Is a more beautiful culture possible?
The purpose of Beautiful Books is to promote and celebrate beautiful art. We want to remind each other that culture can lift and inspire, inform and transform. Goodness, beauty and truth exist. Let’s join together to rediscover what this is. 
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Is a more beautiful culture possible?
A Visionary Society Quest
The purpose of Beautiful Books is to promote and celebrate beautiful art. We want to remind each other that culture can lift and inspire, inform and transform. Goodness, beauty and truth exist. Let’s join together to rediscover what this is. 
 
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Understand what a work of art says
Think about how art affects you
Don’t participate in harmful cultural activities
Put the fair and good into your mind
Put soul at the center of your concerns

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We are simply offering basic principles of meaningful art – not providing a list of works that we condemn or commend. That will always be subjective, and should be entirely up to individuals. Our goal is simply to provide a public forum for the shared attempt at discovering meaningful art. 

We seek only obvious, self-evident principles that anyone would agree to. We invite all to contribute any piece they think meets these principles. 

Beautiful Books is a counterpart to Banned Books. Instead of selecting works because they had been banned, Beautiful Books has readings, discussion and performances of works that are considered beautiful by members.

Beautiful Books supports works of art that express the deeper dimensions of our humanity. There is no limit to beauty, in the natural world, or even, potentially, in society. But beauty is adrift, under assault, in need of a friend. Let us be a friend to beauty. Freedom of the expression of ideas is always valid, but we also need to know what is especially worthy of being expressed.

By joining the steps below members can help plan and stage the very first Beautiful Books event. In addition they can use Visionary Society Challenges and Requests to encourage wider participation and awareness. Hopefully this will become an annual occurrence and grow to multiple locations. 

There should be a central location for the event, possibly at the public library. There could also be a gathering in the main city public square, and secondary events in cafes and theaters. In addition to public readings and performances, we present Challenges and Requests: a way for individuals and businesses to make significant choices to bring meaningful culture into the world.


Get started
Watch the Banned Books vs. Beautiful Books video clip (1 minute).
Review 2 or 3 Perspectives in Explore: Visionary Culture. (10 minutes)
Read the Beautiful Books summary (5 minutes).

Resources for meetings
Explore several insights about what is beautiful culture.
Active, guided meditation ('Reflect') to grasp how culture affects you.
Discuss possibilities for creating Beautiful Books event.


Action
Start the Beautiful Books project!
Related Quests Beauty, Art, Music, Creativity.

Insights to grasp
"Genius in art is invisible to ordinary eyes." (John Ruskin)


 
To learn more, visit the Quest Culture.
Quests are a way to grasp any topic, from Mystery to Perspectives to Reflect to Action



 
Resources
agree with website here these details http://ocenkapnz.ru/
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agree with website here these details http://ocenkapnz.ru/

 
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“Artists play a distinctive role in challenging authoritarianism. Art creates pathways for subversion, for political understanding and solidarity among coalition builders... Artists who occupy marginalized social positions can use their art to challenge structures of power."
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“Artists play a distinctive role in challenging authoritarianism. Art creates pathways for subversion, for political understanding and solidarity among coalition builders... Artists who occupy marginalized social positions can use their art to challenge structures of power."

Why Authoritarians Attack the Arts
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/06/opinion/why-authoritarians-attack-the-arts.html
By Eve L. Ewing, April 6, 2017, NYT

As Hitler understood, artists play a distinctive role in challenging authoritarianism. Art creates pathways for subversion, for political understanding and solidarity among coalition builders. Art teaches us that lives other than our own have value. Like the proverbial court jester who can openly mock the king in his own court, artists who occupy marginalized social positions can use their art to challenge structures of power in ways that would otherwise be dangerous or impossible.

It’s about control. It’s about creating a society where propaganda reigns and dissent is silenced.

We need the arts because they make us full human beings. But we also need the arts as a protective factor against authoritarianism. In saving the arts, we save ourselves from a society where creative production is permissible only insofar as it serves the instruments of power.

 
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Beautiful Books poster under development
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Beautiful Books poster under development



 
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Beautiful Books Goals
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Beautiful Books Goals

Stand up for the idea that beauty, good and truth still exists, and begin to understand what that is

Develop the ability to discriminate between destructive, meaningful and beautiful art, without being prejudiced

Demonstrate that it is possible to stand up for principles without being self-righteous or divisive

Fight destructive, superficial, and nihilistic culture

Find something good, true or beautiful
Show how this is broken and how it can be aspired to or achieved.
This is the last, hardest and most important Beautiful Books goal!


 
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"Here are enshrined the longing of great hearts
And noble things that tower above the tide
The magic word that winged wonder starts
The garnered wisdom that has never died"

Brooklyn Public Library
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Resource in "Is a more beautiful culture possible?"
 
"Here are enshrined the longing of great hearts
And noble things that tower above the tide
The magic word that winged wonder starts
The garnered wisdom that has never died"

Brooklyn Public Library

It almost went without saying, not long ago, that popular culture should involve goodness, beauty, and other virtues. Here is proof of that: inscriptions on major public facilities.

New York Public Library
“A good Booke is the pretious life-blood of a master spirit, imbalm’d and treasur’d up on purpose to a life beyond life.” Sign over the entrance to the New York Public Library reading room.

Portland Public Library steps
"Begin, Experience, Seek, Hope, Explore, Dream, Inquire, Imagine, Discover, Create, Transcend, Become."

The Nobel prize
“To the person who shall have produced in the field of literature the most outstanding work of an idealist tendency.”
Alfred Nobel’s will established in 1896 a prize for literary achievement.

