I often see photographs of small European towns that can be seen off of popular train lines that are a strip of aesthetic, historical homes, sometimes with a well-manicured stream, creek, or river running through, often with a luscious, green field of crops and gorgeous mountains in the background. It's easy to daydream of life here and grow jealous of the folk living here.
...but then I think about how life must actually be like in these areas. I suspect that anything they may want to do has to go through a rigorous approval process. You cannot modify your home even in the slightest without approval, and that will only be granted within strict guidelines. You can't throw up a chicken coup in a bid to be self-sufficient. You can't pop into the gorgeous creek for a swim or hunt for wildlife. You better not leave your bin out for an extra day after pickup. Essentially I've concluded that living in these towns must be like living with an HoA on steroids. What is the point of living within beauty if it comes at the cost of your freedom?
My question for you guys... is this type of aesthetic town even remotely possible without heavy-handed regulation that makes it horrible to live in? Additionally, where on the spectrum of freedom to perfection would you want to live?
There is no real preservation of the beauty of things, that is vanity, even marble statues and other symbols of timeless achievement are all deteriorated today. Everything exists in its moment and goes away in its time in a big cycle of death and rejuvenation and that is, I think, what makes beautiful "beautiful". When we witness beauty it compounds the miracle of anything existing at all and we innately (and sometimes subconsciously) understand the preciousness, vulnerability, unlikelihood, and temporary nature of it.
If it were immortal, if it could never go away, then it could never be defeated, and I promise you a lot of people would see the thing in a very nasty way. This is, afaik, the emotional dynamic that drives people to hate beautiful things; they are trained to see them as product of an invincible system that they must morally defy against all odds.
I'll never be totally good, and part of it is that I can see how ugly some superficially beautiful things are. Things I view as a challenge to surmount or associate with a durable, external, institutional evil.