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(I'm not sure if I'm one of the people you had in mind when you wrote this, so this might be irrelevant.) In our last exchange, you seemed content with being surrounded by physical ugliness because you can find beauty in a lot of higher maths and sciences. My objection was, and remains, that leave us midwits who don't have the g to see things the way you do out in cold. That doesn't mean I think all western society needs to be burned to the root, it just means I wish we didn't always go for the cheapest, blandest options.
Further I reject the framing of your hypothetical here too. I don't think it clarifies much. Why can't we achieve new breakthroughs in math and science while still making buildings that are at least inoffensive?
I think the parent comment I made was bad writing and left out a lot of context. So the complaint from this particular segment of the far right is that there is something essential to modern, western culture (they'll use a term like "globohomo") that destroys something aesthetic. I'm currently a little confused about what exactly their aesthetic complaint is---people's living environments, public buildings and spaces, people's bodies, some sort of missing abstract search for glory? However, as far as I understand them, they think that this aesthetic issue cannot be fixed without changing the foundations of western culture. Usually, they argue it necessitates some kind of ethnostate.
I wanted to make a point---even accepting their premise that the aesthetic issue can only and will be fixed by getting rid of "globohomo" culture, it's not actually that clearly an issue. I personally think that the modern, western physical environment is adequate, even though it could be better---airports and suburbia, for example, are moderately ugly to beautiful (visit Changi or walk around Palo Alto to see the good side) depending on how rich the area is. However, in this trade for adequacy instead of greatness (again accepting the questionable premise that culture change would actually lead to greatness!), we get greatness in another place: beauty coming from scientific and technological advancement.
The hypothetical was meant to ask if people think this trade is ok. Obviously there are also other aesthetic benefits from modern, western culture. I just thought this one was most compelling (though obviously I was wrong here).
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