All that matters in society is appearance
We can never truly know what other people are thinking
What we do know is due to a shared socio-linguistic framework
However, the depth, "color" and "texture" of every word has 2 dimensions to it. One that is personal and not communicable, the other aspect is shared and transparent. You can speak forever and still have countless confusions to remove. It also doesn't help explaining yourself. You cannot use the same tools to disperse confusion through which it originally came about.
How do we still manage to remain sane ?
We go by what we see, we do not speculate beyond a certain point. Ultimately, all speculation comes to a point of return. You go back to where you started from and recollect everything.
The greatest and most important aspect of appearances is one's face. A beautiful face indicates a beautiful being. The starting point of our interaction with others is appearance. Looking beautiful is all there is to success in society. I will elaborate more on this but I want you to think about it.
If you looked like Alain Delon, your life would have been a lot easier and fun. Just a thought
What we do know is due to a shared socio-linguistic framework
However, the depth, "color" and "texture" of every word has 2 dimensions to it. One that is personal and not communicable, the other aspect is shared and transparent. You can speak forever and still have countless confusions to remove. It also doesn't help explaining yourself. You cannot use the same tools to disperse confusion through which it originally came about.
How do we still manage to remain sane ?
We go by what we see, we do not speculate beyond a certain point. Ultimately, all speculation comes to a point of return. You go back to where you started from and recollect everything.
The greatest and most important aspect of appearances is one's face. A beautiful face indicates a beautiful being. The starting point of our interaction with others is appearance. Looking beautiful is all there is to success in society. I will elaborate more on this but I want you to think about it.
If you looked like Alain Delon, your life would have been a lot easier and fun. Just a thought
Comments (113)
Great point!
There have been numerous studies on the subject matter, where good looking people
(including myself :grin: ) tend to get promoted faster...and even helped faster when stranded on the roadside, etc. etc.. .
Kant studied the phenomenon of aesthetics. I had argued awhile back with Possibility (a female) and she was in denial about such impact on human nature and all of the impacts and perceptions thereof… . Objectification is alive and well. And it's okay. I think it's the term itself that offends people.
We cannot escape, nor should we shun, the wonderful world of aesthetics (as the case may be).
It's not politically correct to highlight the importance of appearance. Lookism is a real phenomenon and we have a lot of empirical evidence in our favor. Looks go beyond attracting the opposite sex. The impact of Good looks includes every aspect of your social life. Ranging from friendships, occupation, social status and relationships. It overrides every other factor in our social life.
People love telling each other that beauty is subjective etc but this isn't true in the way they see it. A beautiful face usually tends to be harmonious, average of the community, fits in well with the golden ratio mask, symmetrical. I don't want to go into the details but l can easily explain why a certain eye is attractive and why the other one isn't. The little variation in attractive people account for our taste but this doesn't make beauty a meaningless word to throw around.
No , all there is to life is looking beautiful, the rest will take care of itself.
Ah ok, that settles it then.
You might start your elaboration by addressing the numerous people who are not beautiful and still successful.
Cmon, Wittgenstein was good looking and way more important than Sartre. And he accurately stated some where , "the human body is the best picture of the human soul". Wittgenstein's philosophy was like wittgenstein himself. Schopenhauer on the other hand....... ( he didn't hate women for no reason )
It's not about being successful but ruining it. You could be an accomplished scientist but if you are ugly, people see an ugly person before seeing a scientist. It's unavoidable. Imagine covering gold with poop, you would be disgusted.
I am a bit crude but it is what it is.
Sure, prejudice of this kind is hard to avoid, though it's possible to be aware of it. But it's hardly a guarantee of a specific outcome. Beautiful people have it easier in life, that much is well established, though for beautiful women the effect can sometimes reverse in a professional setting.
But he aged so badly! Many beautiful people age badly.
Depends on the distance from which one looks at a face, and under what lighting conditions. In broad daylight, up close, nobody looks beautiful.
