Becoming a species of Perfection .... Is it More than just the Balance of Brains and Beauty!
It used to be said, and sometimes still is, that brains and beauty are rarely found in one package (package being a euphemism for person). This was perhaps the resultant thought of a more fundamentally modest era and the moral codes evolving from it. But it’s changed ... radically of recent years. So that it’s no longer good enough to be just a model or a super model - once that status is reached the need to be also something or someone clever occurs. “Super Model and Business Woman” .... “Super Model and Actress". Not wishing to confuse cleverness with talent or natural gift, it’s certain that both categories fit the bill where personality improvement meets impressive looks.
All beauty contest winners (or whatever the modern equivalent of those events might be called) are often “Nuclear Physicists” or “Undergraduate Archaeologists” or wanna-be orthopedic surgeons. The need to balance off the visual with the aesthetic is an urgent and pressing matter in the early stages of the twenty first century.
Being beautiful and decorative isn’t enough. It's now necessary to be useful, erudite and intellectually respected as well.
And what of the male sex? Can we reverse things here? are men becoming more visually aware of themselves? Without a doubt! But for some of them it is only after being generally hailed as intelligent, successful or powerful in the worldly sense. We look at politicians and see them smarten up their acts with their heightened profiles. Or we look at sportsmen turned t.v. presenters suddenly appearing with line-free, lifted faces.
The number of people using cosmetic enhancement has more than trebled in the past twenty years. And the number of people attaining academic status in later life has also risen steeply. The scale then is seeking to even itself between mind and physique. It’s worth noting here that neither brains nor beauty equal personality or charm, but maybe that will be the next thing for us as a species to realise at a generic and global level. The way people realised back in the eighties that skin care was superior to good make-up and style was better than ostentation.
The ancient Greeks famously believed that a healthy body bestowed a healthy mind. And going way back to ancient forms of worship and myth it was said that the gods favoured and smiled upon those with beauty and brains. Perhaps that inherent belief in us - through the ancestral memory gene pool - is resurrecting and we have again the urge to be perfect, to be favoured, to be safe. Perhaps the obsession with our looks, our presentation, our image, our need to gain gorgeousness and favourable response is no more than an unconscious need to be alined with the Divine Spark whom we somehow sense and therefore seek the good favour and co-operation of.
The acceptance and approval of our peer group may be just the mirror we use on the way. The need is undeniably to be in all ways a species of perfection!
It used to be said, and sometimes still is, that brains and beauty are rarely found in one package (package being a euphemism for person). This was perhaps the resultant thought of a more fundamentally modest era and the moral codes evolving from it. But it’s changed ... radically of recent years. So that it’s no longer good enough to be just a model or a super model - once that status is reached the need to be also something or someone clever occurs. “Super Model and Business Woman” .... “Super Model and Actress". Not wishing to confuse cleverness with talent or natural gift, it’s certain that both categories fit the bill where personality improvement meets impressive looks.
All beauty contest winners (or whatever the modern equivalent of those events might be called) are often “Nuclear Physicists” or “Undergraduate Archaeologists” or wanna-be orthopedic surgeons. The need to balance off the visual with the aesthetic is an urgent and pressing matter in the early stages of the twenty first century.
Being beautiful and decorative isn’t enough. It's now necessary to be useful, erudite and intellectually respected as well.
And what of the male sex? Can we reverse things here? are men becoming more visually aware of themselves? Without a doubt! But for some of them it is only after being generally hailed as intelligent, successful or powerful in the worldly sense. We look at politicians and see them smarten up their acts with their heightened profiles. Or we look at sportsmen turned t.v. presenters suddenly appearing with line-free, lifted faces.
The number of people using cosmetic enhancement has more than trebled in the past twenty years. And the number of people attaining academic status in later life has also risen steeply. The scale then is seeking to even itself between mind and physique. It’s worth noting here that neither brains nor beauty equal personality or charm, but maybe that will be the next thing for us as a species to realise at a generic and global level. The way people realised back in the eighties that skin care was superior to good make-up and style was better than ostentation.
The ancient Greeks famously believed that a healthy body bestowed a healthy mind. And going way back to ancient forms of worship and myth it was said that the gods favoured and smiled upon those with beauty and brains. Perhaps that inherent belief in us - through the ancestral memory gene pool - is resurrecting and we have again the urge to be perfect, to be favoured, to be safe. Perhaps the obsession with our looks, our presentation, our image, our need to gain gorgeousness and favourable response is no more than an unconscious need to be alined with the Divine Spark whom we somehow sense and therefore seek the good favour and co-operation of.
The acceptance and approval of our peer group may be just the mirror we use on the way. The need is undeniably to be in all ways a species of perfection!
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