A couple more issues from yesterday's class discussion:
3) Bourne's "The magical good fortune of attractive personal appearance marks its way almost without effort in the world, breaking down all sorts of walls of disapproval and lack of interest" elicited a big chunk of conversation in the class, with Lukas saying that there are many areas of life in which personal appearance makes no difference and about five other people arguing that looks are exceeded only by money in their power to ease your way through the world. Look at the paragraph in which Bourne makes that point, and the one following --what do you think of his argument, which specifically arises in his discussion of "business and the practice of a profession"?
4) The middle section of the essay talks about "the handicapped man" in confrontation with society's habit of victim-blaming: "If he could only more easily separate the factors that are due to his physical disability . . . he would realize what he is responsible for, and what he is not. But at the beginning he rarely makes allowances for himself; he is his own severest judge." Later, if he is resilient in the face of obstacles that might otherwise destroy his personality, he ends up with the potential for a bigger-than-average circle of compassion: "He will be filled with a profound sympathy for all who are despised and ignored in the world. When he has been through the neglect and struggles of a handicapped and ill-favored man himself, he will begin to understand the feelings of all the horde of the unpresentable and the unemployable, the incompetent and the ugly, the queer and crotchety people who make up so large a proportion of human folk." What is Bourne doing with that claim? What do you think of the language? What do you think of the argument that suffering might build compassion greater than that possessed by those who have not been stigmatized?
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2 comments:
I'd like to apologize for interrupting JK in the middle of his theoretical posit. It was just selftalk [in the Vygotsky sense] on my part though somewhat rude of me. I still would like to assert that the theoretical he was setting up seemed to be false. In other words, I don't believe that in realty two people can ever have exactly the same qualifications except for one difference [in this case level of beauty]. Therefore, I can't see this as a valid argument that beauty "opens doors" for people in society.
However, now that I have been thinking about it, I can't say that I am as sure about my argument that beauty has no influence on others' opinions of a person. If I were to switch my opinion, I would also have to assert that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. In other words, beauty may influence people to act favorably towards people they find beautiful but every person's perception of what is beautiful differs.
No apologies are necessary from my perspective. While I agree that such a situation is highly statistically improbable I would argue that its theoretical possibility makes it worth considering.
I agree that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but certain physical attributes are considered desirable across a wide-range of groups.
I am here speaking of the archetypal beauty. Ie. "Tall, dark ,and handsome," etc. A number of studies have been done that indicate that certain physical traits which mark one as genetically sound correspond generally to social standards of beauty.
An interesting, if brief, article can be found at: http://www.news.wisc.edu/releases/9679.html
As the article suggests, I believe that our perception of beauty can be altered by knowledge of the subject, or participant, of that beauty.
I don't view beauty as a silver bullet that makes life a pleasant lark for anyone posessing it, but I think it more or less undeniable that certain physical traits, viewed favorably by some, will ease a number of social situations.
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