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My similarly limited understanding tells me that there are a few aspects to this: - We've evolved to find our natural habitat (which is very variable) pleasing
by Cockbrand 4y ago
My similarly limited understanding tells me that there are a few aspects to this:
- We've evolved to find our natural habitat (which is very variable) pleasing, as that's an evolutionary advantage compared to constantly feeling uneasy.
- We are attracted to places that are different to the ones we live in, so we keep exploring and spreading.
- There's also a learned component - even if we understand that a landscape isn't habitable for us (like the desert), we're conditioned to finding it beautiful, as this is the cultural consensus.
- mannykannot 4y agoI feel there is something of a false dichotomy between being pleased and being uneasy, as I suspect that indifference would be equally effective. We, like many other animals, have mechanisms to become indifferent to those aspects of our environment which are commonplace and neither useful nor harmful to us. While some curiosity towards novelty is arguably beneficial, a lack of caution is demonstrably dangerous. If our aesthetic response to flowers was a direct consequence of evolutionary pressure, we would expect to find the flowers of plants having edible tubers or fruit to be especially attractive, and those of poisonous plants to be repulsive.