...makes older men less attractive, it is what you do to hide your weaknesses that makes them repugnant."
Taken straight from Nassim Taleb's book of aphorisms "The Bed of Procrustes". It is a book demonstrating how modernity is sometimes trying to fit a still poorly understood world into neat little categories that help make sense of the world cognitively, but also have a tendency to hide the limits of our knowledge, sometimes at great cost, when said limits conflict with reality.
This particular aphorism is revealing because it expresses what we all observe around us every day. Our default assumption (I still haven't figured out if it's an innate trait or a cultural phenomenon) is to want to hide what makes us appear weak, in order to save face and look good. But it does quite the opposite as is often the case, say with plastic surgery, as we cross the chasm, also know as uncanny valley, but this time in reverse, where humans end up looking more like artifacts than artifacts, which carries a major YUCK factor.
This is now also officially supported by science.
What do you think? Is design as a discipline trying to be too perfect?
I hope you take as much pleasure reading my writings as I do writing them because they are created for your enjoyment!
Click “>>subscribe” at the top left of this page, to get our daily (or weekly) updates straight into your inbox. You can also write me a little love note here. I truly enjoy having conversations with you about what I write.