View RSS Feed

Memories of the 28th Century

On Hiding Faces

Rate this Entry
Everything tells a story about itself. The story I was thinking about was stereotypes, but there's more to it than the traditional discussion, because humans announce themselves with their faces. People looked like what they are. That means that people who look like idiots almost certainly are idiots, and people who pleasant and friendly almost certainly are pleasant and friendly, regardless of other factors. But people who try to convince you that they are your friends but look like they intend to “victimize” you, probably will pick your pocket and leave you for dead after stabbing you in the back. But the matter of stereotyping people is only one aspect of judging people by their appearances.

Umberto Eco was a great writer, one of the world's foremost semioticists, and a great commentator on art of various sorts. He produced a pair of interesting and relevant books: The History of Beauty and On Ugliness (see links below). It has been a little time since I read either, but the essence is that the standards of beauty are eternal, and they reflect evolutionary goals, and ugliness is the flip side. Ugliness is what is least desirable for humans, but those characteristics are apparent with just a glance, if one can see the face.

What is good for the species is good for the individual, so women who are beautiful are, by definition desirable for the community and for the species, and the standards have not changed significantly over the centuries. Alas, it appears that psychopaths never saw that memo, so they may appear quite nice even thought they are not nice, at all. But, while there are generalities, when it comes down to individuals, it is a matter of what matches with whom.

One of the most important things for judging someone's beauty, character, and potential compatibility is the face. The human face reflects the personality of the person; without seeing someone's face it is difficult, or maybe impossible, to determine the value of that individual. This is something that I had taken for granted, until we were recently ordered by the so-called authorities to hide the lower half of our faces behind medical-ish masks in the hope of avoiding covid19. The masks may help, but we didn't need them during the Hong Kong Flu back in 1969 or in any of the other flu pandemics, and somehow we survived. We also continued to be able to read the faces of others, and a significant amount of human communication is non-verbal, and facial expressions are very important. We all know that we will die at some point, so the virulence of covid19 is no more important than the virulence of Swine Flu or any of the other minor diseases that come along, but we do need to see faces to communicate well and to judge the beauty, honesty, intelligence, etc. of other people.

Although coronavirus could be engineered into something that could be a real catastrophe (See my novel Causation), and each and every death is a tragedy; hiding faces may be worse for more people over the long run. Hiding faces is a violation of what we as a species are. As Desmond Morris wrote, we are The Naked Ape, and apes of whatever sort communicate with facial expressions.

It is difficult to be all that confident about the importance of anything, but I think that we can be fairly confident that the human face is important, and the inability to see a face hides important information. There are other, related, ramifications of this, but it may be safer to stop here.

I haven't touched the question of whether using face masks reduces the spread of covid19, but there are good reasons to think that masks have little, if any, effect, except in clinical settings, where more restrictive protection is useful and is somewhat effective.

It is difficult to be all that confident about the importance of anything, but I think that we can be fairly confident that the human face is important, and not being able to to a face hides important information. There are other, related, ramifications of this, but it may be safer to stop here.

Regardless of how effective or useful masks might be at slowing the spread of disease, hiding faces is a bad idea.




I looked for the personal website of Umberto Eco, but it appears to have been removed since his death. This is somewhat like it.
https://www.unibo.it/en/university/w.../umberto-eco-1
History of Beauty
https://www.amazon.com/History-Beaut.../dp/0847835308
On Ugliness
https://www.amazon.com/Ugliness-Umbe.../dp/0847837238
The Naked Ape
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Naked_Ape

Updated 05-07-2020 at 06:51 PM by PeterL

Categories
Uncategorized

Comments

  1. Buh4Bee's Avatar
    If your ugly and have beautiful eyes, this might be your moment to shine.
  2. PeterL's Avatar
    That is true, but it might harm the rest of humanity.
    Updated 05-12-2020 at 09:55 PM by PeterL
  3. Buh4Bee's Avatar
    But it might be good for ugly people.
  4. PeterL's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by Buh4Bee
    But it might be good for ugly people.
    Yes, it is their opportunity to shine.