Diary of a Person Confused About the Relief of Suffering, Chapter 8: Ugliness and Suffering

Actually written NOVEMBER 24, 2018

In this chapter I hope to explain my confusion about how physical beauty/ugliness relates to suffering.

At the time of my writing this chapter, several people objected to my attempt to include such a chapter. It seems many people are convinced either that physical beauty/ugliness has no impact on suffering, or that if it does, it is useless to try figuring out just how much the impact is and that our efforts to relieve suffering are better spent elsewhere. If any of my readers share these opinions, they are free to skip this chapter. But for the sake of the rest of us, I include this chapter in the hopes that it can add to our thought process on the topic.

I am currently of the opinion that we cannot determine how much suffering comes from physical ugliness or lack of access to physical beauty, but that anyone truly determined to relieve human suffering generally must at least worry that the suffering could be significant enough to warrant our attention as we try to relieve suffering.

So the bulk of this chapter is an exploration of the issues that make it difficult, or impossible, to determine how much suffering comes from physical ugliness or the lack of access to physical beauty. But my implicit hope is that in light of this lack of certainty, people truly interested in relieving human suffering will at least worry that the suffering could be significant enough to warrant their attention.

THE NEED FOR DEFINITIONS

In my past attempts to discuss matters pertaining to physical beauty and ugliness, many people have requested definitions for such things as “physical beauty” and so on. I suspect these requests have largely been raised for the purpose of engaging me in arguments over whether physical beauty/ugliness is objective (or intrinsic), or subjective. Whenever I express worry about whether physical beauty/ugliness can cause significant suffering, I suspect people assume I regard physical beauty/ugliness as being intrinsic rather than subjective. And people wish to straighten me out on this assumption of mine, arguing that physical beauty/ugliness is completely subjective. Once I’m persuaded that physical beauty/ugliness is subjective, it is presumed my worries about physical beauty/ugliness causing significant suffering should vanish. If it’s subjective, then people must exist who find any given person physically beautiful. And if such people don’t exist, they can be created. Problem solved. Stop worrying.

There are several things wrong with these assumptions. To me, the most glaring fault is the assumption that:

PREMISE: Because physical beauty/ugliness is subjective/relative…

CONCLUSION: Anyone can be found physically beautiful by someone who they themselves find beautiful.

The conclusion does not follow from the premise. Additional facts are needed to draw this conclusion. And I’ve never seen these additional facts supplied.

The second most glaring fault with the assumptions is that:

PREMISE: Because physical beauty/ugliness is subjective/relative…

CONCLUSION: Physical beauty/ugliness cannot be objective.

Again, the conclusion does not follow from the premise. In fact, everything that is subjective is also objective. First of all, subjective phenomena, such as my mental states, are subjective to me, because they exist in my mind, but objective to you, because they exist outside of your mind. Second of all, my subjective mental states are also objective to me, since I can grasp them as objects – as things that exist in the universe. I can both experience them in my mind subjectively, and experience them as objects grasped by my mind. I can both feel pain as its subject and think about my pain objectively. So subjectiveness is not a claim against objectiveness. A subjective phenomena is just a sub-category of objective phenomena – it is the kind of objective phenomena that exists in the mind.

All this aside, I do acknowledge that physical beauty/ugliness is most likely not objective in the sense that it would be intrinsic, i.e. a property possessed by a person independently of how others feel about that person. Physical beauty/ugliness is not a property that a person can possess independently of someone’s subjective feelings about that person. Physical beauty/ugliness are in the minds of the beholders (both subjectively and objectively), but not the body of the beheld. (And a beholder can behold itself and find his or herself beautiful or ugly.)

But anyway, people still want definitions for physical beauty and ugliness, and related concepts. I therefore include a glossary at the back of this chapter. I hope it satisfies those who want such definitions.

So, these matters now accounted for, let me dive into my first and primary confusing question pertaining to physical beauty/ugliness and suffering.

DOES THE FAILURE TO ATTRACT A LOVER ONE FINDS PHYSICALLY BEAUTIFUL CREATE SIGNIFICANT SUFFERING?

My first and primary confusion about physical beauty/ugliness and suffering is my inability to answer the following question:

Does the failure to attract a lover one finds physically beautiful create significant suffering, on par with starvation and disease?

JUSTIFYING THE QUESTION

But before I discuss my confusion about this question’s answer, I suspect my readers would appreciate a justification for asking this particular question.

Specifically, it might seem more fruitful to at least ask a broader question like this: Is physical beauty a trivial matter or very important, regarding one’s suffering or happiness? This broader version might seem more comprehensive, since it avoids limiting itself to the matter of finding a physically beautiful lover, and concerns itself with suffering and happiness generally.

I limit the matter to finding a lover one finds physically beautiful because, when it comes to issues concerning physical beauty, the issue of whether one can attract a lover one finds physically beautiful seems like the one most likely to generate suffering or happiness. Consider, for example, that the issue of whether one has access to people one finds physically beautiful for the purpose of merely gazing upon them is not a likely source of significant suffering or happiness. It seems to me that the matter of access to a beautiful lover’s affectionate sexual touch brings the true intensity of suffering or happiness to full fruition. In that touching lay exquisite pleasures, the denial of which I suspect can cause much suffering. All other pleasures derived from physical beauty pale in comparison to the astronomical pleasure of the beautiful lover’s touch. And I suspect its denial can be utter hellish agony.

It is this hellish agony that would justify my asking the question, in the name of a desire to relieve suffering.

But now two sub-questions pop up, pertaining to this justification: “Is there really this kind of hellish agony, an agony that comes from the denial of the astronomical pleasure of a physically beautiful lover’s touch?” And: “First of all, is there really an astronomical pleasure that comes from a physically beautiful lover’s touch?”

Unfortunately, I cannot provide a decisive answer to these sub-questions. The best I can offer is a strong suspicion that the answer for both questions is “yes”. So now let’s explore the reasoning for my strong suspicions.

First, do there really exist such “astronomical pleasures” from the touch of a physically beautiful lover? 

I have no way of knowing whether and how many people may have experienced such extremes of pleasure from their physically beautiful lovers’ touching. People tend not to talk about this sort of thing, either because there is nothing to talk about (as they just don’t feel such extremes) or perhaps because talking about it produces dangerously hurtful envy among those who have no access to such extreme pleasures.

Most of the evidence I have for the existence of such extreme pleasure amounts to my own personal experience. So be it. Let me now account my own personal experience.

I have never felt such extreme pleasures from the touch of a lover I find physically beautiful. Significant pleasure, yes - but not in the range of the extreme that I have in mind here. However, I have had romantic fantasies that have produced at least small durations of such extreme pleasures. In my fantasies, one or more women who I find extremely physically beautiful kiss me very amorously. That’s it. There’s no sexual copulation involved – just kissing. Anyway, if I’m lucky, this fantasy will produce extreme pleasure. Furies of warm tingly thrills shoot through my body and I get the sensation of gently falling endlessly into a soft substance. There is a feeling of perpetual astonishment, blended with feelings of trust and vulnerability, of having been reduced to willing weakness and surrender to a loving benevolent person. And up swells a joy so profound that I gag on the impulse to weep. Muscles around my vocal chords pull tightly, such that were I to cry out, it would be a high pitched cry. The pulling on my vocal chords quickly produces an ache in my throat. Finally, the sides of my waist become unbearably sensitive and, as if tickled by someone, twitch or even bring my body into convulsions. It almost seems to me that the convulsions are my nervous system’s means of dissipating the sensual and emotional overload, perhaps thereby preventing some kind of damage to my nervous system. At any rate, these convulsions generally put an end to the experience. Which is perhaps for the best, for it seems to me that were the experience to continue, it would actually be rather painful (in the throat anyway) and maybe even terrifying because the joyous emotions seem to increase their intensity at a rate of perhaps doubling every half a second, producing a fear that I might not survive. I have often considered that, were an actual physically beautiful woman to inflict a real kiss like this on me, I would pass out within 3 or 4 seconds, as any longer than that would simply be unbearable.

As an aside, I have often wondered whether the throat pain problem could be fixed by some kind of throat muscle relaxing drug, and the passing out problem likewise fixed by some kind of anti-passing out drug. Then, as she keeps kissing me, I would feel no throat ache and could not pass out, but instead just feel the ecstasy shoot up to ever higher intensities. The state I would enter would be some mind melting hyper ecstasy coma that I have given the name “hyper ecstatic shock”, or “HES”.

Is there other evidence for the existence of such extreme pleasure? Perhaps. I’ve seen and heard hints of it in fictional media. An episode of Gilligan’s Island showed Gilligan retreating from Ginger’s advances toward kissing him. When she closed in on him to deliver the kiss, he jerked his head backward, hitting his head against a post, knocking him out. This struck me as a kind of metaphorical suggestion that a kiss could make someone pass out. A line from the song “Some Kind of Wonderful” by Grand Funk Railroad goes “Ya when my baby kisses me, chills run up and down my spine.” I once saw some frames from a comic book showing a man after he had been kissed by a woman. Two other people were holding him up, helping him walk, suggesting that he had become weak from the kiss, perhaps even passing out. Then of course there are all the animated cartoons (typically Disney) that portray both humans and anthropomorphized animals acting pleasurably intoxicated after being kissed. As for reality, my internet search on the matter at least produced one man on a forum bragging that he could make some women faint by kissing them. The comments featured people’s reports of becoming weak in the knees from a mere kiss.

But none of this really confirms the existence of such “unbearable” pleasure from the touch of an actual lover one finds physically beautiful. My own experience of the unbearable pleasure comes from fantasy, not an actual person’s touch. So I can’t say whether an actual person’s touch could really produce such unbearable pleasure. I can only guess it could. And other people aren’t unambiguously confirming it either.

Well, regardless whether my experience of unbearable pleasure came from fantasy or a real lover’s touch, the fact that I was denied such pleasures from a real lover did cause hellish agony.

In my youth I pined for the loving affection of a specific real girl [Fimwi] who I found extremely physically beautiful (so much so that my thoughts of her could set me to hyperventilating and getting dizzy). My fantasies of her kiss could produce flashes of that unbearable ecstasy. And conversely, my full realization that she found me repulsive, condemning me to a life without her loving affection, could produce a constant sense of dreadful drudgery, and the occasional cold, “black” wave of terror running through my body.

I think the content of both the drudgery and the cold black waves of terror could use some discussion.

Feelings like these are difficult to describe to those who have never felt them. Perhaps impossible. But I’ll do the best I can with analogies.

First, the dreadful drudgery. The feeling here has a somatic component that can feel like pressure from outside the body, like a crushing. It can alternate with a reactive pressure coming from within, as if it were a compensating response, of feeling like you are going to explode. So it can feel, metaphorically, like you’re trying to live your life at the bottom of the sea, where the water pressure crushes in on your body. Movement becomes difficult in this pressure. You feel tired from doing the most simple things. And you never quite get used to it. Occasionally you rebel against it. And in these moments the pressure comes from within and you want to explode. But here again there is a semi-paralysis of pressure stasis, where your explosive pressure is only enough to meet the external crushing and spares you no energy for any other movement. Soon enough you give up and surrender again to the crushing from outside.

