Meeting on "Why we value purity"

We had an interesting discussion on why we seem to have a positive feeling for things that are "pure".

I had proposed a few possible reasons but a new stronger idea emerge from the discussion.

Gerry was emphatic that we feel the goodness in purity and it is something we experience.  For Gerry, experience is real compared to any discourse of why we feel the way we do.

Ricki wondered about the possibility of pure evil and whether that is a correct use of the word pure. If pure can be used to describe evil, then there is nothing good about being pure and it is only a description of the composition of something.

Shula proposed that images of purity takes us to a simpler black and white picture, a more idealistic view of what should be.  In a world of purity, everything is in its place as we expect it, heroes are always good and villains always bad.  The course forward is always clear.

Ricki also mentioned that purity allows us to see things in stereotypes in our neat categories making the world easy to understand, removing uncertainties.

Gerry mentioned that he was moved by President Obama's inauguration speech.

Presidential speeches to the public appear to be crafted along the lines of simplicity and purity.  This facilitates communication to the masses and move our emotions to motivate us. Any talk of details of conflicts and grayness would hinder the call to our emotions.  Gerry made reference to the the calling of the innocence of the child in him and that seems to align with the simplicity explanation of purity and its ability to evoke emotion in us.

We then discuss the concept of purity in brides wearing white.  It seems that white implies pure but this is only cultural.  In Asia, white is more for funerals and mourning while happy occasions like weddings, red is the color.

But white also connects purity with cleanliness.  The phrase "pure as drifting snow" from the novel Dr. Zhivago comes to mind. Why is frozen water so appealing? 

Rafi said that in the Russian language,  purity and cleanliness is the same word.  The reference in Dr. Zhivago on drifting snow is partly that it has not yet been "contaminated" by any other contact after the snow was formed and before falling to the ground but also referred to the feature of how a snow fall covers everything and make what was otherwise a ghastly scene of battle, death, and suffering all white and peaceful.

To think that something like snow or anything "natural" is contaminated somehow because of human contact is such a guilt laden idea and yet it seem so pervasive in popular thinking.  We tend to think of the "virgin forest" until humans come to somehow make it not as good as before.

Bruce suggested that it may be the poets and artist among us who do not live in the forest that paint this picture and that the real forest is full of bugs, bacteria, dirt, as well as the beautiful flowers etc.

Finally, we cannot leave the subject of purity without discussing the appeal of tradition, where the same positive feeling is attributed to following the same practice every year,  thereby bringing stability and sense of belonging for us.  Again the comforting rules and predictability play their part just as in the attraction of purity.