Ugly people get treated like this every single day. He isn't a creep or a loser. Let's suppose he is average in everything except looks. Unfortunately they didn't let him off easily
He experienced more dopamine rush in a single year than we will experience in a lifetime. We will all be old oneday (hopefully ) and ugly people will look uglier.
Absolutely! The impacts are endless. Whether it's the beautiful neighborhood, the house, the boat, the clothing, the car, the blue sky that makes people happy, the ocean, the mountains...it's an endless phenom.
Generally speaking, maybe another philosophical question to parse could be how does that sense of subjective truth become an objective truth(?). In other words, since we know most people rely on aesthetics to make quality of life decisions, and often very critical life changing one's, does that in some way become a universal truth of sorts... . The paradox seems to be that one's own truth becomes not only subjective, but it's objective in every other way. Kind of like the conscious mind and the subconscious mind being an illogical mix of excluded middle :grin: One truth seems dependent on the other, in subliminal ways.
The lens distortion caused by distance and lens curvature, lighting, background etc affect a picture. In reality, we see people with our eyes ( duh ) and they see pretty much the same person irrespective of background
Wittgenstein isn't talking about a picture in the literal sense. He wants to say we can refer to a person by what they look like in everyday language. What distinguishes us from other is our appearance
I'm not sure Alain Delon really did fun. Melville went to his apartment to talk him into doing Le Samourai. Delon barely spoke, lived in a spartan home, and just seemed cold and obsessive, as he does in his interviews. Weird guy. French though, so...
I think that your post raises a couple of important questions. Firstly, we live in a society based on images and the idea of the perfect body. We live in a world of appearances, but also of subjective experience beyond the frontiers of experience. This is the problem of knowing other minds. Often people make assumptions about others, based on generalisations about others, and on a very limited knowledge of a specific 'other'.
I think that it would be a mistake to not understand the importance of appearances, in the sense that we care how we appear to others. It is the basic starting point of human interaction. However, I think that it is also important to look behind appearances, because surface and deeper levels of knowing others may uncover more than is apparent on a superficial level.
He was abandoned as a child so he did have some mental problems but I didn't say, imagine you were Delon. In general, being beautiful is so important that if you study the Abrahamic faiths, you will realize one fact. All the Prophets God sent were beautiful and handsome. Even if you don't believe in a God , you can sense the importance cultures give to good looks.
Btw, I am living a similar life and it isn't that bad. I like being alone with myself.
I'm not talking about pictures taken with cameras.
Look at people: a beautiful person only seems beautiful when looking at them from about 5 to 2 meters, in dispersed light. Go further, and their features become too indistinguishable to matter, go closer and you see all the ugly details of their skin (or makeup).
Provided one is a visual type of person, ie. focusing on the visual (as most people are). Auditory types focus on a person's voice and other sounds the person makes.
I think truth is experienced subjectively like Kierkegaard pointed it out but we can objectify it in a book. For Christians, they have a bible and it contains all sorts of metaphysical, moral truths . However, we cannot arrive at them by following a crowd. In my view, everyone is essentially looking for the same thing, but they arrive and travel differently in life. It's hard to put your fingers on it.
I don't think this is the case, I have been with truly beautiful people and they look beautiful in every setting. They tend to have a lot of collagen in their skin which makes it smooth and youthful, their pores are not visible to the naked eye.
Btw, I can't say my understanding of what Wittgenstein meant is correct but you need to understand his philosophy of language to get this point. Body can include voice and other things which are observable. Intelligence, feelings, ideas cannot be observed, you can only infer. I think he was describing the human soul keeping in his mind the picture theory of language.
...keep in mind, some of the phenom we're discussing is existential for Christian's, not necessarily dogmatic, moral, or even metaphysical, etc.. (The Book of Ecclesiastes).
