> > "Someone who is friendless, childless, powerless, weak, and ugly will simply not be able to find many opportunities for virtuous activity over a long period of time, ..."
Go find the others who are friendless, childless, powerless, weak, and ugly[1]. Among them, you'll find plenty of opportunity for virtuous activity.
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[1] There's far more of such people than the, uh, non-friendless, non-childless, non-powerless, non-weak, and non-ugly think.
Speaking as an above average looking person (or so I’m told), I’ve found that here in my 30s, physical attraction has taken a major back seat to the personality factor. Maybe I’m in the minority on this one, but I don’t really think of people as attractive or not any more based on facial features or anything else that we don’t have control over with regard to our bodies. What matters is physical fitness and whether we can have a mutually interesting conversation.
As I get older, I still consider physical attractiveness of the people around me. But what I've noticed is that I 100% make fewer choices based on that physical attractiveness.
In my 20's, I was very likely to make a decision to work with or for someone if they are attractive. In my late 30's now, I am much more likely to only base it on the other person's ability and/or intelligence in a subject area.
In Internet 90% of the people are "above average" in attractiveness. Either you are not that good looking as you think you are or you are very modest scratching the untruthfulness. Very attractive people tend to value MORE not less physical appearance, which it makes senss, due to assortative mating and the worldview they grew up with.
No, I believe vain, insecure people post lots of photos of themselves online. Many of them compensate for their ugliness by clothes, background and makeup. Most beautiful people that are busily secure in their lives don't have the time to post 10 times a day!!!!
No, I mean good-looking people tend to care a LOT more about their appearance than regular people. Not only their appearance but the appearance of their partners. Being good looking is part of their identity and has shaped their worldview.
Same reason smart people value intelligence a lot, rich people value money, and so on and so forth.
This somewhat overstates the case, but it does indeed make a huge difference. For myself (also rather unattractive), I wish someone had sat down with me early on and explained these rather awful facts of life.
It might seem courteous and kinder to pretend that this isn't going on, but living in ignorance has significant costs of its own.
Now that I'm older, I'd definitely advise figuring out where you are on the scale and dating down, not up. If you're with someone significantly more attractive, you're paying in other ways--make sure you know what they are.
Yep, I have been infinitely happier dating down, there is no a comparison. Not so much because it is so nice (it is lame) but because dating up is hell on earth. The other "trick" to date across or up (in physical attractiveness) is to offer other things, like money, (this works beautifully with single parents) but I do not like that route.
Go find the others who are friendless, childless, powerless, weak, and ugly[1]. Among them, you'll find plenty of opportunity for virtuous activity.
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[1] There's far more of such people than the, uh, non-friendless, non-childless, non-powerless, non-weak, and non-ugly think.