Introduction
This is a beauty story.
It starts with three women:
A beautiful young woman in Vienna.
An old woman in Capri, Italy.
A young girl in Bali, Indonesia.
The three women all have different needs and different problems to solve, and they would all benefit from the same solution: a little time to themselves in their beautiful surroundings. But they don’t know that yet! They are far too busy getting married and having children to sit around and do nothing for a long weekend—even if it’s just for a few hours!
So these three women decide to take their time together—to enjoy each other’s company under the moonlight and the stars of their own country—while not actually doing anything useful at all (or, better yet, not doing anything at all worth understanding). They decide to just give themselves over to total decadence! ☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️☀️ ☀️☀️ ☀️ ☁ ? ? ? ????? ? ? ? ? ? ??????????? ? ? ? ? ? ? ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ ? ? ? ? → ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ← ⇒ → → ⇒ → ⇒ ⚡ ⚡ ⚡ ⚡ ⚡✅✅✅✅✅ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♫ ♫ ♫ ♦ — ???? = ??? ?? . . . . . . . . . . ❉ ❉ ❉ ❉❉❉❌ ❌❌❌❌ ❌❌❌ ❇ — ?? = ?? = ?ℎℛℛℛℛℛ レヾァレヾァレ レョーパス
The Decadent Style
According to the latest beauty publication, “The New York Times” [4], in 20 years, we will all be ‘in love with our faces’ and the face of all of us will be ‘decadent’; a lot of people will not look at their faces because they think they look better without makeup.
I find it amazing that there are still so many people who don’t like their faces, even though everyone knows that it’s what makes them beautiful. And yet I’m sure there is a reason for this. Perhaps it’s because we have been conditioned to have no opinion about our looks, just like we have been conditioned to have no opinion about who our best friends are or whether we should like someone.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/22/fashion/22impressions.html?ref=fashion&_r=0 [2] http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/18/AR2008101811086_pf.html [3] http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/07/style/warning-facedick-faces-may-not-be-a-good-lookside-partner.-and-why-theyre-justified.-in-theparishemescompetition.-july2015-.html?hp [4] https://www.nytimes.com/.
The Decadent Style and the ‘fin de siecle’
The decadent style is a style of beauty in popular culture that started in the late 19th century. In the late Victorian era and Edwardian period, artists like Édouard Manet and Georges Seurat created a fairytale romance for women and men about the pursuit of elegance and refinement. One of the most well-known examples is Édouard Manet’s Olympia which depicts a woman in a gilded ball gown. The concept of decadence, however, was not simply about decorating rooms with rich-looking furniture but about taking time to appreciate beauty; an idea that was deeply rooted in 19th century French art.
Bryan Appleyard, author of ‘Where Art Meets Art’, contrasts the “decadent style” with many other styles of beauty, such as “naturalistic” (the style favored by Matisse) or “organic” (the style favored by Picasso). He says that while they are certainly beautiful works of art, they are also works that often deceive:
The Decadent Style: It is easy to picture this as meek art – it is unhurried, it lacks personality; it carries itself lightly on its toes; it does not have any sense of drama or suspense. That’s not what we mean by “decadent”. What we mean is this: if you look at these paintings from [Georges] Seurat’s point-of-view you can see he knew exactly what he was doing. These are wonderful paintings from his point-of-view; they bear no relation to reality. He knows exactly how beautiful they are because he has really looked at them many times before. It may be right that he has worked out all the technical details with his brushstrokes and colours so well but his emotional response to them shows through loud and clear. The Decadent Style: If you look at these paintings from [Georges] Seurat’s point-of-view you can see he knew exactly what he was doing. These are wonderful paintings from his point-of-view; they bear no relation to reality.; He knows exactly how beautiful they are because he has really looked at them many times before..
Appleyard notes that this style needs only one thing — a relationship between the artist and their audience:
I think it would be better if we could paint these images for people so that when people went back to look
The Decadent Style in Art, Literature and Music
After spending a lot of time looking at the seductive beauty in art and literature, I have concluded that the decadent style is not just a style — it’s an ethos. In other words, the way we perceive art and music reflects our values and attitudes.
Marcel Proust was right when he said that “the feeling of luxury is really the feeling of having discovered something; it is also the feeling which makes us abandon ourselves to pleasures.”
In art and music, this phenomenon can take on many forms: a particular composer’s music can evoke all sorts of associations (with a particular image, with people from that specific time period, with different emotions). When we listen to something more than once, we are taking those associations into consideration when evaluating whether or not it’s worth purchasing or listening to again.
This is what makes us so susceptible to decadent aesthetics: just because something looks good does not mean you should buy it. And just because something sounds good does not mean you should buy it. We need to take these tastes into account in our buying decisions.
As an example: after reading Paul Auster’s The Book of Lilies some years ago, I decided to look into his other books and found that he had written four novels since then (The New York Trilogy), but hadn’t published any poetry since The Book of Lilies . If I were looking for a book which could evoke all sorts of strong emotions which would encourage me to buy and listen to it again (maybe even several times), this would be a prime candidate for me — but as for why I would want to do so — well that was something else altogether. Concerning creativity and productivity, nothing else comes close.
Conclusion
I’m not sure what I expect to happen with this post, but I do want to offer a few thoughts and observations on the growth of the startup ecosystem as a whole, and how it has evolved over the last two years.
One of my clearest memories of growing up was watching my family head off for their annual camping trip in the woods. My dad would take me along and show me where to sleep, where to go for lunch, where we could see the stars. Then he’d get me back home in time for dinner. This was standard fare for us and so far as I know no one else had done this — not campgrounds or restaurants or beachfront hotels.
In other words, people were going out of their way to provide experiences that were meant for one another: a customer would send a message on Facebook; we would respond to it; we would then build a product that would do something similar in response (e.g., show them pictures of our house). This is known as something called “social good” — which is one reason why it is so important that startups don’t stand alone; they need support from other companies too. The effect of this is not easy to measure but it seems like it has had huge benefits:
• It creates larger market shares (and makes everyone better off)
• It makes people feel heard and cared about even if they’re not doing much of anything (which leads them to being more engaged)
• It brings many different types of people together (including those who are different from each other)
• It promotes sharing ideas — which tends towards learning rather than division between different kinds of users (i.e., you can learn from others what you think works well and why)
I wouldn’t say there isn’t some downside here though: there are clearly times when things don’t work out well in terms of creating value or creating community at large, but I think that trade-off is worth it overall: investment in community pays off in communities building around products or services rather than just individual users with individual problems — which leads me back to #1 above about community building. It also means that as long as you stick to these things you will almost certainly be in business for a long time regardless of whether you have great ideas or make super-cool products — if anything, the long-term success depends on