Standards are necessarily discriminatory. The higher the standard, the more discriminatory. The more standards society maintains the more discriminatory that society is. The idea of discrimination is now discredited, due to the elevation of individual and minority rights. There is no morality above individual self-esteem or the group esteem of favored minorities. Standards of beauty and standards of behavior are linked. A society that will not maintain standards of beauty cannot long maintain standards of behavior.
Ugliness advances in direct proportion to behavior’s decline. A society that can no longer discriminate in favor of, or aspire to, beauty can no longer discriminate in favor of the better or even the good. The lowest common denominator, already set loose by democracy and technology, rules unopposed. Ironically, standards of beauty are more crafted now, more “socially constructed” and derive less from human nature–what would have been called the soul before–than they were in less democratic, less “free” times.
untethered 