Narcissus unbound
Narcissus by Caravaggio; Wikimedia Commons
It is not easy to know when the human being started to develop self-consciousness. It is even more difficult to say when aesthetic considerations entered its mind. When life among hunters and gatherers was organised around tribal customs, there was little room for the individual and his or her personal aspirations, let alone their ideas about themselves as beings. Maybe they could see reflections of themselves in still water, but that may be as far as it went.
As tribal, nomadic life ceded the ground to sedentary agricultural life, the culture of team work gradually evolved into a culture where the individual was left to himself – in an increasingly hierarchical society. As this hierarchical society was developed, mythology and military power were consolidated as institutions with increasing power – partly in competition with each other and partly in collusion with each other (depending on the personalities in leading positions in both camps). For a long time, religious and military power ruled the minds of people, and individual freedom was very limited. This did not stop vanity and narcissism from developing. However, these tendencies were mostly limited to those classes of society which were left with time and resources to spend on themselves and their personal desires. This was the case for a very small number of people in the priesthood and in the military establishment (which was most often led by a king or other types of dynastic rulers).
With the Enlightenment in the 17th and18th century in Europe came a revolution of the mind set – as God’s place in the Universe was questioned, in the same way as the Earth’s place in the Universe relative to the Sun was redefined. The power of the Church and the power of the Military(Monarchic) rulers came under pressure from a population less and less inclined to accept the dogmatic rule of the few. Attempts at democratic rule multiplied, and gradually democratic rule became normal practice in certain parts of the world. In these parts of the world, the individual came increasingly in focus and acquired formal, legal rights. Earlier, during the Renaissance period in the 15th and the 16th century (inspired by Greek and Roman antiquity) in the republic of Florence and the other city-states of Tuscany as well as in the self-indulging clergy in Rome, the individual had come more in focus in the artistic and literary world – but there was still a long way to go before the individual found his role in real democratic terms. With the advent of this increased focus on the individual, individualism and narcissism has evolved steadily.
As the democratic countries have developed and their populations have become wealthy, with lots of leisure time, it has become legitimate for the individual to look at himself and try to find his own true potential in life. This introspection has - combined with the need to be seen as a winner in competition with others - led to an obsession of the self. Individual interests have increasingly turned towards physical appearance and attractiveness. This tendency has, greatly assisted by media, evolved into a permanent beauty and celebrity contest. The ensuing egocentricity has been conducive to all sorts of self-indulgence where gratification of the senses has become the ultimate goal of life for an increasing number of people. This has lead to the development of mental illnesses of all sorts – accompanied by a large spectrum of pharmaceutical remedies, ranging from mild anti-depressants to dangerous addictive drugs. The spreading of drug abuse is an integral part of this evolution.
Narcissism, combined with the focus on gratification of the senses, leads people to lose all sense of meaningful purpose. This in turn produces a steady degeneration of a culture where this kind of attitude and behavior is shared by many.
The dream baby
The science fiction scenario in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World is now in the process of becoming reality. The human genom is identified, and genetic engineering is feasible at the stage of conception of the baby. Not surprisingly, parents want bright and beautiful children – with the necessary fighting spirit to survive in a brutal world (and lots of other characteristics of a tailor-made nature). Science will soon be able to give parents what they want. Those countries that resist this evolution for ethical reasons will be outflanked by countries where money takes precedence over ethical considerations. Parents will seek the necessary medical treatment in those countries, at whatever cost.
Will it be more expensive to buy a bright and beautiful baby, than a more ordinary baby? What kinds of social stratifications will that imply? Will diversity disappear because ideals of beauty and intelligence are of the same kind everywhere (just like diversity has been strongly reduced in agriculture – both as regards plants and animals)? Is there any reason to expect a different evolution in genetic engineering for humans than for animals or plants?
What part of me is me?
The introduction of organ transplants started an entirely new development regarding what is meant by “your body”. You could now in principle renew any part of your body (as far as medical science would permit) to replace wear and tear, and end up with an entirely new body by the time you retire from work. Whose body would that be? Legally speaking, it would be yours – but biologically speaking it would be like a shareholding company.
The new body would partly come from people who had died violent deaths, or from people who voluntarily had given or sold one of their organs (either for reasons of poverty, reasons of family links, or other reasons), or from people who had been forced to part with selected organs or been murdered to give criminals the benefit of selling their organs. The only process that may block such a development, will be the process of research and development leading to production of more and more refined artificial organs Trade in biological organs has become big business, and keeping this trade “clean” is a major challenge. Traceability of organs is crucial. Considering the ethical level of organized crime, the prospects depend entirely on the profitability of such business.
