Which is more valuable in today's society: beauty or intellect?
We are in a time, where society is built on beauty. Who are you going to elect for president? The old guy who has seen the government evolve? Or the sharp looking man who talks a good game? I remember when Obama was running for election a few years back, them and their families were voting for him on the sole reason that he was black. Is it right to say that this is outrageous? Why are we not looking at the facts instead of looking at their game, why is society so inclined to see things on a visual level as opposed to a more logical intellectual level? We call this time the Information age/era, but how much innovation do you see circulating America?
Lets ask ourselves a few questions, If the world valued intellect more, would the Kardashians still exist as they do? What about organizations like TMZ news and other celebrity related news as opposed to reporting on actual issues? The social pressures on the young peers to become “cool” follow a more beauty pattern. Last time I checked, to be cool was to conform to an amount of stupidity, otherwise you're a “nerd” or a “geek”, someone who is usually frowned upon in the younger social circles. How about all the kids who want to grow up to become a star? Or to become a well known musician? You usually have to have an “image” to become a great musician, you don't have to have great music as demonstrated by Nicki Minaj in her recent songs, or Lady Gaga being famous for dressing up in an all bacon suite? I'm not saying becoming a musician or a star makes you automatically stupid, but people find the qualities of how you look better than the qualities found in intellects as demonstrated in these examples.
This is an American problem, I don't see as much commotion built upon others beauty in other countries, maybe the French, but that's it. They see beauty in the land, beauty meaning love, and strive to preserve the beauty through intellectual means. Not beauty within people as America has demonstrated. When was the last time you heard an American scientist making a breakthrough?
Maybe advancements seen only in medicine.
Politicians seek the need to slash funds towards scientific advancement (like what has been seen through the NASA community), while other countries like China, with their 5 year plan to get their own station in space and eventually get a society functioning. Russia and their scientists recently discovering lake Vostok in Antarctica, a lake that might unlock secrets about our world, and a new Freshwater resource, how many people do you think know about that as opposed to the Victoria secret models? If you look ahead a few years, how is our society beneficial to the environment? We are living on a planet that has stretched its resources and continues to grow, we need scientific advancement! Not to increase funds within congress, add taxes to the poor to fund a project the American people don't even know is happening behind their backs. Taxes and fees to help big business like the MPAA fund censorship to the internet like we saw a few months ago with the PIPA/SOPA scare. although the internet is seen as something social, like Facebook has depicted, it is in fact one of the most scientific means of communication for an intellectual individual.
Who is the government and big business to define beauty? it shouldn't be just the people who make the money that says, goes. Beauty is seen as something in the eye's of the beholder, so in a broad sense, if someone who knows a lot seeks beauty in education, the whole meaning of the controversial beauty vs. intellectualism conundrum can't simply be answered. We often do associate beauty with stupidity, we rely on beauty for validity, beauty for a means of judging books by their cover, and that is the problem we have at hand. Beauty needs to be defined in the general sense of love in an emotional level, not stupidity. Beauty needs to be defined as an amazingly put together song or “piece”, that brings you to tears, not a rap about killing people who don't believe in your mentality. I can see why people tend to rely on beauty than they do from being intellectual, because it scares people, what you may find out in the world could change the way we think, and people generally fear change. There is a higher statistic in suicide within the knowledgeable community, would that still be high if people held great values with being smart? People fear what they do not know.
