The Red Herring: Beauty

Actualism
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Adele voice

Hello, it’s me:

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I gaze upon the pretty girls of the world and feel that something is missing in my life.

I pursue those girls, and find rejection: what am ‘I’ doing wrong?

I project that the rejection has come from my failure to live up to the masculine ideals of strength, charisma, authority, high social status, and wealth

And yet I don’t want to or physically can’t do more to ‘be’ those ideals. Enter frustration.

‘I’ can’t win in this system. ‘I’ am forever a loser, the consummation of my desire forever out of reach. Something is wrong with this system.

I asked myself: where is motivation, for the ‘loser?’

The ‘loser’ wishes to burn down the system.

But it isn’t an ‘external’ system.

I am humanity, and humanity is me.

The call is coming from INSIDE the Henryyyyyyyyyyy!

What must be done is to tear down myself: by tearing down myself, I’ve torn down the system which oppresses me and everyone.

I am a hypocrite: there are girls that are attracted to me, but I don’t find them attractive enough… I reject them in turn. What’s going on?

It’s beauty.

I am frustrated with women’s beliefs in the masculine ideals, yet I am upholding desires for the feminine ideals of beauty and virtue.

She is also forced to attempt to perform a standard which ultimately cannot exist.

I am a hypocrite.

What is beauty?

What ‘I’ find beautiful are instinctive indicators of fertility, health, and sexual readiness: pink cheeks, glowing lips, symmetry, bright eyes, clear skin, strong bone structure.

The promise of bliss.

My instinctual ‘bait’ to reproduce.

Similarly, the masculine ideals exist to signal safety, both physical and social.

Her instinctual ‘bait’ to reproduce.

But both are a red herring: after that all-too-brief phase of excitement, the negative emotions return, leaving me right back where I started: disconsolate, depressive, anxious, wondering what ‘I’ am missing. Soon that sexy woman or man becomes a source of stress themselves: do I not have high enough status? Not enough money? Not a strong enough authority? Is she not beautiful enough?

I don’t feel the beauty & desire anymore, and she doesn’t feel safe with this man anymore.

‘I’ was always going to fall short, just as she will always fall short in my eyes: because the instinctive Being cannot be satisfied.

I fill in whatever reasons. She is angry with me. I don’t get enough ‘freedom.’ She wants different things than me. We argue. But the reasons are ultimately arbitrary in the clear light of the fact that no feeling can be sustained.

I only ever felt beauty, desire, & love so I would reproduce.

We all only ever felt beauty, desire, & love so we would reproduce.

The sexual intimacy I crave - the very reason for the feeling - disappears in a darkening storm of mutual resentment, remaining only as a memory. How can something so delightful be unattainable?

I expect something impossible from her… she attempts to maintain the hologram… She expects something impossible from me, and I attempt to maintain the facade. It takes a toll.

But it is attainable.

I know that I’m ‘enough.’ There is nothing ‘wrong with me’ that means I can’t live sustained sexual intimacy until the end of my days. The narratives of masculine success are not true.

This addiction to beauty is the only thing in the way. I am the only one in the way of the very thing I want the most in this world.

I’ve been through this hotwheel track a few times. I’ve been outright rejected, many times. I’ve rejected many girls. I’ve been in love, and I’ve been loved in return. And I’ve seen that love sour into disappointment and pain each time.

I’m tired and I’m frustrated. I don’t want to waste this life, this breath, on something that doesn’t work. I don’t want to uphold this system that has caused so much pain. That causes all this pain every day.

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Having been on both sides of rejection is, as you said, the first clue about our nature.

I really love that phrase in Geoffrey’s freedom report, where everyone is so precious, I must be soooo precious!

He doesn’t emphasize it much, but the turn of phrase, implying the extra precious I must be, is funny. He found it indescribably funny.

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In turns I feel that I’m the biggest loser, and too cool for anyone else.

It’s incredible this structure can maintain itself.

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Practically, attraction is all about the children.

Genetic health via selection cues. Many of those cues are personal. A woman who is universally considered beautiful, isn’t necessarily as attractive as one that suits my own genetic balancing drive.

Have you seen those photo averaging images? Were they take a thousand women in a gene pool and overlay the faces?

The “average” face is the most beautiful.

