American Buddhist Net

"[Winston] looked round the canteen again. Nearly everyone was ugly, and would still have been ugly even if dressed otherwise than in the uniform blue overalls. On the far side of the room, sitting at a table alone, a small, curiously beetle-like man was drinking a cup of coffee, his little eyes darting suspicious glances from side to side...It was curious how that beetle-like type proliferated in the Ministries: little dumpy men, growing stout very early in life, with short legs, swift scuttling movements, and fat inscrutable faces with very small eyes. It was the type that seemed to flourish best under the dominion of the Party." 1984 by George Orwell. Part 1, Chapter 5.
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Have you noticed it too? There's something funny about so many of the people in power today. What is it? Take a run through the usual suspects: Is it that they are pampered brats? Out of touch? Arrogant? Drunk with power? Haunted by an inferiority complex? Living in the past? I don't doubt that things like this play in. But there is a more general quality that actually seems to encapsulate all of the usual suspects and more. For lack of a better word I'll call it 'unsexiness'.

I don't think I have to name any names, although I certainly could. Everywhere you look it's plain to see. Think of academia, science (the class of professional atheists/"skeptics" jumps to mind), the arts, business, economics, and of course politics. The upper levels and prominent positions seem to be dominated by rather tedious, unsexy people.

To be clear, this quality is not specifically to do with looks, although men who actually do resemble beetles abound; unsexiness comes in many shapes and sizes. It is tricky to say what it is. Perhaps it is easier to define the quality in terms of what it is not: it is not cool (defining this term would be an essay unto itself!), it lacks lightness of spirit, its vigor is turned in the wrong direction, it is incapable or unwilling to extend its vision beyond a narrow beam of focus that begins with itself and ends somewhere fairly closeby.

Unsexiness by itself is not enough to cause huge damage on a societal scale. It's the ones who are both unsexy and sinister who are most dangerous. Unfortunately, by the looks of it, it is these types who are presently trying to take over the world.

Perhaps it is just the inevitable fate of human civilizations to follow this pattern: Sexy people build up the civilization within a power hierarchy that features them in prominent roles and makes use of their sexiness. Unsexy people eventually worm their way in and take over once the civilization is established. Thus the great compost pile of history rots on!

(Please note that I do not mean to imply that sexy people do no wrong. On the contrary! I've got no stats on this but I imagine that sexy people have done a lot of killing; perhaps even most of the actual butchery which characterizes human history has been committed by sexy people. Sexy people can be cruel and stupid. Many of them are insensitive during their youth and cantankerous in their older years.)

I am not knowledgeable enough about the following subject to be able to say anything definitive, but it occurs to me that perhaps the plight of the so-called "lost boys" of FLDS -- typically teenaged boys who have been banished from the group due to competition for wives -- may represent a small-scale example of the sexy vs. unsexy dynamic. It is natural that unsexy older men (needless to say, not all older men are unsexy) would feel threatened by potentially sexy young men (not all young men are sexy) heading into their vigorous, hormonally-charged years. The unsexy older men who hold all the power and want all the goods (i.e. pretty, fertile young girls) for themselves allegedly use very unsexy methods to expunge the young men from the community. From Wikipedia:

"While some boys leave by their own choice, many are ostensibly banished for conduct such as watching a movie,[3] watching television,[4] playing football, or talking to a girl.[2] Some boys are told not to return unless they can return with a wife. There are also young women[5] who have left or been pressured to leave because they did not want to be part of polygamous marriages.[6] One estimate is that between 400 and 1,000 boys have been pressured to leave for such reasons.[1]

"Boys in these sects are commonly raised not to trust the outside world, and may be taught that leaving their communities is a sin worse than murder.[7][8] These boys are usually left with little education or life skills and must learn to live in a world about which they know little, while dealing with the consequences of being shunned by their families, and believing they are beyond spiritual redemption. The families of banished boys are told that the boys are now dead to them.[4]" LINK TO ORIGINAL

This illustrates the phenomenon within a small and highly unusual group. Lucky for the sexy "lost boys" of society at large, they may be in a slightly better position. Assuming their brains and spirits haven't been dulled to extinction by ADHD meds and television, they have a good vantage point from which to observe what's going on out there. For the time being anyway, we have an open internet and a First Amendment that kinda-sorta-technically-on-paper still applies. Armed with these things, the lost boys who have been thrust out or who have voluntarily dropped out can sit in relative comfort on the prophetic margins of society where they may watch and comment. I would guess that many of the best bloggers out there are sexy people who've been pushed out the back door of society.

It seems necessary to emphasize that this is not only to do only with men, although perhaps it is traditionally more to do with them. Sexiness in women is so mixed up with things like youth and boobs that it's perhaps a little harder to bring them into this discussion. But take a look at what has happened since they left their traditional realm (the realm of private life), were given public identities and encouraged to "rise"*...

I see three types who are of interest: First, are the eager-to-please ones who enjoy taking exams, revel in being recognized and accoladed, and are content to keep busy laying down evidence of their accomplishments -- this type flourishes, just like Winston's beetle-people. Since they are easy to control, they are allowed in-- nay, encouraged in! -- to become low-level parts of the machine. A commonly ridiculed sub-group of this type is angry and zealous and supremely unsexy. They hang around the universities, divorce courts, and other places venting spleen and providing a useful distraction. Secondly, there are the ones who want to live pleasant, conventional, unobtrusive lives. They will do just that pretty much regardless of the circumstances and hence they constitute no real threat. Many of these women are lovely people. Finally, there are the artists, the Psyches, the ones who really would like to know and who would be willing to fight, if only they understood clearly what the fight was about. Freer in body than perhaps any other women in history, they are possessed of enormous potential energy. Loving beauty as they do, they see clearly that the world is not beautiful but could possibly be made so. It is this that makes them dangerous. But they are easily confused and so are easily neutralized; and they are backed with only the sparsest tradition to guide them in understanding their situation and organizing themselves.

What to make of all this?

If it were a Hindu kalpa, would it be the "Age of the Dweebs?" Go and look around and you'll see them! Even people who at first glance might seem sexy, upon closer examination decidedly aren't. These individuals may possess certain external markers that we associate with sexiness -- a smooth demeanor, wit and charm, a sardonic attitude, a rebellious-sounding voice. We should be cautious of public figures who make us laugh or who impress us with their ready answers and confident manner.

Get the idea? Let's play Guess-Who to make sure. Right now I am thinking of a certain very prominent faux-sexy individual whose name rhymes with "Resident Osama"...

*Did they really lift themselves up? Or were they taken up into public life (i.e. the low levels of the power hierarchy) by unsexy people so that they could be more easily controlled? Newly citizened but not directly within the jurisdiction of unsexy people in high places, did they represent an emerging threat? If so, what better way to deal with them than to invite them in and tempt them with money and power?
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"One of these days, thought Winston with sudden deep conviction, Syme will be vaporized. He is too intelligent. He sees too clearly and speaks too plainly. The Party does not like such people. One day he will disappear. It is written in his face." Orwell, Ibid.