Many Asian cultures base the definition of beauty on algorithms (steps
to follow)... flower arranging, Chinese brush strokes, watercolors...
practice and copy, copy, copy... how much of that becomes the
person/people? There isn't a lot of individuality. But the
appreciation of beauty is part of the Asian culture... it is just
scripted. In many other cultures maybe form follows function.
Necessity was the first step - then personal expression... and
individuality.
Last year or the year before I forwarded an article about the names of
color... and how we only have 8 color names... everything else is named
for an object. It also had something about how other cultures many not
name differences - the color of the sky and the color of the grass may
be the same name. I couldn't find the original, but there is a lot
about language and color:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distinguishing_blue_from_green_in_language
Words and how we hear them "booba/kiki" - can be a type of low level
synethesia (sp?). The sound of the word is associated with a feeling.
When Woody was posting about the NPR broadcast - it was the first thing
I thought of.
