Audri Swisher's Blog

I must confess that, in coming to college, I have fallen woefully behind on current events. I knew only the very bare bones information about the Occupy movement until I started browsing through news sites for this week’s blog post.

However, it seems that I’m not alone in my ignorance. In a Gallup poll released on October 18, 2011, 61% of Americans stated that they didn’t know enough about the movement to agree or disagree with its goals. Without any kind of discernible, unified demand, how do all of the protestors know when “as long as it takes” is? As long as what takes?

According to Lihle Z. Mtshali on the Times LIVE website,

“The occupiers basically want redistribution of income from top earners, or the 1% of the population, to the 99% through a wealth tax; they are asking for bailouts for people who have home and student loans; they are demanding the creation of 25 million new public sector jobs with union wages, less influence by corporates on politics, and trade barriers to keep jobs in the US. They also want guaranteed quality healthcare, university education and pensions for everyone.”

Uh-huh.

Frankly, I don’t agree at all with the OWS protestors. But, in this economy, no one is happy with his lot. If they draw attention to and start conversations about an admittedly shoddy status quo in the United States, well, bully for them.

A good illustration:

http://mommylife.net/archives/2011/11/13/problem%20with%20american%20culture.jpg

My apologies for the short post this week. I demand that parts of other posts be appended to mine, since I deserve to benefit from the work that other people did. As an added bonus, they should also be decried for their success. Oh, and don’t forget to forgive me when I fail to post. It was the system’s fault.

In “Strong Arts, Strong Schools,” an excerpt from a 1994 keynote address, Steven Fowler presents several answers to the questions: What is the connection between excellence in education and excellence in the arts? Why are schools with strong arts programs better schools? How do the arts add significantly to the dimensions of general education?

First of all, Fowler argues that the arts form an integral part of a comprehensive education. No single way of learning forms a complete picture of the world around us, so we must take from as many systems of learning as we can. Arts also offer a different way of education, one that encourages critical thinking and different solutions to the same problem. Students aren’t told what to think, but instead taught how to think.

In the third section, Fowler calls the arts “the cement that brings all the disparate curricular areas together.” The arts relate to almost any other subject matter and can help students relate to the past in a much more personal way than a dry textbook. Similarly, students can use the arts to relate in the present time as well – to other cultures, other countries, other ethnicities, etc. This teaches us to be more empathetic and open.

Fowler writes that the arts enlighten. For instance, theater shows us aspects of our human nature so that we can see them more objectively and perhaps recognize our own shortcomings or strengths. He then concludes by saying, “The arts are our humanity.”

Response:

I can’t count how many essays I’ve written on this very subject. I’m not sure how anyone can still look at the piles of data, statistics, hard evidence, etc. and still be convinced that the arts aren’t valuable subjects in schools.

Indeed, the issue doesn’t center on whether arts education is beneficial to students; instead, in the harsh reality of low funds and little space, the question becomes how it can remain in a public school’s budget. After all, a school won’t keep a band over a science class; it just doesn’t make sense. In a world where finances quickly dry up and schools are punished for low test scores, schools feel backed against the wall and “cut the fat.” But, it’s clear from years of study that music and art programs are worthwhile; how, then, can schools keep them?

On a local level, organizing fundraisers and asking stores or corporations to donate products for free or a reduced price might take away from the high cost. Individuals must also make their voices heard, whether it be supporting a candidate for the school board who favors education in the arts, or increasing interest in music and art programs by arranging concerts or appearances by well-known artists. The efforts of those concerned should strive to restore and maintain music and art programs in schools. Their loss would be devastating, effectively cutting off many from an opportunity they will get nowhere else.

In “The Vanishing Hitchhiker,” we find that urban legends are perpetuated because of three basic elements: a strong story appeal, a foundation in actual belief, and a meaningful moral. These “true” tales fill in gaps left by formal news reports and gratify our sensation-seeking minds. As with other narrative folklore, urban legends vary by the storyteller, to fit local places or to update old stories. In later pages, the book goes on to analyze several (in?)famous urban legends.

The Freakonomics podcast discussed the disappearance of hitchhikers in America. Popular culture and movies warned “If you hitchhike, you will DIE,” and the practice faded from use. The podcast asks, how dangerous was it? How common was hitchhiking violence in reality? (answer: uncommon.) What happens when you let small numbers balloon into large fears? One person interviewed in the podcast pointed out that hitchhiking wasn’t the danger – the crazy people out there will still be crazy people with or without hitchhiking.

