Worth a lot more than a thousand words

Before the mapping of the human genome, people used to blame everything on the genetic makeup of individuals. I remember watching a documentary on BBC that tried to establish a link between criminals and a possible gene associated with their activities. It was almost an attempt to blame everything on fate.

Genes or no genes, there’s no denying every person is different. For instance, everybody has a different thing that they notice when they first look at a girl. A friend of mine used to pay close attention to the nose; other friends were more concerned with other parts of the human anatomy. I personally notice the hair at first glance.

A friend of mine uses the analogy of a picture to describe a lot of situations. According to him, a picture can be interpreted in many ways and can be liked and disliked depending on the person and his or her tastes. So a book could be a bestseller and at the same time be not liked by a number of people. The same goes with music (in fact all kinds of art), food, sports… in effect every possible thing can be liked and disliked by a number of people at the same time. This just goes to show the uniqueness of the human individual.

But this applies more to art, since art is always open to interpretation. So I don’t really understand how people give a damn about music reviews. For someone who listens to pop, it’s possible for that person to find jazz not too appealing. So a person to review all types of music is really not doing justice to it anyway. To take it further, the review wouldn’t mean much even if the person has no bias at all.

If you think about it the more you’d realize that this is a clever mechanism designed by God to allow the smooth functioning of the universe. Imagine if everybody had the same likes and dislikes. I’d like to think that everyone would be looking for the exact same thing causing a major anomaly in the supply-demand equation. Try equating that with relationships and you’d think that the human race would have very little chance of survival. So maybe I’m ensuring our existence when I consider the Mona Lisa nothing more than a painting of an old hag who probably used the picture in the matrimonial section of the classifieds.

(The point of my argument also supports one of my previous posts concerning beauty pageants, proving further that the concept is absurd)