When a man who sees ugliness says beautiful things, it means more than when a man who denies ugliness says beautiful things. The latter is a cheapened, lower, lesser form of appreciation - a coping mechanism through refusal via compartmentalisation. It reveals a gross lack within him, more specifically: a most profound weakness - he is not strong enough to truly see or confront things for what they are, so retreats into a fixation with beauty to soothe himself from his fears, wielding them perversely as counterarguments against less flattering truths, rather than recognising their co-existence. But a man who can see ugliness and yet still focuses on the beautiful reveals the opposite: a profound strength of soul - he has successfully resisted the cynicism and ensuing resentment that are the all too natural byproducts of an observant intellect, and thus his love of beauty is more a mode of epistemic appreciation, orientation and declaration of intent than a means of avoiding the inhospitable. He does not need to deny the ugly or unflattering to preserve the beautiful, and does not wield the beautiful as a weapon against the ugly where that ugliness is true. He wields beauty to invigorate and inspire both himself and others, rather than as a counterargument for why something ugly but true isn’t true - he is governed by high truth preference, rather than by aesthetic preference. This is why a man who only says beautiful things, whilst perhaps less offensive, should actually be more offensive, and he should be more offensive precisely because of his omissions - because he is too clean - because he avoids too much truth to be trustworthy, and thereby lacks the integrity of a man willing to confront and assert the ugly for no reason other than its utility or relevance, as opposed to a preference for its emphasis. Contrarily, a man who may consistently say things you find jarring dotted in between things you find incredibly beautiful presents a more novel problem: how can someone capable of such beauty, beauty that, you as an ardent admirer of the aesthetic find breathtaking, also say such jarring things? Your reflexive defence is to dismiss them as merely cynical or uninsightful, and yet the very source of your displeasure here is the source of your great pleasure elsewhere. This of course presents a genuinely novel problem for the more feminine minded: “why does this beautiful man keep saying ugly things?” or if we are less charitable: “how does this ugly man keep saying beautiful things?” - it is a seeming contradiction, and yet in reality, it is not when you understand the higher connecting principle: he merely states what he has concluded and believes to be true based on reasoning, intuition and experience regardless of whether that thing is particularly captivating or grating. If he were less honest, as someone fluent in the beautiful he could tell you solely what seduces and entices in order to win you over and manipulate you, and so it is his willingness to tell you what you don’t want to hear, whilst being intelligent enough to anticipate your displeasure at having heard it without the intention to hurt you when stating it, that stands as testament to his integrity: he will risk being disliked for no reason other than to articulate a truth. I have used man as the primary subject matter in my exploration here, but these orientations are not exclusive to man, in fact on the point of avoiding unflattering truths, what I am describing is far more common amongst women than men, that is to say: they are the category group more guilty of avoidance and denial whilst harbouring a preference for the aesthetic at the expense of the true, rather than reconciling the two. It is a high propensity to avoidantly self-soothe by compartmentalising, with a low propensity to confront and reconcile seeming opposites which ultimately leads to a low truth preference. Those ruled by aesthetic preference over truth have a lower proof burden and higher affinity towards anything that strikes them as cute, soft, gentle, fragile, pretty, beautiful or otherwise highly aesthetic and sentimentally pleasing, and a higher proof burden and lower affinity towards anything that is truly insightful, but unflattering and difficult to hear because its implications indict or otherwise force confrontation with the self in a person used to hiding from themselves. I suppose in a sense to be high truth preference, one must possess a certain type of appetite, or dare I say niche masochism for the unflattering - to appreciate the reward of true and proper knowing which provides a more accurate and thereby more empowering map of reality, rather than succumb to an avoidant disdain for the discomfort and felt sense of humiliation that comes from enduring the unflattering and indicting.