We had an interesting discussion on judging aesthetics last night.
The question I posed was how do we settle disputes on questions of what is ugly versus what is good looking.
This often shows up in neighborhood building development with the individual home owner exerting his property rights versus the neighbors wanting to protect their real estate value against some house among them that may not be good looking (different size, shape, color, or state of maintenance).
Should these judgments be made by the home owner, rule of majority in the neighborhood, experts, or some arbitration process?
Mano said that so long as there is a legitimate process with hearings and appeals, the home owner entered the neighborhood with the tacit agreement to live with these legitimate processes of the neighborhood. That there is no better way. This addresses the process but to me does not deal with the subjective nature of aesthetics.
Shula said that we should approach this from the "do no harm" principle as well as the tolerance principle. The eye sore is not doing any physical harm to the neighbors but these days we also have to consider psychological distress which again becomes subjective and difficult to determine. The tolerance angle brings in the tension of how hard it is for the perceiver of the eye sore to live with the situation versus how much pleasure the building owner gets.
Shula also brought in the parallel case of the lady who pushed for equal rights to go topless in public when she wanted to. Clearly she is not doing harm to others other than hurting their sensibilities or sense of decency. How to balance her individual freedom versus other people's tolerance?
The example of using local decency standards to judge whether something is pornographic and the usual subjective "you know it is porn when you see it" versus art comes to mind.
Because we cannot do a case by case evaluation of whether a particular topless woman is an eye sore or a beautiful sight, logic dictates that we either let all women have their equal right with men to go topless or else forbid men to go topless either.
Is this the right conclusion or are we avoiding the issue? A case of logic not always providing the best answer?
Rafi said for subjective evaluations such as aesthetics, we can have a committee approach with the committee consisting of experts as well as regular citizens. We should have experts as they have more exposure and background knowledge on the subject than the common person. At the same time, the normal citizen should have input to offset the bias of experts on something so subjective.
This is not any easier by the fact that our taste and sense of aesthetics also change with time and cultural background. Therefore, different committees can come up with different conclusions.
Of course, the make up of the committee will also change the conclusion.
We are again at the point where we can have a procedure to legitimize the settlement of a disagreement. The procedure is not as good as we would like but it is the best that we can do on subjective matters.
The discussion also moved to the influence of developers imposing big commercial or dense residential development on an existing neighborhood through powerful lobbying at city hall. The local resident may feel powerless to act against such powerful interests.
While this is the typical reaction from the standpoint of the existing residents in the neighborhood, is it not true that the developers represent the interest of future residents for the area? These developers are only powerful and influential because they anticipate lots of buyers for the property they develop and is representing the interests of these buyers. The developer that makes the wrong judgment results in properties that are not sold or leased profitably and do not stay being a successful developer.
In other words, the developers are fighting the "not in my backyard" syndrome where existing neighborhoods prevent future residents from increase the density of the area. How do we balance the interest of these two groups?
Another interesting discussion that shows the complexity of the society we live in. How we have to question our firm believe in beauty and disgust when others are involved and that the "big" developer may be speaking for a whole lot of other "little" guys with no say. No answers but a bit more perspective.
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