Evil detests beauty because beauty is proof of a transcendental order, of objective Goodness and Truth. To attack beauty is to wage war against the possibility of transcendence. Beauty is a great affront to nihilism. It testifies to that which is greater than the individual, because to create a beautiful thing is to acknowledge that you are answerable to standards higher than your own. Beauty is often called a great evangelist for this reason. This is why they outright destroy beauty or try to subvert your perception of it by promoting ugliness or triviality. Beauty is neither neutral nor trivial — your ability to discern the beautiful from the ugly is intimately connected to your capacity to recognize the divine. Dietrich von Hildebrand once declared that "beauty is the archenemy of mediocrity." Why? Beauty elevates a person toward truth, goodness, and the divine. The antitheses to beauty drag the soul down into nihilism and worship of the self.