# Am I as crazy as I think I am?



## Vivaldi (Aug 26, 2012)

I'm young in terms of age. My deepest desire is to have children. I often sit and wonder what my children will look like. I compare my parents and their parents and I think to myself 'Do my genes have the propensity to produce the child I want'. Unfortunately I think the answer is no for I have very few traits I seek my child to have. I won't name them just yet but because of my genetic deficit in this respect, I've been thinking about surrogacy. 

In today's society much of what we do and are allowed to do is determined by attractiveness. Attractive people live better lives. Studies confirm that they are healthier, earn more money and raise successful families. Because of this I am seeking every opportunity I get to produce an attractive child. For me, an attractive child would be a boy with blond hair, tall and thin athletic build. I've seen these types of child around and their parents seem so happy because their children are good looking. Parents (especially women) pride themselves on producing attractive children. They take them out, show them off to their friends and know that their kids indirectly make people jealous. They know they have given their kids the best possible start in life.

Now I want one of those boys. I would take him to museums and show him off. People would look at me and him and perhaps see the resemblance. Then more women would be interested in me because they know that the odds of me giving them good looking children are high. I don't want to sound conceited here. I wish I was realistic. An ugly child born today will have a terrible time. I always strive for the best and even if this means manipulating and planning the appearance of my children. The last thing any parent wants is ugly children especially if you (the parent) are quite attractive.

Surrogacy would give me the chance to make the child I speak of. My sperm would be frozen and fertilized with the egg of an attractive female then placed in a surrogate mother. A surrogate mother is a carrier. She is responsible for bringing my child into the world but severs all ties with the child after she has completed this job. She is nothing more than a machine with no emotional attachment. Then at birth, the baby is handed over to me and I can manipulate it to look like the blond hair tall child everyone desires to have. 

Surrogacy is great because I can rear this child by myself. I see it as a short cut and more efficient way to have kids. Your also given more choice in determining the characteristics you want your child to have by choosing the surrogate/egg. Sometimes the egg doesn't have to be the egg of the surrogate. It can be an egg taken from another female. The egg is fertilized in a laboratory and then placed in the surrogate. I find it amazing how the surrogate can then give birth to a child that isn't genetically related to her!

I don't want fate/probability to determine what my kids will look like. That's lazy. If I can intervene with with surrogacy then I will if I don't meet anyone who can give me this child I want. A child with features which respect the golden ratio - phi - 1.618. 

The golden ratio is a number that is considered to be most visually pleasing when it is used to create relationships between two lengths for example. For someone to be universally attractive their bodily proportions will have this divine relationship. Beauty is a mathematical equation and the closer someone is to being perfectly proportioned then the more attractive we will perceive them. It is encoded into out genes through natural selection to give more attention to attractive people. 

Someone who is perceived to be ugly by society will have features that do not respect this ratio. The distance between their eyes might be too small or the length of their face might be too long for their small features. You might think well if every universally attractive person has features conforming with the golden ratio then why don't they look the same. The answer is scale factor and size of their features not the distance between them. Someone with small eyes might have a small face which makes their features 'look right' because the distance is golden ratio. A person with large eyes might have a small mouth yet the distance between these features is still the golden ratio. There are exceptions and deviating from the golden ration in some cases can produce an unique attraction but most models will have features which strongly agree with the golden ratio. 

Nature likes to be efficient and the golden ratio is found in the natural environment too. I think once someone has features that agree with the golden ratio then their children and their children will always be attractive even if they mate with an 'ugly' person. The golden ratio will override the 'ugly' deviant genes in all cases. So if you are ugly then chances are you will have ugly kids unless you find a conventionally attractive women to sire your children with. Nature can only work with what it is given. If it given ugly genes from two parents then their child will not be a model so do not bother holding any hope here.

An ugly person with poor genes for skin will most likely have ugly children because their mate will also be ugly. You cannot get a flower from a pot of dirt (in most cases) - everything in this reality functions in terms of probabilities and statistics. Some people have good genes for skin but are merely average looking. They mate with a somewhat conventionally attractive partner and produce children of some aesthetic worth. A model does not simply come from no where. It has to have the right formulation of parentage and the luck for the right genes to fit together. Essentially personality should not factor into your decision making when deciding to have children. It is a reflection of our exterior image over time. If we are ugly then we will have an ugly personality. If we are attractive then we are more popular and develop our personality more extensively. An ugly woman has a child with a tall attractive man and I tell you the child will be tall and somewhat conventionally looking because of the dominant genes overriding the ugly recessive ones. If I was a woman then I would pay for an attractive and intelligent man to impregnate me as both attractiveness and intelligence are heritable. Then I will have a higher chance of conceiving a child for when placed into the function of society will be more likely to succeed through altruistic tendencies of others.

