I know it’s been a while, but I’ve been working on a theory. Or rather, it’s more of a prediction, based on a previous theory of mine. That is The Pretty/Rich theory.
The Pretty/Rich Theory
This one is fairly common, and I’m sure most of you have come to this conclusion as well. To begin, I present the following argument:
It is based on the premise that in most modern cultures the main reason for choosing a mate, for both sexes, has shifted over the last century. A hundred years ago it made sense for all people of money to marry money, thereby enhancing their families’ total wealth and position. However, around that time it started to change, for half of us.
All of a sudden it wasn’t so important for men to marry into status, even if they had money. Because there were so many people with money running around – it was the twenties, and you could marry whomever you damn-well liked. It stood to reason, though, that because women weren’t really expected to work, that it was in their favour to marry someone who was rich, or likely to become rich (by virtue of being successful or inheriting).
Men, on the other hand, didn’t have to worry about their partners’ families’ money anymore, and so they started to tend more towards marrying women they found attractive. This usually meant hot. The end result was a generation (our parents, if you’re anywhere around generation X or Y) where you have wealthy families with hot moms, making hot babies. The hotness is compounded if the hot children aren’t actually related to the ugly rich dad.
This tradition continues today, with a new generation of beautiful rich girls with greater access to the best beauticians, hairdressers, beauty products, clothes, and cosmetic surgery, if they want to go there. They also will be under more pressure to look better, and to find a well-off husband.
So if you think she married you for your money, she probably did.
In a tangentially-related corner, a study recently showed that men are looking more or less the same as their ‘caveman ancestors’, but women are actually getting more attractive. They do say, however, that it’s a result of a shift in breeding strategies, which is what I started talking about in the first place. There is even some stuff about genes in there.
You get attractive lower and middle-class people as well, naturally, but I think that if anyone bothered to do a study they’d find that there is a disproportionate percentage of attractive women in the upper-middle to upper classes. That, in a nutshell, is The Pretty/Rich Theory.
So where am I going with this? By extrapolating from there, and by assuming that a few things will stay more or less constant for the next fifty years or so, we can come to a prediction. First, those things are that the primary ‘breeding strategies’ for both sexes will remain stable, and that we will still be using money in 2060.
Barring nuclear war or the discovery of free, clean energy and the abolition of wealth, chicks with enough of the good genes will always figure out at a young age that it’s more fun to hang out with guys who drive hot cars, than guys who have to borrow the Volvo.
As technology advances, and certain laws disappear, we will begin to see wide scale availability of genetic engineering. As soon as it is legal it will be expensive, and initially targeted at removing birth defects and inherited diseases from infants. But as time progresses and it gets cheaper to tinker with your genes, people will start to give their babies higher cheekbones, bolder chins, slimmer hips, and so on, attempting to approach an idealised beauty in one form or another.
These forms, as the freedom to alter the appearance of ones’ children grows, might diverge vastly from the norm, or rich people may end up all looking like Angelina Jolie. Personally, I’d go more in this direction:
My point is that it will be available, but only at a cost – even late into our childrens’ lifetimes. But what good is only being able to change your kids’ genes? People that concerned with beauty usually want a bit of it for themselves. And that’s where nanotechnology comes in.
Now, I’m no expert, but there is every reason to believe that it will be possible in the future to build smart organic cells or nanobots that can course through the human body, altering selective DNA as they go. This would allow us to change our appearance over the course of a few days or weeks (probably not without risk). It could also, in theory, allow us to live forever.
What this will mean is an increasing physical difference between the haves and the have-nots. I’m not talking about Morlocks and Eloi here, just enough of a difference that you can tell if someone has the money or not. The rest will remain homely for at least another century.
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Norman Conquest
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Sound good. Its also my favorite topic.That¡¯s great andthanks for the fine sharring.