The titles of two recent books—Sally Rooney’s Beautiful World, Where Are You and Charles Eisenstein’s The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know Is Possible—capture something many people feel today: disappointment with the failures of modern society and a longing for a future more beautiful, wise, and just than the world we currently inhabit.
When I hear this call for a “more beautiful world,” part of me wants to push back.
I think I know what people mean when they say “more beautiful world”: A society more harmonious with the Earth, more prosperous for all, and more rooted in justice. I believe such a world is possible—and it is certainly worth striving for. In some sense, that world would undeniably be more beautiful than one riddled with inequity and ecological collapse. It is valuable to imagine that future and to bring it about it wherever and however we can.
And yet: is the world we live in today really not beautiful enough for us?
From where I stand, Earth right now is almost unimaginably beautiful. Our planet teems with vibrant landscapes, oceans, forests, and an abundance of life. Every culture continues to generate works of art, courage, and genius. And every single day, billions of ordinary people dedicate themselves to acts of love—caring for family, showing up for friends, tending to communities. We live in a profoundly, impossibly beautiful world.
This does not mean we can ignore the urgent problems before us. Climate change, inequality, and conflict all demand our energy and urgent attention.
But a lack of beauty is not one of our problems.
Perhaps the change we want will come about more swiftly and fully if we start striving not for a world with more beauty, but one with less ugliness.
Perhaps our “more beautiful world” will come about more swiftly and fully if we spend more of our energy simply in awe of the preposterously beautiful world right before our eyes already.
Peter Schulte
I help aspiring changemakers do good in the world and feel good in the process.