Can Beauty Tilt a Life?

Sometimes something catches us off guard. A song, a painting, the way the light hits the corner of a building — and suddenly it feels like the world rearranged itself a little. Not enough to knock us flat, but enough to whisper: you could be different.

I’ve been thinking of these moments as glimmers. They aren’t full epiphanies. They’re more like a shimmer at the edge of your current world, pointing to another version of you that isn’t here yet.

The Shapes of Beauty

When people talk about aesthetics, they often mean “I like it” or “it looks nice.” But the pulls of beauty have structure. They live along dimensions, like:

• Order & Unity — symmetry, tradition, the comfort of things fitting together.
• Sublime & Emotion — awe, passion, the thrill of being overwhelmed.
• Silence & Restraint — simplicity, emptiness, the power of less.
• Power & Transgression — rawness, rupture, the thrill of breaking rules.
• Irony & Play — paradox, humor, the wink that refuses to take itself too seriously.

Each of us tends to orbit one cluster more than others. Some find themselves in the cathedral of order. Others at home in chaos and play. And some drift across these clusters over time.

When Form Shapes Function

There’s an old saying in design: form follows function. But in people, it might be the other way around. The forms we love — the clean symmetry of a Bauhaus chair, the dizzying swirl of a symphony, the sparse silence of a minimalist room — don’t just reflect our tastes. They train our attention, prime our emotions, and quietly shape how we function in the world.

A person immersed in order and symmetry may find themselves leaning toward structure in life decisions. Someone captivated by irony and play may become more comfortable with ambiguity, contradiction, even rebellion. What starts as an aesthetic preference can ripple out into aspirations, and from there into identity.

The Fragile Power of Glimmers

That’s why glimmers matter. They’re not just little sparks — they’re predictive. Early resonances often tell us what future identities are on the table. And just as easily, curated glimmers can be used to manipulate: advertisers, propagandists, influencers all understand how to dress their message in aesthetic clothes.

Attention, in this sense, is an art form. What we notice — what we let through the gate of perception — decides the futures available to us.

I created a small self-assessment quiz to systematise aesthetic leanings and thus potentially learn something about our future selfs. This self-knowledge is particularly interesting since it allows modeling aesthetic archetypes using LLM-based agents later on.

Where This Leaves Us

There’s no finite catalog of archetypes or experiences. Culture keeps inventing new ones, from digital glitch art to minimalist white cubes to absurdist memes. The question is less “what’s beautiful?” and more “what beauty do you allow to matter enough to shape you?”

Because every time you follow a glimmer, you’re not just choosing an experience. You’re sketching out the person you might yet become.