Same with men.

Fascinating really.

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Nor are they necessarily a good match for my lifestyle, my tastes, what I want from my life. But beauty ain’t care about those things.

I have seen this. 50,000 generations of humans following their instincts

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An extra special loser though, yeah. Uniquely loserish.

A lot comes from pain too. Buffering ourselves from it.

So we may aim for extremely beautiful, because it seems to provide the validation to fill in the abyss better, whilst ensuring we fail.

Or we go for a Plain Jane, expecting that they will bring something else to the party.

The whole time, women do the same.

And the pain grows over time. To the point that the demands are so crusty, like barnacles on the soul, ensuring no one can ever live up.

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“All I ever learnt from love was how to shoot somebody who out-drew you”

Jeff Buckley

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Selves are good at adding ‘needs.’ It goes against the normal programming to start removing things

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Very very true.

Freud observed that, neuroses only gets worse over time and expression of repressed emotion, more destructive.

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very well written, thank you for sharing. i’ve been noticing my fixation upon this recently too.

i was utterly infatuated with my previous partner based upon his beauty. enough so to overlook the glaring issues in our dynamic - like a fundamental inability to communicate.

my current partner and i are incredibly communicative and supportive of each other. but i don’t feel that ultimate fulfillment i wanted out of love, so my brain searches for what is lacking and often fixates on the one thing in this relationship that is less captivating than in my previous one - my partner’s physical beauty

enmeshed in this fixation is a slew of concerns about how others perceive me (“my mom has called my previous partners handsome but not this one, am i settling??” :joy:). it’s an ugly side of the psyche and it clouds the joyful coexistence that otherwise comes very easily with this partner

it’s a primally addictive obsession. i would also like to move on from it though

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Hot people get loads of attention, and because we can’t look away any more than anyone else can we wind up in a ‘chase’ for a small number of people.

For ‘me,’ this can only mean anxiety as I try to do everything to outcompete the others. I run myself to exhaustion & confusion trying to figure out what my ‘edge’ is.

But the beauty-desire is creating the whole situation. I don’t need the beauty to be ultimately fulfilled… in fact it is perpetuating the gap.

Further, when my interest in my partner is predicated on my experiencing beauty-desire for them, I’m putting them on the spot to perform - @Kub933 described it nicely in his post the other day about elegance. That demand to be something that they are ultimately not - ‘beautiful’ - ‘elegant’ - means a block to intimacy. I am not seeing them, I am looking for a fleeting experience of beauty, which I chase as a high.

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Attractiveness, has many components;

• reproductive drive.
“genetic balancing”

• impressions that we received from our parents.
“mother/father archetypes”

• social standing. (An attractive partner makes us more desirable)
“validation”

• Sexual cues for pleasure (seductive dress, the same person dressed differently, attracts differently)
“gratification signals”

• Security (ability to maintain relationships)
“playing in our league”

• Lifestyle (Money, Luxury)
“having material fun”

• Personality (Humour, openness, confidence)
“having immaterial fun”

‘Beauty’ is the emotion of attraction.

Can one be attracted without emotion?

Can attractive qualities be appreciated without suffering?

Genetically, we are best to balance ourselves. However, there is so much else to consider.

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An interesting question.

There are still aesthetic considerations when free, which in many cases may look similar to our normal desire-based attraction.

In aesthetics, there are still preferences, eg Richard’s burnt toast vs. golden-brown toast

So in that sense he’s still ‘attracted’ to the golden-brown toast.

But ‘attraction’ implies a magnetic ‘force,’ which could really only be desire. So it would probably be most accurate to use some other word than attraction.

Fascinating stuff!

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This is just more sabotage, as you know. All frustration felt is happening at this moment. Therefore this is the only moment to cease feeling frustrated and allow yourself to feel good in it’s stead. From there we can sense pure intent and move towards the PCE.

So you’ve written your poem, which was a thoughtful piece btw, worthy of being analyzed by people interested in beauty and gender and social hierarchies. Now that it’s put on paper, you can get back to pursuing the PCE.

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Grokked!

The realizations I initially posted seem to have been substantial enough to ‘move the needle,’ I’m definitely feeling lighter than I had been. On to the next thing :muscle: :muscle:

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