All that matters in society is appearance

Wittgenstein

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

3017amen

↪Wittgenstein

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).

Wittgenstein

↪3017amen

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.

Ying

Wittgenstein

↪Ying

No , all there is to life is looking beautiful, the rest will take care of itself.

Ying

No , all there is to life is looking beautiful, the rest will take care of itself. — Wittgenstein

Ah ok, that settles it then.

Echarmion

Looking beautiful is all there is to success in society. I will elaborate more on this but I want you to think about it. — Wittgenstein

You might start your elaboration by addressing the numerous people who are not beautiful and still successful.

Wittgenstein

↪Ying

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 )

Wittgenstein

↪Echarmion

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.

Echarmion

It's not about being successful but ruining it. You could be an accomplished scientist but if you are ugly, people see see an ugly person before seeing a scientist. It's unavoidable. Imagine covering gold with poop, you would be disgusted. — Wittgenstein

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.

baker

If you looked like Alain Delon, your life would have been a lot easier and fun. — Wittgenstein

But he aged so badly! Many beautiful people age badly.

baker

A beautiful face indicates a beautiful being. — Wittgenstein

Depends on the distance from which one looks at a face, and under what lighting conditions. In broad daylight, up close, nobody looks beautiful.

Wittgenstein

↪Echarmion

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

Wittgenstein

↪baker

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.

3017amen

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. — Wittgenstein

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.

Wittgenstein

↪baker

Depends on the distance from which one looks at a face, and under what lighting conditions. In broad daylight, up close, nobody looks beautiful.

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

Kenosha Kid

If you looked like Alain Delon, your life would have been a lot easier and fun. — Wittgenstein

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...

Jack Cummins

↪Wittgenstein

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.

Wittgenstein

↪Kenosha Kid

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.

baker

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

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).

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

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.

Wittgenstein

↪3017amen

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.

Wittgenstein

↪baker

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).

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.

3017amen

For Christians

↪Wittgenstein

...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...

baker

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. — Wittgenstein

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.

Wittgenstein

↪Jack Cummins

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.

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.

baker

At this point, we have to embrace it unwillingly. — Wittgenstein

Why?

Wittgenstein

↪3017amen

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).

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.

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.

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.

Wittgenstein

↪baker

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.

Jack Cummins

↪Wittgenstein

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.

3017amen

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).

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. — Wittgenstein

Very good point.

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.

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. — 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... .

baker

I don't see how photography will improve my perspective. — Wittgenstein

I'm talking about your vision, your eyesight, your ability to notice details.

In the grand scheme of things, beautiful people exist.

Just not in broad daylight.

I guess this is one of those things that once seen, cannot be unseen. And until seen, unseen.

All that matters in society is appearance

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