London-based culture critic (1M+ Twitter followers) argues modern Europe’s concrete sprawl stems from lost faith and rejection of "useless beauty"—ornate, spirit-driven architecture like Michelangelo’s David or pre-WWII World’s Fairs. He contrasts this with Dubai’s high-tech futurism or Russia’s classical revival, using Moscow’s subway as proof of cultural vitality. Hollywood’s historical remakes fail to capture true grandeur, but he sees hope in a resurgence of appreciation for craftsmanship, questioning whether secular societies can rediscover past motivations for beauty. [Automatically generated summary]
Certainly didn't expect it to get anywhere near the size that it's at.
But you can probably tell from my accent that I'm from England.
I live in London.
And so the reason for doing it was, I guess, a bit of a kickback against what's going on here in terms of the architecture and the arts that surrounds us.
And most of British sort of inner cities obviously fell victim to World War II.
And they were built back in some of the most egregious ways that we've ever seen in terms of post-war architecture.
And so you can't really go anywhere in Britain without being offended by some kind of concrete monstrosity of some kind.
So growing up around that kind of thing has always wanted a bit of a reaction.
And I'm not the only one to post about it.
There's a big movement and it didn't start with me.
Mine has just become one of the loudest voices in this space.
But there's a lot of resistance against these kinds of things all over the internet and especially on X and on Twitter back in the day.
So I'm just glad to be kind of part of that movement against the destruction of beauty, which has come in many different forms over the last century or two.
And honestly, there's a huge amount of support for it that I didn't actually expect.
And to have reached about a million followers in about a year is just beyond what I would have thought possible.
And I wouldn't necessarily say that was the case based on the message itself to its core, because I think what I'm posting about is relatively inoffensive to most audiences.
But I think it's this guilt by association thing.
I think a lot of people who agree with my message are people like you, Owen, who sit on the rise of politics and are small government people and stand up against a lot of the same things that I do in my private life.
And so I think when you start engaging with accounts that are on that naughty list, you get chucked onto it yourself.
And I think this is what I noticed because I'm not, a lot of the stuff that you post is new to me.
You know, I'm kind of learning along with some of the old English traditions or the old European traditions when it comes to art and history, architecture.
So the one thing that sticks out to me, just as a curious person, as a person that's neutrally observational, I would say, well, what's happened to civilization?
I mean, look, there's a lot of things that go into that, that change.
And it's been happening over some time.
It's not new.
It's at least 100 years old at this point.
But it all really just comes back to faith.
And what you'll see throughout history that kind of drove great art and great building and kind of great people, essentially, was the devout faith.
And when you take that away, you take away something that used to be what really was the key formula, especially within the visual arts and within architecture as well.
When you look back at history and you see paintings of the Madonna, for instance, you see beautiful artworks from the Gospels.
Making those things beautiful once had a purpose in quite a practical sense.
And so when somebody like Michelangelo sculpted the Virgin Mary and Jesus Christ, the reason for making it beautiful was a practical one in that if you did that, it would pull you into the gospel story as an observer.
It had more power and weight in doing things like that specifically.
And so when you take away faith from a society, you take kind of those key motivations away from creating beauty.
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And beauty is something that something that is very spiritual.
It was actually probably done even better stateside.
So, yeah, I mean, that was a pretty incredible thing, which to look back at those old photographs now, it sort of doesn't seem real because you can't really imagine us doing things like that and putting on displays of that level of pageantry without really necessarily a reason to do it, except for its own sake.
I mean, the perfect example is the Eiffel Tower.
People forget that that was put up for the World's Fair in 1889.
And the reason for doing it was, like I just said, a spectacular display of pageantry and beauty and ambition to build great things, which seems almost completely insane to do that now.
It would never pass a cost-benefit analysis for one.
It just wouldn't happen.
And so when you look at those old photographs, like in St. Louis and like in Chicago, you just think, wow, how different those people were to us today.
Yeah, well, something I talk about quite a lot is what other people have called the useless beauty metric.
So you walk around St. Louis, for example, and certainly if you walk around regional towns of England or anywhere, you see incredible Victorian era architecture in the most unlikely places in factories, in sewage pumps, wherever.
And it's all ornate and it's all beautiful.
And you wonder why.
Obviously, it wouldn't pass a cost-benefit analysis now, and it didn't then either.
But people did it anyway because they knew that by building beautiful things, you create a society where people's eyes are pulled upwards to the heavens and you inspire them to be better people.
And that just kind of doesn't really become a consideration in a secular society, which you and I, for the most part, probably are both living in right now.
Well, I don't know necessarily specific events to point to, but I guess I would just point people to pretty much anything that went up around the turn of the 20th century and then contrast that to what happened post-war.