Demand for hitchhiking fell because of fear, but also probably because the supply of transportation increased – fewer people needed a lift. There were more cars that were longer-lasting and more drivers in general. Today, the average commuting car leaves eighty percent of its passenger load unused.

Near the end of the podcast, several interviewees lament the loss of trusting others in America. Our biggest fear, he says, is strangers – odd, since we’re infinitely more likely to be hurt by the people we know.

Response:

All right, first thing. At home, we still use a phone book, hang laundry on a clothesline, and have a computer that accepts floppy disks (though it’s unlikely that they’ve ever been used in its slot). I have also seen plenty of hitchhikers on the road, so to hear that most of these guys haven’t seen one in twenty years was odd to me. Maybe it’s just a western South Dakota thing. Heck, hitching a ride is the only way my dad got across South Dakota when he was in college.

Let’s recap.

1. Hitchhiking saves money.
2. Hitchhiking is environmentally friendly.
3. Hitchhiking is fairly safe. One interviewee compared it to annual shark attacks. Well, I can think of several things that are more likely to harm you than a shark. (deep breath) Biking, jumping on a trampoline, swimming in a lake, swimming in a pond, swimming at all, using an oven, driving, playing sports, eating peanuts, sleeping on the top bunk, climbing ladders, working machinery, playing with a dog, waterskiing, snow skiing, snowboarding, snowmobiling, using a vending machine (you laugh, but people get crushed after shaking it in anger and tipping it over as a result). Hey, the presidency has an almost 10% rate of being killed on the job, and look how many people are still going for that job :P.
4. A return to hitchhiking would signify a renewal of trust between Americans.

In the face of these perfectly logical arguments for hitchhiking, do I think that it will ever see an upsurge? No – and that comes back to urban legends and their morals, etc.

I believe our greatest fear as Americans isn’t only strangers, but the unknown as a whole. With that said, the idea of either getting into a stranger’s car or inviting a stranger into yours is completely foreign to some people. As opposed to every other action I described in 3., hitchhiking is unregulated and random – we can’t be in control if we choose to partake. Urban legends like the ones described in “The Vanishing Hitchhiker” morph into our idea of the worst-case scenario of a relatively harmless action, and we try to protect ourselves. It’s not incomprehensible – merely a sign of the times.

(Random: anyone else notice the three Hs on the Moodle hitchhiker link? 😉 )

This week in Honors, we abandon our theme of beauty to venture into the wild world of themelessness (gasp!). So, naturally, we come to…Christmas?

In “Christmas Was Not Always Like This: A Brief History,” Bruce Forbes essentially puts the kibosh on any rosy ideas we may have had of a completely “spiritual, wholesome” Christmas of the good ol’ days. He begins, appropriately enough, with the beginnings of Christmas. In the very early church, much more emphasis was put on the death and resurrection of Christ than on his birth. When Christmas began to be celebrated, it was through a combination of pagan and Christian traditions.

The residents of early America neither practiced Christmas in a common manner nor necessarily recognized it at all. Instead of the almost across-the-board celebration of Christmas today, a “patchwork” of Christmas celebrations varied from family to family. The phenomenon as we know it today had its roots in the mid-1800s, corresponding to the development of Santa Claus and the backing of Christmas by businesses.

Forbes’s last point has to do with Christmas and gift-giving. Gifts were not a central part of early Christmas, though small gifts for children did arise for a celebration earlier in December, Saint Nicholas Day. Similarly, people gave presents on New Year’s Day. In 1800s America, the gift-giving portion for both holidays converged on Christmas, Saint Nicholas became Santa Claus, and, driven largely by business, Christmas became a dominant celebration in the United States.

Response:

I’ll respond to each of his three comments at the end of the article.

1)      “Christians need to make their peace with the fact that Christmas is partly a winter festival…expecting Christmas to be a purely spiritual celebration is a desire for something that never was” – Granted, the point is well-made. But I believe that the tables can be viciously turned. It’s unreasonable to expect Christmas to be “purely spiritual,” sure, but apparently also unreasonable to expect some to accept it as a “spiritual” holiday at all. Businesses and government fall over themselves trying to be PC and usually manage to annoy more than whom they started with.