Often this pressure feels most intense in the throat, giving a sense of difficulty in breathing through it. To a slightly lesser degree you feel it down through the chest. But the whole body feels it to some degree.

Now for the cold black wave of terror. Imagine how you might feel on the day you are taken prisoner and led to your jail cell where you know you’ll spend the rest of your life. You know that once you are put into that cell, you’ll never come out. This one is truly horrifying. This feeling will fuck you up.

As before, the somatic component involves a pressure sensation. But it is magnified tenfold ‘till it makes you panic completely, losing all composure. No, really. It feels perhaps like a cold electric shock shooting through your body that overwhelms you. You lose your composure and drop to the ground, incapable of standing. You tremble and scream automatically, not even thinking about it. You no longer possess yourself, but are owned by the intensity of panic – like an animal. At that moment you have no way of thinking in terms of self-preservation. You can’t have a thought. You are choking. Your throat is so constricted. But you force air through it to scream and then reload your lungs in short, gasping spasms. Your body is denied any movement you want for it. Your mind races in panic as your imagination directs attention to each direction in space around your body, as if frantically looking for a direction that will allow escape, but all directions only confine you, deny you any escape. And each direction’s denial just sends you deeper into panic until… you give up. You just let the crushing pressure pass through you.

My speculation is that no human can really tolerate that feeling for more than one or two seconds before some kind of psychological “device” kicks in to take the sufferer out of it. Which is why I think people can only feel “flashes” of this at a time. But those flashes are truly horrifying, and must be somehow dealt with, and avoided wherever possible. One must avoid the kind of thoughts that make these flashes likely.

I recall only feeling these cold waves of terror perhaps twice. Thankfully they are very brief, lasting no more than a second. And because they were both infrequent and brief, they by themselves didn’t comprise what I would call a hellish agony. Rather, they were the pinnacle experiences of the less intense, yet much longer drudgery that can still make life hellish.

Suicide was definitely a serious option for me. In those years of hellish drudgery, I felt relieved in having discovered the means to do it. This was 35 years ago. And looking back, I have complete sympathy and respect for my view that suicide was a valid option. I would never question anyone’s decision to escape those hellish feelings by means of suicide if there were no reasonable alternatives routes of escape.

So anyway, these feelings comprise my justification for asking the question:

Does the failure to attract a lover one finds physically beautiful create significant suffering, on par with starvation and disease?

On a final note, I also pass over the question of whether the failure to attract a lover one does not find physically beautiful can cause much suffering. This question has nothing to do with physical beauty. So if I do deal with this question, it would be in a chapter covering loneliness.

SHORTENING THE QUESTION

However, I do find it very practical to rephrase and shorten the question to make it easier to write about and read about. The question is rather long because of its precision, so writing and reading it over and over again in this chapter is quite tedious. I therefore propose that the question:

Does the failure to attract a lover one finds physically beautiful create significant suffering, on par with starvation and disease?

… be rephrased to:

Is physically beautiful lover deprivation a significant form of suffering?

… and abbreviated to:

Is PBLD a significant form of suffering?

But I’ll occasionally switch between the short version of the question and the long version, just to remind us that the short version represents the good old fashioned long version:

Does the failure to attract a lover one finds physically beautiful create significant suffering, on par with starvation and disease?

IMPORTANT IMPLICATED CONCEPTS

But before I get into exploring this question, I’d like to now relate this question to two other implicated concepts: the physical beauty match and conventional beauty.

PHYSICAL BEAUTY MATCHES

When two people find one another physically beautiful, and roughly to the same degree, they are one another’s physical beauty match. One’s physical beauty matches are those people who find one physically beautiful, and who one finds physically beautiful in return, and roughly to the same degree.

But the term “physical beauty match” does not mean someone who ranks similarly to one’s self on a particular scale of beauty/ugliness. If two people rank similarly on some scale of physical beauty/ugliness, yet do not find one another physically beautiful, they are not one another’s physical beauty match.

It is from one’s physical beauty matches that one will attract a lover one finds physically beautiful. A plentiful supply of physical beauty matches help assure one will attract a lover one finds physically beautiful. A scarcity of physical beauty matches help assure one will not attract a lover one finds physically beautiful. No physical beauty matches, no lovers one finds physically beautiful.

This establishes the relevance of the physical beauty match to the issue of whether one is able to obtain a lover one finds physically beautiful.

CONVENTIONAL BEAUTY (OBJECTIVE PHYSICAL BEAUTY)

Conventional beauty (or objective physical beauty) is the proportion of a population that finds a person physically beautiful, and to what degree each person does. Conventional beauty is a statistical matter wherein the statistics are about what proportion of people find a given person physically beautiful and to what degree.

To find the statistical measure of someone’s conventional beauty, get all observers to rate that person on a positive ten to zero scale for physical beauty, then take a statistical average of the subjective ratings of all observers.

Now I am finally ready to explore my confusions about answering the question itself:

Does the failure to attract a lover one finds physically beautiful create significant suffering, on par with starvation and disease?

THE QUESTION HAS TWO AXES

To begin with, there are two axes of this question.

AXIS 1: Does an individual who can’t attract a lover he or she finds physically beautiful suffer as much as an individual who starves or suffers disease? (My previously described feelings-based justification for asking the full PBLD suffering question partly answers this.)

AXIS 2: Are there a significant number of people who suffer PBLD? I.e., are their numbers significant enough for the problem to be taken seriously by those concerned with relieving suffering in the world?

This question, with its two axes, appears to have no clear answer, and the attempt to answer it leads to confusion.

But let me explore this double-axis question as best I can.

RELEVANT VARIABLES FOR AXIS 1

Considering AXIS 1, I must begin by pondering some relevant variables.

I suspect, first of all, that the degree of suffering can depend on whether there is a physically beautiful person present to the sufferer, for whom the sufferer can develop strong frustrated desires. Absent any such actual physically beautiful person to trigger such frustration, the suffering would be minimal, as the sufferer would not know what he or she was missing, so to speak. But when such a physically beautiful person is present to the sufferer, the suffering can become quite intense.

And of course, the suffering can also vary with just how physically beautiful the physically beautiful person is to the sufferer. The more beautiful that person is to the sufferer, the more intense are the sufferer’s desires and the more intense the painful frustration of those desires.

This much seems validated by my own personal experience. First of all, my own PBLD has caused me significant, chronic, life-crippling suffering. But second of all, the intensity of my suffering did seem to vary with the presence of an actual physically beautiful person in my life, or vary with how beautiful that person was to me. In the most recent decades of my life I have considered myself lucky that no extraordinarily beautiful people were present in my life, and that my suffering has been reduced because of this. Pressed to quantify an estimate of the reduction in suffering, I’d say the absence of a significantly triggering physically beautiful person in my life has reduced my suffering by about 75%.

ONE AXIS 1 EPISODE CAN TRIGGER A VICIOUS CYCLE WISHBONE EFFECT 

While most of a sufferer’s life can hover around the lower intensities of PBLD, all it takes is one extraordinarily beautiful person to take that sufferer to such high intensities that the resulting inability to normally function can bring on other forms of long term suffering, such as material poverty and other social lackings. These other forms of suffering can combine with the inability to attract a physically beautiful lover as part of a systemic feedback loop where each kind of suffering causes an increase in the other kinds in a vicious cycle. Such a vicious cycle is, in part, one instance of what sociologist Brian Gilmartin calls “the wishbone effect”. The wishbone effect is the phenomenon where, given a population of children about kindergarten age, the socially valued ones will experience a reinforcing feedback loop that will continually increase their social value over their life spans, while the socially disvalued ones will experience a reinforcing feedback loop that will continually decrease their social value over their life spans. (If you plot social value on a graph with lifespan on the horizontal axis, the diverging levels of social value for each group form diverging lines that together suggest the shape of a wishbone.) While the wishbone effect applies specifically to life spans originating in early childhood, a traumatizing event, such as the presence of an extraordinarily beautiful person the sufferer cannot partner with, can trigger the negative feedback viscous cycle at any time in a person’s life.

And again, all of this seems true from personal experience. (My traumatizing event happened at age 16, and has triggered the vicious cycle of social disvalue with associated suffering lasting into my 50’s.) 

I am therefore convinced by my personal experience that PBLD can, under the right variables, generate significant suffering, either directly, through the exposure to people one finds extraordinarily beautiful, or indirectly, through such exposures triggering other forms of suffering. So I must answer AXIS 1 of our question with a “yes”.

CONFUSION OVER AXIS 2

AXIS 2 of the question, how prevalent the suffering is among people, is quite a bit more tricky. The answer here is confusing indeed.

The first major reason for the confusion is that I suspect nobody has ever bothered to study the issue. Nobody ever launched into a study of how many people suffer from an inability to attract a lover they find beautiful. No doubt there have been studies of loneliness and involuntary celibacy and so forth. But these don’t neatly translate to the inability to attract a lover one finds beautiful. Hence I have never encountered any hard evidence in answer to AXIS 2.

Regardless, I’d like to examine the speculative, “soft” evidence both for and against the notion that many people suffer from PBLD.

The second major reason for the confusion is that there are plausible reasons to doubt what people publicly report about their PBLD suffering. And I’ll cover this second major reason after I cover the first major reason.

So let’s jump right into the first major reason: the “soft” evidence both for and against significant PBLD suffering per AXIS 2.

EVIDENCE FOR SIGNIFICANT SUFFERING PER AXIS 2

First, I’ll speculate towards the notion that many people do indeed suffer PBLD per AXIS 2.

I have two pieces of speculative evidence.

1. People pursue personal physical beauty with great effort, a fact that can be somewhat translated into support for the notion that PBLD can cause significant suffering.

2. Many other people beside myself seem to think PBLD can cause significant suffering.

TRANSLATING AXIS 2 INTO THE PURSUIT OF PHYSICAL BEAUTY

My first piece of evidence pertains to how important physical beauty seems to many people – how furiously they pursue becoming more physically beautiful. The fact that so many of us do pursue becoming more physically beautiful is soft evidence for the prevalence of PBLD suffering. Chances are PBLD sufferers pursue becoming more conventionally beautiful so they can attract more conventionally beautiful lovers, and thus relieve their suffering. Thus, the more we find people pursuing becoming more conventionally beautiful, the more we find evidence for PBLD suffering.

But to rely on this evidence for PBLD suffering, I want to spell out some of the implied reasoning behind our ability to use this evidence.

First premise: Conventional physical beauty exists. That is, there are certain face and body types that an overwhelming majority of people find physically beautiful. Almost everyone finds the same group of people physically beautiful.

