One of the most common complaints in romantic life is how the other gender is so “shallow”. Women think all men care about is big tits and a skinny body. Men think all women care about is is a chiseled jaw and a fat wallet. There’s good reason why this idea is so pervasive in both genders, but what I would like to make clear is that it just is not so, and if you are willing to abandon this false impression, a whole world of possibilities will open up to you in terms of love, romance, partnership, and happiness.

First, let’s talk about where this pernicious illusion comes from.

It starts, as so much pain and trouble does, in our adolescence. The first notions we get about love, sex, attraction, and the other gender are formed in our teen years, and around other teens.

This is perfectly natural, but also terribly wrong, because in the hormonal miasma that is adolescence, we are at our most confused, least mature, least stable, and yes, at our most shallow. All the angles of human sexual response are not only brand new to teens, they are turned up all the way to the maximum they will ever bed, and hence the teen is caught completely unprepared and, for a while at least, it’s the hormones that lead them around, dragging them, often only semi-willingly, in directions they don’t understand, into places with which they are not familiar. The child they were and the adult they will be are in a terrible tug-of-war, and their sexual responses tend to be, to put it mildly, primitive.

So yes, the guys all go pop-eyed for the early blooming girls with the big boobs and the tight ass. And yes, the girls all melt at the sight of the testosterone-laden jocks with the hard bodies and the cool cars their fathers got for them. This is understandable when you realize their hormones are in charge and everyone is thinking with their gametes. The most crude, obvious, and exaggerated sexual signals will be the ones that get people’s attention the most, and this gives people a completely false initial impression that the other gender is completely shallow and only cares about these superficial things.

Even in the teen years, that’s not true. It’s what gets people’s attention, sure, but for most of us, the really sexy people are like another race, nice to look at, but they have nothing to do with us.

And as we look upon those who, through no effort of their own, happen to end up in a body that sends these kinds of strong sexual signals, we begin to see another of the causes of this false belief in the shallowness of the other gender : pretty people themselves tend to be shallow.

It’s not entirely their fault. When you have the looks that we humans are programmed to respond to when we are young, you live in a different world than regular folks. Everyone around you wants to please you. Nobody can stand to see you upset or in difficulty. People smooth the way for you in everything without you even having to ask. This is as true for men as it is for women.

And so you are never forced to develop your mind, your tastes, or your personality. Things come to you easily, and the easiest thing in the world is to just assume you must deserve them just for being you. And because you are one of the pretty people, you can have your opposite number without even trying all that hard, and so you don’t need to get over the shallow phase of attraction…. not yet, anyhow.

As a result, a lot of people have memories of approaching one of these attractive people and being cruelly rebuffed. And from this, they generalize to the entire gender of which the attractive person is merely the most obvious manifestation.

But if you simply wipe the fairy dust from your eyes and look around you, it will because increasingly evident that the entire gender can’t be shallow, or only the pretty people would ever hook up, form relationships, and get married. And nothing could be further from the truth.

The truth is that most people do find someone. Most people do marry at least once in their life, most people do date and end up at least in medium-term relationships, most people do not die lonely.

When you realize this, it becomes clear that this notion of the other gender’s (or your own gender’s, for us homosexuals) supposed unbreakable shallowness is not a true observation based on reality, but rather, a convenient excuse to not bother trying.

No massive generalization of a large slice of humanity can possible be true in the face of the vast scope of human diversity, and that goes double at least when you are talking about fully one half of the entire human race on Earth.

Sure, some ladies and some gentlemen are very shallow. Generally, they are the pretty ones, who have never had to be anything but shallow, or the highly immature ones who are still trapped in the moth’s death spiral, eternally attracted to the pretty flames that will only burn them again and again.

Don’t be like them. Ignore the shallow pretty ones. Their gifts are no prize in the long run, when they begin to grow old and lose their looks and realize people didn’t really love them for who they are after all, and they have no idea what do with their life now anyhow.

Strike them from your mind, and instead, look for the one thing that really matters in love : finding a person you like to spend time with. Because beauty fades in time, not just in life but in the mind’s eye, and no mater how beautiful they are, after a while it will become ordinary to you, and you will be stuck with whether or not they make you happy, and vice versa.

Stay out of the shallow end of their gene pool, and stop thinking you know what your perfect lover will look like, or even be like.