And it's obviously very different.
There are examples all over the world.
What happened with the World's Fairs was there were these proud displays whereby countries would try to outdo each other with building the most beautiful things possible.
And so if St. Louis is a point of interest, look at Chicago, look at Paris, look at London.
These things were happening not just at the turn of the century, but for decades and decades before then as well.
So there was a good century of these massive displays of beauty and architecture and artistic genius.
And it was happening all the time.
And people invested money in communities actually came together to fund them.
They weren't necessarily just done on the backs of big donors.
A lot of them are community efforts.
Chicago is a great example of that.
So I will just, yeah, point people to pretty well anything that happened prior to the world wars, architecturally speaking.
I mean, I certainly think we are just from a technical standpoint.
And there are people still sort of, you know, making great art and certainly trying to push within those institutions.
And they, you know, deserve recognition for doing so.
But it kind of comes back to the fake point.
If people aren't driven to do it, then I suppose you can say that they can't do it.
I mean, from a technical standpoint, yes, we can make marble look transparent if we have the drive to spend seven years doing that.
People forget that, you know, they look at a Michelangelo or they look at a Benini and they forget quite how long that they were devoted to their craft for.
That didn't just come by accident.
These guys were working at it for decades before they got picked up by the Pope to do something spectacular.
So with a return to faith, it's very possible, but that's what it's going to take.
It's going to take people really investing in beauty as something that's important, something that is a fundamental virtue.
Yeah, you mentioned the work that was done with marble and specifically with sculptures.
I remember one of the points of interest or curiosity for me was they talked about, I think it was in the sculpture of David, and it showed how advanced the knowledge was even back then, how there's these muscles in the forearm that are just like just one little thread of a muscle in the forearm.
And they would even put that into the sculptures.
Just that they knew enough that there was that one thread of a muscle in the forearm.
And they had that tiny little detail in the sculpture.
They talk about making marble look like it's waving, look like it's weightless.
I mean, do you see, is there anybody that you follow or see now that does art or sculpting like that just in the modern day?
Sorry if I'm getting that pronunciation wrong, but it's S-A-B-A.
It's an Orthodox church in Belgrade.
And what's amazing about it is that it has what I believe is the largest mosaic ever constructed, at least certainly the largest mosaic that exists today.
And that was built, the mosaic was finished, I believe, in 2020.
And so I think people should look at things like that and be encouraged because where societies do have faith at their center, they are still doing things like this.
And it's enormously encouraging.
And yeah, your example is great.
Barcelona is a beautiful place.
And that cathedral is very close to completion.
And when it is completed, it's going to be, I believe, the biggest church in Europe.
So there's a lot to look forward to.
And I don't want to be pessimistic in everything that I say because there is a lot of stuff going up still.
Yeah, and most of this stuff, and this is why I find your account, and I'm going to pull up the Saint Saba.
It looks like we have some 4K footage that you can find here on YouTube.
They do a walkthrough.
That's the one reason why I enjoy following your account so much, because there's so much that you put up that I would otherwise never see, never hear about.
I mean, what are your methods for even discovering a lot of this stuff?
I generally kind of leave that to other people, but it's living in the ruins of great civilization, as I believe we are now, it is not, I don't necessarily think something new.
I mean, the Greeks, even the ancient Greeks, were surrounded by beautiful ruins that were wondrous even to them.
And so what I've seen recently is really, really great communities around that kind of asking these questions.
Was the timeline that we've been come to believe correct?
What do we not know about ancient societies and sort of how wondrous really were they?
And so I love to kind of go down those rabbit holes and learn things about that kind of thing.
But I wouldn't say I'm an expert.
And so I'll let others teach me about that.
I'm sort of focused on the Renaissance and less so antiquity.
Well, I would say from my research, I have no doubt that, I mean, anybody can argue what's superior or what's inferior, but there's no doubt we've been lied to about the history timeline.
And I think the big lie is the theory of evolution.
If anything, the modern day theory of evolution has actually been completely disproven by archaeology, anthropology, and the megaliths.
I would say that that theory has been completely disproven.
So if you do want to argue evolution, then you have to adjust your theory based off of discoveries by people studied and covered by individuals like Graham Hancock.
So I think obviously that the timeline that we've been given is a lie.
And I think that the megaliths are kind of the missing link.
I think the megaliths kind of prove it, whether it's the pyramids in Egypt or the pyramids in South America, the tunnels, the paintings and the sculptures that are universal all over the planet, dating at least 10,000 years ago before these humans could have possibly contacted one another.
I think that that proves that there either was some technology or some might argue a different form of intelligence back then.
But I think it also shows that there was always this appreciation and this yearning, this reaching for beauty.
Jimmy Corsetti is a really, really great accountant.