Second premise: PBLD sufferers, as part of the overwhelming majority, want to attract conventionally beautiful lovers, as opposed to lovers who deviate from the conventional beauty standard.

Third premise: Conventionally beautiful people, also as part of the overwhelming majority, want to attract conventionally beautiful lovers, as opposed to lovers who deviate from the conventional beauty standard.

Fourth premise: Since conventionally beautiful people want each other, they have no reason to settle for conventionally un-beautiful deviants.

Therefore: PBLD sufferers must become conventionally beautiful people (if they aren’t) to attract conventionally beautiful people.

And therefore: Someone who has too little conventional beauty to attract a conventionally beautiful lover, and who tries to become more conventionally beautiful, likely does so because they suffer PBLD and want to attract a conventionally beautiful lover to relieve their suffering.

Of course, being conventionally beautiful has many benefits beyond just the ability to attract a lover one finds beautiful and relieve PBLD suffering. This is why the pursuit of becoming more conventionally beautiful is not conclusive evidence for PBLD suffering. 

But I suspect that of all the reasons for wanting to be conventionally beautiful, the ability to attract a lover one finds physically beautiful is likely the number one reason, by far. I imagine that if people could easily attract lovers they find physically beautiful without themselves being beautiful to their lovers, they would hardly bother to become beautiful to others (except maybe to be polite in public). So I suspect the pursuit of becoming more conventionally beautiful is still somewhat useful evidence.

So then, let’s consider how much of this evidence there is. Just how intensely do we pursue becoming more conventionally beautiful? Here's an example of what is written on the topic:

People do extreme things in the name of beauty. They invest so much of their resources in beauty and risk so much for it, one would think lives depended on it. In Brazil there are more Avon ladies than members of the army. In the United States more money is spent on beauty than on education or social services. Tons of makeup – 1,484 tubes of lipstick and 2,055 jars of skin care products – are sold every minute. During famines, Kalahari bushmen in Africa still use animal fats to moisturize their skin, and in 1715 riots broke out in France when the use of flour on the hair of aristocrats led to a food shortage. The hoarding of flour for beauty purposes was only quelled by the French Revolution.

(Nancy Etcoff, Survival of the Prettiest, P6)

And:

During 1996 a reported 696,904 Americans underwent voluntary aesthetic surgery that involved tearing or burning their skin, shucking their fat, or implanting foreign materials. Before the FDA limited silicone gel implants in 1992, four hundred women were getting them every day. Breast implants were once the province of porn stars; they are now the norm for Hollywood actresses, and no longer a rarity for the housewife.

(Nancy Etcoff, Survival of the Prettiest, P5)

So I suspect that many of us strive to become more physically beautiful to others precisely in order to attract lovers we find physically beautiful. This suggests that obtaining lovers we find physically beautiful is a very strong and persistent desire. And the frustration of a very strong and persistent desire is a strong and persistent frustration. And strong and persistent frustration means suffering.

But is this strong and persistent desire actually frustrated? Maybe it isn’t. Maybe our furious pursuit of becoming beautiful to attract the beautiful is actually working. Maybe the major share of suffering is actually being prevented by the success of this pursuit.

I suspect that while our pursuit of becoming more conventionally beautiful may be working to some extent, it is still only somewhat successful. Many of us cannot be helped by our current cosmetological technology. Many, I suspect, still suffer what I call “problematic physical ugliness”, that is, these sufferers deviate so radically from the conventional standards for physical beauty that too few other people find them physically beautiful and hence these sufferers cannot attract a lover they themselves find physically beautiful. In other words, problematic ugliness is ugliness sufficient to cause PBLD. Anyway, the problematically ugly still suffer (unless they adopt some kind of subjective or placebo relief-method).

OTHER PEOPLE SEEM TO IMPLY THAT GREAT SUFFERING CAN COME FROM PBLD

My second piece of evidence also involves inferences from another issue. But once inferred, it shows that other people besides myself may be thinking that significant suffering can come from the inability to attract a lover one finds physically beautiful. This evidence comes from two works of fiction. The first is a movie called Surrogates. The second is an episode of the Twilight Zone TV series called “Number 12 Looks Just Like You”.

In this movie called Surrogates, people have become accustomed to interacting with the world via total control of conventionally physically beautiful robots. Each person is wirelessly connected to a beautiful robot they control as if they were controlling their own bodies, and that relays analog sensory information back to its controlling person, such that the person can enjoy the illusion of being the beautiful robot. Since everyone’s robot is physically beautiful (by the current Western standard of beauty), everyone enjoys the illusion that everyone else is physically beautiful as well. Hence, everyone is attracted to almost everyone else’s robot, and mutual attraction for one another’s robot is the overwhelming norm. It is therefore very easy for everyone to find a robot lover they find physically attractive, providing the illusion that one has attracted a lover one finds physically beautiful.

Near the beginning of the movie, it is shown that since the widespread use of these surrogate robots, crime has decreased by 99%.

I interpret this as follows:

Significant suffering motivates people to commit crimes.

When significant suffering is reduced, crime is therefore reduced.

Therefore, that which reduces crime (without suppressive methods that could explain it) has likely done so by reducing significant suffering.

The popular illusion of having attracted a lover one finds physically beautiful has reduced crime.

Therefore, the popular illusion of having attracted a lover one finds physically beautiful has likely reduced crime by reducing significant suffering.

And this means the ability to attract a lover one finds physically beautiful reduces suffering.

And this implies that the inability to attract a lover one finds physically beautiful can cause significant suffering.

Again, the inference is not perfect. But I strongly suspect this inference is precisely what the writers of the Surrogates screenplay meant to imply. And they meant for the audience to interpret the issue the way I have done here. I take this as evidence that many other people besides myself at least entertain the idea that PBLD can cause significant suffering.

The same basic inference appears in an episode of the Twilight Zone called “Number 12 Looks Just Like You”. The episode is set in the distant future when humanity has achieved social harmony (eliminated war and other aggressions) partly by means of the technological ability to make each person conventionally beautiful. The character of Professor Sig, explains why: “Years before, wiser men than I . . . saw that physical unattractiveness was one of the factors that made men hate, so they charged the finest scientific minds with the task of eliminating ugliness in mankind.”

Here I could simply repeat my interpretation of Surrogates, but replace “crime” with “hate”.

So again, the writers of this Twilight Zone episode seem to think that significant suffering can come from PBLD, significant enough to cause hate – presumably the kind of hate that leads to wars and so on.

In the end, the fact that many other people tend to think significant suffering can come from PBLD might mean that this resonates as true for such people. So it might in fact be true. 

So far I’ve got a somewhat questionable argument affirming that PBLD is a significant cause of suffering, deserving attention from those who seriously want to reduce suffering in this world – a speculative affirmative answer to AXIS 2.

EVIDENCE AGAINST SIGNIFICANT SUFFERING PER AXIS 2

But there’s also a speculative rejecting answer to AXIS 2 that makes things confusing.

Many people who cannot attract a lover they find physically beautiful do not suffer from it. Indeed, many people even prefer a lover they do not find physically beautiful even if they are able to attract a lover they find physically beautiful. As the song by The Coasters / Jimmy Soul / NRBQ states: “If you want to be happy for the rest of your life, never make a pretty woman your wife. From my personal point of view, get an ugly girl to marry you.”

It seems to me there are four sub-categories of such people.

Sub-category 1: People who are indifferent about having no lover at all. While they aren’t happy about it, they don’t suffer either. I suspect most people like this are among the elderly, but not all.

But all I can do is suspect. I don’t have any real evidence for the existence of such people, let alone their demographics. Such evidence may indeed exist. I just haven't seen it.

Sub-category 2: People who are happy about having no lover at all. 

I think I’ve met at least one such person. So I can only trust that many others exist. But again, I lack any other clues for how big this group may be. And many people who make this claim about themselves could be sweet lemoning the issue. [“Sweet lemoning” is the opposite of “sour graping”.]

Sub-category 3: People who are happy in spite of having no lovers, such as many religious priests, monks and nuns and so on. They are not necessarily happy about having no lovers, but they are happy for other reasons and do not suffer from their lack of lovers.

Of course in the case of priests, we hear news stories about some of them taking lovers in defiance of the various prohibitions against it. The risk they took may show that they were suffering without the lovers they risked so much for, and therefore never really belonged in this sub-category. And this sheds at least some doubt on whether many people actually comprise this sub-category.

Sub-category 4: People who find happiness in having a lover they find spiritually beautiful, i.e. their lover has great self-confidence, social position, carries themselves well, and so on.

Among heterosexuals, I have not encountered many men who openly state that they fall into this category. All such men who spoke to me on the subject insist that they find their female lover physically beautiful. But again, I lack much reliable evidence in this matter.

But regarding heterosexual women, I have encountered some evidence for an exclusive appreciation of spiritual beauty. There is a plethora of literature giving advice to men on how to seduce women that supposedly works even if the woman does not find the man physically appealing. This literature intends to show men how to become spiritually beautiful to women, by cultivating such spiritual traits as self-confidence, social influence, and power display. The claim is that even men that most women find physically ugly can seduce a woman who does indeed find him physically ugly.

To the extent this is true and successfully practiced, there are women out there who are happy with lovers they do not find physically beautiful – because they find them spiritually beautiful.

But regardless of whether there are sub-categories and how many there are, the big question is whether these populations are the overwhelming majority or not. If they are the overwhelming majority, then very few people actually suffer from PBLD. If they are not the overwhelming majority, then there is most likely a significant population that suffers from PBLD.

FREELY REPORTED EVIDENCE IS SUSPECT

The second major reason for the confusion is that whatever evidence there is based on what people freely report is suspect. People may be lying or withholding the truth.

SUFFERERS ARE MOTIVATED TO DENY THEIR SUFFERING

First, let’s examine the possible lying or truth-withholding that supports the idea that many people suffer significantly from PBLD. This would be most people denying their suffering exists when in fact it does, or simply not mentioning their suffering.

I sense that, in Western culture at least, there is a prevailing attitude about physical beauty that would motivate people to deny they were suffering from PBLD. There’s a social penalty for confessing this sort of suffering. Anyone who openly states that they are suffering from an inability to attract a lover they find physically beautiful will likely be shamed, ridiculed, shunned and invalidated.

SUFFERERS ARE SHAMED AS BEING SHALLOW

PBLD sufferers will be shamed as people will accuse them of being shallow for placing such importance on physical beauty at the expense of spiritual beauty. The “depth” metaphor is that it takes a certain admirable sophistication (depth of character) to appreciate spiritual beauty. So if one lacks this depth-afforded appreciation for spiritual beauty, one is of shallow character. This sort of shallowness is regarded as a character flaw, a moral bad choice, which will get one shunned in polite society. At best, it will be regarded as a sickness or form of brainwashing, for which one should seek psychotherapy, or at least practice dating people one does not find physically beautiful.

