You’re so Vain

My Favourite TV show is Wife Swap UK. It provides endless entertainment, an insight into how others live, and the inevitable altercations between conflicting spousal arrangements. Whats not to love! But one episode I watched recently had a woman who said something that stuck with me. “Looks are everything”. She explained that looking good is the highest level of achievement you can possibly hope to attain. It was only the day before that I had said to a friend, Thinking only how you look is the worst trait in a person.

There is definitely a preoccupation with how we look as its how people perceive us wether its wealthy, handsome, successful, happy or a multitude of things. And I think its because theres no way to physically show how advanced or full of knowledge each of our brains is. Its all about the visual. As the saying goes “Seeing is believing”. So if, like many alien movies, our brains were exposed and the size determines our intellect, would intellectual pursuits be the obsession of society in order to increase our brain size for all to see?