Ratings
of attractiveness of various morphs of portraits of 30 women. Note how
closely the average of all 30 portraits resembles the highest-rated
morph. From Pierre Tourigny's flickr site -- also check out the two other image sets he refers to in the article below the photo set. More discussion of this at Mindhacks.
After spending a bit of time in the virtual world of Second Life,
I've become aware of the extent to which how you appear affects your
behaviour and your sense of identity. This is partly a function of how
others' response to you affects your self-confidence, and also how your
perception of your own physical attractiveness and health affects how
you see and project yourself.
If attractive people are seen
(rightly or wrongly) as being 'better' people in other respects (more
intelligent, more important, more successful) and if perception is (to
some extent) reality, does our appearance end up playing an important
role in the determination of our identity, who we are?
Some surveys indicate
(see graphic above) that perceived physical beauty is, more than
anything else, principally a function of 'normalness', the absence of
any abnormality or unusual facial or body features. This suggests that
people who look normal (in the sense of being exceptionally unexceptional) will be models of how we want
to look. And if appearance affects sense of self and, then perhaps by
extension we will subconsciously aspire to be exceptionally
unexceptional (i.e. conformists to normality) in our behaviour, character and beliefs.
Or in other words, we may be aspiring to be 'everybody else' (only more
so), with fewer deviations of behaviour, character or beliefs than
anybody else. This is a depressing thought, but it strikes me
intuitively as consistent with how most people actually behave.
We
now live in a world where the weak, ill and ugly can (and do) have as
many children as the strong, healthy and beautiful. I have argued
before that prehistoric humans were probably, due to natural selection,
much more 'beautiful' (they were certainly more healthy,
anthropologists now agree) than modern humans. If this is true then
beauty (exceptional unexceptionalness) is even rarer in modern
civilized society, and since scarcity increases desirability, the
beautiful may be even more powerful and highly valued.
Perhaps
this is why those of us not naturally exceptionally unexceptional
strive so desperately (with makeup, clothes, dyes, and even surgery) to
appear so, and may also conform fiercely to 'norms', to compete for
mates when we are at such a disadvantage. We clearly do ostracize those
whose appearances, beliefs, character or behavior is very
exceptional -- we view them as entertainment, as ridiculous. Cartoons
and comedy series are mostly built on exaggeration of eccentricities
and abnormalities.
In Second Life (except for the few who go out
of their way to make themselves look comical) everyone appears
beautiful, exceptionally unexceptional, attractive, shaped and looking
and dressed with almost astonishing sameness. It is a paradise for
voyeurs, exhibitionists and narcissists. But we don't change our
internal self-image so quickly. Deep-seated insecurities, jealousies,
aggressive behaviour, timidity and hostility quickly betray the surface
beauty.
Perhaps the truly physically beautiful, bathing in
real-world adoration, need never set foot in Second Life, and this
entire artificial world is a charade, with everyone trying to be
'normal', everybody-else, and failing spectacularly. If so, it's a sad
spectacle.
In real life, we may also be trying to be perfectly
everybody-else, in search of love, acceptance, appreciation,
reputation, wealth and power. This would play perfectly into the hands
of those who currently have wealth and power (however acquired), who
would like nothing better than mass conformity and obedience to norms.
It would also account for the terrible imaginative poverty of modern
society -- there is no reward for imagination and innovation when
everyone aspires to be and act like everybody-else. Even most so-called
counter-culture movements (as The Rebel Sell
demonstrates) arise largely out of dissatisfaction with some endemic
situation or unwanted surprise, or out of the desire to be cool, a
model that everybody-else would want to emulate, rather than any
intrinsic propensity for non-conformity.
I think this excessive
and obsessive conformity is unnatural, and is borne out of modern
society's insecurities of scarcity and low self-esteem, which in turn
have been wrought by overpopulation and overconsumption. In a natural
world of abundance and awareness and balance with all-life-on-Earth, I
believe, we would, like most wild creatures, be astonishingly
beautiful, self-confident, peaceful, imaginative, playful, and unafraid
to think and act differently.
And as a consequence we would
be, like most indigenous human cultures, remarkably diverse,
experimenting and playing imaginatively with different ways of
thinking, adorning ourselves and living, and different ideas. We would
evolve very different languages and forms of art and recreation, just
for fun and self-expression, producing art and artifacts beyond the
imagining of our culturally and intellectually homogeneous society.
In
such a world what ee cummings called "the hardest thing, to be
nobody-but-yourself when everyone around you is trying their best every
day to make you everybody-else" would be easy. We could, naturally, be
nobody-but-ourselves.
I think (as my novel The Only Life We Know
will try to show) that this is what the world after the collapse of our
modern civilization will be like. I want to create some models, not to
help them become that, but to let them remain that, naturally,
uncivilized and, most unlike us, free to be themselves.
|
MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
