Most people are familiar with the Japanese term kintsugi ( “golden joinery”), also known as kintsukuroi ( “golden repair”).
At the top level, it’s considered a form of repair of a broken object which results in the object subsequently becoming more beautiful as shown in the bowl above. It’s a lovely idea, one which may offer some help to address the current over-consumerism and waste which is part of our society. (For more on this topic, read the excellent paper Exploring Japanese Art and Aesthetic as Inspiration For Emotionally Durable Design by P.Y. Kwan).
But I do wonder to what extent this concept can be applied to humans instead of objects?
For example, consider the tendency in the West to adopt a variation of Nietzsche’s 8th aphorism from the Maxims and Arrows section of Twilight of The Idols:
Out of life’s school of war — What does not kill me makes me stronger.
(This aphorism may offer some truth—such as it occasionally will in immunology and psychology—but it is also overstated. Often physical and/or psychological trauma may be just as likely to weaken someone indefinitely.)
Would it make more sense to consider that our soul has been made more beautiful (rather than stronger) after being roughed-up a bit?
Could this change our approach to elderly people, who may have both physical and cognitive damage, but may also have an increasingly beautiful soul?