To increase the variety of the created world
Fridayβs newsletter, βWondrous Variety,β started out with something I read in Clive Jamesβ Cultural Amnesia:Β
Humanism was a particularized but unconfined concern with all the high-quality products of the creative impulse, which could be distinguished from the destructive one by its propensity to increase the variety of the created world rather than reduce it. Builders of concentration camps might be creators of a kindβit is possible to imagine an architect happily working to perfect the design of the concrete stanchions supporting an electrified barbed-wire fenceβbut they were in business to subtract variety from the created world, not to add to it.
I was having trouble coming up with an image for the newsletter and then I remembered this photo I took in a Costco on Oahu.
Read the whole newsletter here.