I speculate that the reason for this shaming is the pity we feel for (or solidarity we feel with) those who are conventionally un-beautiful. These are the folks who are likely being rejected by an overwhelming majority of people, including those who suffer PBLD. Our pity for (or solidarity with) those rejected motivates us to shame those who reject them, as if to say: “How dare you reject people as lovers because of their lack of physical beauty, you shallow prick!”

Indeed, those who suffer from PBLD are quite rejecting those they do not find physically beautiful. And indeed, those they do not find physically beautiful are most likely those who are conventionally un-beautiful or conventionally ugly, and therefore suffer various forms of rejection regularly. So it is an easy accusation of shallowness to hurl at the rejecters.

SUFFERERS ARE SHAMED AS BEING HYPOCRITICAL

And because the rejecters and the rejected are often members of the same group, i.e. the physically un-beautiful are rejecting the physically un-beautiful, the rejecters are also shamed for being hypocritical, as if to say: “How can you be so shallow as to reject the physically un-beautiful when you ain't so hot yourself? That's hypocritical!” Illustrating this, the “The Beard” episode of the television show Seinfeld included a comedic encounter between the characters George, Kramer and Elaine.

George to Kramer, disparagingly: “You fixed me up with a bald woman.”

Elaine to George: “Do you see the irony here? You’re rejecting somebody because they’re bald.”

George to Elaine: “So?”

Elaine to George: “You’re bald!”

I don’t think this could be comprehended, let alone viewed as comedy, without there being some popular support for Elaine’s position here. To see the irony she points out requires some understanding of why George is hypocritical.

SUFFERERS ARE SHAMED AS EXAGGERATING THEIR SUFFERING

Those who complain that they do suffer significantly from PBLD are accused of exaggerating their suffering and shamed for it. They are told that the inability to attract a lover one finds physically beautiful is a trivial matter compared against real suffering, such as chronic hunger or chronic pain or disease and so on. Such accusations are often accompanied by additional shaming accusations of inflated ego, and/or self-absorption, or some other delusion of self-importance.

SUFFERERS ARE RIDICULED FOR BEING UNWANTED

So far I’ve covered the ways that polite people shame those who complain that they cannot attract a lover they find physically beautiful. Now I want to mention the way that callous and malevolent people do their shaming. The callous and malevolent are most likely to ridicule the sufferer: “You can’t find a pretty lover because you are so ugly! Nobody wants you! Ha ah!”

NOTE THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN TRIVIALIZING VERSUS AFFIRMING THE IMPORTANCE OF PHYSICAL BEAUTY

Notice that polite people dish out their shaming in a manner that trivializes physical beauty. Callous and malevolent people do so in a manner that affirms the importance of physical beauty. This will be discussed at greater length later.

THERE’S NO COMPENSATING MOTIVATION TO ENDURE THE SHAMING

I want to mention that this shaming would only motivate PBLD sufferers to under-report their suffering if there were no compensating advantage to accurately reporting their suffering. If, for example, complaining of suffering PBLD greatly increased one’s odds of attracting a physically beautiful lover, then PBLD sufferers would most likely do so in spite of the shaming. But, to my knowledge, there is no such compensating advantage. In fact, complaining of suffering PBLD appears to repel all possible lovers, let alone physically beautiful ones.

SUFFERERS ARE SHUNNED FOR COMPLAINING ABOUT THEIR SUFFERING

And like all sufferers, PBLD sufferers are likely shunned for complaining about their suffering. The general principle here is that one person’s suffering makes other people uncomfortable. The discomfort of the others might aptly be expressed “Ok, so you’re suffering. But the effort required of me to relieve your suffering is too much for me and would ruin my own fragile happiness. I really don’t want to help you so much that I myself end up much less happy. I don’t want to sacrifice myself for you. But your suffering makes me feel morally obligated to do so. And I feel guilty for not doing so. So to protect myself from this feeling of guilt, I’m going to make excuses to stay away from you.” And so the others shun the sufferer to get away from the discomfort. This seems particularly true when the suffering is incurable. Here the sufferer can do nothing but bring others down by complaining about their suffering. And others don’t wish to be brought down. Depressing people are naturally shunned by others.

This reason for under-reporting suffering is certainly not unique to PBLD suffering. It likely applies just as much to other types of suffering, such as suffering from cancer and so on. So being shunned by non-sufferers doesn’t count as a reason why PBLD suffering would be less reported than other forms of suffering. But at a minimum, it counts nonetheless as a reason for under-reporting on par with other forms of suffering.

SUFFERERS ARE INVALIDATED BY BEING RE-DIAGNOSED AS FEARING INTIMACY

One final penalty for reporting one’s PBLD suffering is that many mental health professionals will claim the sufferers are not really feeling what they are feeling, and that the real problem is the sufferer’s fear of intimacy. The logic runs as follows:

Proposed theory to be supported: People who report suffering PBLD are just rationalizing. Their real problem is fear of intimacy.

Supporting conjecture #1: If one fears intimacy, then to protect one’s self from opportunities for intimacy, one invents a reason why nobody can be an acceptable mate.

Supporting conjecture #2: If one fears intimacy, then one way to pretend nobody is an acceptable mate is to pretend that all the available potential mates are not physically beautiful enough.

Supporting conjecture #3: One way to pretend that all the available potential mates are not physically beautiful enough is to conversely pretend that only the unavailable folks are physically beautiful enough.

Supporting conjecture #4: One way to pretend all of this is to pretend that one suffers PBLD.

Conclusion: The theory is supported. People who report suffering PBLD are just pretending. Their real problem is fear of intimacy.

Hence, if PBLD sufferers do exist, many mental health professionals will invalidate these sufferers’ feelings of suffering. This can only aggravate the suffering, and pose a stiff penalty for reporting the suffering to a mental health professional.

CONSIDERING AN ALTERNATE REASON FREELY REPORTED EVIDENCE IS SUSPECT

So far I have shown how those who suffer PBLD are shamed, ridiculed, shunned and invalidated when they express their suffering. And I’ve done so to give a reason why such suffering may be greatly under-reported or denied. The sufferers must publicly deny their suffering to avoid being penalized these ways. And this comprises one major reason why I don’t think we can trust what people report about this kind of suffering.

MILD SUFFERERS ARE MOTIVATED TO EXAGGERATE THEIR SUFFERING

And there is an alternative reason for not trusting what the sufferers report about their suffering. It could rather be that the sufferers are over-reporting. It could be that PBLD simply isn’t a significant source of suffering, and those who claim to suffer from this source are exaggerating their misery for various reasons. Likewise, it would mean that the civilized shamers and mental health professionals just discussed happen to be correct about a few things. What these civilized shamers and mental health professionals say may make the exaggerating sufferers feel shame or frustration, but what they say may also be the truth.

First, let’s address the exceptions to this possibility, beginning with the accusation of shallowness. Even if the accusation of shallowness is true, it doesn't mean the sufferer is exaggerating. Shallow people can still suffer greatly.

Also, the accusation of being a hypocrite doesn’t really apply. Hypocrisy basically means a contradictory relationship between ideas and/or actions. It is basically a synonym for contradiction. There is no actual contradiction between being rejected for one’s own lack of physical beauty and rejecting others for their lack of physical beauty. It may be claimed that being rejected should trigger empathy for others who get rejected, which would prevent one from rejecting others. This may be true in certain situations, such as being polite in choosing teammates for sports. But I don’t believe it applies to romantic and sexual rejections. In romantic and sexual matters, rejection is an emotional feeling – it is aversion against this suggested romantic/sexual pairing. I don’t believe empathy converts the rejection-aversion into acceptance-desire. No matter how much one has been emotionally hurt by being rejected by others, the resulting empathy with those one feels a romantic/sexual aversion against does not convert that aversion to desire. At best, it makes one reject others in the most polite and compassionate manner possible, but it doesn’t prevent the rejection. One may even act so as to accept the other as a lover, by pretending and going through the motions, but the feelings of aversion are still there – the emotional rejection has still occurred.

So shallowness and alleged hypocrisy don’t count as reasons for exaggerating the suffering that comes from PBLD. But the other reasons offered by the shamers have validity: inflated ego, and/or self-absorption, or some other delusion of self-importance. These reasons could actually apply.

SUFFERERS EXAGGERATE PBLD SUFFERING TO INFLATE THEIR SELF-IMPORTANCE

The basic idea here is that one exaggerates one’s own suffering because it is one’s own, and therefore more important than other people’s suffering, as if to say: “My suffering is the greatest because it’s mine.” This seems to require a certain lack of empathy with other true sufferers, and perhaps even a sense of privilege wherein one believes one is entitled to relief from any and all suffering. 

SUFFERERS EXAGGERATE PBLD SUFFERING TO DISGUISE THEIR FEAR OF INTIMACY

Finally, the mental health professionals, who accuse the PBLD sufferers of exaggerating their suffering to cover up their fear of intimacy, could simply be correct. As frustrating as this diagnosis may be to the sufferer, it may be true.

Moreover, there is likely evidence for what these mental health professionals claim here. Likely many of their patients who initially complained of PBLD may have overcome their fear of intimacy, accepted an available spiritual mate, and become quite happy as a consequence. Such evidence, while not proving that fear of intimacy is the real problem 100% of the time, is nonetheless strong – strong enough to cast serious suspicion on those who claim to suffer significantly from PBLD.

So anyway, I have given two major reasons we can’t trust what people publicly report about the significance of suffering from PBLD. This alone creates enough confusion around AXIS 2 of the question of whether this suffering is significant to make me withhold judgment on the entire question.

ADDING SOME OTHER QUESTIONS

I'm not finished examining the question of whether PBLD can cause significant suffering. But I think it’s time to deal with some dependently related vexing questions. Exploring these other questions will occasionally shed some light on the question we have so far been dealing with, what I will call “The Original Question.”

TWO MORE QUESTIONS

Here’s the first two of these dependent related vexing questions:

DEPENDENT QUESTION 1: Could it be that the PBLD suffering can actually be significant, but that it is being relieved or pre-empted by placebo relief-methods?

DEPENDENT QUESTION 2: And if so, are the placebo relief-methods causing other types of suffering that offset their advantages?

JUSTIFYING THESE QUESTIONS

I want to begin by discussing the reasons I’m concerned about these dependent questions.

I worry that PBLD suffering could potentially be significant and epidemic, but that it’s otherwise sufferers may be finding relief in placebo relief-methods that …

1. only partially work, 

and/or

2. create as much or more suffering than they relieve. 

