"Got to be good looking 'cause he's so hard to see..." - Lennon/McCartney
This last summer, scientists postulated that in the distant future (probably next Thursday) human beings will evolve into two basic types: tall, beautiful creatures and short, goblin-like creatures. This I don’t doubt. This is already happening. For any Star Trek fans out there, you must know that much of the technology in the original TV series is actually coming to pass, amazingly. But what if that’s not all? In the Star Trek “history”, Earth was to go through something called the Eugenics Wars in the late 20th and early 21st Centuries. This was related to the creation of a super race (never happened before, right?) and the so called “perfection” of mankind.
I contend that we are currently dealing with a quite conscious effort to shape the “preferable” natural selection. Not by science, not by politics, but by the very vacuous, soulless and mind-numbingly stupid fields of fashion, advertising and entertainment. Look, for instance, at what passes for attractive today in the male category: cow eyed fembots who feign heterosexuality. Their perfectly symmetrical features, pouting lips and barely controlled lisp seem to be what we men are supposed to aspire to embody. Today, we are supposed to opt for the pretty, not the handsome. Any and all manner of manliness shrugged off, we are commanded to favor the sensitive, caring, ultimately ineffectual boyishness that borders on the female. And who is commanding this acceptance of this “super race” (or stupor race)? Why, it’s the cokehead gays and the chain-smoking Europeans that control the fashion industry. Nothing like hedonistic sociopaths and people who don’t bathe on a regular basis dictating the shape of the human future.
This, I am not joking about, actually. This is happening, and many of us have seen it coming for decades. What used to be talent now is replaced by photogenic image. And taking into the account the unavoidable reality that advertising places these things in premium, and that advertising is entirely invested in the mission to tell us “You are not good enough, you are not attractive enough and you are not ‘hot’ enough” unless you buy what they are selling", our inner and outer selves are being literally mutated to the whims of stupid, shallow people. Envy is the engine that powers this society, make no mistake about it. Otherwise, no advertising would work. We are being engineered to allow only those with certain features to succeed. Take, for a moment, the vast numbers of young people who are getting cosmetic surgery. Look at the fact that the legislature of Mississippi was trying to pass a law to make it illegal for restaurants to serve obese people. Do you think for one moment that this was promulgated for health purposes? No. It is because people aren’t supposed to be overweight because it’s not attractive. Nobody cares about their health. It’s just not pretty. This disgusting hypocrisy is only the surface symptom of this manipulation of the natural selection process that drives the self-esteem of the weaker person into the ground. And it’s all geared toward killing the “right” people: those people not wearing the jackboots of the GQ generation.
So let’s ask ourselves some probing questions. What happened to the content of one’s character as currency in this culture? Look at the cultural icons of previous generations, and then compare those time periods to the cultural/ethical wasteland we have produced today in this rotting nation. Were did we go? Since when did the feminization of the American male equal the improvement of the male image in the arts? Keith Ledger died recently. He was probably talented, but would anyone care if he wasn’t pretty? What if he was 38 and not 28? And why did the vacuous dirtbags in the media have to mention that he was naked when they found him? Why? Tell me why that’s significant. I dare you.
As teen suicide rises; as the continued pounding emphasis on physical perfection (as defined by drug addicts, perverts and neurotics who can’t deal with intimacy) pushes the timid to bulimia, anorexia and the like; as young people insist on self mutilation to rebel against this absurd pressure from soulless nobodies, our culture oozes towards its twilight. The words from Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb” linger in my mind as I watch how the Madison Avenue brown-shirts tug on the intestines of our youth, nudging them ever so subtly to the brink of self hatred. And why? Because they aren’t emaciated. They don’t have eyes that match up exactly, symmetrically. They don’t have female facial features and a penis. They don’t have a drug/alcohol problem or pouting lips. And they might – just might – be interested in the opposite sex.
Those who demand perfection cannot deliver it themselves. Therein lies the problem. Did Joseph Mengele have blond hair and blue eyes when he was working on producing the master race? Did Hitler?
So we come to the eternal question. Not “What is the meaning of life?”. Not “Is there a God?”. But, “Who the hell are you to tell me what I should be and what I am worth?”.
Guess – just guess – who is the only one who can answer that question.
(c) Andrew T. Durham, 2008
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