Take, for instance, how we so frequently strive to distinguish ourselves in our choices in fashion, for tied to them is a significant portion of our individual identity. Ironically, if the pursuit of beauty is considered one of the most unifying aspects of human behavior, what each individual finds to be aesthetically pleasing is arguably one of the most diverse. In essence, the ubiquitous desire of humans across cultures to seek out what we perceive to be beautiful seems to represent a process of sensory optimization, a claim that has received such empirical validation that an entire new field of scientific inquiry, “ neuroaesthetics,” has spawned. Aesthetic questions influence many of our day-to-day decisions, from what color combination to wear in the morning to vacillating about font size when working on an essay at 2 a.m. One topic of particular thematic interest, at least to me, centers around the epistemology of beauty - think common quips like “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” or “don’t judge a book by its cover.” Yet within the global proverbial lexicon, there seem to exist several underlying motifs that converge around the same deeply human topics with only slight variations in substance. Given their nature as moral ZIP files, it would be natural to assume that adages are heavily culture-loaded - an assumption that would be right, for the most part. Folk sayings like “a watched pot never boils” are designed to convey moral lessons that are often too difficult or time-consuming to describe literally. These snippets of collective wisdom are found globally, thriving due to their naked simplicity in communication and comprehension. Perhaps one of the most consistent and ubiquitous forms of oral human tradition is the humble proverb.
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