An Argument I Had

As humans, we understand the world by interpreting it through the lens of past experiences. In other words, we make sense of things that happen in the now by drawing on rules which we have derived from and have been corroborated by past experiences. We use these rules to understand the present and to make predictions about the future. For example, when we throw an object in the air, we expect it to fall down, for that has been the way of all thrown objects since we were born and presumably since the Earth herself was born. We learn this as babies and therefore a baby would act accordingly surprised when we throw an object and deceptively hide it in mid air, because he has learnt from past experience that all objects launched into the air- including himself that afternoon he was naughty and would not heed his mother's cries to not hop off the kitchen counter - must fall down.

This method of learning applies wonderfully to scientific rules and fortunately for us scientific rules are not subject to random change, at least not in the visible realm. Only the gods can explain what happens in the quantum realm. However when applied to the social, emotional and psychological apsects of our lives, this approach severely hinders us from ever completely understanding a situation. We are polarised by our past experiences and since each human being has been through infinitely different experiences, there are infinitely many ways to view and intepretete a situation. We are doomed to never understand anyone or anything completely.

There is good news however. This is not a totally hopeless affair. We can employ the viewpoints of others, in addition to ours, to understand an experience more throughly. Just as adding more points to a graph gives us a better approximation of the relationship, ie the function, relating two variables, so too can adding more human perspectives give us a more accurate view of a sitaution. The other people bring their views, judgements and rules, thus we get to see the situation from completely new and sometimes bizarre angles, draw knowledge and wisdom we never would have distilled on our own and gain foresight to help make future plans.

All this was known to me in theory yet why did I forget it all when a discusssion about the pros and cons of Tiktok turned into a debate on my objective beauty. It was between my best friend Roland , in whom I am well pleased, and I with the motion : " I, Samantha, am an extremely average faced human". Roland was utterly against the motion while I defended it like my life depended on it. I was telling him that seeing all the insanely gorgeous women on Tiktok strengthened my feelings of ugliness even more. He could not believe I thought of myself as ugly, when he thought I was a very beautiful lady. The conversation completely switched from social media to how I view myself and let me say it was not in the least comfortable. But it was Roland, my best friend with whom I am completely at ease. So slowly I began to express certain opinions I had about myself that I was too ashamed to tell anyone for fear of being deemed as "preoccupied with her looks". A judgement that did not at all fit with my intellectual persona.

I told him how I felt I was unattractive beacuse I did not get the same treatment that my friends I thougt were prettier got. I told him of the time a roomate's male friend came to visit, completely ignored me, but lavished attention on my other roomate who was more sultry, prettier and with a body that fit all the current beauty standards. I told of how I do not really crave attention but have rather accepted the fact that I am an average girlie.

But, Rollie, as I affectionately call him, would not have it. He tried to get me to see what he saw in me, but I stubbornly decided to counter all his arguments instead of genuinely listening to what he had to say. He said I did not put my self out there in the same way these girls I see as prettier do, and I said pretty girls do not have to put themselvesout there to be receive pretty privilege. He said beauty is not just about physcial traits, but is enhanced by character as well. "No!", I retorted, "Most times, a pretty face can get away with awful deeds". He said beauty is subjective and one person's idea of beauty could be another's epitome of a sub par human. I refused to accept this, saying that in the world of today, there exists an objective yardstick for beauty and it is: Whatever The Masses Declare.

Yet as I countered his argument after argument, I realised not only were my arguments getting weaker, I was getting more and more defensive. I paused and thought to myself. "Do I really believe what I am saying to be true?" I felt an internal nudge, telling me to actually listen to what Rollie had to say. The conviction in his voice and the fact that I hold him in very high regard contributed to the shift in my mental stance.

I paused and I actually listened. I evaluated his arguments. Yes beauty is subjective and I have personal experiences where girls I have thought to be drop dead gorgeous have been classified as average by others. I know of people who are visually pretty but had such awful characters that it was difficult to see and even admit to onself that depsite the rotten interior, the exterior was finely crafted. I knew of pretty girls who always slithered in corners, afraid of being perceived, haunted by one past experience or the other which had distorted their perception of themseleves. Was I really one of those beautiful shadows? I had all these counterexamples, all these supporting statements to Rollie's points but my experience of feeling ugly was so emotionally laden and had been carried for so long that to disregard it felt like a threat to my sense of self.

There was a lull in the conversation as I reflected on all this and as he was probably thinking up ways to get me to see myself in a positive light. I would not be so bold as to claim that after this period of self reflection, I automatically saw myself as a pretty girl and my self esteem and I lived happily ever after. But I realised that my opinionion and my view of even a subject as intimate as my ownself, is liable to inaccuracy. My shallow arguments and my unwillingness to rationally analyse and compare our opinions convinced me that I was in the wrong and was fighting to keep my strongly held negative opinions because I was scared to be wrong about myself. But no, we are only human and by our very nature are prone to error making in our worldview when viewed alone. I learnt that we ought to view and in so doing build the world with others. In this way, we can hope to construct a more accurate version than if we viewed it alone.