And he's a rumble streamer as well.
And he dives into all these kinds of questions.
And it's fascinating.
But you're right.
That's kind of the one thing that strings it all together, really, is that people just had a sense of the wondrous and the beautiful and endeavored to build as much of it as they could, as much of it as they possibly could, even to a degree that would seem impossible.
And the Greeks knew this, and the Greeks learned a hell of a lot from the Egyptians and other ancient civilizations that came before them.
So we're kind of at this place in history where we're almost the only humans ever to not think about these things, as far as we can tell from looking back at the timeline.
So we're the only humans who don't build with these mighty goals in mind.
Well, and my concern is we're going to reach this stage where it's either going to be AI building it, creating it, conceiving it, or it's not going to exist.
I think that we're already in a way kind of seeing that.
But when you plug these sort of prompts into even artificial intelligence, it somehow seems to get it.
It somehow seems to appreciate it or find a way to recreate it in the same beauty that humans used to build.
Well, there's a lot of talk because I think that we may not be aware of this.
We may not fully comprehend this.
But I think in a way we are in a modern day dark age.
And it's hard for us to even understand or appreciate that because we have all this technology, we have all this ease of access.
I mean, you could even argue that just around the entire planet, as far as we know, historically speaking, we live in the greatest time to be human as far as the ease of living, the life expectancy.
But there's kind of another side to the coin.
Because of that, we don't even realize that we're in a dark age with the ugly music, the ugly art, the ugly architecture.
I mean, just aside from everything that goes on politically, I mean, just culturally speaking, to me, we're kind of in that dark age.
But there seems to be a crossroads and there's a new narrative forming about a new renaissance, another renaissance that out of this dark age will be a new renaissance.
Do you have that same hope or are you blackpilled, as they say?
And I think even if we talk about the, you know, the very small impact that people like me are having on the airways and on X, even just by doing that, I'm observing kind of a groundswell in terms of people's appreciation for these things.
It's now become quite common to ask the question, why don't we build this stuff?
Or what was it that inspired people to build this in the first place?
It's quite common now to hear those kinds of questions.
And so I do think we're at a bit of a turning point.
I couldn't say how long it's going to take to kind of reverse core something like this.
And I suspect we have some time to wait.
But I think you're right.
I think we will bounce back.
And, you know, maybe it's the case that we just go in this endless cycle of peak and troughs where we forget what's important.
We forget what's beautiful and true and good until it kind of forces us back towards it because we just can't bear to live without it.
So I think that will happen, but it's going to be a matter of time.
Again, I suggest giving him a follow, if nothing else, for a nice timeline cleanse, but you'll become quite enamored and interested in this stuff the more you see of it.
We get a bit of a perspective into his mind and his spirit and what's drawn him to this beauty and this art.
So a final question now.
Are you interested?
You seem not to be a fan of the new gladiator movie that's coming out.
So, but do you think Tucker was right about Russia?
Or do you think, or better yet, do you think the reason why Russia embraces the tradition is because it's probably the most fundamental Catholic Christian country maybe on earth right now?
I guess I'm not sure I have a genius answer for you in terms of why certain societies pivot to the modern and the touring skyscrapers.
But it was amusing to watch Tucker have that realization in Moscow because, I mean, he's just so right.
And it comes back to this sort of what I look for, here's how I'll answer the question.
What I look for is the useless beauty metric.
Look at things that just needn't be beautiful.
And it tells you a lot about what that society values.
And maybe the perfect example, as Tucker was going on about, is the subway system in Moscow.
There really isn't any need for a subway system to be ornate and to have colorful ceiling frescoes because you spend half an hour of your day down there and it's underground, you know?
And so it would occur to most people who plan cities that that kind of thing doesn't matter.
But they're just completely wrong because those everyday occurrences are what lift people up.
And that's one thing that Moscow just gets right.
And they have probably the most beautiful subway system in the world.
And I think to some extent you can look at youthless beauty as that ilk as a barometer of the culture and of the spiritual health of a society.
You know, I would say it's for the same reason why we want our house to look aesthetically pleasing and we want our house to be a place that we enjoy.
I mean, hell, even the video game The Sims, you know, they have a little bar in there for environment.
How much do you enjoy your environment?
So, yeah, you know, you're walking through downtown San Francisco that's covered in feces.
You probably don't enjoy that so much.
Or a subway in New York City that reeks like sewage versus something in Russia or some of these other areas that you cover on your Twitter account, probably a little bit more pleasing.
Well, I appreciate your time.
The culture critic is with us.
Give him a follow on X. I really appreciate your account.
I hope that you keep it up and I hope that others will enjoy what you post.
And who knows, maybe it'll inspire a future architect, a future designer to help us get back to a new golden age.