There is still beauty in the world. But I suspect that many aren't looking for it where it is. You can find superficial versions of it all over the place of course, but the deeper kind is elsewhere. I think people may look in the wrong place for meaning, as well. But of course all this is just a suggestion.
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You're correct, of course, and interestingly not the first to notice this problem. I've been reading a book called The Nature Writings of Carl Jung. Among so many memorable statements about how we live in the world having forgotten our instinctual, million year history of life before modern times.
'We keep forgetting that we are primates and have to make allowances for those layers in the psyche.'
'How totally different did the world appear to medieval man! For him the earth was eternally fixed and at rest in the centre of the universe…Men were all children of God under the loving care of the Most High, who prepared them for eternal blessedness; and all knew exactly what they should do and how they should conduct themselves in order to rise from a corruptible world to an incorruptible and joyous existence. Such a life no longer seems real to us, even in our dreams.'
'In the last analysis, most of our difficulties come from losing contact with our instincts, the age-old forgotten wisdom stored up in us.'
I've been an admirer of Jung for some time. He might be considered more of a philosopher than a scientist nowadays, but the idea of there being a hard and permanent distinction between the two disciplines is pretty recent.
And he's right about us forgetting that we're primates. The reasons have varied. In the nineteenth century, when Darwin (and Huxley, Lyell, etc) suggested a relation between ourselves and apes the idea was scandalous. Now evolution in itself is less controversial--although I've still known people who dismiss it out of hand--but we have more toys to distract ourselves with. I'm not entirely innocent of that, God knows.
But owning your own dreams and having some contact with your unconscious is necessary for spiritual health.
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