With medical science advancing the frontiers of possible transplants and body repair, the availability of organs is the crucial bottleneck and traceability of the origin of organs becomes an ethical necessity for bona fide medical treatment (which of course opens great opportunities for gray area clinics in shady parts of the world).
Availability being the major bottleneck, the increased production of synthetic organs may help to reduce the potential for organized crime in this field of human life. Were this to become entirely successful, the human being would get spare parts as easily as your car or airplane mechanic would get theirs (hopefully with a minimum of cheating with fake, counterfeit parts – as can be found in the airline industry).
Colour and shape in flux
With spare parts dealing with the interior part of your body, you can now change every exterior aspect of your body through cosmetics and plastic surgery. Money being the only limitation, having a beautiful body is now one of the major status symbols of the wealthy.
There is only one inconvenience: fashion changes. The notions and norms of beauty are in flux. Cosmetics can deal easily with that, but not plastic surgery. Changing the shape of your nose every six months is not an attractive option – neither for reasons of convenience nor for medical reasons.
Nevertheless, the industry of superficial beauty is running full speed, and it is pushing its products on the public with great aggressiveness. The cosmetics industry is advertising “models of beauty” to show you what you can become if you use their products sufficiently often. Since these advertisements make use of manipulated pictures, the models of beauty go far beyond normal human shapes and give you very false expectations. The plastic surgeons show you with well-chosen pictures what they can make you look like if you decide to do something about your imperfect body.
The art of body maintenance
Less drastic than change of spare parts or plastic surgery, is the activity linked with “keeping fit”. People with education learn how to stay fit without too much effort, but many develop this tendency in extreme ways, as we can see with anorexy and other eating disorders. Training is also taking different paths for different people, with excesses and moderation living side by side. Training fans have developed their own set of status symbols. Running marathon or taking part in triathlon are examples of status symbols among those who build vanity around their exterior signs of strength and endurance.
Vanity is not the only drive behind excessive fitness movements. Corporations have embarked on the fitness train, and activities that promote fitness are increasingly integrated in their human resource policies. When the competitive culture of corporations is introduced in fitness programs, there will be a movement towards excessive fitness pressure and stigmatization of those who do not adhere to this culture. The attitude of the leaders will be essential.
Eating in a proper way is fast becoming another dividing factor among the educated and the non-educated. Eating the right kind of food, or the wrong kind of food, is becoming a clear sign of your level of education – and consequently health. Financial means are not crucial in this respect. Right kind of food is not necessarily more expensive. Eating the wrong kind of food brings numerous health hazards, whereas the right kind of food makes you healthier. And health hazards cost you money, a lot of money – in doctors’ bills, loss of work capability and many other ways. As many of the uneducated have poor health coverage, they also get less favorable treatment when illnesses strike.
The successful appearance
Having a successful or fashionable appearance is a moving target which gives this pursuit the character of a Sisyphus-labor. By the time you have acquired the “correct” clothes, the proper “attitudes”, the “right” colors for your hair and skin, and the “signal accessories”, the criteria assigned to the successful appearance will have moved – often in surprising, contrarian directions. You will never quite be "there".
Fashion gurus speculate in the need to surprise and “shock”, which leads them to change the success criteria at short intervals. The producers, the sales stores, the fashion magazines and all the other players in this industry are built around this constant need for change. In theory, a change of clothes would only be necessary when the old ones are worn out or if their size no longer fits (in the latter case the clothes could be given to a center for exchange of clothes, and a replacement obtained in exchange). However, this way of seeing things is outright subversive in the present economic and social paradigm.
Only those who choose “classic” appearances have a reasonable chance of having a stable set of criteria to go by. However, they will pay the price of being considered boring or “out” by the “in” crowd, a price some can handle without problems, while others would suffer greatly from it.
Being “in” is an exhausting excercize which requires constant attention to movements in trends, a solid budget to meet the exaggerated pricing of fashion items, and a good stamina to make appearances at the “right” places, at the “right “time. There is no point in being a hot fashion icon if you don’t give other people a chance to see it. Only a small minority of stigmatized persons, like transvestites or the like, actually dress up for an audience that includes only themselves.