2)      As the early America showed, meaningful Christmas celebrations can happen without everyone joining in – Again, well-made point and very true. But rather than stand by the sidelines and simply not participate, parts of the “entire culture” join in, all right – but only to dig at and aggravate any fault they can find. Christmas (at least, when it comes to religion) is “offensive”: well, so are some things on TV, but we’re told to shut it off, change the channel, stop our ears. Nativity scenes and “Merry Christmas” shove religion down our throats, but sex, violence, and bad language on daytime TV are creative expression. After all, “You don’t have to watch it!”

3)      If gift-giving has overwhelmed Christmas, it’s not the store’s fault – Commercialism dominates Christmas, as those statistics earlier showed. Well…it’s good for the economy.

My apologies for getting on my soapbox. Merry Christmas everyone!…albeit a bit early.

A common theme emerged when I was looking over the blog posts of the last several weeks: change vs. tradition.

In our very first reading, calliagnosia presents a huge change for society – taking away our ability to judge a person’s face by its appearance. The author likely wants us to reevaluate how we have traditionally viewed people and consider what good might result from a change.

Cicero, in our second reading, compares how men had lived in the past (who had determined not by reason, but by brute strength) with the eloquent men of his time. He recognizes the changes in and history of eloquence, and much of what he said can still be applied today.

The authors of “The Televised Sports Manhood Formula” analyze and define manhood according to a range of different sports on television. This definition, for the most part, follows the traditional views of what it means to be a man: aggressive, gutsy, a fighter; someone who’s willing to compromise his own health to win. LZ Granderson, on the other hand, wonders if sports could eventually take a step ahead of the rest of society to redefine what it means to be manly.

In our fourth reading, we learned about fractals and their first pioneer, Benoit Mandelbrot. He flew in the face of classical mathematics with his discovery of fractal geometry. Traditionally, math was limited to smooth lines and regularity. However, in the 1970s, Mandelbrot pointed to the seeming chaos of nature and claimed that fractals could describe its patterns, as classical geometry described man-made patterns – a huge step forward in mathematical thinking.

Finally, we come to Vonnegut. Vonnegut discussed some of the changes that science brought in his lifetime and called for abandoning capitalism in favor of socialism. I believe he tried to change the world for the better with his satire.

My other tie-in for all of the blog posts has less to do with their topics and more to do with our discussion. It’s intriguing to me to see the different perspectives on these varied subjects. I tend to read the articles and have a certain expectation for what everyone else will think, and I’m always surprised where the discussion leads. So…I’d add “unexpectedness” to my theme.

(Re: title of today’s post – it’s from Fiddler on the Roof. Watch it. 🙂 )

This week in Honors we tackle two speeches by Kurt Vonnegut, an American writer known for his pessimism, heavy satire, and humanist beliefs. The first address was given in 1970 to a women’s college graduating class. Vonnegut first recounts the loss of his optimism – mostly due to his experiences in World War II – and laments that science lost its luster when he realized that it couldn’t “make us so happy and comfortable.”

Therefore, no matter how much he would have liked to, he can’t bring light and happiness to this graduating class; all he offers is the truth, bleak and gloomy as it is. He calls for putting hope in superstition (“become an enemy of truth and a fanatic for harmless balderdash”), which he defines, essentially, as believing that humanity is a creation of God Almighty. According to Vonnegut, both this “superstition” and the arts put humanity on a pedestal. If a person believes that, then he will not treat his fellow man with contempt; at least, that’s his theory.

Vonnegut advertises socialism for a little while and ends. Gotta give points for brevity. Moving on…

Vonnegut’s last speech (delivered by his son after Vonnegut’s death) was given in his hometown of Indianapolis. The speech is a rather convoluted mishmash of ideas, wherein he tries to find a universal American sentiment, informs us that the Mona Lisa is not a perfect painting, succinctly summarizes the origin of the universe (“…BANG! And that’s where all this crap came from”), proclaims the apocalypse, discourages the use of semicolons, and praises communism and Karl Marx. He mentions asking his son what life is all about, to which his son replied, “Dad, we are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is.”

Response:

Oh, Kurt Vonnegut.

What I love about Vonnegut is that even if you think he’s crazy or his politics are complete and utter trash, he’s still a fun read. His writing is that kind of gallows humor that you laugh at, then sort of shift guiltily and look around to make sure you’re not the only one to do so. His personality comes through so well – probably because it seems as if he writes down whatever happens to be wandering by in his thoughts. His style is brief and simple, punctuated often by seemingly random tangents.

