Throughout human history, beauty has always been intensely desirable – but it was designed by evolution to be a short-term high, not a long-term addiction. The flames of female beauty were originally a Lucifer match – burn brightly, darken quickly. For about a year from the age of eighteen or so, female beauty was supposed to shoot into the air like a flare, to draw high-quality men out of their hesitant lairs – then become pregnant, and shed smooth skin, excellent curves and bright eyes on the hard grater of gritty human reproduction.
Modern times brook no such acceleration – female beauty is now a shrieking siren to draw male attention, time and resources for at least two decades! Men are attracted to video games, women to attention – both allow adolescence to be extended into what feels like infinity – but only turns out to be eternity, after the pair-bonded richness of a life of having and creating love exists only in the endlessly regretful rear-view mirror.
Modern culture in a nutshell: Promote the narcissism of instant gratification, deny the deeper values of virtue and love – and then hide from view the roadkill detritus that scatter the lonely post-40s highways. Youthful beauty is no longer a lever to pry the next generation from drawn-to-the-mirror vanity, but an ego-infesting drug that hollows out the personality by assigning value only to its exterior.
https://freedomain.locals.com/post/3749792/the-present-chapter-1