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Are humans beautiful animals?

Akoto

Akoto

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Jan 9, 2005
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Do you think people are objectively beautiful animals? Do you think other animals make fun of our nakedness and funny tufts of hair on the top of our heads?

I mean, if you look at birds, some of them put a lot of effort into looking beautiful, and we as people agree that they are so.

Are dolphins beautiful? We surely admire them.
 
we're a very physically diverse species, appearance-wise.
it's almost like asking if dogs are beautiful.

i'd say physically - sometimes.
and culturally - sometimes, but infrequently.

i think dolphins are very beautiful.

great question.
 
i don't think there's such a thing as objective beauty.

alasdair
 
^Agreed. I think we find beauty in many things, and it's very subjective. For example, even among humans, there are a vast array of appearance factors that people find either attractive/beautiful or not. The same person can be considered ugly or beautiful to two different people. Some people might find dolphins unattractive (though I can't see why they would personally). Some people find spiders beautiful, some find them horrifying and disgusting. I personally think snakes are gorgeous creatures but some people find them repulsive.

I really can't speak to how other animals perceive beauty or even if they do. I'd think that beauty is something that goes beyond simple utilitarianism. I mean there is sexual attraction, which clearly happens with all mammals and some other animals (but not, say, fish, which just reproduce by fertilizing clouds of eggs released), but beauty and sexual attraction are not mutually exclusive, as I find dolphins beautiful but not sexually attractive (on the other hand, dolphins have been known to be sexually attracted to humans on occasion). I'm not sure that all animals perceive beauty, but for those that do, I'd think it would be subjective there as well. And some intelligent alien species somewhere in the universe that takes the form of a blob of slime or something we'd find unattractive may find beauty in forms entirely different to those we find them in.

Art further confounds the question. We find beauty in color and form, and in nature, and in music, and in those things some people find beauty while others do not, in any particular instance.

I personally find the human form beautiful, especially the female human form, which again brings sexual attraction into it. But I'm a heterosexual male human. Could be that chimps look at us like, damn, those are some ugly creatures! So funny-looking with their naked skin and sparse, thin hair. =D
 
Would we still be beautiful if you removed the skin from the body, leaving the muscle and tissues beneath?

Beauty is a projection of the human mind, a combination of genetic programming and environmentally programmed associations.

The most beautiful things I have experienced are not visual but abstract mental experiences that have no visual component.. realizations about how reality is. The female form has never moved me to tears of reverence.
 
Well I concur, the most beautiful thing to me is thoughts about the structure of existence, maybe most notably the comprehension of the vastness and complexity of the structure of the universe both microscopically and macroscopically.

Even further complicating the question. :)
 
-=SS=- said:
Would we still be beautiful if you removed the skin from the body, leaving the muscle and tissues beneath?
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definitely. there's a strange, certain beauty here:



deconstructed, damaged, imperfect things can be beautiful. there's beauty in the work of damien hirst. in that of francis bacon.

alasdair
 
There are so many ways of looking at it. There are moments of truth, moments of attraction, and moments when I feel like some kind of cosmic anthropologist stepping back and saying, "How did this happen?" Humans are weird looking. I've reflected on this for hours at nude beaches. Yet our vehicle can be used for so many things which evoke truth in others and within ourselves. To me this is the source of the beauty and not some objectified form floating out in space without context. Beauty is truth and truth is beauty. You know it when you see it.
 
I personally find cats much more beautiful. If I could reproduce with a leopardess, I would probably do so (the pre-fornicational shower and a few menthol oral cleanings are obligatory of course).
 
Ziiirp said:
I personally find cats much more beautiful. If I could reproduce with a leopardess, I would probably do so (the pre-fornicational shower and a few menthol oral cleanings are obligatory of course).
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I think cuteness is another indicator of some form of universal beauty standards.

Baby's of SO many species of animal are just so darn cute to us people, from seals to cats to anything really small. Even if they are an efficient killing machine, they need some sort of defense as a youngster and one of those comes in the form of cuteness.
 
^ there's plenty of discussion around why we find baby animals cute and it may have less to do with beauty than simple evolutionary benefit.

alasdair
 
alasdairm said:
^ there's plenty of discussion around why we find baby animals cute and it may have less to do with beauty than simple evolutionary benefit.

alasdair
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Can you dig up some literature for me?
 
alasdairm said:
i don't think there's such a thing as objective beauty.
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this sums it up, really.
i'm very fascinated by subjective beauty though. the evolutionary angle alasdair mentions is very true.

the OP made me think of some great books desmond morris has written about these sorts of things, as a zoologist and sociologist.

 
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I like to do a mental exercise from time to time where I imagine these are my very last hours in this life. Everyone looks beautiful, every gesture tugs at the heart. I was inspired to do this after reading Ellen Bass' poem called Remodeling the Bathroom. Now she's written another one, equally beautiful, called If You Knew.
 
Weird thing is, that I think my cat (female, died at 17 years old) was a little bit sexually attracted to me and I would have been to it, if it would not have been so small. So I treated her as a little sister and never touched her/abused her of course.

Just saying, that if we grew up together (she was much younger than me, I saw her growing up, so I treated her as a sister) at the same age PLUS if she was a big cat (lioness, tigress, leopardess) I totally see the possibility to have a sexual relationship to another type of animal if it is consensual. It of course stays highly dangerous to have intercourse with a big cat (bacause humans are physically downgraded and mentally upgraded animals). Just saying, that love has no boundaries, if it is consensual.
 
i think the ultimate meaning of beauty is perfectly objective...things have to look a certain way and be weighted and balanced in curves and lines to specific degree and angles that make a person or thing beautiful..

So its obvious that some humans and of course the most you'd probably see would be an example like Hollywood..which is filled with beautiful people..

But you can almost do anything to mar beauty itself..whether its scars...acne..or just about any part of the picture or body being slightly or even very to heavily out of place..

So the concept of beauty therefore IS one of placing of things..

I do think ultimately..that almost everyone could attain a perfect beauty if they just owned up to who they are..
 
Ziiirp said:
I personally find cats much more beautiful. If I could reproduce with a leopardess, I would probably do so (the pre-fornicational shower and a few menthol oral cleanings are obligatory of course).
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Cats are beautiful, but what about hairless cats? Not so much, and I think that clearly answers the OP's question.

My little cat is such a pretty girl and she definitely knows it. <3
 
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