It's an inescapable reality that many of us humans are embedded in a world where we aren't one of the physically beautiful people. I suspect it's more difficult for people who are borderline beautiful. Fortunately, I have less of an issue! I accepted my standing early in life.
In social media, we are constantly bombarded with images of physically beautiful people. The kind of people that we don't often see in real life (unless you live in a big city). So what's one to do if she's constantly reminded of her lack of perfection?
We are evolutionarily wired to notice beauty (btw, what's considered beauty is in the eye of the beholder). It's an unconscious thing that constantly creeps up into one's consciousness. This attention device is omnipresent.
The wonderful thing about education is that you can discover beauty elsewhere. The stuff that occupies my mind rarely involves human physical beauty. I'm fascinated by abstract beauty. But the truth is, it isn't as primitive an instinct as human beauty.
It's not just human beauty that we are attentive to. Those other cute and cuddly mammals are also the kinds of images that keep popping up on social media. But at least in our everyday existence, these pets are more accessible than the humankind.
It's fascinating that birds have advanced to a state where they've "invented" all kinds of different beauty norms. Birds are unencumbered by two dimensions. There is a likely causal relationship between mobility and the diversity of beauty norms.
Perhaps there is a fundamental theory about beauty norms. It's different from the notion of beauty is in the eye of the beholder which is also incontrovertibly true. That there are also cultural norms of beauty that are established, but mobility generates greater diversity.
So it should never come as a surprise that as our human civilization becomes more complex and affords much greater freedom and mobility of its citizenry that the norms of beauty become more diverse.
The side-effect of what is found beautiful is the attachment of value. It's different from the value that is attached to things of utility. In a modern civilization what becomes valuable are things that can lack utility. It should be no surprise then to discover expensive art.
Birds go beyond the selection of physical beauty and often select based on the exhibition of complex cognitive behavior like singing. Similarly, humans are also attracted to people who can make us laugh (and hence bring us joy).
If we say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, then we must acknowledge that how we think of the world influences how we see beauty in the world. The more complex our thought processes, the more abstract our sense of beauty.
Thus to see all the beauty that reality has to offer, one has to train and construct our cognitive scaffolding such that we can recognize and then create beauty. The ultimate goal of humanity is to encourage this ability for everyone.
What is good is for everyone to know how to see beauty in this world. What is evil is to trap people into seeing everything as ugly.
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