Coming into this reading, I was curious to see what thirty-seven years would do. How had those years changed him? Truthfully, I didn’t see much of a difference. However, it made me wonder – what would Vonnegut have expected to see from those almost-forty-years-older girls from his 1970 speech, now that they were “old enough” to change the world?

I can appreciate that Vonnegut writes from his personal hardships and that his beliefs come from his own experiences. However, his presentation of the “truth” is permeated with the very worst assumptions. After all, why believe that anything is true or good or pure when you can lower your expectations and believe the very opposite? Hey, if you’re proven wrong, you haven’t lost anything, have you?

The saying goes, “The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds, and the pessimist fears this is true.” Vonnegut was honestly trying to change the world for the better, I think; but, I also believe he had a few things wrong.

I read Slaughterhouse-Five several years ago. In it, Kilgore Trout, a character who functions as a sort of alter ego to Vonnegut himself, had a maxim for life: “Being alive is a crock of shit.” Mr. Vonnegut, being alive is not a crock of shit. I wonder if you had that figured out before the end.

“Hunting the Hidden Dimension” presents fractal geometry: the means of describing mathematically those patterns that appear jagged and random upon first glance. This is done by breaking a typical geometric shape into endlessly smaller and smaller pieces – “iteration” – with often surprising results. The key idea is self-similarity: that is, no matter what the scale is, a fractal will look very much the same.

Essentially, Benoit Mandelbrot flew in the face of classical mathematics with his discovery of fractal geometry. The long-held assumption was that math was limited to smooth lines and regularity. In the 1970s, Mandelbrot pointed to the seeming chaos of nature and claimed that fractals could describe its patterns, as classical geometry described man-made patterns.

In fact, fractals seem to be all around us – tree branch patterns, special effects of films, art, noise on telephone lines, textiles, antennas, cell phone parts, our eye movements, cancer screening, etc. While their full potential likely hasn’t been realized, it’s clear that fractals have already been beneficial to us. As for what lies ahead…who knows? (There’s probably a fractal pattern out there somewhere to predict it, though.)

Response:

So this is what the math teacher was talking about when he said that what we were learning was applicable.

While some of the people in this video are quick to point out that the technicalities aren’t the most important things about fractals, I was still intrigued by their explanation of being “in between dimensions.” According to mighty Wikipedia, a dimension is “informally defined as the minimum number of coordinates needed to specify each point within it.” All right, so locating a point in a two-dimensional square needs (x,y), locating a point in a three-dimensional cube needs (x,y,z). Therefore, a 2.6-dimensional fractal needs…2.6 points? Hmm. Oh well.

Trivialities aside, fractals are pretty cool. And definitely useful. But beautiful? Biologist Brian Enquist (University of Arizona) had to say: “What’s absolutely amazing is that you can translate what you see in the natural world in the language of mathematics. And I can’t think of anything more beautiful than that.”  I might not go that far, but it is fascinating to think that seemingly unrelated objects, such as a mathematical formula and our eye movements, could be linked somehow. I’m curious about what precisely he means, though. Is he amazed that nature fits these patterns? Or, conversely, that the patterns fit nature? Is he simply amazed at our ability to translate them? That simplicity results from seeming complexity?

Richard Taylor (University of Oregon) also said that mathematicians and artists are closer than a person might think: they just use different languages. At another point, Mandelbrot stated: “The eye had been banished out of science…been excommunicated.” He, on the other hand, was fascinated by the visual side of mathematics. From a pure visual standpoint, fractals are eye-catching and beautiful. But, as some of you have probably already figured out, I’m much more concerned with the practical side of things. If useful fractals are also beautiful, more power to them. If they ensure that my cell phone doesn’t look like a porcupine, even better.

Here’s a fun little site for playing with fractals: http://www.fractalposter.com/fractal_generator.php

“Why are numbers beautiful? It’s like asking why is Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony beautiful. If you don’t see why, someone can’t tell you. I know numbers are beautiful. If they aren’t beautiful, nothing is.” ~ Paul Erdős

How do sports change our views of what it means to be a man?

In his article “What’s ‘manly,’ what’s not for athletes,” LZ Granderson examines this question. Professional athletes are held to different standards from other celebrities in terms of their “manliness.” Athletes who take advantage of their good looks, who put family ahead of their career, who appear in a men’s fashion magazine – many are criticized for, essentially, doing “women’s” work. Granderson wonders if sports could eventually take a step ahead of the rest of society to redefine what it means to be manly.

