I reckon humans were never fashioned to bear witness to so much beauty, if beauty is what you’d call it. Too much of it is like staring too long into a sun.
Think of cocaine. In its natural form, as coca leaves, it’s appealing, but not to an extent that it usually becomes a problem. But refine it, purify it, and you get a compound that hits your pleasure receptors with an unnatural intensity. That’s when it becomes addictive. Beauty has undergone a similar process, thanks to advertisers. —Ted Chiang, Stories of Your Life and Others