Expounding on point 1, I consider it likely that, if otherwise PBLD sufferers are finding relief in placebo relief-methods, then these placebo relief-methods may work only partly. This is so, I speculate, because the placebo relief-methods are based on lies or half-truths, such that reality contradicts them to some extent. Placebo relief-methods are like a bad patch-up job on a continually crumbling wall. The wall continues to crack through the patches, and further patching up is always needed – lies to cover up exposed lies, to cover up more exposed lies. For example, a PBLD sufferer is so conventionally ugly that he is not likely to find a physical beauty match, ever. But we give him the placebo relief belief that physical beauty is relative enough to make physical beauty matches likely. But decades go by with no physical beauty matches presenting themselves. Reality exposes our lie. So we need to come up with more lies, more unfounded reasons why the physical beauty matches have not appeared, but are still likely to appear. It is during those times when reality exposes our lies that our placebo relief-method only partly works, and suffering returns.

Expounding on Point 2, I consider it conceivable that PBLD suffering could drive its sufferers to seek relief in various placebo ideologies that conflict among one another, creating war, and with it, much suffering. Again, this is basically the hypothesis portrayed in the “Number 12 Looks Just Like You” episode of the Twilight Zone that I mentioned earlier, wherein it was stated that “… physical unattractiveness was one of the factors that made men hate.” So let’s call this hypothesis the Number 12 hypothesis, or N12 hypothesis for short.

Furthermore, I worry that PBLD suffering may be the only form of suffering prevalent and incessant enough to drive its sufferers to these placebo relief ideologies in numbers sufficient to create these wars. In other words, maybe physical unattractiveness was the fundamental factor that “made men hate”. This one goes a little further than the N12 hypothesis, so let’s call it the N12+ hypothesis.

A BASIC N12 AND N12+ HYPOTHESIS

Now I want to briefly outline a prototypical N12 and N12+ hypothesis so that we can get a feel for how well an N12 and N12+ hypothesis can explain aggression and war and so on.

Here is an outline of an N12 hypothesis:

Point 1: PBLD suffering is significant and widespread.

Point 2: In most cases, PBLD suffering cannot be relieved by a direct objective method, because...

Point 2a: The direct objective method requires that the PBLD sufferer undergo changes to his/her face and/or body, to increase their conventional beauty, so that they will have plenty of physical beauty matches, so that they will have lovers they find physically beautiful.

Point 2b: In most cases, the technology required to make these changes to the sufferer’s face and/or body does not exist. The PBLD sufferer must remain conventionally unbeautiful.

Point 3: Religious and/or political ideologies offer alternative relief-methods to PBLD sufferers. These are:

Point 3a: Compensational relief-method – community: At a minimum, ideologies offer a sense of community and “belonging” as compensation to PBLD sufferers.

Point 3b: Compensational relief-method – other benefits: Many ideologies promise other compensational benefits to the PBLD sufferer, such as greater health and longer life, eternal life or afterlife, economic opportunities, protection from oppressors, revenge against oppressors, and so on.

Point 3c: Value Replacing relief-method: Ideologies can replace the value of having a lover one finds physically beautiful with the value of being a good supporter of the ideology or virtuous example of the ideology’s moral code (if it has one).

Point 3d: Indirect Objective relief-method: One can become a very powerful leader in the ideology’s movement. This can attract lovers one finds physically beautiful, in spite of being conventionally unbeautiful. It seems that political/social/economic power is an element of spiritual beauty that attracts mates even when physical beauty is absent. This seems especially true for conventionally unbeautiful males attracting conventionally beautiful females.

Point 4: PBLD sufferers therefore align themselves with a given ideology based on temperament, family upbringing, social pressures and so on. And they commit heavily to the ideology they pick, investing their psyches in the ideology to the degree that ideology relieves their PBLD suffering.

Point 5: Even people who don’t suffer PBLD align themselves with a given ideology. Sometimes this is because non-sufferers feel solidarity with the sufferers, but sometimes the compensations offered by the ideology are also just pleasant icing on the cake for non-PBLD sufferers.

Point 6: Most, if not many, of the relief-methods offered by these ideologies must be placebo relief-methods, because…

Point 6a: The relief-methods of one ideology will contradict the relief-methods of all competing ideologies.

Point 6b: All ideologies and their relief-methods cannot be the correct, truthful ideologies and relief-methods. All the ideologies, or all but one, must be false placebos.

Point 6c: In all conflicts between any two ideologies and their relief-methods, at least one of conflicting relief-methods is a placebo, if not both.

Point 6d: Placebo relief-methods that conflict with truthful relief-methods drag truthful relief-methods into the conflict.

Point 7: Since every PBLD sufferer’s current ideology is relieving their suffering, abandoning their current ideology means a return of suffering, which they cannot bear. This creates extreme ideological stubbornness.

Point 8: Ideological stubbornness generates additional suffering that I call ideology-dependent suffering. 

Point 8a: The most obvious way ideological stubbornness generates ideology-dependent suffering is through inevitable aggressions between conflicting ideologies – power struggles, cross-oppression, and even war. Ideologies tend to threaten one another. And the stubbornness means these threats will not be tolerated. PBLD sufferers on either side of these conflicts would rather inflict the ravages of war than go back to suffering PBLD.

Point 8b: Another way ideological stubbornness generates ideology-dependent suffering is when an ideology is false, and its supporters stubbornly act on that ideology's wrong theories of human nature and the world. They make big mistakes that hurt themselves and others in their community.

Point 9: Here’s another form of ideology-dependent suffering that sometimes does not come from ideological stubbornness. This is when the leaders of an ideology oppress others in their community as an expression of power in an effort to attract lovers they find physically beautiful. Again, the classic male despot comes to mind. His power may indeed attract lovers he finds physically beautiful, so that he does not suffer PBLD. But the situation only holds true so long as he keeps expressing that power. So he must constantly oppress his underlings to keep from suffering PBLD. But the despot may or may not invest much in the ideology of which he is a leader. He may be a leader of an ideology, but he may not give much a crap about it beyond the benefits of the power he enjoys.

So in review, PBLD suffering generates ideological stubbornness, conflict, harmful mistakes and despotism. And these generate additional suffering – ideology-dependent suffering.

Point 10: Therefore, PBLD suffering is a major cause of other ideology-dependent suffering.

Point 11: Therefore, we cannot relieve most of the world’s suffering without using the direct objective relief-method of offering PBLD sufferers the opportunity to become conventionally beautiful. It would be necessary.

Point 12: This direct objective relief-method would be insufficient by itself to cure the world’s suffering, because there exist other ideology-independent forms of suffering (disease, poverty). But it would still be necessary.

That is a basic outline of an N12 hypothesis.

Here’s how an N12+ hypothesis differs, beginning at Point 10:

Point 10: PBLD happens to be the only cause of other ideology-dependent suffering.

Point 11: Other types of ideology-independent suffering (disease, poverty) are relieved by the compensation of having a physically beautiful lover. People dying of cancer don’t mind it so much when they can die in the arms of a physically beautiful lover who thrills them with their loving touch. People don’t mind toiling at labors with very little pay when they can come home to a lover who thrills them with their loving touch.

Point 12: Such compensated people don't invest much of their psyche in any ideology. They are not ideologically stubborn.

Point 12a: Thus, ideological conflict is greatly reduced – perhaps eliminated altogether, since it is easier to convince someone that their ideology is wrong and get them to switch.

Point 12b: And thus harmful actions in the name of a wrong ideology is reduced, since it is easier to convince someone that their ideology is wrong and harmful.

Point 13: Even otherwise despots would have no reason to become despots – no reason to oppress others in a display of power.

Point 14: Therefore, to restate Point 10, PBLD suffering is the only cause of other ideology-dependent suffering.

Point 15: Therefore, we cannot relieve most of the world's suffering without using the direct objective relief-method of offering PBLD sufferers the opportunity to become conventionally beautiful. It would be necessary.

Point 16: This direct objective relief-method would also be sufficient by itself to cure the world’s suffering, because there exist no other ideology-independent forms of suffering (disease, poverty).

And so that is an outline of an H12+ hypothesis.

I worry that an N12 or N12+ hypothesis could be true. There’s a certain plausibility to the hypothesis, a plausibility reflected in the fact that others seem to have speculated that an N12 hypothesis could be true, others such as the writers of the “Number 12 Looks Just Like You” episode screenplay of the Twilight Zone. And this is the best I can do to justify asking the pair of dependent questions, which are:

DEPENDENT QUESTION 1: Could it be that the PBLD suffering can actually be significant, but that it is being relieved or pre-empted by placebo relief-methods?

DEPENDENT QUESTION 2: And if so, are the placebo relief-methods causing other types of suffering that offset their advantages?

REPHRASING THE PAIR OF DEPENDENT QUESTIONS

So now the pair of dependent questions can be rephrased as just one question:

DEPENDENT QUESTION: Is an N12 or N12+ hypothesis true or false?

This question vexes me as it seems there’s no way to be sure one way or the other.

PROBLEMS ANSWERING THE DEPENDENT QUESTION

Consider the following problem with verifying an N12 or N12+ hypothesis:

If an N12 or N12+ hypothesis is true, the people whose PBLD suffering is being relieved by placebo and harmful relief-methods cannot ever admit it. That is, they’ll never admit that these relief-methods are placebos or otherwise harmful. Placebo relief-methods only work because the sufferer believes such relief methods are truthful. Or, in the case of the despot, the placebo methods only work for him because he publicly supports the associated ideology. So he must avoid any public confession that he knows it’s all just placebos. So if we seek to verify an N12 or N12+ hypothesis, we can’t trust what people say about the relief-methods that help them. They will always deny their relief-methods are placebo, whether these relief-methods are placebo or not.

Therefore, our attempts to verify an N12 or N12+ hypothesis should focus more on evidence outside of what suspected relieved PBLD sufferers report. This being the case, let’s explore what kind of evidence there can be.

There are basically two axes of evidence to investigate. Both are discovered by investigating the people we suspect are subject to the N12 or N12+ hypothesis – that is, people who might otherwise be PBLD sufferers if it weren’t for a relief-method that was placebo or otherwise harmful. I call such people “N12/N12+ suspects”. (Just “suspect” for short.)

VERIFYING AXIS 1

To verify AXIS 1, we need evidence for or against the likelihood that the N12/N12+ suspect would suffer PBLD if it weren’t for some kind of subjective relief-method or compensational relief-method. Evidence for this would support the N12/N12+ hypothesis.

Or, we need evidence for or against the likelihood that the N12/N12+ suspect would suffer PBLD if it weren’t for his or her expression of power within an ideology – the suspect’s power attracting lovers he/she finds physically beautiful. Evidence for this would support the N12/N12+ hypothesis.

The only evidence I can think of for AXIS 1 is whether or not the suspect is conventionally beautiful. If the suspect is conventionally beautiful, they likely don’t have a problem with PBLD. If the suspect is conventionally un-beautiful, then there's a greater chance the suspect might have PBLD suffering that is being relieved by a potentially placebo relief-method. This likelihood increases the more conventionally ugly the suspect is.

VERIFYING AXIS 2

To verify AXIS 2, we need evidence for or against the suspect’s ideology being logically flawed. Evidence for this would support the N12/N12+ hypothesis. Also, if the ideology were logically flawed and the suspect has been made aware of the flaws, yet the suspect remains loyal to the ideology, this would be even stronger evidence supporting the N12/N12+ hypothesis.