Just find someone who makes you happy. Nothing else matters at all.

The word “natural” doesn’t mean a god damned thing.

Think about it. What does “natural” mean? It means “that which is found in nature”.

But everything is found in nature. A skyscraper is just as natural as a tree. Plastic is just as natural as sea foam. That is because nature never ends. The whole idea that there is nature, or even Nature, and then there is us is completely specious. We never left Nature. You can’t. Everything in the Universe is natural, everything that happens is natural, all that is,was, and will be is equally the product of the exact same natural forces which make bees and kittens and pretty desert sunsets.

Of course, you wouldn’t know that by looking around in our grocery stores. Natural is the hottest meaningless Madison Avenue buzzword of all time, and it shows no sign of relenting in the slightest. Everything from produce to shampoo to novelty seat covers are eager to tell you how “natural” and “organic” they are in order to convince you that they are somehow better than those nasty unnatural things which violate the laws of nature their competitors are pushing.

Everything that I have said for “natural” goes double for “organic”. If a human being can derive nutrition from it, it’s organic, whether it’s an “organically farmed” mushroom or a bag of Doritos. Just as much human intervention is involved in bringing you that mushroom as in bringing you the Doritos. There is no logical, scientific, or even sensible difference between an organically grown food item and the same thing made by more modern methods. There is no “vitamin nature” we all lack.

And I think it’s this rejection of human intervention that really bothers me about this modern fetish for “natural” and “organic” products. Somehow, in the last fifty years ago, we have all become convinced that the touch of our fellow human beings is inherently corrupting and destructive, and that the less we have done to something, the better for us it is, somehow.

It is as thought the entire scientific revolution never happened. The joke is trite now, but it’s true : our ancestors a mere two hundred years ago ate completely natural, organic foods and had active, outdoor lifestyles, and they died before reaching the age of forty. We live nearly twice that, and yet we now think the progress and technology which allows that is somehow suspect.

No doubt, in the march of science and commerce, mistakes have been made which resulted in food which was less nutritious than what came before. But that was not due to the destructive and “unnatural” evilness of science, it was due to an incomplete understanding of the human body and what it needs. It was not too much science but too little that caused these mistakes to be made.

And for every such mistake, there are dozens of ways in which modern science has made what we eat and drink and use in our daily lives far healthier than the crude and disease-ridden things of the past. From the days of Pasteur, scientific progress has made what we consume safer, cleaner, better looking, better tasting, and in all ways simply superior.

If that’s the case, then where does this modern, pervasive rejection of science and embracing of the specious notion of the superiority of the “natural” and “organic” come from?

Part of it, I think, is simple historical nostalgia. When we are discontent with modern life, we seek to place the blame, and the future is frightening and uncertain, so it is far easier and more comforting to imagine that there was a time when things which were much better Way Back When, and this involved an inherent need to think we went terribly wrong somewhere.

But I think it goes far deeper than that. I think modern life alienates us from nature, and leaves us with a deep mysterious craving for the connection with nature we once had. It is a mysterious craving because it does not map directly onto our usual sense of the needs of the body and the mind, and therefore comes from that dark and disturbing realm between consciousness and the subconscious. From an everyday point of view, a craving for nature seems entirely illogical and insane. We have everything we could possibly want in modern society, right?

But I think, deep down, every creature has a sense of what their environment is supposed to be like. Evolutionarily, this makes sense. It would keep a given species in the environment to which they are best adapted, and lead them back to it when they wander too far.

With us crazy human beings, however, not only had modern society, with the best of intentions and for the most part, the best of results, has caused us to live in environments which cut us off from the complex signals that tell us we are in the right place.

We try to compensate. We have lawns and flower boxes and gardens and parks and so on. We vacation in places of “natural beauty” in order to soothe this deep feeling of being out of place. We decorate our homes with pictures of nature. We bring animals into our homes to live with us.

But still, we crave, and it is this craving that is callously manipulated by the forces of consumerism in order to get us to buy their crap instead of someone else’s crap.

Ignore whether it’s “natural” or “organic” or “naturally sourced”. That is just bullshit magical thinking. Ask whether it is good for you, and judge without prejudice.

Because having an open mind and asking questions is a natural thing for a human being to do.