“The Televised Sports Manhood Formula,” published in 2000, analyzes and defines manhood according to a range of different sports on television. Its conclusions result in a formula of a “real man”: aggressive, gutsy, a fighter; someone who’s willing to compromise his own health to win.

The YouTube video is a SportsCenter countdown of the top ten most extraordinarily creative hockey goals. Impressive!

Response:

Confession: I’ve never been an avid watcher of televised sports. On the rare occasions I do, it’s usually golf or tennis – the quiet, individual sports – or the very end of the Super Bowl. But even with my limited background, I can see where the authors of both articles are coming from. The Formula seemed right on the money in its definition of a Real Man according to the world of televised sports. I would be curious to see the statistics for today, as opposed to 1999. I’m betting that both the gender and race numbers would be less glaringly male and white than twelve years ago.

I really liked the point about Tiger Woods that Granderson made in his article. First of all, I don’t think that professional athletes should be propelled to role model status in areas beyond their sport, but that’s kind of beside the point. If Tiger Woods was condemned for cheating on his wife, why is Sergio Romo similarly condemned for taking time off for the birth of his child? I feel as if we have some skewed priorities here, people.

Taking a different tack…

My friend and I have had this ongoing argument for a while. She hates sports – watching, playing, sweating, etc. I, on the other hand, love them. She wrote an article a while back for our high school paper entitled “Art vs. Sports: The Debate Lives On” and asked me to proofread it. The opening read: “Which is more important? Self-expression and creativity or physical fitness and athleticism?” I wrote, “Are you suggesting that athletics are not a form of self-expression or are not creative? Because I heartily disagree.”

True, sports are not and never will be the same as art. But take a look at that YouTube video of the top ten creative hockey goals (note: creative). They took work, they took heart, they were unique, and they certainly stirred emotion. Isn’t that creative? Isn’t that beauty?

I’ll leave you with a few choice quotations, each paired with an appropriate theme of the Televised Sports Manhood Formula:

Sports is a Man’s World: If the Bible has taught us nothing else, and it hasn’t, it’s that girls should stick to girls’ sports, such as hot oil wrestling, foxy boxing, and such and such. ~ Homer Simpson, The Simpsons

Boys Will Be (Violent) Boys: I went to a fight the other night, and a hockey game broke out. ~ Rodney Dangerfield

Give Up Your Body for the Team: Pain heals.  Chicks dig scars.  Glory lasts forever. ~ Vince McKewin, from the movie The Replacements

Show Some Guts!: Losers quit when they’re tired.  Winners quit when they’ve won. ~ Unknown

Hard to believe that the words of a man who lived before the time of Christ would still ring true today, isn’t it? It seems the basics of eloquence haven’t changed much in two thousand years; or, perhaps, Cicero was a man ahead of his time. Maybe it’s both.

Cicero begins by wondering whether eloquence has brought more harm or good to man. While he writes that the actions of eloquent men have led to “distresses,” he ultimately concludes that eloquence leads to tremendous things: “enduring alliances,” “holy friendships,” etc. However, wisdom without eloquence is ineffectual, and eloquence without wisdom is useless and leads to mischief.

The men of an earlier time, Cicero writes, determined not by reasoning but by brute strength. Only when a man arose and sought to draw out the capabilities of the minds around him through his impassioned wisdom and eloquence did civilization develop. Could any of it have happened without eloquence?

No, writes Cicero; but he acknowledges the capacity for evil as well. (Hitler, anyone?) Men that had acquired eloquence with no regard for knowledge or understanding fooled multitudes and brought about disasters. Therefore, many abandoned eloquence for quieter, more tranquil pursuits.

However, the misuse of eloquence should only strengthen the resolve of those who would use it well, Cicero writes. Eloquence has the largest effect on all affairs and, if paired with wisdom, will bring more advantages to the public than from any other source.

Cicero devotes some time to discussing the duty and end of oration and its subjects. Its duty, which is what ought to be done, is to “speak in a manner suitable to persuading men.” Its end, which is the goal of the duty, is to persuade by language. The subjects of oration, at least according to Aristotle, should be the demonstrative (praise or blame of an individual), deliberative (statement of opinion), and judicial (topics of accusation and defense or demand and refusal).

