is there, at bottom, any real distinction between aesthetics and economics? -Aldo Leopold

We postulate a new axis for the understanding of the word Luxury.

Luxury in any objective form is proportional to the degree it expresses eternal order- the critical criteria for this assessment is Beauty. The essential method of accomplishing luxury in any object is nothing other than a faithful emulation of eternal order expressed in all natural and human phenomena- it is a revealing of eternal order which imbues our objects with what we refer to as timelessness. In short, Luxury is Eternal. It expresses an absolute value that transcends all human dimensions of value into one absolute reality, it is not just healing, but it is meaningful, and it is not just creative, but it is also good- all these dimensions are byproducts of a sacred order called Wisdom, and Wisdom is always imbued and represented by Beauty. Nature itself is the ontological proof of this statement.

Thus we can conceptualize luxury as the brilliance imbued in a composition which reveals eternal order. Composition (bringing together) is the eternal principle expressed in creative/naturalistic terms. We can derive from nature (soil, ecosystems), our own bodies (digestion), families(cohesion), culture, etc. Composition is a divine principle- the fermentation (composition) of grapes becomes wine- a divine (eternal) symbolism. The wheat resurrects from the compost. **Thus we conclude- composition is the principle of life, and secondarily of creativity (and healing, meaning, and luxury).

Thus, we can postulate that the eternal nature of luxury is composed, and by the compositional principle we participate in the eternal order of wisdom, enabling us to express something eternal objectively and temporally- the proof of which is beauty.*

This defines then, a method for timelessness, a natural order.

We have every day before us the example of a universe in which an infinite number of independent mechanical actions concur so as to produce an order that, in the midst of variations, remains fixed. Furthermore, we love the beauty of the world, because we sense behind it the presence of something akin to that wisdom we should like to possess to satisfy our thirst for good. In a minor degree, really beautiful works of art are examples of ensembles in which independent factors concur, in a manner impossible to understand, so as to form a unique thing of beauty. -Simone Weil

Economics & "Value" Now, let's discuss value. A human economy can evaluate, distribute, use, preserve, and even add to things of value, but it cannot make value. Value can only originate in eternal order. It is true that we can add value to natural things- we may transform trees into boards; boards into chairs; adding value at each transformation. these transformation would be enabled by Good work.

Thus, we can postulate that value itself is simply the degree of eternal expression - the degree to which something truly is, that something represents the wisdom of reality. If then, Luxury transcends our temporal dimensions of added value, if it represents absolute value.

Shouldn't all of our economies be based on this value? or rather, wouldn't the best economies "produce" objective products that aspire to express timelessness? wouldn't that command the highest value? Thus we arrive at our final postulate:

"Timelessness is pricelessness in terms of value"

Luxury Compositions are not just beautiful in their complexity- they are alive. Thus, we arrive at the unity of art and life by the principle of composition- the principle of luxury unites both what is of highest value in all art and economy- life.

So then we can look to the phenomena of nature and as we can look to ourselves, both united in the expression of aliveness. In ecosystems, ripeness is the state of highest: maturity, flavor, richness, density, quality, tenderness, fertility. In people, vitality is the state of highest: decadence (flavor), novel interrelation (creativity),  meaning layering (luxury), wholeness & integration (healing).

This unity gives us an agency by which to develop ecosystems and projects that engender objects of luxury and timelessness by and as a result of the simultaneous flourishing of life. This is the new creative era- the return of art to life. The dimension of timelessness in art is directly proportional to the dimension of inexhaustibility in culture and natural landscapes.

Wendell Berry

It is the artists, not the scientists, who have dealt unremittingly with the problem of limits. A painting, however large, must finally be bounded by a frame or a wall. A composer or playwright must reckon, at a minimum, with the capacity of an audience to sit still and pay attention. A story, once begun, must end somewhere within the limits of the writer’s and the reader’s memory. And of course the arts characteristically impose limits that are artificial: the five acts of a play, or the fourteen lines of a sonnet. Within these limits artists achieve elaborations of pattern, of sustaining relationships of parts with one another and with the whole, that may be astonishingly complex. And probably most of us can name a painting, a piece of music, a poem or play or story that still grows in meaning and remains fresh after many years of familiarity.

