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The philosophical relevance of cosmetic surgery
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By Marc Meisfelt
Bangkok , September 2007 (2.1)
Viewed superficially, cosmetic surgery is a superficial matter. Anyway, it only modifies person's façade while our culture teaches us to search for, and to value, primarily inner qualities.
Initially, our culture ridiculed those who were not content with the way they looked. Cosmetic procedures where thought of being something aging actresses would undergo to get a boost, if not in beauty, then at least in self-esteem.
But it's this opinion that is superficial, not the cosmetic procedure.
Most people believe (wrongly) that they arrive at their opinions on about everything as a result of some contemplation. They also believe (wrongly) that they later design their lives in accordance with their sort-of philosophical views.
If it were like that, we would all be standing on our heads. But we stand on our feet... even those esoteric philosophers do.
As a matter of fact, our opinions are not the result of our contemplations. They are the result of our interests. And our interests are based on the modes of production prevailing in the society in which we live.
One important internal aspect of the human mode of production is whether a society is capable to produce the sexual health of its male members. This is why both Viagra and tongkat ali are philosophically so relevant. Viagra allows men at almost any age to have erections. And tongkat ali can bring back sexual appetite to those men and women who have lost it in the course of aging.
Men who can have erections, and women and men who have sexual appetite, have other interests than those who don't. They also have other opinions. They may think that their opinions are the result of their intellectual contemplations, but they are not.
As far as sexual pleasures are concerned, the opinions of previously impotent or frigid men and women are the result of the mode of production of a society that can produce sexual health pharmacologically, via Viagra and tongkat ali.
I promote tongkat ali because it increases the sexual appetite of almost all men and women who use it, and for many elderly men, or men who have abused synthetic testosterone or steroids, tongkat ali is the only medication that restores it.
When a large number of people have a more pronounced sex drive, they will likely hold opinions that sooner or later express themselves in the formation of a society that allows more sexual opportunities.
On the other hand, if a large number of those people who sit in politically relevant positions are mentally or physically impotent, anti-sexual social models are much more likely to get their support.
The philosophical relevance of cosmetic surgery is established through the same chain of events as the philosophical relevance of Viagra and tongkat ali.
That we all, men and women, only find, depending on our sexual orientation, men or women sexually attractive if they meet certain minimal criteria of beauty and youthfulness, may be a genetic parameter that may be hard to modify.
But cosmetic surgery, here and now, can achieve that we all look no older than in our 30s, and this means that, in combination with good general health, nobody will have to fall prematurely out of the category of people considered sexually desireable in general.
A mode of production that includes apparent youth and sexual desirable appearance as products, generates a totally new ideological superstructure: one in which those ideologies that negate the primacy of optimal sexual experience have, fortunately, a much harder stand.
For those who have the means, the future is now. Just as Viagra and tongkat ali are capable of restoring sexual function in men and women of any age, cosmetic surgery can make any man and woman sexually attractive until a very high age indeed. Those who are in their 20s today will never in their lives have to look older than in their 30s.
And because they will always be part of the mating game, they will never have to adopt anti-sexual ideologies.
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