and, um,
Jeff Hein: And architecture is just through it's just amazing. right And just can't imagine that just because you didn't grow up in the West, you can't appreciate as an Asian person Western architecture and as someone growing up in the West can't appreciate and really feel something when you get into Japanese or other Asian architectural designs.
Jeff Hein: It's just, I mean, have you guys been to the Met in that section where you walk through all the different rooms that represent different cultures?
Mr Beauty: Hmm, mm-hmm.
Jeff Hein: And not a single one didn't, important every single one, I should say, moved me majorly, right? But I didn't grow up in a lot of those cultures.
Jeff Hein: But when it it was done, all of them are so beautifully done. And to your point, Paul, what lasts in Asia? Asian architecture. Right? The way the joinery, Asian joinery and stuff, oh my gosh, that's been around for what?
Jeff Hein: Millennia? And it just continues on through all those different styles of dress and teeth and whatever. But that did last. And it's just extraordinary.
Mr Beauty: Jeff, I agree with you wholeheartedly, but I do think that this relies largely upon the openness of the individual.
Jeff Hein: Yeah.
Mr Beauty: that you like the the The prototypical person you're describing right now is you, and it is a person that is open to other experiences and cultures and looking for beauty, where I think there is a large swath of the human population that like I grew up in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
Mr Beauty: The open rolling hills are the most beautiful thing you've ever seen. And if you never left Lancaster, Pennsylvania, you grew up in the eighteen hundreds you took a train out to the Rockies, you'd be like, what the fuck is this?
Mr Beauty: This is dog shit.
Jeff Hein: ah um no I don't know.
Mr Beauty: Where am I rolling hills?
Jeff Hein: don't know.
Mr Beauty: I think those people, I think those people are are in the world like still today where if they have not experienced it, it is not the thing that they know and love, then it is not beautiful.
Jeff Hein: really
Mr Beauty: If it is not...
Jeff Hein: Well, I would agree that there are people that tend to not even care about aesthetics at all.
Mr Beauty: it
Mr Beauty: Yeah, yeah.
Jeff Hein: I've met those people. They won't even look out the window when you're driving past the most beautiful landscape. They don't even care. I got that. But but if you get someone out of Lancaster that is remotely aesthetically um driven or can appreciate aesthetics, yeah I find that hard to believe.
Mr Beauty: No, I, okay. So I want to be clear. I'm not suggesting that everybody from Lancaster is not open to the existence of beauty outside of their culture.
Jeff Hein: Oh, whatever you bigot. Yeah.
Mr Beauty: But, ah but, but what I'm saying is, I think the, the person that you just described is, is
Jeff Hein: Yeah,
Mr Beauty: is probably the type of person who like ends up wanting to be a ah painter or ends up wanting to be an illustrator or a musician. They are open.
Jeff Hein: yeah maybe you're right.
Mr Beauty: They are open to the universality of beauty, perhaps in a way that that the majority of the public are not.
Jeff Hein: Okay, that brings up another question then. So if there are just, as you put it, just people like me, as you put it, and I would say like you two as well, there are lots of people like us.
Jeff Hein: Maybe proportionally, let's just say, I'm gonna make up a random number out of eight billion people, maybe 25%, right? So two billion people are really driven by aesthetics.
Mr Beauty: Sure.
Jeff Hein: They really love aesthetic things. um and and motivated by beauty, let's say it's 2 billion people. Why? That doesn't serve evolution.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: I don't know.
Mr Beauty: I think Paul disagrees by that face.
Jeff Hein: billion people.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: i don't know.
Jeff Hein: like Why would 25%, one in four people really being driven by aesthetics help the human race as a whole?
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: well, all
Jeff Hein: It would have to be consistent across the race.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: right.
Mr Beauty: That's a good question.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: So,
Mr Beauty: It's a good question.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Hold on. No, I think i think these these pieces that we talked about of beauty and sensing beauty are universal. Because it's not like they just bring in artists for these studies. It's ah just a random cross-section of humans.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: So like all these beauty studies that bear out so statistically significant are in the general population.
Mr Beauty: Hmm.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: So I think these are universal.
Jeff Hein: So you disagree with Eric, you're saying? You think everyone has it?