However, the world we find ourselves in is partly physical. There's no escape. Yet the real joys come from a limbic system that seems, and is, mostly metaphysical.
What does it mean to experience a some-thing. Kant tries to parse that in his theory of aesthetics of course...
Then you don't have very good vision. Or you're rather idealistic (to wit: infatuated) or naive.
Take up up-close photography, to train your vision.
I agree with you on this point but it's pointless. Developed countries tend to have a fast paced life. Everything is immediate. Take marriage for example, people don't want to be married anymore. They have short term relationships and move on to another one easily. If you look at the statistics on dating, hypergamy and polygamy has increased quite a lot. One night stands and having multiple partners is becoming the norm ( esp in Scandinavian countries ). Our society is moving in the opposite direction to the one you have suggested. It's too late now. At this point, we have to embrace it unwillingly.
Why?
I think existential problems include them all. Kierkegaard's last stage ( religious ) includes the ethical and the aesthetic. But its better if we talk in terms of existential philosophy.
I agree, we cannot reduce joy to some physical interactions in our brain at the moment. Some scientist and philosophers have suggested a new framework for neurology. An objective scientific inquiry of consciousness is actually not possible. In order to achieve progress in this field, we would need to redefine the scientific method a bit. The main problem they encounter is as follows : The person providing the data is also the source of data, this interference and inseparable state causes huge discrepancies in data.
I don't see how photography will improve my perspective. I am sure l don't look as good as Delon. It's not like you won't be able to tell apart the average joe from Brad Pitt in Troy. In the grand scheme of things, beautiful people exist.
I know a number of people from school and college who married, and a lot of the relationships didn't survive long. I think that this is part of the problem of finding connections beyond the immediate. Relating to others is extremely complex, because it involves so much projection. We project so much onto others, and others do this to each one of us.We could ask to what extent is a person really in love with another, or with the image of another? The imagined other may be so different from the actual person.
Very good point.
Quoting Wittgenstein
Well said. At the same time, that implies we cannot escape the subjectivity in nature. Accordingly, and practically speaking, I think it is perplexing to think about why a person who feels sad because it rains too much feels sad...or the other way around... . And as an extreme case, a person commits suicide because they are sad about some aesthetic thing... .
I'm talking about your vision, your eyesight, your ability to notice details.
Just not in broad daylight.
I guess this is one of those things that once seen, cannot be unseen. And until seen, unseen.
Can you explain to me just what you're seeing when you watch that video?
Love is usually idealized. I have observed this first hand and l think most people can relate. We love what we don't possess in the present moment. It seems love is more about about the journey towards possessing what you love than actually possessing it. It's easy to love when you are separated.
For this reason alone, I can always tell when someone is playing hard to get. For girls, a desperate guy isn't ideal It's simple economics. Your value is determined by the number of people interested in dating you. The sexual market value of a 3/10 female is higher than a 7/10 male.
Don't fall in love though, if you love someone more in comparison to their love towards you, it will be a one sided relationship and you will be begging for attention. You will be the one who is "down" and other party will be the one in control , the "up" side.
Sure, there's a long tradition in literature of equating ugliness, old age, and deformity with evil as well. monstrum in fronte, monstrum in animo
Are you being serious?
This kind of thinking might be related to a pervasive cultural trend to treat all kinds of relations as commerical relations, could it not? In which case it wouldn't actually be evidence of anything more profound than the zeitgeist.
I wish l was trolling or lying. The appreciation you get for being attractive is on a whole new level compared to the appreciation you get from being intelligent, hardworking etc. For instance, when l lost weight. People started treating me a lot ( a lot ) better. Beautiful people are living life on tutorial mode. I wish we were better than animals and more compassionate, but we are not. It's a sad reality
I am not quite sure how my discussion on the thread has become about love affairs. I have so few, and most of my friends, male or female, are single. I think that may have been more the point which I am making. Relationships, and even friendships can be complicated. So much can be about superficial aspects of existence, or common ground. However, I do have a few of friendships which go back to teenage years, or before, so these are most likely based on deeper connections.
