BEAUTY:eugenics, art, etc.

Many people believe in the phrase, “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”. They can relate to it in a situation where there is discord among individuals over the beauty of something/someone. Beauty, however, is topic that is as simple as it is controversial. In genetic engineering, science is heading toward a direction where genetic beauty and perfection are synonymous. The bioethical matter that exists in creating a perfect human through genetic engineering simultaneously is creating a ‘beautiful’ human. In essence explaining what is beautiful and what is not, lies heavily on a premise that society lives off of human consensus and influences the generations to come, but able to evolve and be influenced over time.

There may be dispute over my statement in that beauty truly is innate and there is a biological aspect to it, but I am not fully disqualifying it. I introduce the topic of genetic engineering because genetic beauty applies to a variety of things. It affects both what is inside and outside the individual. The phenotype has to do with the physical aspect of an organism, and this can be seen as beautiful, but is it really genetically beautiful if the genotype has a recessive gene for an “unwanted” trait. Then it may not be ‘genetically’ perfect. And we can even go farther to say ‘yes’ genetic beauty has to do with symmetry in a karyotype, a lack of mutations, along with cells that are healthy and efficient based on their DNA. However, external beauty is subjective and based on the selection by scientists. This selection is influenced by a consensus on what phenotype this organism should display. Beauty is decided by the mass. It is almost like an election. Merely because more people voted for one candidate does not mean that the others are unfavorable and not liked. The term to look at is eugenics, and has to do with selective breeding to produce an organism with specific wanted traits.

There does exist instinct and how one responds to foreign objects. Even though we can say that society develops an image of beauty based on the media, etc., when it comes down to primitive human understanding beauty is simple. It brings joy to oneself. It is not something tangible but does affect receptors in the brain that associates beauty and pleasure. At this point human evolution it has made us so complex that it is harder to trace what one thing can be beautiful universally.

Beauty overall, is determined by the majority. It always has. It does have its individual subtleties, but as soon as a majority agrees on something beautiful it seems to become exactly that for many. This does not mean that nothing else is beautiful. It is open to influence by perhaps a future agreement on what is beautiful, and/or several ‘majorities’ can exist. Countries, or cultures, or towns can have a say on what is beautiful against other countries, cultures, or towns. In art, beauty can exist or not. It all depends on who is judging. Typically, a standard on what is beautiful is constantly set and then re-modified. It may be a cycle (just as the reemergence of neoclassicism) or just in the form of evolution. In all, beauty and art are held together by loose bonds that probably never will nothing more than loose bonds.