A good network of “in” people, with connections to the doorkeepers of the “in” places, is a must for those who run after the successful appearance. “In” people and “in” places have a common interest in promoting each other. When a celebrity goes to a restaurant or a night club, this place gets publicity. Persons who are in the process of becoming celebrities need to be seen at such places, and they in turn get special admission and special invitations to inaugurations because their presence promotes these places. In turn, places and people get “worn out” in the media, and the media then turn their attention to new people and new places.
All these elements taken together show clearly that having a successful appearance is a full time job which would normally imply that you have sources of income that sustain your lifestyle without the need to stay in a job. If you are not in that position, you already have a handicap. The more you need to work, the more of a handicap you have if you want to stay on top of the “in” crowd.
With the Enlightenment in the 17th and18th century in Europe came a revolution of the mind set – as God’s place in the Universe was questioned, in the same way as the Earth’s place in the Universe relative to the Sun was redefined. The power of the Church and the power of the Military(Monarchic) rulers came under pressure from a population less and less inclined to accept the dogmatic rule of the few. Attempts at democratic rule multiplied, and gradually democratic rule became normal practice in certain parts of the world. In these parts of the world, the individual came increasingly in focus and acquired formal, legal rights. Earlier, during the Renaissance period in the 15th and the 16th century (inspired by Greek and Roman antiquity) in the republic of Florence and the other city-states of Tuscany as well as in the self-indulging clergy in Rome, the individual had come more in focus in the artistic and literary world – but there was still a long way to go before the individual found his role in real democratic terms. With the advent of this increased focus on the individual, individualism and narcissism has evolved steadily.
As the democratic countries have developed and their populations have become wealthy, with lots of leisure time, it has become legitimate for the individual to look at himself and try to find his own true potential in life. This introspection has - combined with the need to be seen as a winner in competition with others - led to an obsession of the self. Individual interests have increasingly turned towards physical appearance and attractiveness. This tendency has, greatly assisted by media, evolved into a permanent beauty and celebrity contest. The ensuing egocentricity has been conducive to all sorts of self-indulgence where gratification of the senses has become the ultimate goal of life for an increasing number of people. This has lead to the development of mental illnesses of all sorts – accompanied by a large spectrum of pharmaceutical remedies, ranging from mild anti-depressants to dangerous addictive drugs. The spreading of drug abuse is an integral part of this evolution.
Narcissism, combined with the focus on gratification of the senses, leads people to lose all sense of meaningful purpose. This in turn produces a steady degeneration of a culture where this kind of attitude and behavior is shared by many.
The dream baby
The science fiction scenario in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World is now in the process of becoming reality. The human genom is identified, and genetic engineering is feasible at the stage of conception of the baby. Not surprisingly, parents want bright and beautiful children – with the necessary fighting spirit to survive in a brutal world (and lots of other characteristics of a tailor-made nature). Science will soon be able to give parents what they want. Those countries that resist this evolution for ethical reasons will be outflanked by countries where money takes precedence over ethical considerations. Parents will seek the necessary medical treatment in those countries, at whatever cost.
Will it be more expensive to buy a bright and beautiful baby, than a more ordinary baby? What kinds of social stratifications will that imply? Will diversity disappear because ideals of beauty and intelligence are of the same kind everywhere (just like diversity has been strongly reduced in agriculture – both as regards plants and animals)? Is there any reason to expect a different evolution in genetic engineering for humans than for animals or plants?
What part of me is me?
The introduction of organ transplants started an entirely new development regarding what is meant by “your body”. You could now in principle renew any part of your body (as far as medical science would permit) to replace wear and tear, and end up with an entirely new body by the time you retire from work. Whose body would that be? Legally speaking, it would be yours – but biologically speaking it would be like a shareholding company.
The new body would partly come from people who had died violent deaths, or from people who voluntarily had given or sold one of their organs (either for reasons of poverty, reasons of family links, or other reasons), or from people who had been forced to part with selected organs or been murdered to give criminals the benefit of selling their organs. The only process that may block such a development, will be the process of research and development leading to production of more and more refined artificial organs Trade in biological organs has become big business, and keeping this trade “clean” is a major challenge. Traceability of organs is crucial. Considering the ethical level of organized crime, the prospects depend entirely on the profitability of such business.
With medical science advancing the frontiers of possible transplants and body repair, the availability of organs is the crucial bottleneck and traceability of the origin of organs becomes an ethical necessity for bona fide medical treatment (which of course opens great opportunities for gray area clinics in shady parts of the world).