You can put whatever hair colour, clothes, make up you like on an attractive person and they will still be viewed as attractive because of the relationship between their features. We are encoded to perceive the golden ratio thanks to thousands of years of natural selection. A famous celebrity shaved her hair off once - yet she still appeared attractive because of this relationship. You can take away all of the environmental influence and go right down to the basic exterior. A skull, an arm, a hand, a foot, a leg etc. If The the leg is 1.6180 times longer than the foot then this is conventionally attractive. The same goes for forearm and hand. The majority of models will have this relationship between their limbs although you do not directly notice it. You gravitate towards them based on their skin tone. Then you subconsciously decipher whether they are proportionate. If they are then you label them as attractive. If their hand is slightly longer then this may be perceived as ugly and disproportionate.

We are nothing but numbers of appeal. The purpose of life is to take God's role and create life under my assumption: Attractiveness is most important when selecting a potential partner. People are to me, pieces of art. I do not see the complexity of their life and social intricacies of communication


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## Blake (Nov 6, 2013)

Yes, you're crazy.


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## Guest (Dec 18, 2013)

The fact that it has nothing to do with classical music should be a clue, for starters.


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

Nah, you ain't crazy... maybe irrelevant, but not crazy. Superficial, shallow, that stuff, but not crazy.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

You may want to steer clear of insulting other members. It ain't nice.


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## Stargazer (Nov 9, 2011)

Kontrapunctus said:


> The fact that it has nothing to do with classical music should be a clue, for starters.


That's what I was thinking too! I don't have time to read all of it (so I can't comment on the question), but I think that this post would be more appropriate for the community forum.


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## Blake (Nov 6, 2013)

Stargazer said:


> That's what I was thinking too! I don't have time to read all of it (so I can't comment on the question), but I think that this post would be more appropriate for the community forum.


It might be more appropriate for an asylum.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

As for the OP's speculations: you can try surrogacy, and you'll still run the risk of a butt-ugly child. You never know what the shuffling of thousands of genes will produce; that's the beauty and the risk of sexual reproduction. With genetic engineering, perhaps in future they'll be able to make babies to order, but then of course in a sense it wouldn't be your child anymore. Best option is to adopt one that has already been born and can be checked for beauty.

But perhaps you make too much of physical beauty. If being ugly was a serious problem, natural selection would have eliminated it by now. Fortunately there are many ways in which to compensate for lack of physical beauty. Money is one such thing - how many women would get into bed with Donald Trump had it not been for his money? Power is another: apparently, some ten or twenty million people living today are direct descendants of Genghis Khan. He sure was a busy bee, and I doubt whether his looks made any difference. 

And then there were people like Bach, who wasn't exactly a male model, and ended up leaving us greater treasures than almost anyone else. 

But do let us know how your experiments in eugenics go. I for one will be curious to know.


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## Katie (Dec 13, 2013)

Crazy and weird. But it's a cool combination that only grows more novel with age as most of the population begins sleepwalking through their adult lives. 

You should definitely procreate./Katie

Edit: P.S.: Just don't talk about your "golden ratio" theory of eugenics when your kids have their friends over!


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

I'd rather have a plain but warm-hearted child than a handsome but arrogant one who is continually aware of his/her own attractiveness. Man looks at the outward appearance, but I wish to look at the heart.


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## GGluek (Dec 11, 2011)

The short answer is yes, but for longer one: you're way over thinking this. The ability of parent to love his child, whether an Adonis or a troll, is almost infinite. And the ability of children to go their own way, regardless of how a parent brings them up, is equally off the charts. In short, do what you want, but don't think you'll have a lot of real control over the outcome.


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

Firstly, I don't think I want to know this dreadful stuff.
Secondly,I don't know about crazy but what you've written sounds quite dangerous to me.
I'm a parent with two boys and one girl---grown up now.


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## tdc (Jan 17, 2011)

I would agree with those suggesting you put too much emphasis on physical attractiveness. If it was as important as you make it to be, all the most successful people would be attractive, but obviously this is not the case. Outside of acting and sports how many successful people are super attractive? Of all the brilliant composers that have lived, how many were really physically attractive? How many of the most brilliant scientists are physically attractive? I think certain valuable things in life are arguably harder to attain for attractive people - like humility, and success in careers that involve an above average level of intelligence. Why is this? Maybe because attractive people can engage in the act of sex easier than the rest of the population, therefore in many cases may have less incentive to develop their personalities, or to work hard to achieve things. There is often an inverse relationship between outer beauty and inner beauty, those who have the most attractive bodies are often very selfish and ugly inside because they have little incentive to be any other way. These are just generalities of course, but stuff to think about. Do you really think the main point of life is just to be happy all the time? Most of the people who have achieved great things have done so through hard ship and hard work, not because they were good looking and had everything in life handed to them on a silver platter. 