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Well, no, I... I think everyone has some foundation, but then based on brain type and we know brain type is all over the map, right? In fact, our next episode, Eric, you talked about openness.
Jeff Hein: Right.
Mr Beauty: Mm-hmm.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: The next episode that we're recording tomorrow night for the next show is on personality types. The big five traits of personality, which in, which includes neuroticism, openness, uh, conscientiousness, um,
Jeff Hein: Oh, that's going to be a good one.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: you know All of these traits that come and go through the human population as and how does that relate to art? So what I think what I'm trying to to say is that I think all of us have those roots of beauty in us genetically determined because we're all humans. But on top of that is brain chemistry and brain, which has has a lot of interplay with how receptive and open and curious or not that you are to these visual or oral signals.
Jeff Hein: yeah but if we break it down into purely survival, you know if you take you know ah ah hundred dogs, all the attributes that they have genetically to help them survive, they're all going to share them.
Jeff Hein: they're not going to if it's a sort of If it's an attribute designed for their survival, they're going to share it mutually.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: And jeff Jeff, a hundred out of a hundred humans probably prefer facial symmetry.
Jeff Hein: Yeah, but but to his point to his point, they might not, they might but some people might not appreciate might not appreciate certain architecture or certain you other types of beauty.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Even the people who who don't, well, I don't know, but the majority.
Mr Beauty: Hold on. hol is Is that true, though? no no, no. Sorry.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yeah, but because that's
Mr Beauty: I'm going to go back to that point, though, Jeff. Like, is it true that 100 out of 100 dogs would share the same qualities that help them to survive? Like, look, Teddy...
Jeff Hein: Well, no net wild dogs wa no, no, wild dogs.
Mr Beauty: Fucking, fucking lovely dog.
Jeff Hein: wild dogs.
Mr Beauty: Like, this guy's an idiot. Okay?
Jeff Hein: I'm talking about wild dogs.
Mr Beauty: I love this boy to pieces.
Jeff Hein: we We've screwed up dogs.
Mr Beauty: But, like, yeah, yeah, yeah. But, like, there's got to be, there's got to be that dog in the pack where everybody, like, the culture of the dogs are like, he's kind of a fucking idiot.
Jeff Hein: yeah a
Mr Beauty: But, like, we like him for some reason. You know? Like, there's something.
Jeff Hein: But he's still going to find someone to mate with. Like, it's still going to work.
Mr Beauty: you Maybe, maybe, or maybe he's just like a hype man, you know?
Jeff Hein: Ha, ha, ha, ha.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Hey, dude.
Jeff Hein: Ha, ha, ha, ha.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Eric, there's a lid.
Mr Beauty: Yeah.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: There's a lid for every pot, Jeff.
Mr Beauty: i yeah
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: That's what Eric's saying. There's a lid for every pot, baby.
Mr Beauty: ah
Jeff Hein: Oh man.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: all right. So let's let's sum up.
Jeff Hein: hey but Yeah.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: This has been a fantastic discussion, way better than version one.
Mr Beauty: ah
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: um We actually got to the interplay of culture. um What I want from the three of us. is a short summary of where you are at the end of the show with regards to beauty being innate or learned or cultural.
Jeff Hein: okay at the time
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: I want your summary statements. Who thinks they can summarize?
Jeff Hein: Summaries, meaning how we feel after having this conversation. What?
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Yeah, like what's what's your worldview after this discussion?
Jeff Hein: Okay.
Jeff Hein: going to go last, if you don't mind, because I'm still working it out.
Mr Beauty: ah
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Eric, go first.
Mr Beauty: All right. ah I love and respect the hell out of both of you guys, but you you haven't necessarily changed my opinion on this this thing. um I think that there are universal standards of beauty.
Mr Beauty: I think. and And if that is true, then I believe that those stem out of the human experience, not necessarily out of the genetic genetic makeup that helps us to survive and pass on our genes or ah from any kind of higher being, but from the experience that the millions of generations of humans and proto humans that have come before us that have found comfort in the the places that we have existed and wanted to pay homage to those things that moved us. And so we developed those standards of beauty out of that.
Mr Beauty: That might have been the most succinct summary I've ever given on this fucking podcast, I just want to say.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: was was right That was very succinct for you.
