Early on The Great Gatsby, a novel I'm reading for the first time, narrator Nick Carraway qualifies himself as "that most limited of all specialists, the 'well-rounded man'. The problem he admits, is that "life is much more successfully looked at from a single window after all."
Later, his cousin Daisy makes a further observation which I think is related - that the best thing to be in life is a beautiful fool.
Indeed, those that are pleasing on the eye and unchallenging to brain cells both in and outside their own heads are possibly more blessed than even the meek. One can only be envious of their bliss - well, one can be resentful too as their happiness seems to make it a lot harder for the plain and cereberal to enjoy themselves fully during their own stay on this Earth.
The next best thing to being an alluring, charismatic airhead is to act like one, a tactic employed to good effect by a female acquaintance of mine whose widely-projected self image is that of a beautiful fool, when in fact she is neither.
Many of the books I have read about marketing propagate the myth that capitalism is a game best played by rational, clever people. But you only have to note how many of its greatest boons are exclusively enjoyed by the attractive and stupid, in order to realise that there's a profoundly sub-rational, instinctual current in there too. It certainly doesn't help to be well-rounded anyway.
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