HOW TO DETECT SOME RELEVANT LOGICAL FLAWS

I would now like to take some time to discuss how to detect these logical flaws.

The most obvious indicator of logical flaw is the stubborn self-contradiction, which is particularly popular among people who have some acquaintance with philosophy. An example of self-contradiction is the liar’s paradox, which states: “Everything I say is a lie”. A similar self-contradiction that people take seriously is radical relativism, which states: “It is absolutely true that there are no absolute truths”. Once aware of this self-contradiction, it would definitely be suspect to continue believing it. Yet stubbornly continuing to believe it is precisely what most philosophically acquainted people do, by obscuring the contradiction under layers of sophistry, or by outright embracing contradiction as a matter of policy. In other words, such people either try to hide their logical errors, or they simply proclaim that, not only are they themselves illogical, but that everyone is, and that we should just make the best of it. (Many do a complex mixture of both.) The obvious problem with both of these approaches is they do not resolve the contradiction. The sophistry approach just tries to hide the contradiction. Embracing contradiction just pushes the contradiction to another level. If embracing can be stated: “Contradictions are OK.”, then it can also be true that “Contradictions are not OK, precisely when and in the manner they are OK.” Anyway, if these responses to self-contradiction persist after being exposed and explained to someone who believes them, and if these self-contradictions support a relief-method, then I’d say the relief-method is likely a placebo.

A less obvious indicator of illogic is the stubborn regular contradiction, as opposed to the self-contradiction. Regular contradictions do not contradict themselves, but merely contradict some other belief held by the same mind. These are no less serious than the self-contradiction, but are merely more difficult to spot. And again, if such a stubborn regular contradiction supports a relief-method, that relief-method may be a placebo.

If either self-contradiction or regular contradiction dissipates on discovery, rather than stubbornly remains, then these contradictions can’t indicate a placebo relief-method, unless some other relief-providing contradiction more or less simultaneously replaces it.

Another good indicator of illogic is what I call “truth-and-logic-criteria hijacking”, which is the claim that truth and logical coherence are produced by something other than correspondence to reality and the lack of contradiction. Once a person believes that truth does not correspond to an absolute reality, they are free to regard any belief as true, without constraint, provided their criteria for truth is consistent. Once a person believes logic has nothing to do with truth, they can dispense with the consistency.

This freedom of belief comes from the fact that, once the criteria for truth and logic are chosen, that criteria cannot be refuted by any claims of truth or logic. A classic example is the claim that God creates truth and logic. If someone objects by stating that truth is correspondence to reality, the devout can simply reply that the correspondence theory of truth is itself only true because God made it true. If someone then objects that this is a senselessly impossible contradiction (that both criteria for truth cannot be true), the devout simply replies that through God anything is possible, and His ways need not make sense to us. And thus the absurd becomes immune from logical refutation. 

And they can get away with it provided the truth-and-logic criteria they select (instead of correspondence to reality and coherence) is somehow popular enough to be validated by a significant number of other folk. This is why the claim that God creates truth works, while the claim that doorknobs create truth does not work. Both claims are equally absurd, but only the God one works because of its popularity. Popularity, in turn, is determined by the emotional appeal of the selected criteria, such as a powerful God doing our bidding provided we are devoted enough and pray enough. But one emotional aspect most useful in the selection of God as the criteria, is the various ways that believing in God can relieve suffering. And thus we have the connection between the relief of suffering and illogic. We have a good (although not infallible) indicator for a placebo relief-method (but only applicable to those who are illogical precisely because they see Him as the criteria for truth and logic. There are after all, other reasons to believe in God that have nothing to do with this particular kind of illogic).

Belief that doorknobs create truth would also be a good indicator for a placebo relief-method if it were believed they were capable of relieving suffering. In this way, a doorknobist religion, or at least a cult, is certainly possible if someone would just write a mystical book claiming how doorknobs do in fact relieve suffering. (Chances are this mystical book would have to anthropomorphize doorknobs a bit, giving them an undetectable consciousness and will that can nonetheless be appeased and directed at easing suffering.)

But one other instance of truth-and-logic criteria hijacking is worth mentioning here – the one that replaces God with society. Many secular intellectuals claim that truth is social, meaning that the criteria for truth is whether society has successfully programmed us to believe it. (See Richard Rorty’s “Epistemological behaviorism”.)

Again, since many of our sufferings and relief from thereof come from other people, i.e. society, there’s good emotional reason to vest swayable powers in society. People imagine reliving all manner of suffering by performing “social reform”, not merely such that we treat one another better, but such that we sway the very criteria for truth and logic themselves to produce new truths that relieve suffering. This of course is a variant of the radical relativism I discussed before, but with truth-and-logic criteria hijacking sophistry thrown in to make it immune to criticisms in terms of truth and logic.

[This is the end of my current draft of this chapter. What follows are fragments of further or alternative expressions of these ideas. They may interest the reader.]

The view:

Most of us are conventionally un-beautiful and conventionally ugly people.

Most of us believe in illogical ideologies.

---------------------------------

There are some “worry premises” to examine here.

WORRY PREMISE 1: People secure in their continued ability to attract lovers they find physically beautiful do not place so much importance in their ideology that they’d go to war and inflict suffering on others over it – unless expressing solidarity with PBLD sufferers who DO place much importance on that ideology.

WORRY PREMISE 2: People secure in their continued ability to attract lovers they find physically beautiful do not mind other forms of material poverty much. Working hard all day for low pay isn’t so bad when one can come home every night to a lover whose touch creates ecstatic thrills.

WORRY PREMISE 3: Powerful despots who currently attract lovers they find physically beautiful only continue to oppress others because they think doing so is an expression of power that attracts lovers they find physically beautiful.

IS PBLD POTENTIALLY SIGNIFICANT BUT PRE-EMPTIVELY RELIEVED BY PLACEBO RELIEF-METHODS?

As to this first question, I suspect that PBLD suffering is indeed preemptively relieved by placebo relief-methods. My suspicion centers particularly around the ways religion can be used to pre-empt PBLD suffering. And I think it highly likely that the relief methods used by religions are placebos. So let me first explain how religions relieve PBLD suffering. Then let me explain why these relief-methods are likely placebos.

GRANTING BEAUTY IN THE AFTERLIFE

One key relief-method used by religions to pre-empt PBLD suffering is the promise of physical beauty in the afterlife. Supposedly, after they die (if they are good and faithful), PBLD sufferers will be made physically beautiful and therefore able to attract lovers they find physically beautiful – that is, if such issues still concern them in the afterlife. 

RELIGIOUS RELATIVIZATION REFERENCING GOD'S PHYSICAL BEAUTY SCALE

Another key relief-method used by religions to pre-empt PBLD suffering is the relativization of physical beauty scales, with the claim that if one ranks ugly as measured against all the physical beauty scales of we earthy humans, one still ranks as beautiful against God’s scale of physical beauty – we are all beautiful in the eyes of God. And here the implication is apparently that we on Earth should strive to adopt God’s beauty scale. One can always hope.

There may be other relief-methods used by religions to pre-empt PBLD suffering, but they escape my imagination.

RELIGIOUS RELIEF-METHODS ARE LIKELY PLACEBOS

Anyway, here is the reasoning behind my suspicion that most, or all, of these religious relief-methods are placebos:

If a religion is false, then the relief-methods that depend on that religion being true are placebo relief-methods. Now consider that all religions claim to be the one true religion. But only one of them, if any, can be the true one. This means that all but one religion is false and the relief-methods that depend on their religions being true, are in fact placebos. (And as an agnostic myself, I must entertain the prospect that all religions are false, and all relief-methods that depend on their being true are therefore placebo relief-methods.)

MORE CONFUSION ABOUT THE ORIGINAL QUESTION

Now I will introduce a problem with this that will contribute to the confusion I have around my original question: “Is PBLD a significant form of suffering?”

Observe that I have simply imagined ways that religion could preemptively relieve ugliness-related suffering, such as PBLD. But my imaginings do not establish that PBLD suffering would be significant or widespread without such religious relief. It could be that the PBLD suffering pre-emptively relieved by religion could potentially exist, but would be mild.

THE KNOWLEDGE PROBLEM OF POSSIBLE OVERKILL RELIEF

The problem here is we can’t discern how significant the PBLD suffering being preemptively relieved would have been without the relief – precisely because the relief may or may not have been more effective than required. If the relief-method is strong enough to pre-empt significant suffering, then we can’t know whether the pre-empted suffering could have been either mild or significant. I’d call this the “knowledge problem of possible overkill relief”. And to complicate matters here, we can’t even determine whether or not the relief-method is strong – strong enough to pre-emptively relieve significant suffering, or weaker, only strong enough to relieve mild suffering.

Or can we? The religious relief-methods I have so far imagined appear to be strong enough to relieve significant sufferings other than PBLD, such as the sufferings from diseases and so on (not cure the disease itself, but only relieve the associated suffering). If these other significant sufferings are relieved by these religious relief-methods, then PBLD suffering could be just as significant. But again, we can’t tell. PBLD suffering could just as well have been mild instead. So the knowledge problem of possible overkill relief remains.

SECULAR RELIEF-METHODS

So far I have focused on religious relief-methods because I think they would be the most obvious candidates for being placebo relief methods. But now I want to examine secular relief-methods to see to what degree they may be placebos as well.

SECULAR PHYSICAL BEAUTY RELATIVIZATION

Consider that a highly popular secular means of relieving the suffering that would come from PBLD is the relativization of physical beauty scales. This is when we tell the otherwise sufferer: “You may think the reason you have not attracted a lover you find physically beautiful is because you rank low on the scale of physical beauty, as in, you are not beautiful enough by that scale to attract a lover you find physically beautiful. But there exist alternative scales of physical beauty by which you rank much higher. And several people who desire you (according to one of these alternative beauty scales) might be physically beautiful to you. In other words, don’t give up. Someone you find physically beautiful may yet find you physically beautiful in return. You may have several physical beauty matches. And you may become lovers.”

If this relativization is truthful, then continued searching may eventually produce a lover the sufferer finds physically beautiful.  But then again, for various reasons including being institutionalized or just bad luck, continued searching may not produce any such lover, and would make the relativization placebo. And if the relativization is a placebo, then continued searching definitely won’t produce such a lover. But of course, whether truthful or placebo, either will produce a sense of hope that will reduce suffering.

But I am here interested in determining whether this secular relativization is a placebo relief-method since this will become important when trying to answer DEPENDENT QUESTION 2.

CONDITIONS FOR TRUTHFUL AND PLACEBO RELATIVIZATION

The deciding factor for whether or not secular relativization is a placebo is whether or not there actually exists a physical beauty scale that a PBLD sufferer finds useful – one that turns up a physical beauty match.