We know by now that a natural ecosystem survives by the same sort of formal intricacy, ever-changing, inexhaustible, and no doubt finally unknowable. We know further that if we want to make our economic landscapes sustainably and abundantly productive, we must do so by maintaining in them a living formal complexity something like that of natural ecosystems. We can do this only by raising to the highest level our mastery of the arts of agriculture, animal husbandry, forestry, and, ultimately, the art of living.

Our human and earthly limits, properly understood, are not confinements but rather inducements to formal elaboration and elegance, to fullness of relationship and meaning. Perhaps our most serious cultural loss in recent centuries is the knowledge that some things, though limited, are inexhaustible. For example, an ecosystem, even that of a working forest or farm, so long as it remains ecologically intact, is inexhaustible. A small place, as I know from my own experience, can provide opportunities of work and learning, and a fund of beauty, solace, and pleasure — in addition to its difficulties — that cannot be exhausted in a lifetime or in generations.

Simone Weil

The contemplation of veritable works of art, and much more still that of the beauty of the world, and again much more that of the unrealized good to which we aspire, can sustain us in our efforts to think continually about that human order which should be the subject uppermost in our minds. The great instigators of violence have encouraged themselves with the thought of how blind, mechanical force is sovereign throughout the whole universe. By looking at the world with keener senses than theirs, we shall find a more powerful encouragement in the thought of how these innumerable blind forces are limited, made to balance one against the other, brought to form a united whole by something which we do not understand, but which we call beauty.

Simultaneous composition on several planes at once is the law of artistic creation. A poet, in the arrangement of words and the choice of each word, must simultaneously bear in mind matters on at least five or six different planes of composition. The rules of versification—number of syllables and rhymes—in the poetic form he has chosen; the grammatical sequence of words; their logical sequence from the point of view of the development of his thought; the purely musical sequence of sounds contained in the syllables; the so to speak material rhythm formed by pauses, stops, duration of each syllable and of each group of syllables; the atmosphere with which each word is surrounded by the possibilities of suggestion it contains, and the transition from one atmosphere to another as fast as the words succeed each other; the psychological rhythm produced by the duration of words corresponding to such and such an atmosphere or such and such a movement of thought; the effects of repetition and novelty; doubtless other things besides; and finally a unique intuition for beauty which gives all this a unity.

is there, at bottom, any real distinction between aesthetics and economics? -Aldo Leopold

We postulate a new axis for the understanding of the word Luxury.

Luxury in any objective form is proportional to the degree it expresses eternal order- the critical criteria for this assessment is Beauty. The essential method of accomplishing luxury in any object is nothing other than a faithful emulation of eternal order expressed in all natural and human phenomena- it is a revealing of eternal order which imbues our objects with what we refer to as timelessness. In short, Luxury is Eternal. It expresses an absolute value that transcends all human dimensions of value into one absolute reality, it is not just healing, but it is meaningful, and it is not just creative, but it is also good- all these dimensions are byproducts of a sacred order called Wisdom, and Wisdom is always imbued and represented by Beauty. Nature itself is the ontological proof of this statement.

Thus we can conceptualize luxury as the brilliance imbued in a composition which reveals eternal order. Composition (bringing together) is the eternal principle expressed in creative/naturalistic terms. We can derive from nature (soil, ecosystems), our own bodies (digestion), families(cohesion), culture, etc. Composition is a divine principle- the fermentation (composition) of grapes becomes wine- a divine (eternal) symbolism. The wheat resurrects from the compost. **Thus we conclude- composition is the principle of life, and secondarily of creativity (and healing, meaning, and luxury).

Thus, we can postulate that the eternal nature of luxury is composed, and by the compositional principle we participate in the eternal order of wisdom, enabling us to express something eternal objectively and temporally- the proof of which is beauty.*

This defines then, a method for timelessness, a natural order.

We have every day before us the example of a universe in which an infinite number of independent mechanical actions concur so as to produce an order that, in the midst of variations, remains fixed. Furthermore, we love the beauty of the world, because we sense behind it the presence of something akin to that wisdom we should like to possess to satisfy our thirst for good. In a minor degree, really beautiful works of art are examples of ensembles in which independent factors concur, in a manner impossible to understand, so as to form a unique thing of beauty. -Simone Weil

Economics & "Value" Now, let's discuss value. A human economy can evaluate, distribute, use, preserve, and even add to things of value, but it cannot make value. Value can only originate in eternal order. It is true that we can add value to natural things- we may transform trees into boards; boards into chairs; adding value at each transformation. these transformation would be enabled by Good work.

