Translating at last an old post I wrote in January, as a responce to a post about how cuteness is a sign of helplessness I wrote on my aspie blog, back when I was still pretending it was a different person:
Incredibly fashionably late, it’s time to write a responce post to that of Lepus Albus.
L.A.’s idea was rather interesting. I’d never thought of the concept of ‘cuteness’ like that before, but I have thought about it in a different manner:
Contrary to what too many Creationists seem to think, Evolution is not a monkey giving birth to a human or a caveman. Evolution is the name given to a very long process in which the environment causes variations in a certain species’ genetic structure (a.k.a. mutations) in various ways, and those who’ve had the luck to’ve mutated in a way fit to various environmental changes lived on, time after time after time.
Members of a given species that reprdis via sexual reproduction also share a subconscious (or not entirely conscious) understanding of the conditions they live in and of themselves, which makes a member look for another member (mostly one of the opposite sex) with characteristics fir for survival in the given environment and a certain structure of their immunity system (something you can smell in their pheromones) opposite to that of him/her/itself. Those that do not look for such or members have a lesser chance of surviving and reducing. Since these environments change from place to place, so do the standards of beauty (which reflects these genetic benefits) change from place to place, and due to contemporary mass media some societies adopt those of more dominant ones.
In ages past, when the best way to survive for a member of the human species (that is, a human) was physical strength and the ability to defend oneself, the strongest survived; but today the characteristics most important for such a member’s survival are intelligence and the ability to interact with other members (most of them neurotypical) that makes them help said member, so today the smartest survive. No, not only the smartest, also the cutest; and thanks to mass media, the cute survives in many cultures, more than before.
Notice something interesting. The modern meaning of the Hebrew word for ‘cute’, khamud (חָמוּד), is relatively very new. In the 1985dition of the Even-Shoshan dictionary the word khamud is defined as, ‘1. adj. Nice, appealing, precious. 2. Something dear, treasure.’ The English word ‘cute’ is also relatively modern: it was created as a contraction of ‘acute’, which meant ‘very bright’ (as in ‘smart’) at the time of derivation. Icelandics not have a specific word for ‘cute’, using instead the word sætur (f. sæt, n. sætt), meaning also ‘sweet or ‘pretty’, like the Arabic word ḥillu (حلو, lit. ‘sweet’). By contrast, the etymology of the Japanese word kawaii (可愛い) originally meant ‘blushing’ (by analogy also ‘embarrassment’), and the kanji used today meaning ‘loveable’ is a modern interpretation. AS a matter of fact, languages don’t have much of a distinction between ‘sweet’ or ‘pretty’ and ‘cute’.
Our society today is becoming tighter and tighter. The days when we were mostly busy with competition and power play are slowly passing away, being replaced by values sanctifying altruism (think about the difference between the ideal ‘sweet’ and ‘cute’ ideal man of today with the ultra-macho of the past: you’ve most likely heard in Tenakh about kings who wrote in their historic documentations about how they slew foreign armies in numbers far greater than in reality, as this strength and ruthlessness were the characteristics that assured a man had the advantage; here I should point out the Jewish idea of the sanctity of human lives―‘I will make man scarcer than pure gold’―is the one thing I truly cherish in Jewish culture, despite all the buts, but I’m going off topic). Notice how the Hebrew word khamud is also used to describe altruistic nature, so even in Hebrew the lines are rather blurred and show a clear trend.
I can understand, to some extent, why L.A. was offended by the idea that being an aspie automaticaly makes him cute (aspies’ usual aversion of spciety might be a part of it; I can only presume, only he can tell [no, that’s bollocks]). Despite the fact that this concept does not reflect in various languages (except maybe Japanese), characters we automatically perceive as cute, beying being attractice and ‘paying’ to defend members that have them, have to be in part characteristics usually attributed to children, so they show both a need of protection, such as gentleness and innocence (there are also in-between ones, like lack of aggresionl whether or not you can attribute that to kids is a whole ‘nother issue). On the other hand, an L.A. cannot deny the fact that aspies have characteristics naturally perceived as cute (the questions which is debatable).
I really don’t think there is anything to protest here. Autism is a characteristic like any other inherited characteristic (how inherited it is is another argument), with ups and downs, and trying to overlook it entirely is being naïve. One can try to channel it or overcome certain difficulties for certain purposes, but that does not change the ‘opening statistics’, the genetics and common social conditioning. And as a matter of fact, what is so wrong with that?
A while ago I thought about the subjects and one of Dana Spector’s columns on 7Days. She wrote there about how women have a tendency to always look for the opposite of their previous man, and eventually stop and think about how they want their man to feel. So I thought about it, and I want the person I’m with to make me feel cute, and be cute him/herself. There is something very... blissful about cuteness, and that’s just what I want: someone who will make me want to love and protect him/her, and make me feel worthy of love and protection myself. (Of course I don’t intend to be cute 24/7... I, like everyone else, still want and need to be taken seriously for a good deal of the time.)
Here I have to go off topic a bit and say that it is worthwhile for us, not as a society but as a species, to defend out kind, or at least naturally filter ourselves naturally using our instincts (in other words, not to deliberately connect to ugly and unamiable people). If we want to survive as a species, it is beneficial that we make sure a variation as big as possible survive with us, as we have no idea how to predict what environmental changes will occus in the future. Today the ‘cute’ and smart survives, but tomorrow we might have a serious trouble with supplies or some other scenario I can’t think up right now, and then we’ll have to fight one another to the death to survive. On the other hand, there could be a scenario emphasising the ‘cute’ one’s superiority. Today, white people are considered the more ‘successful’ human race (you can’t argue with the facts―Europe has a miniscule infant mortality rate, especially when compared to Africa), or at least some sub-categories from among them and among the Asians (the world’s highest average life expectancy is in Japan, which also has the highest percentage of aspies from among the developed states, as L.A. has states before); in the future the earth might heat up so that the poorly-pigmented white people won’t be able to survive and be inherited by black people, or that the sun will somehow lose some of its power (I am no astrophysicist, I have no idea how likely that is) and albinos will have a clear advantage. Something to think about for any racist or homophobe out there, as well as for those who think there’s something wrong with being an aspie.
So, whether you’re cute or big ‘n’ muscular, men or women, gay or straight, autistic or neurotypical and any shade of any spectrum, don’t be ashamed of what nature gave you. Rejoice: your difference is a guarantee for the survival of the human race. Be happy to be different!
P.S.:
1. Perhaps ‘Or K.’s Cousin’ [a notorious troll on IsraBlog, has already been shamed off] has characteristics that give him an evolutionary advantage. He’s funny [mostly because he writes idiotic stuff], that’s already a bonus...
2. In January, a book by one of my the most amazing girls I know, Katelyn Finkel, a.k.a. ‘Khavatselet’ from the ‘Best People’ list, has her new book, Screams, published [excellent poetry book, she said she’d translate it herself to English]. It’s an emotional poetry book, written by a woman in her teenage years, no less, which is a kind of literature I tend to to relate toi in the least, and I still think she is an outstanding writer, regardless of my connection to her: I can be very critical even of people I love and cherish. Look for it in book shops near you, I highly doubt you’ll be disappointed!
Unum diem...
(P.S.: I just noticed The Mask is a perfect troll. He trolls practically everyone around him, be they gangsters or policemen, has a signature smile, and even works using troll science. Just imagine him stretching his smile a bit more and saying, ‘Problem?’ and you got yourself a modern internet troll, IRL!)
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