The video shows looks>>>>>personality
People always tell you that personality is the most important factor when it comes to attraction and dating. This isn't true in any way or form. It's useless to approach girls unless you have seen some indicator of interest. Every sexual encounter in all the species is initiated by the feminine gender ( sex ).
Personality ( intelligence, character, ideals etc ) matter later on once you pass a certain threshold of good looks. ( this varies between girls ).
But although I am devilishly handsome I disagree.
Society mainly judges by money,prestige,power,social class. Look at trump and hilary clinton. Both pig ugly dogs.
Both revered by millions.
Social class and money first to the superficial.
@Wittgenstein
It has always been this way. In the past, the commercial aspect involved politics and tribal relations and the women did not possess a lot of control.
It isn't a worldwide, it is basic biology, we want to produce the best offspring possible. These days, women are in control of the dating market and they want the best looking guy out there to be their bf/husband. I don't see how you can change this.
This isn't philosophical but in order to be in control of any social relation, you need to keep the PIMP HAND STRONG
Your friends probably agree with me, you can ask them to verify it. It's a common sight these days
You are right , it is
Looks, money and status
But in case you don't know, Instagram thots have turned down world class footballers ( David luiz ). He has status and money but not the looks. On the other hand, anyone with decent looks can easily get status and money through it. This isn't limited to relations. Good looking people get more opportunities which in return allows them to acquire useful skills. It's a self perpetuating cycle
Look at all the ugly old men with fashion model wives and children.
And look at the porn models who end up with lower class guys in terms of success and wealth.
Seeing how the bit from the video is focused entirely on a first impression, where personality never enters the picture, I don't see how it could show any such thing.
Quoting Wittgenstein
Since you don't wear you personality on your sleeve, it's fairly obvious that it would come in later than looks, unless you engage in some elaborate literally blind dating system. That's not the same as one or the other being more or less important. I think these kinds of distinctions more often than not create an illusion of clarity and predictability that simply doesn't hold up in reality. Who ends up dating who depends a lot on contingencies of the situation, mutual expectations etc. It's going to be impossible to isolate "beauty" as an independent factor from this melange.
Quoting Wittgenstein
How do you know this? Have you perused the relevant sociological research?
Quoting Wittgenstein
And yet a cursory look around a busy city on a summer day (where there are no CoViD restrictions) would immediately supply you with dozens of counterexamples to this supposedly ironclad law. Now I understand it would be tempting to explain them all away by some contingency, as this line of thinking likes to do. But I think the far more plausible explanation is that while biological urges exist, and looks are a shortcut our brains use to judge the health and fitness of a potential partner, this is merely one factor in a vastly complicated psychological state.
It seems entirely unconvincing to me to dial the clock back to 19th century mechanism when it comes to the dating behaviour of humans. Tempting perhaps, as such simple theories always are.
I've inhabited both the blue collar and white collar worlds. Appearance is much more important in the white collar world. I'm using that word broadly meaning one's public image, not just physical appearance. In the blue collar world it's more a matter of, can you do the job or not?
In the blue collar world, if I can fix your toilet for a reasonable price, nobody really cares if I look like this.
from?
Can you please elaborate on this? I'm interested to see what your take is on how he arrived at his views on women.
Also, continuing on with Schopenhauer, he wrote a bit on his views concerning physiognomy. Does the inner life/soul/etc. of a person write itself on the outer appearance?
You might like this quote from Oscar Wilde, 1854-1900: It is only shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.
Quoting Philosophim
Here's another heads up: philosophers are always going back to quote people who have been dead for 2500 years. Just saying...
Again, trying to rely on that could easily lead you to misinterpreting some people who are very much different on the inside than their appearance would suggest. The idea that our inner world has no outward expression seems unlike my personal experience though.
Thanks for the tips!
