Photo by d3l

What we wear on the outside, what we decorate our bodies with, inevitably causes assumptions to be made by others about who we are. What started with a necessity to protect ourselves from the elements has evolved into an art form. From what I have been able to observe around me, I have separated the way people view clothes into two main categories. Aesthetic wearers and niche wearers.

Aesthetic wearers are those who choose the clothes they wear based on what they find visually appealing. They are for the most part not limited by any particular style. They wear anything and everything that they think will look good on them. This may sometimes be inhibited due to social acceptability but anything allowable by law is fair game. This group includes those who wear clothes more for functionality than for appearance, because to them, function is beauty.

Niche wearers, as I call them, are those who decide what to wear based on what group of people they choose to associate themselves with. They choose clothes based on what characteristics they want others to perceive in them. The Emo look is an excellent example. Here, members of the group choose to wear similar clothing to show to the rest of the world their membership. The niche wearers are not limited to those who want to show group membership. This includes people who want status, style, sexiness, or any quality that they are consciously choosing to exemplify. The popped collar wearer is a prime example. Never has there been such a blatant indicator to the world that this person is purposely seeking to be viewed as “cool.” The niche wearers will consistently choose to follow their desire for certain qualities over comfort, quality, sometimes even price.

The way I have constructed it is a little too simplistic. In reality, no one is perfectly one or the other. Everyone has a different balance of the two. This is because we already have preconceptions about what looks good, and they are based on seeing others. So the aesthetic wearer cannot be completely original, and the niche wearer will not choose to wear something completely ugly. But for the most part, elements of both these ideologies are visible in the style choices of the people around us. The actual possibilities in appearance are not exactly infinite in reality, so it is very much possible to see a niche wearer and aesthetic wearer in the same exact outfit, but what differs is the motivation. I believe everything a person puts forth to others can indicate something of their personality, and clothes are no exception. So next time you find yourself in a social situation, see if being an aesthetic or niche wearer has any bearing on the way a person interacts with you. I would be very interested to learn of your experience.

Photo by Noel Zia Lee

Is the value of a cute and familiar animal greater than that of an unfamiliar animal?  I’m defining familiar in terms of closeness to humans.  Of course this varies across cultures as well.  Eating a dog or cat would seem unthinkable to most people in the United States, but it is commonplace in Asia.  But this bias toward animals that we think are cute or animals we have become accustomed to living among seems inconsistent.  The value of a dog versus the value of a cow does not change with the human opinion.  Both are four-legged mammals and neither have any discernible mental advantages over the other.  So our decision to eat one and adopt the other comes down to how friendly these animals are to us.

We could adopt a subjective view of the world and claim that whatever we perceive as value is value, making the friendliness of the dog its higher value.  But in this view, I would also become acceptable to differentiate among humans like this.  I would be able to kill anyone that I believed had lesser value to me.  Obviously this is not the prevalent philosophy.  The people that eat cows are for the most part, people that think humans have value and certain animals have value.  Outside of the subjective view, we have no logical basis for differentiating among different animals.  Without a logical basis, it is just inconsistency in its most obvious form.

How can a person be against eating dogs, but eat cows?  Most consumers of beef or chicken would not want to cause the death of a cow or chicken, yet they eat them.  It seems that we are just choosing to ignore what’s not in front of us.  It’s more convenient to make these differentiations than to face our inconsistency.  A person who chooses to eat animals should be perfectly willing to kill animals.  Some might be willing to accept the killing but want someone else to do it, even this is fine because they are accepting responsibility.  But to eat meat without wanting animals to die is wrong.  A person who chooses to eat meat and kill the animals that gave rise to the meat must also accept the killing of other animals.  If I choose to kill and eat stray dogs, the beef eater should not tell me that I am wrong.  It would just be a matter of taste.

The existence of an objective moral truth is arguable, so I cannot claim whether it is right to kill animals or not, but either belief should be practiced with complete consistency.  The meat eater should be willing to accept the death of every kind of animal.  The animal rights activist should not cause the death of any animal.  To choose among animals corrupts whatever we believe and we end up with an inconsistent and faulty moral code.