 
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Initial thoughts on how to create a framework for supporting beautiful art and culture
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Initial thoughts on how to create a framework for supporting beautiful art and culture

The main value of art lies beyond itself. Art for its own sake, unaware of its effects, is potentially dangerous. It is quite possible that works of art can injure or shatter a person’s spirit. That is why we need a framework for making sense of art and culture, for judging art and holding accountable artists and those who support art for the ramifications of what they are doing.
How do you know the power of a work of art? We can establish guidelines, but everyone has to do the work themselves. You must try to sense the effect, what it does to you and how it makes you feel. Does it inflame your ego? Does it magnify what is fleeting? Does it make you compare yourself to something inane? Or does it recognize the part of you that you admire?
It's not easy, but it's necessary. There are great dangers along this bath (bigotry, ideology, etc). It's not a framework but a journey, in which we agree to aspire to, to look for, focusing and elaborating, implications and [the good]. But our hope is to actually create a culture of care – by standing up for the good, true, beautiful, and sacred, and making artistic creativity of this kind a part of daily life.

High level
Explores conundrums, mysteries.
Expresses these transcendent qualities: beauty, truth, good, love, and the sacred.
Nourishes these personal qualities: Purity, depth, inwardness, awareness, holiness, integrity, honesty, faith, compassion, commitment, care, autonomy.
Effect: Recognizes your whole self, and calls you to your higher nature.
(They also oppose superficiality, degradation, and manipulation.)

Mediocre level
Works as entertainment. Delight, gratitude, tell a story, support, console
Superficial
Vulgar
Magnification of the profane, superficial, and material. Life is entertainment, and art is distraction from what is transcendent and eternal. Ignorant, one-sided, and ideological.
Personal qualities: Greed, narcissism, self-interest, hard-heartedness, isolation, and sanctimony.
Effect: Diminishes the ability to perceive realities outside of oneself. Insensitivity.

Low level
Degenerate
Appeals to these realities: the ugly, the false, hatred, and evil.
Magnifies these personal qualities: bigotry, destructiveness, and sadism.
Effect: Destruction of the capacity to see what is good: Degradation and nihilism.
‘Superstition, witch hunts, torture, and a multitude of other forms of cruelty or traditional folly.’ Schweitzer

 
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“Watching a bad TV program, we the TV program. We are what we feel and perceive. If we are angry, we are the anger. If we are in love, we are love. If we look at a snow-covered mountain peak, we are the mountain...
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“Watching a bad TV program, we the TV program. We are what we feel and perceive. If we are angry, we are the anger. If we are in love, we are love. If we look at a snow-covered mountain peak, we are the mountain...

"We can be anything we want, so why do we open our windows to bad TV programs made by sensationalist producers in search of easy money, programs that make our hearts pound, our fists tighten, and leave us exhausted. Who allows such TV programs to be made and seen by even the very young? We do! We are too undemanding, too ready to watch whatever is on the screen, too lonely, lazy, or bored to create our own lives. We turn on the TV and leave it on, allowing someone else to guide us, shape us, and destroy us. Losing ourselves in this way is leaving our fate in the hands of others who may not be acting responsibly. We must be aware of which programs do harm to our nervous system, minds, and hearts, and which programs benefit us.”
“Of course, I am not talking only about television. All around us, how many lures are set by our fellow and ourselves?....
“We must be very careful to protect our fate and our peace….With the sun of awareness shining in us, we can avoid most dangers….” Thich Nhat Hanh, Peace Is Every Step


 
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Hi,

Thelocation3 is a website that collects opinions from webmasters/bloggers/business owners for Bing, Bluehost, etc.

We are looking for people like you to test our website.

They spend *,000,000,000 dollars each year collecting data, and then improving their products.
Thelocation3 pays to each member $ *** daily for their opinions.

Interested? Click here: https://www.thelocation3.com/paidsurvey

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Plan for recurring annual event, and for Beautiful Books in other places
Develop a plan for recurring events and for supporting others in developing Beautiful Books in their community. This is meant to be an annual event that can take place at any number of locations.
Hold Event
Stand up for the good and beautiful in public spaces and forums. Readings and performances of any kind, to build awareness and share examples of this ancient and forsaken idea.
Preliminary meetings to discuss principles, readings, performances, etc.
Publicize meetings to think about Beautiful Books principles, and to decide on the kinds of performances (and possibly the specific works) we will be presenting.
Publicize and Support related Challenges, Requests and Topics in the community
Publicize, support and develop Visionary Society Challenges, Requests and Topics in the area of Culture. Any validated Challenge or Request in the Culture category is potentially suitable. Encourage participation in Culture Topics. Not just during the event but ongoing.
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Message from the Guide of this Proposal
   Great art wakes us up. It reminds us of our higher nature and helps us find ways to express our own vision. It inspires us, makes us whole, and strengthens us to go back into the world and fight for what is true.
This Proposal added by Visionary Society
on August 01, 2018
 
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You can click "Explore this Step" or "Explore Proposal Plan" to go deeper into Proposal content; on the Plan page you will find an explanation of the Proposal in greater detail, as well as Resources for you to explore. Learn more about Proposals.


 
 
 
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Gatherings
Exploring a Quest on your own is good, but doing it together with friends and community members is better.
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Exploring a Quest on your own is good, but doing it together with friends and community members is better! Facilitating Quests is easy and no one needs to be an expert. The Quest Path is intuitive. Just take the steps that interest you. To begin, decide on the Gathering type.
Quest Meeting
Hold a meeting open to Visionary society members and the public, with the purpose of following any Quest Path, reaching the heart of a basic social or personal mystery. See more.
Public Action
A great insight matters little unless and until we bring it into the world. Public Action is bringing the insights of a Quest to the public. It works by engagement – engaging the public, helpfully but with clarity, in matters of significance. See more.
Celebration of the Good
Can we envision a new kind of entertainment, one that engages people in active celebration of beauty, truth and good? See more.
 
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