Amen. I also think this goes for (perhaps entailed by the above situation) discrimination too. We do it all the time with great success
You know it when you see it.
It's just hard to put it into exact, systematic, interpersonally verifiable concepts.
Liberals and communists will hate you now.
They teach kids that beauty does not exist. What
do they care the most are political & electoral correctness. Aesthetics is their biggest enemy. There are communist and liberal "aesthetics" being spread all over the world now. Either you accept that everything should be considered beautiful, or you are banned from the "respectful" world.
I was thinking one day that the reason why portrait-painting developed in Europe more than in other parts of the globe might be (to some degree) that a European face has more expressions & colors than Non-European faces. Do I dare to say this in public?
Maybe I am totally wrong. But the problem today is that I am afraid to learn. We live in a world where we are taught to suppress all thoughts that are not politically correct.
is this a 'constant conjunction' thing? My experience has been the inverse..
Really? Where do you live? Seems to me racism, bigotry and even hatred are frequently expressed in mainstream culture.
I have generally found that there is almost no correlation between a person's appearance and who they are. But it is true that people who scowl and frown a lot may well be unpleasant or preoccupied...
Yes, I would say its fairly safe that when people are clearly affectatious in their presentation can be judged on it :P
What do you mean by "appearance"? And what by "who they are"?
Hi Baker, appearance is what we see when we meet people or see them in pictures. Who they are is their core personality. However, what Tom said about almost no correlation between appearance and who they are -- I disagree slightly. I work with all kinds of people, and so does Tom, I believe. But there are outward clues as to who they are if you look closely.
@Tom Storm, you can disagree with what I said above. I also do not have a scientific backing for what I said.
This I agree :100:
I often see the opposite being the case, for some reason. Take one person who is considered by many to be the most beautiful woman of all time: Marilyn Monroe. Her life was filled with misery and ended in disaster. For many 'beautiful' people, their looks are often a burden, not an advantage. (This may be more true for women though, but I am not certain) Many beautiful women are not taken seriously and degraded. When I see a very good looking guy, I immediately feel as if I could not trust him. I almost feel as if one should NOT be good looking if they are to be considered by others as intelligent and trustworthy.
Are good looking people nicer than average looking people, or are good looking people less nice than average looking people?
Quoting Tom Storm
No wonder. Ever notice how who you think the other person in your relationship is changes over time, and who they and you are changes through being affected by the reciprocal interaction of the growing relationship itself?
Interesting question. In my experience, 'good looking' people are less nice.. to me. But that's almost certainly a bias about my desires.
I would say though, traditionally ugly people seem on avg to me more truculent and quick to argue and then dismiss than are people who don't see themselves as somehow already at a disadvantage aesthetically.
Thank you for formulating this so eloquently!
How do you tell which is which?
And how do you distinguish between who a person is and who you think said person is?
"Closely"? I think it's quite obvious.
Interesting. I've never really felt anyone around me has changed much over time. Certainly not my partner or significant friends or long term colleagues. If anything people seem to be remarkably consistent. If by change we mean one is no longer being able to anticipate reactions and choices made by the person we think we know. As to how well we 'know' anyone, well that's a matter for a range of interpretations.
Are you really just going to literal-ass this?
Obviously, the outward appearance is "obvious". When I said closely, I meant you would need to ignore the superficial curtsies and social routine so you could see a couple of measures -- integrity, maturity, and respect, for example.
Quoting baker
By fucking them. Okay, seriously, by spending time with them.
This is what I mean, and to me, these things are obvious.
People's bodily appearance is like the picture of Dorian Gray: it depicts all their sins and passions.
This is a philosophy forum. Presumably, you have a systematic methodology for distinguishing between who a person is and who you think said person is.
@Joshs said:
[i]Ever notice how who you think the other person in your relationship is changes over time,
and who they and you are
changes through being affected
by the reciprocal interaction of the growing relationship itself?[/i]
You say, "I've never really felt anyone around me has changed much over time". Or is it that you stick with your first impressions of someone?
