Self Expression and Force of Personality Lead to Degeneracy

More specifically, the desire to express oneself solely though the force of their own personality, without adherence to objectively measurable aesthetic qualities and mastery, is the very core of what you'd probably call degenerate. You can apply this to just about anything.

One does not need to be a virtuoso to make music, right? It is true that anyone can pick up an instrument with limited knowledge and still make a decent tune. However, I find that in these times, sheer personality and self-expression are valued over achieving any kind of aesthetic mastery.

In music, there are notes that go together beautifully, chords that compliment each other. Consonance and dissonance can be used to make something that is objectively, aesthetically pleasing, and such sounds can be examined and explained why they are pleasing.

However, we often find ourselves or the people around us focusing not on the aesthetics of their creations, only that it feels good to them, and that they are putting themselves out there. Complimented with actual mastery of the craft, this a great thing. Alone? This is what leads to garbage music.

Just look at the entirety of modern art. I suppose you can Modernism in general forsook any kind of aesthetic quality to the work, focusing instead, again, on the sole expression of oneself. While a blank piece of paper may move the easily impressed heart of the artist, what aesthetic qualities are there to speak of? What techniques or mastery can been seen or felt by those that see it?

It's not just the arts this applies to, but human beings as well. The world can deny it all they want, but there are qualities that we find in ourselves as well as other people that are objectively attractive, almost universally. It's just a matter of to what degree each individual finds a certain trait or characteristic attractive.

For instance, though your attraction to someone may not hinge on this alone, people tend to like a woman that fits a certain frame, is not foul in her speech, yet witty when challenged. Everyone can appreciate a woman who is kind, well-mannered, and modest. It screams 'This person could make a good girlfriend/wife/employee/co-worker/friend/caretaker/whatever it may be.

As such, some societies have standards for what a man or woman ought to be, what they find conventionally attractively and aesthetically pleasing.

You can take Fat positivity and various aspects of Feminism as transgressions of this face. People are gravitating towards beliefs that condone their own inherently flawed behavior, accepting this as the end-goal of their existence, as if the human condition is only as good as the desires ever human personally wants.

So then, where exactly in Western history did our common love for aesthetic beauty, mastery, and excellence die out in favor of catatonic self-indulgence, and the idea that one should live their lives by the power of their own personality alone?

Thoughts, Holla Forums? Can we ever go back to better days?

And has artistic methods if done correctly
I still think about that woman shitting paint onto canvass as degenerate """art""" - that's the wrong way.
Grunge was the correct way - saying "hello people there's something wrong here", or "this isn't working clearly"
Basically something that has a firmer deeper meaning, not just bait for "look how degen I am" like the grunge scene turned into by the end of it's run.

I think we can in fact go back to better days. Those truths of aesthetics and standards you talk about are hard wired into us. I doubt they can be eternally suppressed.

Unless of course it gets bred out of us somehow.

Maybe you can start a board where people post and critique each other's musical compositions or artistic works and work to get better as composers or artists. Of course, 99% of people in general, even people here on Holla Forums, have no talent and in this pozzed culture would perceive you as a snobby elitist, so you would have to put up with pleb tier trolls who prefer pleb tier stuff and have no desire to work hard at anything.

No, but we can go forward to better days.

actually it's a pretty good point.
Faust has been a degenerate man until we was saved by Gretchen.
In a sense every man tends to be degenerate without the feminine part following him.

I actually do play guitar. I wonder how many Holla Forumsacks are musicians though

Why don't you create a /composers/ board, advertise it on Holla Forums, and find out?

Humanity is in an eternal flux, ever changing so slightly. In all individuals. Small mutations to the mind, small reactions to foods and to outside conditions. Perhaps there have been whole nations molded by the stress caused by the endless car traffic even…we wouldnt know for sure.

but things like civilization cycles, like r/K selection theory say that perhaps there are trends that may span our cognition, perhaps with every step that we take, we sometimes unearth the ground beneath our feet. Setting small pebbles loose and making our path ever so harder.

Perhaps the best way to view healthiness, sanity of mind is to aggressively extend a desire to protect our environment. To protect who, and how many we may see, to protect our light and sound spectrum (from traffic and artificial street lights even)

perhaps as you feel pain in your limb and react violently to the cause, you too should immediately react violently if a loud machine pollutes your neighborhood. if a somewhat too large circus makes residence there, or perhaps just too many goddamn people start to live near you permanently.

I am not sure, but I feel like as we have moved from the industrial revolution, we let go of the many, subtle ways that our environment was, and gave us sanity. Into an ever increasing clusterfuck of accumulated effects that drive us insane, even if our body is whole.

Perhaps some day, someone will recognize this outside need to protect your environment as much as you would your body from direct, mortal danger.

Guitar player, painter and lover of the classical arts here.

I agree with you OP, and the only way is for men of virtue stand up and up and lead by example. It is not an easy life to choose, but as Spengler said: "A good life is a hard life".

I suggest watching the video embedded. It's about objective beauty, how important it is to cater to our spiritual and moral needs and how love, which is to give, elevates us and how lust, which is to feed the ego, is degenerate.

As quoted by Plato in the video:

"Beholding beauty with the eye of the mind, you will nourish true virtue and become friends with God".