The illusion of superiority (and inferiority)
“I don't have a feeling of inferiority. Never had. I'm as good as anybody, but no better.”
Katherine Johnson
Most people think that they are either superior or inferior to others. For instance they might think that they are more beautiful and more intelligent than others. In fact, others might even agree on this. But we will see that it has very little value in the eyes of nature and evolution. Being intelligent or being beautiful does not increase the chances of reproduction on the long run (on the short run maybe yes, but this does not matter). For instance high intelligence comes often with higher chance of mental instability. In Africa, a disease called sickle cell anemia is common. It is an inheritable disease of the red blood cells. The genetic mutation causing this therefore seems to be clearly a disadvantage. But scientists have discovered that the mutation can also help the body to fight malaria infections. Every coin has two sides.
Every single one of us shares the following property: she or he is the offspring of millions of humans and animals who were fit enough to reproduce successfully. Note that only a small fraction of all animals which have ever lived have reproduced successfully. Many fish produce millions of larvae from which almost all get eaten by other sea creatures and only a handful of them make it to adult age.
So if all these billions of ancestors where fit enough to live a successful (biologically) live, their last offspring must definitely have very good chances to be fit too. Why then do we sometimes have this feeling that some people are not fit (e.g. we perceive them as ugly, physically weak or stupid)? Because in biology it is like in roulette, you can bet on even / odd (with a small chance to lose but also not much to win) or on a number (with a high chance to lose but much more to win). Beautiful people with average intelligence in this example represent the „even / odd“ case and the supposedly weak represent the „number“ case. How does this work? Imagine that earth is hit by a meteorite tomorrow or an unknown deadly disease appears suddenly. It is clear that only individuals which are very different from the average will survive such an event and will be able to reproduce further. But in this case, they will have the chance to genetically dominate the future population because they are very few before. People which are close to the average (which we perceive as beautiful) have a good chance to reproduce in the case that nothing changes. This is likely in the short run but unlikely in the long run: sooner or later some significant event will change living conditions. Also, „average“ individuals cannot easily genetically dominate the future population because there are just too many of them. The far future will be always dominated by some (we don’t know which ones) of the rare „weak“ people of the present, as only they have the necessary extraordinary features to survive in a very different future world. The far future is always owned by special people, and - as we will see - we know this subconsciously.
This is the reason why in nature you always have both kinds of individuals: a large number of „even / odd“ creatures with the intent do dominate the near future and a small number of „number“ creatures with the intent to dominate the far future.
So we should stop to look at people which are different (such as small, skinny, nerdy or fat) as inferior. Only time can tell who will survive and who not. Until then, every single individual has a fair chance to make the race. And it is therefore valuable in the sense of biology.
Think about this, each time you catch yourself looking down on „weak“ people (which you might also do if you believe that they should be helped!) because you assume that they are biologically unfit.
This is the reason why diversity is so important. It does in a way form a backup for human live on earth. It makes sure we cannot be so easily made extinct by diseases or other disastrous events.
Note that beauty is often even only a fashion. This means that the value of the beautiful comes only from the shared (and well known) belief of many individuals that one particular individual is attractive. This makes the person attractive to mate with, because it is likely that offspring with this partner will be perceived as equally attractive and will have a larger number of partners to choose from for mating: e.g. If a group of men tells a man that they find a particular girl very attractive, he will suddenly find her more attractive too. Therefore in this case beauty has no meaning in terms of biological fitness. It’s kind of a mathematical joke of nature, a self fulfilling prophecy.
But why then are we so obsessed with beauty? Surprisingly it is, because we don‘t have anything better to decide the attractiveness of people when we meet them first. Only later, when we get to know somebody (which is rare), we can fall in love. We fall in love, if we unconsciously detect a deep alignment or synergy in strategy with another person. Then it makes a lot of sense to prefer this person sexually, find him/her more attractive than others, because with this partner we are able to raise more successful children. When this happens, the superficial „average“ beauty becomes unimportant. Or more precisely: the special features become suddenly the reason for the attraction. It‘s like in roulette: if we don‘t have a minimal belief that a certain number will win, we prefer to play simply odd or even in order to make it at least to the next round. Falling in love is like rigging the roulette game, it increases the chances of success of a specific number.
Falling in love (i.e. the perception of a deep alignment of strategy) is more important for women as they don‘t have the men‘s „shotgun“ option of producing many offspring available. As they have a very limited reproductive capacity, they are forced to optimize every aspect of reproduction very carefully to be successful in the long run.
It has become obvious by now: we are all different but we have all equal value. Each single one of us is an equally fantastic and beautiful creature of mind-blowing complexity with billions of years of completely successful family history behind. And as long as we are not dead, we have a chance to live a successful life. In the sense of biology, there are no living weak individuals which could be easily identified.
As a consequence we also understand that other peoples children are as valuable as yours. Your kids are in no way better than other peoples kids. So why to have your own children then? Why not to devote your time to other peoples kids? Understanding this might be a key to reduce the overpopulation of our planet (of course some women have to give birth to children, otherwise humankind would drown in sadness).
Whats the implication for our love live? If we can free ourselves from the slavery of superficial beauty (which as we have seen is hollow), we are able to discover the sexual attractiveness of so called „ugly“ people. Note that I also mean visual attractiveness, not only attractiveness coming from inner values. Extraordinary people can be very attractive (visually and otherwise), you just have to find the matching strategy in yourself. A broad erotic appetite is the result of improved self awareness. And our current and shared simple visual preferences are the result of a kind of unconscious strategical despair.
Our current shared classification of people into „beautiful“ and „ugly“ is self reinforcing: those falling into the „ugly“ loose self-confidence which makes them even less attractive.
With intelligence we have the problem that there is not even an agreement among experts what it is. There is a huge range of cognitive skills which could be called intelligence (from counting to intuition etc.). IQ tests usually measure only a very small fraction of the possible skills (e.g. no tests on motoric, visual or emotional intelligence, creativity etc.). They focus on skills which are currently considered especially relevant for economic success. But this is short sighted as other skills might be very useful in the future or in an unusual situation. A group of people profits from diversity: if the group members have different skills they can complement each other. It is not desirable that everybody is only good at the same small set of skills.
Note that we have so far discussed fitness in the old context of competitive nature (fit are those who can win against others). If we can get rid of competition, the old concepts and criteria do not make much sense anymore anyway. Then the attractiveness of a person might be much more subjective and coming from things like creativity, humor or emotional warmth.