Photo by Richard0

Beauty is one of those concepts that has been questioned for thousands of years and yet its true meaning eludes us.  What makes something beautiful?  Why do we feel pleasure from it?  Why does perception of beauty differ?

I like to separate the things that we perceive as beautiful for only their form without any meaning that they might carry.  A lot of the debate about what makes art beautiful could be defined by this.  In this category, it is easy to see why the perception of beauty differs from person to person.  When our reaction is based on the meaning we see, it will always be different because everyone has a different mindset and so their reaction will be different.  The pleasure we may get from such things could be traced to the relationship of the meaning we perceive to our experiences.

The other category, of things that are seen as beautiful simple for what they are, is a little harder to understand.  A tree, the moon, the ocean, all these things could be pleasurable because of certain meanings, but I think they are also capable of being beautiful by themselves.  A person might have memories of the sea and so might like the ocean, but I’m inclined to think that someone that has never seen the ocean might still find it beautiful.  This sort of perception of beauty, where it isn’t based on any experience or bias, is difficult to grasp.  What is it about the ocean that is beautiful?  First, I can’t make the claim that everyone would like the ocean.  It is a matter of whether there are things that are just objectively beautiful independent of perspective.

Which things are beautiful in and of themselves and which things are beautiful because of bias is something that would change from person to person.  For me, sunsets are independent of experience, but the lawns at the University of Miami are not.  This might be different for someone else.  Maybe the fact that we have formed opinions based on experiences takes away our chance to like something for what it is.  When I look at the lawns, it brings memories of past experiences with friends.  If I was able to look at the lawns without recalling these memories, maybe I could appreciate them for what they are instead of what hey mean to me.

I feel that at some level, if we can manage to look at things completely objectively, we could see beauty in everything, just because they exist.  It is intriguing to look at leaf patterns and cloud formations.  Just like that we could let millions of other things intrigue us.  It’s hard to call this objective beauty because everything would be of interest to us.  If we can alter the way we perceive our world, maybe the question of beauty or no beauty wouldn’t arise.  This is the way I can somehow blend the idea that everything is subjective with the idea of an objective beauty.  How do you see it?  Subjective or Objective?

It’s really surprising how much you can notice around you when you come out of yourself.  If you can leave the thoughts about your own life and day-to-day chores, your mind is able to soak up and give new meaning to so many things that you might have missed before.

I’ve been visiting India almost every summer since moving to the US in 1998, but when I was there this summer, I noticed a lot of things that I had missed before.  It was probably a result of the changes my mind has been undergoing in the last couple of years.

The thing that struck me the most was the vast cultural differences that exist between the social classes in India.  Now I might have known this at some level before, but I probably only knew it as a dry fact in my head and not something real or observable.  In America, a person earning $30,000 a year and a person earning $300,000 live similar lives.  Of course the latter has a lot more luxury, but they are exposed to the same TV shows, they both drive cars, enjoy central A/C, and if they were to meet on the street, they could probably carry on a conversation with each other pretty well.

Now consider this image, on a busy street in downtown Bangalore, there is a new nightclub that’s just opened and there’s a massive crowd of young Indians waiting outside, busy on their cell phones, adjusting their designer clothes, and sporting the latest looks from GQ.  Directly across the street, there’s a building under construction that has just shut down for the night.  Sitting at the 1^st floor windows, are some of the workers that have just finished.  These are people that make about $40 a month for their labor. They’re sitting and looking at the crowd assembled outside the nightclub.  These workers don’t know why the club goers are dressed so weird, they’re trying to understand why everyone is trying to argue with the doorman to get in.  This is quite different from the small roadside huts that they will go on to have a few drinks at.  The alcohol the workers drink come in plastic packets, they don’t speak English, they don’t know about the economy.  The two groups of people that are 15 meters apart from each other, from the same city in the same country, wouldn’t be able to carry on any type of conversation whatsoever.

It’s hard to describe the image, especially since I can’t convey the feeling I got when I realized this difference that exists.  It’s hard for people in America or other developed nations to understand I suppose.  If you have spent a lot of time traveling, I’m sure you’ve noticed this, and if you’re planning on traveling, keep en eye open for this, it really is quite startling when you first realize it.