This is not meant to put down attractive people just to point out that everyone on this earth has certain challenges they will be presented with, being good looking doesn't give one a better life automatically it just presents them with a different set of challenges.


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

The children you will have will inherit the mindset you express and if they later try to battle it, at least a feeling of absolute absurdity in existence and a strive for superficial status underlying it. A lot of work to do, before contemplating children, IMHO.


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## TurnaboutVox (Sep 22, 2013)

Vivaldi, I wonder if you might be open to considering an alternative perspective? My view is that happy people, and many successful people, are that way because they have been loved by parents (or parent surrogates) who can appreciate them for who they actually are.

It is fairly widely accepted now that nature are nurture interact in human development: gene expression and neuro-cognitive and emotional development unfold in conjuntion with the 'environment' and the relationship(s) provided by the parent(s); early experience influences to a surprising degree how neuronal interconnections are formed in the developing human brain.

I don't see beauty, therefore, as arising out of purely genetic endowment, and, as other posters on this thread have pointed out, beauty does not have to be synonymous with physical attractiveness - which in the eye of the beholder anyway.


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## Couac Addict (Oct 16, 2013)

I'm somewhat dubious about your _Master Race_ programme. It's destined to fail.
Here's a valuable lesson I learned during the 80s...

You take goggle-eyed musician...









...add an Uptown Girl









The result? Goggle-eyed offspring who eventually get cosmetic surgery to further their musical career.









Oh...the valuable lesson is this. _Become a musician!_
I mean, seriously...Billy Joel and Christie Brinkley? Respect, Billy. Respect.


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## emiellucifuge (May 26, 2009)

You may want to brush up on your genetics.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Introductio...1387359897&sr=8-2&keywords=griffiths+genetics


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## Svelte Silhouette (Nov 7, 2013)

Vesuvius said:


> Yes, you're crazy.


Agreed. I have children and love art galleries, museums and music. My children have virtually no interest in art, an almost distaste of museums and only one likes any form of music really (and that largely restricted to the top 20). My children are far prettier, fashion-conscious, athletic and foody-faddy than I ever was and think I'm a fuddy-duddy taxi-driver who'll take them wherever then collect them later. Dunno about genes ... I do own a nice pair though.

Actors say never work with children or animals. Children seem lovely but usually want animals so if you get one you usually have to work with the other as children love petting but not looking after what they pet. That's my 'pot-shot' at kids ... lovely to look at lovely to hold, but if you get any consider your life sold. Seriously though ... for those who have them we wonder where'd we be without them as for all the stress (that probably keeps our adrenalin going and maybe us alive just that bit longer) they do actually 'keep us on our toes' and avoid that 'one foot in the grave' getting too close to that family plot besides when they bring laughter after the rain, well, that just makes it all worthwhile.

I've no idea what that has to do with music BUT I do have a 'sound to light unit' in the loft and some large boxes of lights that used to get trotted out at party-time and we have the old VHS-C footage to prove just how much fun was had in a room that had to be emptied of anything breakable and then have the carpet cleaners in afterward. Unfortunately I soon became a far too fuddy-duddy DJ as by 7 or 8 kids realise that even if you have a turntable and some lights and a microphone that don't make you 'DJ name' and by then they start expecting professionalism.

Better to be DINKY than DINK or SINKY than SINK as if SINK to long then you're likely sunk forever. What a ramble, sorry, BUT get those children had and now ... after all, why should only those who have them be miserable, bitter and twisted ;-)


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## Crudblud (Dec 29, 2011)

Have a child because you want to raise a child, not because you think it will make you look good in public.


