It has come to my attention for a long while now of two opposing human desires that manifest in our stories, two spirits that possess them that contradict. As I know of no names for these I refer to them as "elegance" and "peculiarity"
What are these things?
I am defining Elegance to mean the sense of things being derived from the same principles as each other, a sleekness where all things are used to create the sense of unity
Conversely Peculiarity I use to mean the sense of something being in principle opposed to those things around it. Something that doesn't seem to fit right, and thus creates the sense of dis-unity.
These things transcend genre and medium, though they may be said to be some product or producer of that mysterious quality of atmosphere.
The nature of elegance and peculiarity mirrors our perception of reality. To all of us, in the case of other humans behaviors for instance, observe that they do things entirely unexplainable to our sense of causation. They respond in ways we certainly wouldn't and act to our tastes contra-productive. Yet at the same time some of what they do is bound by the principles of humanity that we share. When they are hungry, they eat as we do. When they are tired, they sleep as we do.
By the very product of there being differences between things that none the less share a same classification, the conceptions of elegance and peculiarity seem inevitable. And we might expect that to each person is a different level of desire for these opposing concepts.
The taste for elegance is seen in the taste for the things of great magnitude and dignity, and in the absolute, that which is all-encompassing, the ideal of the completely universal experience.
The taste for peculiarity is seen in the taste for the contrast, the love of the interesting tidbits and minutiae, the humor for the thing that seems strange and unassociated. There in essence can't be an absolute to the peculiar because it must go against the grain of what is around it.
This leads to an interesting point, which is the Peculiar seems to be somehow a subversion of the Elegant, rather then a freestanding thing of it's nature.
I must confess, I have a very strong preference for the elegant over the peculiar, to the point that I wonder if I can even present the two in a honest fashion, not helped by the lack of conversation I have seen on these two desires.
I must presume my preference is fed by my experience of the cosmos as a great singular entity, the unity seems so ever present, that any arbitrariness comes across not as it was probably intended but instead as a failing to connect points into the Unity properly.
It is most likely that I simply do not have the same enjoyment of diffused elements that others do rather then they are simply not properly connecting the points.
If you look at my favorite works you will notice one theme coming up again and again beyond all else; the inter-connected, unity of the cosmos, the extension of the premise from the small to the great. It is in the great continuity of reality and being as depicted in fiction that I enjoy to the fullest and in the disunity of juxtaposition that I find I don't understand the popular appeal.
I apologize if this blog seems very weird, this was my merely attempting to give names to something I have never heard anyone express.
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