Friday, November 24, 2006

Ugly Like a Skeptic, Beautiful Like Woo

The other day, crawling home through peakhour traffic, I was distracted by Simon Armitage reciting "You're Beautiful" in his tuneful northern accent: "You're beautiful because you believe in coincidence and the power of thought. I'm ugly because I proved God to be a mathematical impossibility." This got me thinking. Could it be that 'beautiful' is the love child of fuzzy logic and emotionality? 'Ugly', on the other hand, is the test-tube baby of rationality and cynicism?
Just run the scintillation counter over your family and friends. Who sparkles? Not the careful-with-their-facts ones. More likely the huggie-kissie ones who whoreship the 'documentary' "What the Bleep", enshrine Deepaks by their bedside and seek daily psychic adjustments. Who gives a stuff for a killjoy who nags that your flu was self-limiting and not cured by homeopathics? Or makes insinuations about how your new $599 NASA-chip device (that melted Ms Nextdoor's frozen shoulder) resembles a recycled mouse?

If you believe in Anything you come across as positive, generous, fun and sympathetic. If you confuse Qi and Pi who cares? Everything's everything. Physics says so. There's no need to worry; life is predetermined by stars, overseen by angels, swathed in auras and road-mapped by meridians. When loved ones die they still speak to you.

The Questioners however, are hateful cynics. They pedantically point out miniscule discrepancies. They read aloud smallprint disclaimers on everlasting-healthproduct advertisements. Their types lurk at psychic fairs, popping irreverent and irrelevant questions to 'spoil it' for others. Where ever they go they can't resist exposing frailties of humankind. When loved ones die they say goodbye.

No wonder we tend to scowl and grumble and develop antisocial habits. Eventually, it seems, we'll regress to a state of profound and terminal ugliness.

6 comments:

  1. Well, personally, EoR has always found Richard Dawkins sexier than Deepak Chopra...

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  2. Me too. Glad you feel this way despite your "insurmountable lack of naughty bits". Sad fact is most people, despite being mentally intact, go the other way.

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  3. Sooo true Lucy Jr ...U G L Y we ain't got no alibi ...we ugly, we ugly.

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  4. Yep I like that idea. I'll cling to that one. Must find a copy of the episode too...

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  5. Years ago, when I was still in high school, I was onto the fluff and glitter crowd. I named their guiding ethic then: "Smart to be stupid."

    Literally being reasonable is a hard row to hoe, to be sure, in a culture that encourages mediocrity. It can be a very lonely occupation. However, I find it helps to look at it this way:it's got to be a testimonial to character to be surrounded by stupidity and not end up stupid.

    To be respected in a community of dullards, you have to be a dullard, and that trade-off sucks. I don't like taking shit from airheads, but being like them would be even worse.

    When I find myself surrounded by fools, I often call this lyric from an old Alan Parsons Project song to mind:

    If I had a mind to
    I wouldnt want to think like you
    And if I had time to
    I wouldnt want to talk to you

    I dont care
    What you do
    I wouldnt want to be like you


    That's not an elitist statement. It's just an honest one.

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