Aesthetic Preferences

I wonder how much of a life is molded by aesthetic preferences. How much of a modern person’s preferences are a result of thousands of years of adaptation, and how many are engineered?

There is perhaps no greater reward or control function than instilling a defined scope of what is aesthetic.

I find the following question highly disturbing: why, as a male, am I sexually attracted to females and not males? Where is this switch? Why is it on? I’m not interested in being with men, but if you’re open to questioning—why is this?

What are the characteristics to which I attribute beauty? Who or what has molded my aesthetic preferences?

Why is it that I know what is good for me, and yet I choose the opposite?

This last question is the most disturbing: I appear to know what is good, yet I choose the opposite! Why do I betray myself, and for what purpose? My actions suggest I value the aesthetic over my own self—but why? Where does this impulse come from? How does it hold such power over me?

Within me, there appears to be a double persona: one that knows what to do, and one that currently controls and chooses a course on a whim.

An easy and common cope is to look for culprits and assign blame. And sure, there are plenty of tools, voices, and institutions to point fingers at. But at the end of the day, this struggle—to be that which you choose to be, by your own rational process—is a struggle you must win if you wish to truly be.

You must define for yourself your values and reasons for being. Derive your moral compass from these axioms. Your definitions will probably not be complete, but they’ll be yours—created and upheld by you. Only then, once this compass is in place, can you find enough footing to start dismantling the choices the past you would have made, and begin aligning and granting power to that part of you that knows what is good.

But alas, this appears easier said than done.

I suspect this is what it means to be strong—and the source of strength itself.