Views: 228
SCP: 7
7 upvotes, 0 downvotes (100% upvoted it)
~31 user(s) here now
NSFW: No
Authorized: No
Anon: No
Private: No
Type: Default
view the rest of the comments →
[–] conchpearls1 0 points 2 points 2 points (+2|-0) ago (edited ago)
Cars, I was actually thinking about the 'If everyone is beautiful, nobody is beautiful' quote that's usually said here in response to body positivity activists.
The thing is that we also agree that beauty is objective and can be measured due to years of evolution and our biological drives. However, if there was a device that made it so everyone's face and body met every single objective measure(height, skin tone, facial and bodily symmetry, perfect waist-to-hip ratio, bust size, golden ratio, strong nose bridge and defined cheekbones and jawline, etc which signify high reproductive, physical and mental fitness) to the highest degree of attractiveness and thus everyone literally looks the same(for both genders respectively), would everyone technically be 'beautiful' since beauty is objective and thus it's similar to saying that the length of a particular brand's student ruler is 15cm and thus the statement that all student rulers from that brand are 15cm is correct?
Or would everyone cease to be 'beautiful' despite the fact that they have all the objective evolutionary markers of human physical perfection?
This kind of dilemma occurred to me late as I was about to sleep and it just keeps haunting my mind because it really makes me unsure if beauty is purely objective or if there is surely some subjective element to it that does not rely on evolutionary or genetic progress.
[–] Carsandsarcasm [S] 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
I think it's possible that beautiful would lose its value or cease to have meaning. As you say, there are as many examples as you want of things that have been standardised to the point where describing their functional characteristic is redundant. However, I have a few responses to this scenario.
Firstly, I think what is most likely to happen is a reframing of the range. For example, in China, I'm sure they still talk about people being tall or short despite their population being relatively narrow in terms of height differences. People in Finland and Canada still talk about the weather being warm or cold even though it's always cold. We have always had fat and thin people even before today's megafats existed. Since your example of beauty puts everyone within a (narrow) range of characteristics, then I would absolutely expect 1-10 to be recalibrated to suit the population range. This is what happened when the homogeneous populations of old encountered other races for the first time, and there are probably people who rate insects for looks because they spend all their time researching them. If your example made everyone a clone and visually identical, then we might have to talk about beauty losing meaning.
Secondly, you will still have the fact that preferences for beauty vary from person to person. This is something you would have to contend with if everyone was a clone because, although there are certainly generalisations to be made about attractive characteristics, they are not absolutes and some people will insist blonde is best while others will insist its red. That's not to mention that falling in love with someone certainly skews relative attractiveness. I don't think it's therefore possible to create a subjectively perfect human being. In that sense, your premise is flawed. If you were able to make perfect clones and also make everyone's preferences uniform, then beauty might start losing its meaning again. This would only be the case, though, once our genes forget. As long as we are genetically wired to seek certain traits, they will remain attractive as long as those genes reproduce. Since there is no difference between people anymore, it's possible that genes selecting for physical traits would become obsolete and lost, and only once that happened might be stop talking about beauty. However, as long as random mutation exists to select-out genes for selecting beauty, it must also exist to mutate physical appearance and so it's an impossible scenario because you can't have one without the other.
Thirdly, attractiveness is ultimately driven by reproductive fitness and this is subject to the environment. Let's say you create a subjectively perfect person and make everyone of that sex visually identical. What if the environment changes and makes those traits less desirable? All of a sudden, your "perfect" person doesn't exist because it's not as simple as symmetry and ratios. Our measures of what is attractive suits the human population at current time. There was a time we were apes and I'm sure we still thought Grugette was scorching! In the future, we may find different ratios preferable. Also, physical attractiveness is a signalling competition. People are beautiful because their genes are fighting to be selected and to reproduce and they do this through the phenotype. I think evolution would abhor a sex of clones because there would be no way for the individual genes of each person to outcompete each other. Other differences between phenotypes would become attractive in order for genes to compete and I suspect this would take the form of behaviour. We might start competing over who does the best mating dance and we would find those differences in the phenotype attractive as opposed to simply looks. We already do this to an extent because men have to display wealth and security, but it would become more pronounced.
Fourthly, and to address a couple of unanswered questions I made, there are things which are similar to the point of being identical that remain beautiful. My obvious example is cars. Every Lamborghini Aventador is identical and yet I find every one of them stunning. Many famous artworks have recreations for display purposes to prevent damage to the originals and yet they retain the beauty of the original as far as most people are concerned. I have the same cup of coffee every morning and yet it always hits the spot. The caveat here is that these things do not exist in a vacuum and so all Lamborghinis are beautiful in a world where the Chrysler PT Cruiser exists. Would they all be beautiful if there were no other types of car or would there need to be nothing at all to compare them to i.e. would they still be beautiful compared to dung beetles? I say that because I don't think any rulers are beautiful with or without diversity of rulers, and so are rulers fundamentally ugly, do they merely lack beauty because they weren't intended to be beautiful, or do they lack beauty because other things exist that are much more beautiful? Would they be beautiful if there was nothing in existence except rulers to compare to each other, or nothing in existence more beautiful than a ruler?
Therefore, I think yes. I think a sex of clones will remain beautiful in a vacuum because we will compete over behaviours of the phenotype. I think they will remain attractive also in a world where other things exist because people would be attractive with the context that dung beetles and the Chrysler PT Cruiser exists. Human attraction certainly evolved to remember not to find other things in the world more attractive and so we probably compare people to just about everything somewhere deep down. I think a perfect person can't exist due to subjective preferences and the nature of a changing environment; and I think that beauty will still exist, albeit recalibrated, even when everyone falls within a narrow range that we would consider 10/10 from our current perspective where Tumblr users exist.
This began as 2 paragraphs at 8:30. I'm now done and it's 9:45. This was an excellent thought experiment. Really gets the noggin joggin'. Do you agree? I would love to hear your thoughts.
[–] conchpearls1 0 points 2 points 2 points (+2|-0) ago
I've just had a read through what you've said and I've managed to glean quite a lot from your insight. I think I understand where you're coming from and I highly agree that it makes for a very interesting brain exercise.
One of the primary answers that I've managed to find meaningful was how in a population of clones, beauty loses meaning until mutation occurs and variation begins which then proceeds into competition for even more superior genes than before to adapt to our current state of Planet Earth and its environmental circumstances. I realised from your analysis that the current objective measures for beauty are not meant to be permanent but that 'objective' beauty is actually quite transient and prone to change depending on what new environmental stressor comes along.
And the part about how a uniform identical species or race can actually be considered beautiful when compared to the existence of something else significantly different such as a different species or a type of object was a great addendum because I had not considered that angle before, or at least didn't think it to be important compared to intra-species/group comparison.
Thank you so much for being willing to discuss this at length for me! I'm really impressed by what you could come up with!
[–] CowboyDancer 0 points 1 point 1 point (+1|-0) ago
Roasting the fatties even in a deeply thoughtful piece in the OTT.. Love it