For secular relativization to be truthful, three conditions must be met.

Condition 1: There must actually exist a scale of physical beauty against which the sufferer ranks high. In other words, there must actually be people who find the sufferer physically beautiful – or at least could find the sufferer physically beautiful with some easily achievable acclimation. 

Condition 2: The physical beauty “judgments” must be mutual. There must be physical beauty matches. Among those actual people who do, or easily could, find the sufferer physically beautiful, there must be enough people who the sufferer finds, or could easily find, physically beautiful – enough to make it likely that the sufferer would meet several of them and actually become lovers with at least one of them.

Condition 3: The likelihood of finding a lover this way is not significantly reduced by some kind of forced separation from society, such as being institutionalized.

A failure in any of these conditions would make secular relativization a placebo relief-method that could only supply hope, but never deliver any truth-based relief.

IS SECULAR RELATIVIZATION A PLACEBO?

Given this, I now ask a second-level dependent question here: How likely is it that the secular relativization of physical beauty is truthful versus placebo?

FOCUS ON CONDITION 1

It’s been my experience that most of the effort to administer secular relativization of physical beauty focuses on satisfying condition 1, by establishing that physical beauty is relative, and allowing the PBLD sufferer to imagine the other conditions are also satisfied.

But let us examine the likelihood of satisfying all the conditions, beginning with condition 1, the claim for usefully alternative physical beauty scales – people who find the PBLD sufferer physically beautiful.

CONDITION 1: PHYSICAL BEAUTY IS RELATIVE

So we begin with the arguments proving that physical beauty is relative. The 16th century paintings of Peter Paul Rubens are often cited to show that even conventional female physical beauty changes relative to time. Rubens painted portraits of women who would be considered too chubby by today’s dominant standards, suggesting that chubbier women were considered the height of female physical beauty back in Rubens’ day. The female physical beauty standards of Jamaica are often cited to show that female beauty standards vary relative to culture. Again, Jamaicans prefer women slightly chubbier than most of Western civilization. And even within a culture, alternate scales of physical beauty exist, as there are many people who find physically beautiful what the majority does not. Almost every body shape has a niche of appreciators, even within the world of pornography.

IS PHYSICAL BEAUTY RELATIVE ENOUGH?

While these arguments may be true, they may fall short of establishing Condition 1 of our criteria for truthful relativization. Standards for physical beauty may be relative, but are they relative enough to help the PBLD sufferer? Are there really enough people whose physical beauty preferences deviate from the majority norm such that everyone is found physically beautiful by someone? Can the beauty standards of Jamaica be of any use to chubby women who don’t live in Jamaica? Can a PBLD sufferer with Treacher Collins syndrome, whose face deviates radically from almost all standards for physical beauty, count on the existence of people who find his or her face physically beautiful?

My general experience with the issue seems to say that while physical beauty is relative, it’s not really relative enough to help many who I suspect suffer significantly from PBLD. Whenever I go out in public, I see many people whose face and/or body are conventionally un-beautiful or ugly, who appear unhappy ...

I suppose even PBLD sufferers with Treacher Collins syndrome could find admirers who find them physically beautiful after all. I have speculated how this could be done. This speculation of mine may be wild, but I think it’s worth writing down here. So here goes:

I see it as a two step process.

Step 1: The sufferer acquires, strengthens, or merely shows off their spiritual beauty.

Step 2: People who are attracted to the sufferer’s spiritual beauty begin to psychologically experience that spiritual beauty as physical beauty. (Call this the Shallow Hal Phase 1 Effect, after the movie called Shallow Hal, in which this principle was somewhat twistedly demonstrated by the lead character, Hal, who was hypnotized into experiencing spiritual beauty as physical beauty. The hypnotism was phase 1 of the changes he went through regarding beauty.)

Somehow I imagine step one would involve acquiring the spiritual beauty of openly and politically rebelling against the dominant physical beauty standards – adopting the mantra: “Fuck your fascist beauty standards!” Many people apparently find this attitude spiritually beautiful in the extreme.

THE PROBLEM OF CONDITION 2

But even if condition 1 can be satisfied for even extreme cases such as PBLD sufferers with Treacher Collins syndrome, condition 2 may fail. Even if a Treacher Collins syndrome PBLD sufferer can find people who find the sufferer physically beautiful, there might not be enough of such people to assure that the sufferer will find one of them physically beautiful. There may be no physical beauty matches.

...

Suppose for a minute that step one does involve this kind of political spiritual beauty about physical beauty. And suppose step two also happens, that is, others experience the sufferer’s spiritual beauty as physical beauty via the Shallow Hal Phase 1 Effect. This gets us to the satisfaction of Condition 1 for truthful relativization. Condition 2, the one about mutuality, may or may not take effect here. But if it does, and Condition 3 is also true, then we’ve got a somewhat ironic case of placebo relativization becoming a self-fulfilling truthful relativization. The very act of insisting that physical beauty is relative enough has in fact made it relative enough.

I suspect that Condition 2 can more likely be achieved when the Shallow Hal Phase 1 Effect is mutual, that is, when two PBLD sufferers experience a Shallow Hal Phase 1 Effect about one another, made possible by the fact that they share the same politics about physical beauty and therefore find one another spiritually beautiful. And yes, at least one of these PBLD sufferers could have the extreme problematic ugliness of Treacher Collins syndrome.

If there’s any truth to this wild speculation of mine, it would depend on the extent to which the Shallow Hal Phase 1 Effect works on people.

It may be interesting to note that when I ask my friends whether they know of any cases of the Shallow Hal Phase 1 Effect, many appear not to understand the question – not to get what the Shallow Hal Phase 1 Effect really is. They appear to confuse the Shallow Hal Phase 1 Effect with simply being attracted to someone based on spiritual beauty. Or, more interestingly, they object to the very distinction between physical and spiritual beauty, claiming that they are attracted to an integration of the two that cannot be analyzed in terms of either. But with some back and forth clarification, some of these friends suggest that the Shallow Hal Phase 1 Effect has taken place in their lives to some degree. And they typically add the observation that the Shallow Hal Phase 1 Effect is more prevalent or likely in women rather than men.

But until a scientific study of the matter comes to light, the prevalence and potency of the Shallow Hal Phase 1 Effect remains a mystery. And the prevalence and potency of the associated self-fulfilling relativization also remains a mystery.

...

Now let’s consider the ways that placebo relativization can create suffering.

Conservatives and other religious zealots typically relativize by referring to God’s scale of physical beauty, the idea being that we are all physically beautiful in the eyes of God. And here the implication is apparently that we on Earth should strive to adopt God’s beauty scale. One can always hope.

If the religion is true, then the relativization is truthful. If the religion is a placebo, then the relativization is a placebo. But in either case, this relativization adds fuel to the hostilities between religions. By this I mean, the fact that the relief from suffering depends on a religion adds psychological “need” for that religion, which adds psychological need to defend that religion in the wars between religions. These wars, of course, create much suffering.

If the religion is true and its corresponding relativization is truthful, then the suffering from the wars that defend this truthfulness can be seen as somehow necessary to relieve the original suffering.

Insofar as these wars are fought not because one of the religions is true and the others false, but because all of them are placebos, then the religions only exist to relieve suffering, and yet the wars between them create suffering.

...

But so far I’ve only covered the basic motivational reasons why sufferers who can’t attract a lover they find physically beautiful may be motivated to either under-report their suffering to avoid being shamed, or over-report and exaggerate to feed their sense of self-importance. But what about the merits of the arguments used to support these shaming and diagnostic accusations? I have not investigated such merits very deeply, but have merely scratched their surface. And I think these merits need investigating. If those arguments have little or no merit, then we can better assume the sufferers are under-reporting their very significant suffering for fear of being shamed. If those arguments have merit, then we can better assume those who claim to be suffering are over-reporting and exaggerating to feed their self-inflated sense of importance.

So now I want to switch from the emotional motivations behind what the sufferers report, to the facts that support what they report.

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Many people are apparently happy with lovers who are conventionally un-beautiful or conventionally ugly. This could mean several things, several of which are relevant to the suffering that may come from one’s inability to attract lovers one finds physically beautiful.

1. Some of such people have still managed to attract a lover they find physically beautiful. A lover may deviate from the dominant standards for physical beauty and one may still find that lover beautiful by fiat of one’s personal taste deviating in a corresponding way. The dominant standards for physical beauty are not the determining factor here. (While this is true, it’s irrelevant to whether the inability to attract a lover one finds beautiful creates much suffering – precisely because such people have attracted a lover they find physically beautiful.)

2. Some of such people are happy with their lovers even though they do not find their lovers physically beautiful. Instead, they find their lovers spiritually beautiful. They are satisfied with all spiritual beauty and no physical beauty.

3. Some of such people process through the second situation to arrive at the first. They initially find their lovers physically un-beautiful, yet spiritually beautiful. Yet through finding their lovers spiritually beautiful, they acquire the capacity to see their lovers as also physically beautiful. (Call this the Shallow Hal Effect, after the movie called Shallow Hal, in which this principle was somewhat twistedly demonstrated.)

4. Some of such people find their lovers lacking in both physical and spiritual beauty, but are still quite happy with the combined balance of whatever quantities of both that their lovers do possess.

Situations 2 through 4 demonstrate that the availability of spiritually beautiful lovers may relieve, or pre-empt, much of the suffering that comes from the inability to attract physically beautiful lovers.

My personal experience is that most people interested in issues of beauty and suffering are adamant on this point. Some folks apparently go so far as to claim that spiritual beauty trumps physical beauty in almost every way. Apparently this means that if one is concerned with relieving suffering, issues of physical beauty are practically irrelevant, and that one should direct their attention toward increasing spiritual beauty instead of physical beauty.

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Few people talk publicly about how many of us are not able to attract lovers we find physically appealing. This, as I see it, could be caused by one of two reasons.

REASON 1: It is a trivial matter. The inability to attract a lover we find physically appealing simply does not matter much in our lives. We don't talk much about it because it just doesn't occupy our minds that much – because it's not really a problem.

REASON 2: It is a profoundly important matter. The inability to attract a lover we find physically appealing creates such chronic and incurable suffering that the best thing we can do is help each other pretend otherwise, i.e., pretend it is actually a trivial matter from which very little suffering comes.

EVIDENCE IN SUPPORT OF REASON 1: People appear to live happy and productive lives to spite the fact that they do not attract a lover they find appealing.

EVIDENCE IN SUPPORT OF REASON 2:

[I did not get around to writing on this evidence. But as a substitute for such writing, I offer a bunch of Nancy Etcoff quotes.]

We allow that violence is done to the body among “primitive” cultures or that it was done by ancient societies, but we have yet to realize that beauty brings out the primitive in every person. During 1996 a reported 696,904 Americans underwent voluntary aesthetic surgery that involved tearing or burning their skin, shucking their fat, or implanting foreign materials. Before the FDA limited silicone gel implants in 1992, four hundred women were getting them every day. Breast implants were once the province of porn stars; they are now the norm for Hollywood actresses, and no longer a rarity for the housewife.

