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Human beings (that means you and me) spend a good amount of time wanting. Mind you, wanting some water or food in your belly is merely par for the course for a biological creature. Wanting rest when you're tired, wanting activity when you're bored, wanting company when you're lonely... these are all predictable results of the experience of being anatomically and emotionally structured as human beings.
However, there is a different, exceedingly larger collection of wants that has nothing to do with survival or requisite fulfillment. This seemingly infinite list of personal desires not only has nothing to do with what humans require for happiness or fulfillment, it actually has much to do with the production of dissatisfaction and unhappiness. That an entire industry of ambitious mountebanks have risen to prominence by dangling these needless carrots in front of the Pavlovian masses should be no surprise to anyone paying attention. Does it truly require a marketing degree and six-figure salary to realize that human beings generally will want whatever is placed in front of their noses? This is not any sort of science; it is transpicuous manipulation. Typically, those who stand up and shout from the street corner about this insidious puppetry are thought of as lunatic fringe. "What's wrong with a little excitation of the human proclivities known as conquest and acquisition to stimulate consumer activity?" the oily penguins known as 'marketing executives' love to ask. Everything. Take for instance the concept of physical beauty. While it is conceptually true that beauty resides in the eyes of the beholder, there are also seemingly universal standards that spawn an implicit hierarchy of beauty among the vast majority. This hierarchy is arbitrary and subjective, yet most can somehow agree that person 'A' is attractive, and person 'B' is comparatively not as much. Most people tend to think it must be wonderful to be considered very attractive. To the average student in high school or college, this is a 'no-brainer.' Cultures across the globe breed us to desire popularity in order to establish our identity and importance in the eyes of the world. Tabloids and magazines at the checkout stand are icons of this mentality. Television, movies, shopping malls... these all constantly reinforce the idea that our existence is firmly founded and celebrated by how many 'friends' we can congregate to our Facebook pages, for example. I submit to you this radical point of view: exceptional physical beauty is a curse. Why do I look at physical beauty with such a seemingly odd perspective? A whole host of psychological maladies have arisen from the idea that we must compete with others to be as attractive as possible. We are in competition in this area because it is by comparison that standards are established. Therefore, by either a quirk of nature, or perhaps extensive employment of trickery known as makeup and grooming products, some will rise to the 'top,' but many will tumble into the undesirable bargain bin of social leprosy known as The Unattractive. However, and this is the twist, just what is gained by being at the top of the beauty heap? Constant attention, whether you want it or not. As anyone who is 'blessed' with exceptional beauty will tell you, it's no picnic. To have your physical aspect praised and worshipped may stroke the ego, but ultimately it overshadows and all but buries the most valuable asset you possess: who you truly are inside. For the blowhard and sociopath, being attractive is an endless source of pride and joy. For the rest of us, it is a pursuit we're pressured into from earliest youth, and must comply with continuously for the entirety of our lives, else suffer the consequence of deliberate rebellion against the standard. That consequence being, of course, social irrelevance. For me, to be able to go to the store in my bland but clean clothes, sporting my unfashionable but clean hair, driving my boring, unsexy, but quite reliable vehicle, and not be pestered by the attentions of people I don't know... well, now that's what I call a blessing. But then again, I don't measure my relevance by the opinions of others. |