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## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

Vivaldi said:


> I'm young in terms of age. My deepest desire is to have children. I often sit and wonder what my children will look like. I compare my parents and their parents and I think to myself 'Do my genes have the propensity to produce the child I want'. Unfortunately I think the answer is no for I have very few traits I seek my child to have. I won't name them just yet but because of my genetic deficit in this respect, I've been thinking about surrogacy.
> 
> In today's society much of what we do and are allowed to do is determined by attractiveness. Attractive people live better lives. Studies confirm that they are healthier, earn more money and raise successful families. Because of this I am seeking every opportunity I get to produce an attractive child. For me, an attractive child would be a boy with blond hair, tall and thin athletic build. I've seen these types of child around and their parents seem so happy because their children are good looking. Parents (especially women) pride themselves on producing attractive children. They take them out, show them off to their friends and know that their kids indirectly make people jealous. They know they have given their kids the best possible start in life.
> 
> ...


ssssssssssssss
ok


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## Ukko (Jun 4, 2010)

KenOC said:


> You may want to steer clear of insulting other members. It ain't nice.


The member _specifically requested _analysis, apparently fearing the onset of insanity. My response does not constitute insult, rather suggests alternative possibilities - and so attempts to ease the member's fear. A humanist can do no less.


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## EricABQ (Jul 10, 2012)

I hate to reach back into the past for an old message board cliche, but I'm going to anyway. 

TL;DR.


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## Flamme (Dec 30, 2012)




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## SiegendesLicht (Mar 4, 2012)

Never mind.......


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## scratchgolf (Nov 15, 2013)

This thread is a fart in an elevator and the person responsible is long gone.


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## Flamme (Dec 30, 2012)

U r crazier than you think bro...


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## Cheyenne (Aug 6, 2012)

"The vilest abortionist is he who attempts to mould his child's character." - and so ends the question of parenting!


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## mstar (Aug 14, 2013)

I'll study genetics on a mouse, not on a child.


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## Jos (Oct 14, 2013)

On the radio today I heard of a woman who advertised her, yet unborn, child on Facebook. It was up for sale as she didn't want another abortion. That might be a route for you to explore......some legal, moral, ethical and psychological issues to deal with but reading your OP I don't think that will be a problem.

Pretty crazy, but as long as it's only a mindthing you'll be fine. I hope..........

Cheers,
Jos

(Father of three; nice ones)


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## deggial (Jan 20, 2013)

EricABQ said:


> I hate to reach back into the past for an old message board cliche, but I'm going to anyway.
> 
> TL;DR.


I was just going to post that. Long live them cliches! I think the OP *is* careezy to think most of us will read essays that long. All I gleaned was ugly kids, society, golden ratio. To which I will reply with another cliche: beauty is in the eye of the beholder.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Couac Addict said:


> I'm somewhat dubious about your _Master Race_ programme. It's destined to fail.


As long as he doesn't invade Poland, I don't mind too much. 



> The result? Goggle-eyed offspring who eventually get cosmetic surgery to further their musical career.


It occurs to me that one way to distinguish between good and bad music is to check whether the looks of the musicians are considered more important than the music itself.


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

KenOC said:


> You may want to steer clear of insulting other members. It ain't nice.


I think it all depends on what that member has said or done. In this case the member in question has put himself beyond the pale---in my opinion.


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## Flamme (Dec 30, 2012)

Yes there are traces of nazi eugenics and genetics in the OP...Fine but still


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## Guest (Dec 19, 2013)

Vivaldi said:


> The purpose of life is to take God's role and create life under my assumption: Attractiveness is most important when selecting a potential partner.


That may be the purpose of _your _life, since it includes _your '_assumption'. It's not the purpose of mine, and it may not be the purpose of anyone else's: please don't assert that this must be so for us all.


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## ebullient (Sep 21, 2013)

Vivaldi is right that attractive people have a much easier time in life.


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## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

ebullient said:


> Vivaldi is right that attractive people have a much easier time in life.


ssssssssssssss
TELL THAT TO ALL THESE HOT CHICKS I'M HARASSING


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## moody (Nov 5, 2011)

ebullient said:


> Vivaldi is right that attractive people have a much easier time in life.


Now that you've said it I suppose I do really.


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## shangoyal (Sep 22, 2013)

Attractive people have an easier life yes. But I don't think that's always equal to a good life. I guess Marilyn Monroe had a bad life, as might have lots of beautiful ladies who just could not handle the people who were running after them all the time. So I guess it all boils down to lots of learning and adjustment from your side - give life a real go and you will get unexpected rewards. Don't be greedy or bitter - be patient and alert.

Try not resorting to something which you might regret later. Eugenics is just another theory which appeals to the intellect - but the heart never approves of it. That disapproval has a reason behind it, because we know there's a good chance we might never recover from the scars it will give us.


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## Blake (Nov 6, 2013)

I'm pretty attractive, and I don't find my life to be any easier than the uglies I'm around. People just look at you more.... Reasoning, kindness, and compassion are much more valuable traits to move around in this world.


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