Thus, we can postulate that value itself is simply the degree of eternal expression - the degree to which something truly is, that something represents the wisdom of reality. If then, Luxury transcends our temporal dimensions of added value, if it represents absolute value.

Shouldn't all of our economies be based on this value? or rather, wouldn't the best economies "produce" objective products that aspire to express timelessness? wouldn't that command the highest value? Thus we arrive at our final postulate:

"Timelessness is pricelessness in terms of value"

Luxury Compositions are not just beautiful in their complexity- they are alive. Thus, we arrive at the unity of art and life by the principle of composition- the principle of luxury unites both what is of highest value in all art and economy- life.

So then we can look to the phenomena of nature and as we can look to ourselves, both united in the expression of aliveness. In ecosystems, ripeness is the state of highest: maturity, flavor, richness, density, quality, tenderness, fertility. In people, vitality is the state of highest: decadence (flavor), novel interrelation (creativity),  meaning layering (luxury), wholeness & integration (healing).

This unity gives us an agency by which to develop ecosystems and projects that engender objects of luxury and timelessness by and as a result of the simultaneous flourishing of life. This is the new creative era- the return of art to life. The dimension of timelessness in art is directly proportional to the dimension of inexhaustibility in culture and natural landscapes.

Wendell Berry

It is the artists, not the scientists, who have dealt unremittingly with the problem of limits. A painting, however large, must finally be bounded by a frame or a wall. A composer or playwright must reckon, at a minimum, with the capacity of an audience to sit still and pay attention. A story, once begun, must end somewhere within the limits of the writer’s and the reader’s memory. And of course the arts characteristically impose limits that are artificial: the five acts of a play, or the fourteen lines of a sonnet. Within these limits artists achieve elaborations of pattern, of sustaining relationships of parts with one another and with the whole, that may be astonishingly complex. And probably most of us can name a painting, a piece of music, a poem or play or story that still grows in meaning and remains fresh after many years of familiarity.

We know by now that a natural ecosystem survives by the same sort of formal intricacy, ever-changing, inexhaustible, and no doubt finally unknowable. We know further that if we want to make our economic landscapes sustainably and abundantly productive, we must do so by maintaining in them a living formal complexity something like that of natural ecosystems. We can do this only by raising to the highest level our mastery of the arts of agriculture, animal husbandry, forestry, and, ultimately, the art of living.

Our human and earthly limits, properly understood, are not confinements but rather inducements to formal elaboration and elegance, to fullness of relationship and meaning. Perhaps our most serious cultural loss in recent centuries is the knowledge that some things, though limited, are inexhaustible. For example, an ecosystem, even that of a working forest or farm, so long as it remains ecologically intact, is inexhaustible. A small place, as I know from my own experience, can provide opportunities of work and learning, and a fund of beauty, solace, and pleasure — in addition to its difficulties — that cannot be exhausted in a lifetime or in generations.

Simone Weil

The contemplation of veritable works of art, and much more still that of the beauty of the world, and again much more that of the unrealized good to which we aspire, can sustain us in our efforts to think continually about that human order which should be the subject uppermost in our minds. The great instigators of violence have encouraged themselves with the thought of how blind, mechanical force is sovereign throughout the whole universe. By looking at the world with keener senses than theirs, we shall find a more powerful encouragement in the thought of how these innumerable blind forces are limited, made to balance one against the other, brought to form a united whole by something which we do not understand, but which we call beauty.

Simultaneous composition on several planes at once is the law of artistic creation. A poet, in the arrangement of words and the choice of each word, must simultaneously bear in mind matters on at least five or six different planes of composition. The rules of versification—number of syllables and rhymes—in the poetic form he has chosen; the grammatical sequence of words; their logical sequence from the point of view of the development of his thought; the purely musical sequence of sounds contained in the syllables; the so to speak material rhythm formed by pauses, stops, duration of each syllable and of each group of syllables; the atmosphere with which each word is surrounded by the possibilities of suggestion it contains, and the transition from one atmosphere to another as fast as the words succeed each other; the psychological rhythm produced by the duration of words corresponding to such and such an atmosphere or such and such a movement of thought; the effects of repetition and novelty; doubtless other things besides; and finally a unique intuition for beauty which gives all this a unity.