So under survival stress the surplus gets used for utility, destabilizing identity. If it is completely used up even fit an instant, identity continuity is broken, so you get death and non-eternity.
Conversation
Useful to consider each pure case
Beauty + longevity = purely symbolic monument
Longevity + utility = pure creative destruction
Beauty + utility = pure transient instantaneous consciousness
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I find the pure longevity+utility case most interesting. There is no beauty, because there’s no persistence to be either beautiful or ugly. It’s “not even ugly.”
Annihilated-self amnesiac pure process non-being-and-time.
In a Bergsonian mood this morning.
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Pure utility+longevity only has coherence only to the extent it has a perfect thermodynamic boundary. It’s a mindless sub-universe unto itself that leaks out and dissolves into the universe. Maybe like how a black hole can evaporate.
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This kind of useless shitpost is what happens when I don’t get enough sleep and haven’t had a second cup of coffee.
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Since all 3 asymptotic cases are impossible, and you have to be in the interior,… calibration practical near-pure cases:
Beauty + utility = latte art
Utility + longevity = interchangeable commodity component
Longevity + beauty = family heirloom
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Replying to
I submit for your consideration, the Pyramids: supremely useful as grave markers, beautiful in their geometry and engineering, long-lasting in the extreme.
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We can only judge utility according to how well something achieves its intentions. If your purpose is to commemorate the eternal power of your divine rulers, tell me anything ever built that does a better job?
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“Commemorate” is doing way too much work there. While the dynasty was alive and ruling ancient Egypt I’ll grant it was useful. But even by Roman times it’s main function was a tourist trap. Today nobody knows/cares who Cheops was. It’s a prop in alien movies.
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