Availability being the major bottleneck, the increased production of synthetic organs may help to reduce the potential for organized crime in this field of human life. Were this to become entirely successful, the human being would get spare parts as easily as your car or airplane mechanic would get theirs (hopefully with a minimum of cheating with fake, counterfeit parts – as can be found in the airline industry).
Colour and shape in flux
With spare parts dealing with the interior part of your body, you can now change every exterior aspect of your body through cosmetics and plastic surgery. Money being the only limitation, having a beautiful body is now one of the major status symbols of the wealthy.
There is only one inconvenience: fashion changes. The notions and norms of beauty are in flux. Cosmetics can deal easily with that, but not plastic surgery. Changing the shape of your nose every six months is not an attractive option – neither for reasons of convenience nor for medical reasons.
Nevertheless, the industry of superficial beauty is running full speed, and it is pushing its products on the public with great aggressiveness. The cosmetics industry is advertising “models of beauty” to show you what you can become if you use their products sufficiently often. Since these advertisements make use of manipulated pictures, the models of beauty go far beyond normal human shapes and give you very false expectations. The plastic surgeons show you with well-chosen pictures what they can make you look like if you decide to do something about your imperfect body.
The art of body maintenance
Less drastic than change of spare parts or plastic surgery, is the activity linked with “keeping fit”. People with education learn how to stay fit without too much effort, but many develop this tendency in extreme ways, as we can see with anorexy and other eating disorders. Training is also taking different paths for different people, with excesses and moderation living side by side. Training fans have developed their own set of status symbols. Running marathon or taking part in triathlon are examples of status symbols among those who build vanity around their exterior signs of strength and endurance.
Vanity is not the only drive behind excessive fitness movements. Corporations have embarked on the fitness train, and activities that promote fitness are increasingly integrated in their human resource policies. When the competitive culture of corporations is introduced in fitness programs, there will be a movement towards excessive fitness pressure and stigmatization of those who do not adhere to this culture. The attitude of the leaders will be essential.
Eating in a proper way is fast becoming another dividing factor among the educated and the non-educated. Eating the right kind of food, or the wrong kind of food, is becoming a clear sign of your level of education – and consequently health. Financial means are not crucial in this respect. Right kind of food is not necessarily more expensive. Eating the wrong kind of food brings numerous health hazards, whereas the right kind of food makes you healthier. And health hazards cost you money, a lot of money – in doctors’ bills, loss of work capability and many other ways. As many of the uneducated have poor health coverage, they also get less favorable treatment when illnesses strike.
The successful appearance
Having a successful or fashionable appearance is a moving target which gives this pursuit the character of a Sisyphus-labor. By the time you have acquired the “correct” clothes, the proper “attitudes”, the “right” colors for your hair and skin, and the “signal accessories”, the criteria assigned to the successful appearance will have moved – often in surprising, contrarian directions. You will never quite be "there".
Fashion gurus speculate in the need to surprise and “shock”, which leads them to change the success criteria at short intervals. The producers, the sales stores, the fashion magazines and all the other players in this industry are built around this constant need for change. In theory, a change of clothes would only be necessary when the old ones are worn out or if their size no longer fits (in the latter case the clothes could be given to a center for exchange of clothes, and a replacement obtained in exchange). However, this way of seeing things is outright subversive in the present economic and social paradigm.
Only those who choose “classic” appearances have a reasonable chance of having a stable set of criteria to go by. However, they will pay the price of being considered boring or “out” by the “in” crowd, a price some can handle without problems, while others would suffer greatly from it.
Being “in” is an exhausting excercize which requires constant attention to movements in trends, a solid budget to meet the exaggerated pricing of fashion items, and a good stamina to make appearances at the “right” places, at the “right “time. There is no point in being a hot fashion icon if you don’t give other people a chance to see it. Only a small minority of stigmatized persons, like transvestites or the like, actually dress up for an audience that includes only themselves.
A good network of “in” people, with connections to the doorkeepers of the “in” places, is a must for those who run after the successful appearance. “In” people and “in” places have a common interest in promoting each other. When a celebrity goes to a restaurant or a night club, this place gets publicity. Persons who are in the process of becoming celebrities need to be seen at such places, and they in turn get special admission and special invitations to inaugurations because their presence promotes these places. In turn, places and people get “worn out” in the media, and the media then turn their attention to new people and new places.
All these elements taken together show clearly that having a successful appearance is a full time job which would normally imply that you have sources of income that sustain your lifestyle without the need to stay in a job. If you are not in that position, you already have a handicap. The more you need to work, the more of a handicap you have if you want to stay on top of the “in” crowd.