(no subject)

[jookitcz]

I pinned it down.  The argument against any anger at the "pretty people" bias, instances when the physically attractive get what they want with less effort, generally, than everyone else.  Generally, any nose-wrinkling at this trend is met with--"Well, you hold intelligent people in high regard.  People are born with good looks just as people are born with intelligence or sweet tempers.  It's not anyone's fault."  You're right, it's just jealousy, I hang my head in sheepish shame. 

Then I realized.  Intelligence is useful.  Attractiveness is not (particularly, we're overpopulated so that doesn't count.)

Discuss. 

The fact that I can think of maybe three photographs over the course of my life that don't make me look ridiculous has nothing to do with this entry.

Comments

[spence137.livejournal.com]

Discrediting my examples doesn’t change the principle that usefulness comes not from what a person is given, but form how they use it.

You say that, “Intelligence… has more applications than beauty.” I think that’s true, but in both extremes. Intelligence provides a broader spectrum of opportunities to do “good,” but so does it also hypothetically allow the person greater access to do harm to society than does a surfeit of beauty.

You claim “personal gain and societal gain are one and the same,” but your argument began by lamenting over the fact that attractive people acquire personal gain too effortlessly. In either case, I don’t think they are the same. Selfishness is selfishness.

But my point is this: Counting someone’s attractiveness against them is no different than counting a person’s high intelligence against them. Or, for that matter, low intelligence or physical ugliness. An individuals worth is not dictated by what lot they are dealt, but by what they choose to do with it.

[jookitcz.livejournal.com]

Ah. So if intelligence has a more extreme potential for good and bad than beauty has, and you imply that the two extremes cancel each other, then you must be making the assumption that there is an equal amount of malice and altruism in the world. Selfishness, to simplify things, can probably be treated as an unavoidably neutral.

But what if we assume that people are basically good, and want to do good things? As soon as the balance swings that way, then the greater potential of intelligence for good wins compared to the smaller potential of beauty. On the opposite side, we could assume that people are basically malicious, and that would actually make beauty more morally redemptive (or at least, less harmful) than the misused intelligence.