Jeff Hein: That's like you read it. It's like you read it. That was good.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: right, I'll go. I'll start by saying I think Eric's wrong.
Jeff Hein: i know I can tell by you shaking your head the whole time.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: humans are animals and we are governed by the same rules that every other animal on the earth is governed by which is survival and procreation that is the core of who we are and beauty has evolved as a darwinian adaptation to help us survive we find things that will help us survive and procreate to be beautiful and to be the healthiest version of ourselves on top of that as in a layer cake We have a massive cultural piece that we learn as part of our human experience.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Eric, I'm with you on the human experience.
Mr Beauty: Okay.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: We learn that on top of this layer of evolutionaryily evolutionary aptitudes. So the cultural piece is hugely important and interplays with the genetic piece.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: to form like the final answer, which I think for each of us is different because of our different biology and our different experiences through life.
Jeff Hein: Yeah. Okay. now i Now I kind of wish I didn't go last because now I have to say you're both wrong.
Jeff Hein: And I'm just feel bad about it. No, I'm just kidding.
Mr Beauty: ah Well, you are the chosen one, so.
Jeff Hein: acts Actually, i think you're actually, I think you're, I mean, actually I agree with both of you.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: It's,
Jeff Hein: I'm not just saying that, but I will say before I give my opinion, i still don't know. I mean, I think this is kind of an unknowable topic.
Mr Beauty: Yeah.
Jeff Hein: um I mean, all of the examples that Paul, Which, by the way, I'm super impressed how much you came home information you came with. But all that stuff, the conclusions our theories.
Jeff Hein: right We really don't know why for sure. But I accept that they're likely true.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: True.
Jeff Hein: Um, I also believe, like I suggested earlier, that human beings are very complex. And I, I, I tend to believe that it is not, um, linear. It's, there are lots of things that go into why we feel the way we do. I don't think it's just procreation and survival.
Jeff Hein: Um, but lastly, but I do think it's partly that I do agree with that. At least I suspect it is. But lastly, something to throw you a curveball, which you probably expected, but something we didn't talk about is I personally, as a theist, think that in being created in the image of God, we are driven to behave and like God. And God is the creator, therefore we are driven to create.
Jeff Hein: That's another thing that I can't shake as a theist. and i i I also believe that. So, you know, I'm just sort of is Are you allowed to have your foot in all the camps?
Mr Beauty: i I love that summary because I feel like this, like genuinely, this was a really good episode. It is was a very genuine episode.
Jeff Hein: Yeah.
Mr Beauty: And I feel like what you just said was like, I think... but I don't know shit about fuck. And like, that's how I feel.
Jeff Hein: don't I don't.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: yeah
Mr Beauty: That is how I feel after this episode of just like, ah it's, it's impossible to nail this down.
Jeff Hein: don't.
Jeff Hein: It is. It seems that way. Honestly, I thought coming into it, it would be easier, but it's actually harder than i thought.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Well, the good thing is we're talking about it. That's what this podcast is about.
Jeff Hein: Yeah.
Mr Beauty: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. yeah
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: It's about bringing up difficult questions.
Mr Beauty: yeah
Jeff Hein: Yeah.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: We may not find the answers. We don't really know. And it leaves us thinking. And that's why I love this. I love this for us.
Mr Beauty: yeah
Jeff Hein: Can I add one thing? I know you mentioned that you're doing the next podcast and you're and you're going to talk about personality traits. Yeah. When you get to the narcissist part, can you not throw me under the bus like you did with PTSD?
Mr Beauty: yeah
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: No, no, no. Eric's got that. We got Eric on board for that part.
Jeff Hein: okay.
Mr Beauty: yeah yeah this people often ask me what the n in en curtis stands for and it is narcissus yeah
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: That
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: was funny.
Jeff Hein: I
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: All right, y'all. If you want to hear about how Eric almost got killed by a hippo twice in Africa, join us for the after show.
Jeff Hein: Adios.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: We'll see you there. Thanks again, Jeff.
Mr Beauty: we'll see you there thanks buddy okay bye
Jeff Hein: Adios.
Woodworking is Bullsh*t: Bye, all.