Finally, what we’ve all (or at least I’ve) been waiting for: the parts of effective eloquence. Cicero lists five: Invention, Arrangement, Elocution, Memory, and Delivery. I’ll discuss them slightly more in depth in my response. Speaking of which…

Response:

In keeping with this year’s theme – that is, beauty – we come upon beauty in a different form: eloquence. Cicero writes of something, like outward attractiveness, that can be misused for harm but is ultimately beneficial to humanity.  It was intriguing to watch the origins of eloquence unfold, especially through the eyes of a Roman philosopher, B.C.

For my second reading, I chose President Reagan’s response to the space shuttle Challenger disaster. He gave this speech on January 28, 1986, only hours after the shuttle broke apart less than two minutes into its flight. The speech is short, the words simple – but the emotion and impact huge. Quiet and somber, he expresses his grief, encourages the nation, and looks to the future with hope. He ends with a then-unknown quote from a poem by John Gillespie Magee, a teenaged pilot in the Royal Canadian Air Force, who died at the age of nineteen: “We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and ‘slipped the surly bonds of earth’ to ‘touch the face of God.’”

Cicero wrote: “No wisdom which was silent and destitute of skill in speaking could have had such power…” I think President Reagan understood this. The speech itself was written by Peggy Noonan, but America was looking to its leader for hope at such a tragic time. The invention, the arrangement, the elocution were not his; the memory of the event as a whole was burned into everyone’s mind already; but the delivery – the dignity, the solemnity – mattered.

Oliver Goldsmith (1730-1774) wrote: “True eloquence does not consist…in saying great things in a sublime style, but in a simple style; for there is…no such thing as a sublime style, the sublimity lies only in the things; and when they are not so, the language may be turgid, affected, metaphorical, but not affecting.” The president’s words that night in 1986 were said in a simple style, perhaps; but, for a nation mourning the crew of the Challenger, true eloquence had brought sublimity.

In Ted Chiang’s fictional Liking What You See: A Documentary, calliagnosia is a hotly debated issue. Shortened to calli in informal speech, calliagnosia is an alternative to the “deeper societal problem” of lookism, prejudice against unattractive people. Through selective anesthetics in the brain, calliagnosia effectively blocks a person’s ability to distinguish between beautiful and ugly people, as well as everyone in between.

The proponents of calliagnosia call it an “assisted maturity”: a means to look beyond the surface. Calliagnosics experience no aesthetic reactions to differing physical attributes, not even to the across-the-board definition of beauty – clear skin, symmetry, and average facial proportions. According to its advocates, calli is the cure for discrimination in the workplace, advertising distractions, image-consciousness, and devaluation of women.

Some warn against calliagnosia. The opponents ask whether it is worth losing the good with the bad. One man compares world-class beauty with the athleticism of an Olympian and wonders why a person must apologize for feeling wonder and admiration at both. He also believes that depriving ourselves of the chance to enjoy the talents of gifted individuals is a crime. Another claims that calli supporters want to condemn women for taking pleasure in their appearance.

Many of the varied “interviews” in Liking What You See pertain to an upcoming election at Pembleton University. A certain initiative, if passed, would make calli a requirement for students. The president of the National Calliagnosia Association speaks at the university, calling beauty a “visual drug” which interferes with our personal relationships and naming calliagnosia the only protection. Soon after, polls show that most students support the initiative. However, after an opponent speaker warns that calli will only create naïve individuals incapable of identifying “lookism,” the initiative fails to pass.

Response:

This is difficult for me to consider. I’ve always wanted to be judged solely on my character and not my outward appearance – leave the spiteful, empty-headed girls with perfect hair and flawless skin behind. But if I were faced with it head-on, in this way? It seems like cheating. Instead of people looking beyond blemishes or beauty to the person within, calliagnosia would make both invisible – make blinkers for us. True, calli would mean that people would be judged “by the content of their character,” in the immortal words of Martin Luther King, Jr. But at what cost?

Our decried autonomic responses are there for a reason, but let’s put reproductive success aside for now. Why deny ourselves the enjoyment of beautiful people or divest them of their pleasure? Instead of blinding ourselves to outward beauty so we can see the inner, we should teach people to love their neighbors. One proponent of calli in Liking What You See said, “True beauty is what you see with the eyes of love.” True. But I would add that instead of rewiring our brains, we could change our hearts. If we saw anyone who crossed our paths through the eyes of love, calli would become redundant and meaningless.

If this came to reality, many would flock to its use. But not this girl. Take me as I am. Take me and my bushy eyebrows. My future husband and I will still be able to tell our little girl how beautiful she is.