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I haven't read about SCT, but in the wikipedia article about social constructionism I read: "When we say that something is socially constructed, we are focusing

I haven't read about SCT, but in the wikipedia article about social constructionism I read: "When we say that something is socially constructed, we are focusing on its dependence on contingent variables of our social selves rather than any inherent quality that it possesses in itself." You said: "on top of those there is a whole conflicting mess of different desirable appearances which depend upon the period, culture, and person, driven by all the complexities of interacting human beings." At first I thought are "the period, culture, and person" not "contingent variables of our social selves"? But you went on to say "those factors can be boiled down to some fairly simple drives which have all emerged for one reason: to maximise reproductive success." In other words, you're saying those factors can be boiled down to something that is an inherent quality that we possess in ourselves, which is we maximise reproductive success. Does this make sense? I dislike SCT too now but I wasn't trying to imply the perfect image society creates is socially constructed when I said "personifying what society has deemed as the perfect image." I meant regardless of whether society is socially constructed or not, this system that I'm referring to as "society" creates an ideal image of what a human being should look like. If society is not socially constructed, and is in fact defined by our biology, then that would mean this ideal image also originates from our biology. Regardless of all this, there is a perfect image we strive for. I feel like we're on the same page, and I totally relate to your view that, and I'm going to paraphrase you: "it is in our nature to be highly responsive to our nurture." Our nurture is not an individual entity from the system, our nurture is grounded by our biology.

corporalagumbo 14y ago
1) I just called it "SCT" as shorthand, not to imply that it's a coherent theory. I don't think it's particularly coherent - from what I know it's one of the many parts of modern cultural theory, stemming from sociology, anthropology, and history, among others, which in modern times have become extremely theoretical and disconnected from reality, and tend to say very little with a lot of very complicated words. 2) Ultimately everything, including human behaviour, boils down to the principles of fundamental physics. Human behaviour is just the most complex expresion of these principles of which we are aware. 3) I mostly jumped on the hint of social constructionism because I absolutely hate it when people try to argue that beauty and aesthetic standards are purely constructed and hence artifical or arbitrary, which is patently not true. It's driven by a misguided desire to defend ugly people or something, I don't know, anyone it's stupid. Again I recommend Steven Pinker, his book The Blank Slate also touches on this I believe. 4) Mostly though I wanted to offer some logical reasons why people on online games might tend to wish to present themselves as, for men, muscular, strong, dominant figures, and for women, attractive, assertive, desirable figures.

corporalagumbo 14y ago

1) I just called it "SCT" as shorthand, not to imply that it's a coherent theory. I don't think it's particularly coherent - from what I know it's one of the many parts of modern cultural theory, stemming from sociology, anthropology, and history, among others, which in modern times have become extremely theoretical and disconnected from reality, and tend to say very little with a lot of very complicated words. 2) Ultimately everything, including human behaviour, boils down to the principles of fundamental physics. Human behaviour is just the most complex expresion of these principles of which we are aware. 3) I mostly jumped on the hint of social constructionism because I absolutely hate it when people try to argue that beauty and aesthetic standards are purely constructed and hence artifical or arbitrary, which is patently not true. It's driven by a misguided desire to defend ugly people or something, I don't know, anyone it's stupid. Again I recommend Steven Pinker, his book The Blank Slate also touches on this I believe. 4) Mostly though I wanted to offer some logical reasons why people on online games might tend to wish to present themselves as, for men, muscular, strong, dominant figures, and for women, attractive, assertive, desirable figures.