Abraham Maslow: «Lack of beauty can cause disease»

1. I remember an old textbook on anomalous psychology that I used as a student. It was a terrible book, but it had a wonderful frontispiece. On the bottom half of the picture were babies, pink, enthusiastic, innocent, loving. And from above, the passengers in the subway car were shown — gloomy, gray, gloomy, annoyed. The caption read: «What happened?» That’s what I’m talking about¹.
2. Life can be seen as a process of successive choices. At each point there is a progressive choice and there is a regressive one. One can move towards protection, safety, fear; but on the other side there is a choice that leads to personal growth. To make a dozen such choices in a day, instead of choices dictated by fear, is to take as many steps towards self-actualization. It involves making numerous choices: to lie or be honest, to steal or not to steal in each case, and each time a choice must be made that leads to growth. This is the movement towards self-actualization.
3. Lack of beauty can cause disease. People who are aesthetically very sensitive experience depression and discomfort in an ugly environment. Such an environment can affect menstruation, cause headaches, and so on… Living in an unpleasant environment with bad people is a pathogenic factor. If you prefer to spend time with beautiful and worthy people, you will find that you feel better and uplifted.
4. The problem of evil, or psychopathological behavior, vice, violence, envy, greed, exploitation, laziness, debauchery, anger, must be considered and resolved consciously. “The shortest and surest path to despair and surrender is the belief that somewhere there is such an order of things in which conflicts, the struggle for survival, stupidity, greed, personal envy are impossible,” said David Lilienthal².
5. When I see a complete absence of aggressiveness, I suspect an act of repression, suppression, or self-control. I believe that sadistic or cruel behavior is a characteristic of aggression typical of undeveloped, neurotic people, but with the transition to personal maturity and freedom, the nature of this aggression changes towards just indignation, towards healthy self-assertion, resistance to exploitation and domination, striving for justice … I also believe that the verbal expression of aggression reduces the likelihood of actual aggressive behavior.
6. We must trust our ability to improvise when we encounter something new in the future. Confidence implies self-confidence, courage, lack of fear of the world … Childbirth, urination, defecation, falling asleep, lying on the surface of the water, self-giving in sex — in all these cases, tension, diligence, control must give way to free, relaxed trust in events going on. in its turn. It also means: less criticism and editing, less evaluation, selection, rejection, less judgment and weighing, less dissection and analysis of experience. Such self-forgetfulness is one of the ways to find your true identity, your real «I», your authentic, deep nature.
7. Man learns what to do with the world. Silenced so that his voices could be heard; being receptive, non-interfering, non-demanding, and letting events take their course.
8. One of the necessary methods for finding identity, your «I», spontaneity and naturalness is to close your eyes, remove noise, sweep away all thoughts and deeds. The method here is simply to wait — to hear what comes to mind by chance. This is what Freud called free association, free floating attention… If you succeed in this effort, you forget about the outside world and its noises and start hearing those faint subtle voices from within, signals that come from your biological nature — not only from of what is common to the human race, but also from your own uniqueness.
9. You can learn to choose. Set two shots of sherry in front of you, cheap and expensive, and figure out which one you like best. See if you can tell two brands of cigarettes with your eyes closed. If you can’t specify a difference, then it doesn’t exist. I found out for myself that I can distinguish between good and cheap sherry, and now I buy the one that is more expensive. On the other hand, I can’t tell the difference between good and cheap gin, so now I buy the cheapest gin. If I can’t tell them apart, why bother?
10. We can only see what we ourselves are. But we must also add to this that, in turn, what we see contributes to our transformation into what it is and what we are … Personality and environment make each other alike. These ideas apply to human relationships as well, helping to understand how people help shape each other.

¹ A. Maslow «New frontiers of human nature» (Sense, 1999).

² David Lilienthal (1899-1981) — American government official, lawyer, one of the world’s most famous experts in business theory.