How would I know? I just responded to the idea that we notice people chaining. I don't, generally. Of course you might have noticed that I wrote earlier:
Quoting Tom Storm
So perhaps 'first impressions' are not all that significant to me either.
To a certain point, yes.
Quoting baker
I was actually speaking of people I actually do meet in person and spend time with.
The philosophy forum is probably very limited in providing insight to a person's true personality.
*sigh*
I asked, "And how do you distinguish between who a person is and who you think said person is?"
Replying, "Okay, seriously, by spending time with them" is below one would expect at a philosophy forum.
I've never noticed this. It makes perfect sense though.
:grin: I was lazy to elaborate. I'm sorry.
Judging from what I experienced, there are things they say that give away how they feel about certain issues.
"My wife is a Karen." I heard this uttered by a man. Though I cannot divulge what led to his statement, what he was revealing about himself is that he is an easy man to deal with and expect no issues with him. He wouldn't cause any drama.
To me, it's the default. To me, relationships are dynamic, mutually conditioning two-way streets. Normal relationships, that is.
But I also understand that for some, perhaps most people, the normal way to go about relationships with others is to define the relationship at some early point after meeting the other person, and then keeping it that way until either of the persons dies; or else, if it changes, blame the other person.
I'm not really sure what I am trying to say. I recognize that relationships evolve over time. Or devolve. My original point was that I find people don't really seem to change much over time. In as much as they are always recognizable as variations of themselves. But this is sounding vague and pointless, so I will contemplate the matter some more.
Damn, you've gone and busted my irony meter.
Amazing thread though.
I'm curious, are you short? You come across to me like a short guy.
:monkey:
I was just testing out my hypothesis, that you really didn't know what you were talking about when you said:
Quoting Deleted user
Thanks for playing. :lol:
Any one of those pictured could have craniums the size and shape of a watermelon and jawlines reminiscent of the same, flesh literally rotting off even, and they would still be a welcome reprieve, an oasis-like vision, from the wretched abomination that is your soul, revealed by your course of conduct here.
And you can quote that and take it to the bank.
“It is disgraceful for a philosopher to say: the good and the beautiful are one; if he adds 'also the true', one ought to beat him. Truth is ugly. We possess art lest we perish of the truth.”
? Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power
An excellent example of recall bias.
Unfortunately for your opinion, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, alas.
Though your posting illustrates why conmen (and women) can make a comfortable living.
Quoting Vaskane
In fact, could you elaborate on these statements with more details, viz. in what sense the orchid does mind truths, and the orchid is synonymous with "Woman" rather than woman/women? Thanks.
Does it then imply Nietzsche's idea was that a living agent cannot overcome / transcend its biological foundation i.e. DNA, inherent characters, features, natures and destinies within its physical and biological build of body, no matter what the mental makeups might be?
In this perspective, freedom for each individual agent in the society or nature wouldn't be possible. Would it be kind of a determinism? What does Nietzsche say about freedom and determinism?
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.14321/contagion.21.2014.0131
I know nothing about Bataille beyond his name!
Yes - you write. But as is your nickname is Wittgenstein - and he said that: all problems: philosophical and psychological are problems and imperfections of language.
Yes, appearance matters. In an industrial state. In capitalism. And as Nietzsche said: the last man, the little man is a derived existence. First value others and only then yourself. It's a "competition". I see it, for example, in the work and personal fields. For example, muscles provide men with greater self-confidence, clothes fit better and they have a better non-verbal effect on the opponent in communication. So if the person is intelligent and good at communication. And clothes. Sure If a person wears a jacket, the dress looks more serious when he comes to the meeting than if he comes in sweatpants and a shabby t-shirt.
However, we must ask philosophically. When someone puts something to admire, to the eye - what is he hiding?