#1022 - Sheehan Quirke - How Did The Modern World Get So Ugly?

Modern Wisdom

Chris Williamson

Society & Culture, Health & Fitness

4.7 • 4.6K Ratings

🗓️ 20 November 2025

⏱️ 115 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sheehan Quirke is a British writer and online educator, known as The Cultural Tutor for creating accessible posts on art, history, and literature. Why does modern life feel so devoid of beauty? For decades, efficiency has beaten out elegance. Cheap has replaced meaningful. When did we stop creating things built to last and meant to move us, and what would it take to return? Expect to learn why contemplation is a luxury, or a necessity for sanity in the modern age, why we lost when architecture became more functional than beautiful, if Is there such a thing as objective beauty in architecture or if it’s purely cultural and subjective, which city or structure best captures the balance between progress and timelessness, if sterile architecture is one of the reasons the students of today are so bored and uninspired, and much more… Sponsors: See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: https://chriswillx.com/deals Get a free bottle of D3K2, an AG1 Welcome Kit, and more when you first subscribe at https://ag1.info/modernwisdom Get a Free Sample Pack of LMNT’s most popular flavours with your first purchase at https://drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom Get 35% off your first subscription on the best supplements from Momentous at https://livemomentous.com/modernwisdom Get $100 off the best bloodwork analysis in America at https://functionhealth.com/modernwisdom Extra Stuff: Check out Sheehan's book: https://linktw.in/PdoFxP Get my free reading list of 100 books to read before you die: https://chriswillx.com/books Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic: https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom Episodes You Might Enjoy: #577 - David Goggins - This Is How To Master Your Life: https://tinyurl.com/43hv6y59 #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: https://tinyurl.com/2rtz7avf #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: https://tinyurl.com/3ccn5vkp - Get In Touch: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	What is beauty?
0:02.0	It's one hell of a question.
0:05.0	I think the word is overused, misunderstood.
0:10.0	The best way to think about beauty, the most helpful way, is to think of it as synonymous with the word love.
0:17.0	Once you do that, all the complications kind of fade away.
0:20.0	I think beauty is basically love
0:23.5	manifest in the physical world. But anyway, so that's how I think of beauty, because I think
0:29.4	Because you're a hopeless romantic. Oh, I'm a hopeless romantic. Well, I'm a hopeful romantic,
0:33.2	I let's say. But I think the problem is once you start talking about beauty, what is beauty, it's kind of like
0:39.7	asking what is art, right? It's a very, very interesting question, but you can end up talking,
0:43.8	we could spend the whole two hours or how long we're going to be here just talking about,
0:47.5	well, maybe beauty is this, maybe beauty is that, but what are this? Same with art. I think it's
0:50.7	very helpful to agree on a pretty simple definition and then move on to the more important stuff. So taking beauty, I think it's very helpful to agree on a pretty simple definition and then move on to the more
0:54.4	important stuff. So taking beauty, I think people obsess too much over the idea of beauty, like,
1:01.8	is the modern world beautiful, is architecture beautiful, is design beautiful? Is this room beautiful? I don't
1:06.9	think it's helpful. I think more helpful words are interesting, charming, and meaningful.
1:13.0	They're the words I prefer to use. Delineate those for me.
1:16.3	So, well, I think interesting is the opposite of boring. And I think, you know, a lot of what I write
1:22.1	about online and what generates an awful lot of interest is when you talk about the ugliness of the modern world.
1:29.4	But I think boringness is a much more important and powerful word.
1:34.3	Because again, ugly and I'm beautiful, they're very, they feel very subjective.
1:38.8	But when you say boring, it's a lot easier to agree on what is boring.
	...

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