Since Omni popped in for a visit

I thought I'd drop by her place to see what she's up to. Since I'd rather talk about that than the Twins tonight [It's all your fault CPF! You kept that prayer I asked for for the Packers to yourself and used it for the Yankees.], I though I'd take up her question:

If we could all look alike
...
Imagine a world where we could only win love, popularity and success by developing ourselves as human beings, rather than by enhancing and using our looks; would it lead to utopia... or would we be just as unhappy as we are now, because we don't all have equal levels of intelligence, humor, warmth, and other personality traits, and so some of us would STILL be favored, and DISfavored, for things we were born with?

My straightforward answer would be this: when I moved to the Twin Cities in 1987 I noticed that everybody seemed to hate everybody else for the most trivial reasons. People that I thought were very nice and helpful spent all their time bitching about each other behind each others' backs and seemed to consider this pleasant conversation. The fat and/or ugly girls talked about how slutty or moralistic the slim, good-looking girls were, the good-looking girls talked about how bitchy the fat a/o ugly girls were, you got pretty much the same thing from the guys in different terms... I suppose I was kind of like an alien landing here, because, until I experience poverty for myself in Odessa, TX and The Grand Canyon, where in both places I worked very hard for long hours at minimum wage [and learned to budget my money by experiencing the consequences of not doing so in the form of foregone meals], I was a fat guy. From the sticks. Who sought the company of squirrels and songbirds in the woods. I had also spent four years learning useless crap at UM-Duluth (German major, Math and Philosophy minors--somehow that didn't equate to a great social education, even with all my efforts at mastering Beer-Drinking).

When I started my present job in the Cities I was 6-foot, 190 and I had hair and it never occurred to me that those pretty gals were hitting on me. [If I knew then what I know now... I'm old enough now, though, to realize that the trouble I wanted to get into was real trouble, with deadly consequences.]

But that's just a pleasant reverie. My protected, conservative Christian upbringing led me to accept people kindly, including their inexplicible need to bash other people. Whom I also liked. Everybody has faults and I love you anyway. For your virtues which I can see.

I have one quirk that keeps people from taking advantage of my innocence, though several did anyway: God made me larger and stronger than average, though not large enough that I feel that I can rely on that alone. I have been tested in that regard from an early age by people who felt the need to try their physical prowess on me. I've never lost when I felt I was in the right. I learned other methods of dealing with these situations by the time I entered my teens because I grew sick and tired of violence long before. Though there are still people who will push their advantage until you beat the hell out of them. The good news is that in a society that respects the Rule of Law [just law; Natural Law], that doesn't have to be a fist-fight (or a gun-fight).

In any case, I'm saying that I have a confidence about me and a mean Mean Look. Which I try not to abuse.

Where the hell is the source of this meandering ramble? Oh yeah. If we all looked alike, but still had individual minds and talents we'd still hate the Other. Xenophobia is an evolved survival trait. Wallowing in fear and hatred of people different from us is the source of the majority of evil in the world. "Animal spirits," as Keynes put it - sort of an irrational joie de vivre, or to use Hitler's term, brutality - account for the rest. When either becomes a collective spirit it can be astoundingly destructive.

I invite correction.