(Nancy Etcoff, Survival of the Prettiest, P5)

… a bad hair day, a blemish, or an added pound undermines our confidence in ways that equally minor fluctuations in our moods, our strength, or our mental agility usually does not.

(Nancy Etcoff, Survival of the Prettiest, P6)

People do extreme things in the name of beauty. They invest so much of their resources in beauty and risk so much for it, one would think lives depended on it. In Brazil there are more Avon ladies than members of the army. In the United States more money is spent on beauty than on education or social services. Tons of makeup – 1,484 tubes of lipstick and 2,055 jars of skin care products – are sold every minute. During famines, Kalahari bushmen in Africa still use animal fats to moisturize their skin, and in 1715 riots broke out in France when the use of flour on the hair of aristocrats led to a food shortage. The hoarding of flour for beauty purposes was only quelled by the French Revolution.

(Nancy Etcoff, Survival of the Prettiest, P6)

Beauty has consequences that we cannot erase by denial. Beauty will continue to operate – outside jurisdiction, in the lawless world of human attraction. Academics may ban it from intelligent discourse and snobs may sniff that beauty is trivial and shallow but in the real world the beauty myth quickly collides with reality.

(Nancy Etcoff, Survival of the Prettiest, P7)

Economist David Marks has said that beauty is as potent a social force as race or sex. But unlike racism and sexism, which we are conscious of, “lookism,” or beauty prejudice, operates at a largely unconscious level.

(Nancy Etcoff, Survival of the Prettiest, P25)

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THE GLOSSARY

BEAUTY MATCH (PHYSICAL BEAUTY MATCH)

One’s physical beauty matches are the people one finds physically beautiful, who find one physically beautiful in return. People who find one another physically beautiful are one another’s physical beauty matches.

CONVENTIONAL BEAUTY (OBJECTIVE PHYSICAL BEAUTY)

Conventional beauty (or objective physical beauty) is the proportion of a population that finds a person physically beautiful, and to what degree each person does. Conventional beauty is a statistical matter wherein the statistics are about what proportion of people find a given person physically beautiful and to what degree.

To find the statistical measure of someone’s conventional beauty, get all observers to rate that person on a positive ten to zero scale for physical beauty, then take a statistical average of the subjective ratings of all observers.

CONVENTIONAL UGLINESS (OBJECTIVE PHYSICAL UGLINESS)

Conventional ugliness (or objective physical ugliness) is the proportion of a population that finds a person physically ugly, and to what degree each person does. Conventional ugliness is a statistical matter wherein the statistics are about what proportion of people find a given person physically ugly and to what degree.

To find the statistical measure of someone’s conventional ugliness, get all observers to rate that person on a negative ten to zero scale for physical ugliness, then take a statistical average of the subjective ratings of all observers.

OBJECTIVE PHYSICAL BEAUTY (CONVENTIONAL BEAUTY)

Objective physical beauty (or conventional beauty) is the proportion of a population that finds a person physically beautiful, and to what degree each person does. Objective physical beauty is a statistical matter wherein the statistics are about what proportion of people find a given person physically beautiful and to what degree.

To find the statistical measure of someone’s objective physical beauty, get all observers to rate that person on a positive ten to zero scale for physical beauty, then take a statistical average of the subjective ratings of all observers.

OBJECTIVE PHYSICAL UGLINESS (CONVENTIONAL UGLINESS)

Objective physical ugliness (or conventional ugliness) is the proportion of a population that finds a person physically ugly, and to what degree each person does. Objective physical ugliness is a statistical matter wherein the statistics are about what proportion of people find a given person physically ugly and to what degree.

To find the statistical measure of someone’s objective physical ugliness, get all observers to rate that person on a negative ten to zero scale for physical ugliness, then take a statistical average of the subjective ratings of all observers.

PHYSICAL BEAUTY

Physical beauty is the capacity of person “A” to give pleasure to person “B” through touch, wherein the degree of this capacity depends exclusively on how person “A” physically appears to person “B”.

Person “A” is physically beautiful to the degree that their physical appearance to other persons gives that person the power to produce pleasure in those other persons through touching them or being touched by them.

PHYSICAL BEAUTY MATCH

When two people find one another physically beautiful, and do so roughly to the same degree, they are one another’s physical beauty match. One's physical beauty match is someone who finds one physically beautiful, who one also finds physically beautiful in return, and roughly to the same degree.

PHYSICAL UGLINESS

Physical ugliness is the capacity of person “A” to give revulsion to person “B” through touch, wherein the degree of this capacity depends exclusively on how person “A” physically appears to person “B”. 

Person “A” is physically ugly to the degree that their physical appearance to other persons gives it the power to produce revulsion in those other persons through touching them or being touched by them.

--DISCUSSION OF PHYSICAL BEAUTY AND UGLINESS

These definitions account for the fact that physical beauty and ugliness are subjective and relative. Person “A” may be beautiful to person “B”, but ugly to person “C”. Person “A”’s power to give pleasure or revulsion to others through touching them depends on how the others are subjectively constituted. If they are subjectively constituted such that they would experience pleasure in touching person “A” because they have perceived person “A”’s physical appearance, then person “A” is physically beautiful to them. If they are subjectively constituted such that they would experience revulsion in touching person “A” because they have perceived person “A”’s physical appearance, then person “A” is physically ugly to them. So it is true that beauty and ugliness are in the eyes of the beholders. Well, “minds” of the beholders is more accurate.

But physical beauty and ugliness are subjective only in the sense that they exist in the minds of the observers, as opposed to being intrinsic properties of the observed. And while it is true that physical beauty and ugliness are subjective in this way, it is also true that physical beauty and ugliness exist objectively, on the basic principle that everything subjective is also objective. Once something subjective comes to exist in the mind, it also simply comes to exist as a thing in the universe, and is thus an existing thing. All that exists is objective. So the fact that a subjective mental state exists is an objective fact. Also, what occurs in the subjective mind of one person is the object of anyone else who observes that person, and thus objective. Your subjective mental states are objective to me.

So there is such a thing as objective physical beauty and ugliness. While physical beauty and ugliness are subjectively in the minds of the beholders, the mental states of the beholders are also things that exist in the universe and are objective that way. Facts about our subjective mental states are objective facts. So if half of all observers find one physically beautiful and the other half finds one physically ugly, then one is objectively 50% physically beautiful and objectively 50% physically ugly.

To find the measure of someone’s objective physical beauty or ugliness, get all observers to rate that person on either a positive ten to zero scale for beauty, or negative ten to zero scale for ugliness, then take a statistical average of the subjective ratings of all observers.

Another word for “objective” in this case is “conventional”.

A high rating on the averaged objective beauty scale means one is conventionally beautiful.

A low rating near zero on the averaged objective beauty scale means one is conventionally un-beautiful.

A low rating on the averaged objective ugliness scale means one is conventionally ugly.

I happen to find these particular objective measurements a bit useless, however, except insofar as objective physical ugliness contributes to what I call “problematic un-beautifulness” or “problematic ugliness”.

PROBLEMATIC PHYSICAL UN-BEAUTIFULNESS

Problematic physical un-beautifulness is when two conditions hold true: First, none of the people one finds physically beautiful find one physically beautiful in return. One has no physical beauty match. Second, this matters to one’s happiness. One cannot or will not be happy without a beauty match. Spiritual routes to happiness do not work.

PROBLEMATIC PHYSICAL UGLINESS

Problematic physical ugliness is when two conditions hold true: First, none of the people one finds physically beautiful find one physically beautiful in return. In fact, most people find one physically ugly. Either way, one has no physical beauty match. Second, this matters to one’s happiness. One cannot or will not be happy without a beauty match. Spiritual routes to happiness do not work.

SHALLOW HAL PHASE 1 EFFECT

The Shallow Hal Phase 1 Effect is the psychological translation of spiritual beauty into physical beauty, that is, one experiences spiritual beauty as physical beauty. This is where person “A” finds person “B” physically beautiful because person “A” finds person “B” spiritually beautiful.

It is called the “Shallow Hal Phase 1 Effect” because the effect was somewhat portrayed in the movie called Shallow Hal. The lead character, Hal, is hypnotized into seeing a woman’s spiritual beauty as physical beauty. If he encounters a woman he finds spiritually beautiful, but would ordinarily find physically repulsive, he instead experiences her as physically beautiful. In the movie, however, the hypnotism achieves this effect by making Hal enjoy the visual hallucination that the woman’s body complies with his pre-existing ideals for physical beauty. Such a hallucination isn’t likely in reality. In reality, the effect would more likely make Hal’s ideals for physical beauty comply with the woman’s body as is. But whether the effect is achieved by hallucination or adjustment of physical beauty ideals, the effect remains essentially a translation of spiritual beauty into physical beauty.

And the effect is called “Phase 1” because it is only the first of the two changes Hal undergoes regarding beauty in the movie. The second change, Phase 2, is when Hal becomes satisfied with his lover’s spiritual beauty, regardless of lacking any physical beauty. Here, the previous hypnotism is undone, the hallucinations gone, and Hal no longer cares about physical beauty. Now he pursues a lover exclusively for her spiritual beauty.

SHALLOW HAL PHASE 2 EFFECT

The Shallow Hal Phase 2 Effect is when one initially finds physical beauty a requirement for sex or romance, but loses this requirement, and instead finds spiritual beauty the only requirement.

It is called the “Shallow Hal Phase 2 Effect” because the effect was somewhat portrayed in the movie called Shallow Hal. And the effect is called “Phase 2” because it is the second of the two changes the lead character, Hal, undergoes regarding beauty in the movie. The first change, Phase 1, is when Hal is hypnotized into seeing a woman’s spiritual beauty as physical beauty. 

SPIRITUAL BEAUTY

Spiritual beauty is the capacity of person “A” to give pleasure to person “B” through touch, wherein the degree of this capacity depends exclusively on how person “A”’s personality seems to person “B”. 

Person “A” is spiritually beautiful to the degree that their  personality’s appearance to other persons gives it the power to produce pleasure in those other persons through touching them or being touched by them.

SPIRITUAL BEAUTY MATCH

When two people find one another spiritually beautiful, and do so roughly to the same degree, they are one another’s spiritual beauty match. One”s spiritual beauty match is someone who finds one spiritually beautiful, who one also finds spiritually beautiful in return, and roughly to the same degree.

SPIRITUAL UGLINESS

Spiritual ugliness is the capacity of person “A” to give revulsion to person “B” through touch, wherein the degree of this capacity depends exclusively on how person “A”’s personality appears to person “B”.

Person “A” is spiritually ugly to the degree that their personality’s appearance to other persons gives it the power to produce revulsion in those other persons through touching them or being touched by them.

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