Skin-Deep Society

Wonderfully weird article today on plastic surgeons moving fat to the face to make people look younger. Apparently a surgeon has invented a way of keeping more of the fat alive in the transfer. And I thought we were all trying to kill the little buggers, not keep them alive! Also today there’s one on the proliferation of sunbeds and the concern they may cause melanoma. People risking surgery and cancer in order to look good. Truly strange.

It strikes me that this preoccupation with how we look has permeated into every area of society, rather than just the beauty industry (where is has been for thousands of years). I have noticed over the past ten years that we are increasingly interested in things at only the most superficial of levels.

I am not just talking about the ubiquitous sound bite, here. Neither am I talking about the infotainment industry as a whole. The move to replace real analysis with pretty pictures is only a symptom of our shortened attention spans. As we try to fit more and more into our lives, we run out of time to sit and consider, to read and ponder. We want everything given as “push” technology – predigested and right in our laps. It is worrying that this is a good description of vomit.

The upshot of our desire for spoon-feeding is a distressing lack of content to our lives. It is no accident that John Key is more popular than Helen Clark, despite Key being a relative unknown and Clark being a seasoned and excellent politician (whatever you may think of her policies). It does not surprise me that National retain a huge lead in the polls despite the fact that they have said little beyond what they won’t do.

The American presidential race is a masterpiece of superficiality with Obama’s flashy, contentless oratory being pitched against a McCain campaign message that seems to consist of “Obama is a lame-brain” and little more.

Even our “parties of principle” on the right and left are struggling. ACT appears to be currently running a “guess the candidate” competition and the Greens a “guess which way we’ll vote” competition. Bizarre. 

This extends way beyond politics though. The sudden knee-jerk reactions from the media and their usual sound-bite people over the flavoured condom story is a classic. Sucking colourful news out of thin air without consideration for even the most basic facts.

We are in danger of becoming the least informed people of all time while at the same time having access to the richest information sources of all time.

Now that’s stranger than wanting to keep your fat cells alive…

(This rant brought to you by the MacDoctor in the interests of increasing his blog stats. Any resemblance to thought is purely co-incidental)

Additional:

Thanks to Jafapete for illustrating the trivial nature of American Politics so eloquently.

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