It took me a while before I could get her to tell me what was up; she made me promise twice not to get mad. Eventually she said Garrett isn’t exactly good-looking. I was thinking he must be average-looking, because he didn’t really look that different after I got my calli turned off. But Ina said he was definitely below average.
She found pictures of a couple other guys who she thought looked like him, and with them I could see how they’re not good-looking. Their faces just look goofy. Then I took another look at Garrett’s picture, and I guess he’s got some of the same features, but on him they look cute. To me, anyway.
I guess it’s true what they say: love is a little bit like calli. When you love someone, you don’t really see what they look like. I don’t see Garrett the way others do, because I still have feelings for him.
Ina said she couldn’t believe someone who looked like him would break up with someone who looked like me. She said that in a school without calli, he probably wouldn’t have been able to get a date with me. Like, we wouldn’t be in the same league.
That’s weird to think about. When Garrett and I were going out, I always thought we were meant to be together. I don’t mean that I believe in destiny, but I just thought there was something really right about the two of us. So the idea that we could’ve both been in the same school, but not gotten together because we didn’t have calli, feels strange. And I know that Ina can’t be sure of that. But I can’t be sure she’s wrong, either.
And maybe that means I should be glad I had calli, because it let me and Garrett get together. I don’t know about that.
From a broadcast of EduNews:
Netsites for a dozen calliagnosia student organizations around the country were brought down today in a coordinated denial-of-service attack. Although no one claimed responsibility, some suggest the perpetrators are retaliating for last month’s incident in which the American Association of Cosmetic Surgeons’ netsite was replaced by a calliagnosia site.
Meanwhile, the SemioTech Warriors announced the release of their new ‘Dermatology’ computer virus. This virus has begun infecting video servers around the world, altering broadcasts so that faces and bodies exhibit conditions such as acne and varicose veins.
Warren Davidson, first-year student:
I thought about trying calli before, when I was in high school, but I never knew how to bring it up with my parents. So when they started offering it here, I figured I’d give it a try. (shrugs) It’s okay.
Actually, it’s better than okay, (pause) I’ve always hated how I look. For a while in high school I couldn’t stand the sight of myself in a mirror. But with calli, I don’t mind as much. I know I look the same to other people, but that doesn’t seem as big a deal as it used to. I feel better just by not being reminded that some people are so much better-looking than others. Like, for instance: I was helping this girl in the library with a problem on her calculus homework, and afterwards I realized that she’s someone I’d thought was really pretty. Normally I would have been really nervous around her, but with calli, she wasn’t so hard to talk to.
Maybe she thinks I look like a freak, I don’t know, but the thing was, when I was talking to her I didn’t think I looked like a freak. Before I got calli, I think I was just too self-conscious, and that just made things worse. Now I’m more relaxed.
It’s not like I suddenly feel all wonderful about myself or anything, and I’m sure for other people calli wouldn’t help them at all, but for me, calli makes me not feel as bad as I used to. And that’s worth something.
Alex Bibescu, professor of religious studies at Pembleton:
Some people have been quick to dismiss the whole calliagnosia debate as superficial, an argument over makeup or who can and can’t get a date. But if you actually look at it, you’ll see it’s much deeper than that. It reflects a very old ambivalence about the body, one that’s been part of Western civilization since ancient times.
You see, the foundations of our culture were laid in classical Greece, where physical beauty and the body were celebrated. But our culture is also thoroughly permeated by the monotheistic tradition, which devalues the body in favor of the soul. These old conflicting impulses are rearing their heads again, this time in the calliagnosia debate.
I suspect that most calli supporters consider themselves to be modern, secular liberals, and wouldn’t admit to being influenced by monotheism in any way. But take a look at who else advocates calliagnosia: conservative religious groups. There are communities of all three major monotheistic faiths – Jewish, Christian, and Muslim – who’ve begun using calli to make their young members more resistant to the charms of outsiders. This commonality is no coincidence. The liberal calli supporters may not use language like ‘resisting the temptations of the flesh,’ but in their own way, they’re following the same tradition of deprecating the physical.
Really, the only calli supporters who can credibly claim they’re not influenced by monotheism are the NeoMind Buddhists. They’re a sect who see calliagnosia as a step toward enlightened thought, because it eliminates one’s perception of illusory distinctions. But the NeoMind sect is open to broad use of neurostat as an aid to meditation, which is a radical stance of an entirely different sort. I doubt you’ll find many modern liberals or conservative monotheists sympathetic to that!
So you see, this debate isn’t just about commercials and cosmetics, it’s about determining what’s the appropriate relationship between the mind and the body. Are we more fully realized when we minimize the physical part of our nature? And that, you have to agree, is a profound question.
Joseph Weingartner:
After calliagnosia was discovered, some researchers wondered if it might be possible to create an analogous condition that rendered the subject blind to race or ethnicity. They’ve made a number of attempts – impairing various levels of category discrimination in tandem with face recognition, that sort of thing – but the resulting deficits were always unsatisfactory. Usually the test subjects would simply be unable to distinguish similar-looking individuals. One test actually produced a benign variant of Fregoli syndrome, causing the subject to mistake every person he met for a family member. Unfortunately, treating everyone like a brother isn’t desirable in so literal a sense.
When neurostat treatments for problems like compulsive behavior entered widespread use, a lot of people thought that ‘mind programming’ was finally here. People asked their doctors if they could get the same sexual tastes as their spouses. Media pundits worried about the possibility of programming loyalty to a government or corporation, or belief in an ideology or religion.
The fact is, we have no access to the contents of anyone’s thoughts. We can shape broad aspects of personality, we can make changes consistent with the natural specialization of the brain, but these are extremely coarse-grained adjustments. There’s no neural pathway that specifically handles resentment toward immigrants, any more than there’s one for Marxist doctrine or foot fetishism. If we ever get true mind programming, we’ll be able to create ‘race blindness,’ but until then, education is our best hope.
Tamera Lyons:
I had an interesting class today. In History of Ideas, we’ve got this T.A., he’s named Anton, and he was saying how a lot of words we use to describe an attractive person used to be words for magic. Like the word ‘charm’ originally meant a magic spell, and the word ‘glamour’ did, too. And it’s just blatant with words like ‘enchanting’ and ‘spellbinding.’ And when he said that, I thought, yeah, that’s what it’s like: seeing a really good-looking person is like having a magic spell cast over you.