Evolution does not lie in refinement of the mind. It lies only in freedom from the mind. Refinement of one's tastes, so that one enjoys the so-called exclusive and finer things of life, is in no way a freedom from sensuality and inner acquisitiveness. It is an additional device to feel separate, to be able to look down upon others who seem unable to comprehend one's own tastes.
Greatness is in simplicity. Depth is different from complexity. A very deeply moving film may be very simple. Neither the crude nor the refined are simple. It is simplicity of the heart which opens oneself to great emotion.
It gives a peculiar pleasure to intellectuals to talk in words and phrases which the common man cannot understand. Similarly, it is a common device in literature to cite lesser-known texts in order to boost one's apparent knowledge.
Someone who quotes Sartre, Heidegger, Wittgenstein is seen with veneration, as if he has understood the deep mysteries of life. The one who understands is simple. Complexity is a fact of life, and one adds to this complexity by one's own refinement of thinking and cogitation.
Perhaps a measure of one's wisdom is if one can communicate one's insights to a person of any background.
Simplicity is being aware of both crudity and refinement around oneself, and not preferring one over the other.
Wide experience in no way leads to freedom. Today's man ingests far more information and experiences in his life, but he is not thereby more evolved. He is just more distracted and burdened. It is clarity in one's vision, and the depth of one's observation, and the sensitivity to one's own reactions, which lead to learning. A very well read man may very well be much more stupid than an illiterate peasant.
False knowledge, based on hearsay and authority, burdens the mind like nothing else. To know of theories, speculations, ideas, philosophies of others in no way means that one understands oneself.
The spectrum of human response varies in its subtlety, but being subtle does not mean one is wise. The educated and the refined are seldom spontaneous, they have an opinion about almost everything. They cannot own ignorance about a subject. Apparent knowledge of the world, the one based on ingestion of media contents, is different from wisdom, which is based on non-reactive compassionate observation of oneself and one's surroundings.
One has to observe if refinement leads to love. Neither refinement nor its opposite, crudity, is the gateway to love. Both are self-enclosing activities of the mind in its pursuit to acquire pleasure, at some level, for itself.
Renunciation is primarily the rejection of the means of happiness. A refined and a crude man, both depend on something other than themselves for their happiness. A very introspective intellectual can derive pleasure even from his clever thoughts. Renunciation is understanding that there is no means to love and to happiness.
There is no end to refinement, and to the heights of subtlety and pleasure. The mind can invent subtler and subtler realms of pleasure and dependance. This is not the journey towards freedom.
One finds active condemnation of the cruder pleasures of life as being escapist in nature. But what about the so-called finer things? Modern art, postmodern literature, "fine wines", fine music ... ? It is said these things appeal to one's soul. That they bring one into contact with the deeper feelings of the heart.
It may be true that great literature, or great music, written from an immensity of passion, can generate the same depth of feeling in oneself, it can make one feel supremely elated or sorrowful. But if one is insensitive to a naked child, crying on the roadside, and one wants to immerse oneself in Henry James' writing, or in the music of Bach, one has to find out if these things also have not become escapes from one's own petty existence.
Life itself has great depth. To prefer a means in order to go deep within oneself is the way of exclusion. In the mundane, the sensitive can find immense depth.
A life which resists and chooses, for its own gratification, is not free, it may be highly refined, but it is not free.