>It is rarely spoken how much our sense of self and what we allow ourselves to achieve is a reflection of everyone's biases towards our appearance. When stuff

>It is rarely spoken how much our sense of self and what we allow ourselves to achieve is a reflection of everyone's biases towards our appearance. When stuff like this comes up I always have to think of two people, Machiavelli and our last chancellor, Angela Merkel. She was by no means attractive, a woman, an East-German physicist and yet managed to become arguably our most significant post-war leader and governed over 16 years. Machiavelli tells us why. In social hierarchies it's not looks, wealth or even intellect that matter, it's Virtù, that is martial spirit, or ambition. All other traits are just up to luck. People who accept the notion that their role in hierarchies comes down to how they look or how others perceive them have already given in to passivity. People who climb hierarchies literally do ignore why they're not supposed to be there.