NATURE hath given men one tongue but two ears, that we may hear from others twice as much as we speak.
– from The Philosophy of Epictetus (Fragments) VI
You’ve probably seen a few of these before. Yep, you guessed right, it’s a face:
Nature and evolution put eyeballs in the face for one reason, so that we understand (and care) more about our surroundings and environment and those around us, than we do ourselves.
We can’t physically see our own faces and it’s only through an anatomical anomaly that we are able to see the rest of our body.
So why do we care so much about the way we look, and in particular the way our face does? If mirrors and highly reflective rivers never existed, we would not look at our faces once in our whole lives.
But hair transplants, facelifts, and anti-wrinkle creams exist (and exist in by the shitload full).
Many of us are focused on improving how our face and head looks –the one thing we were designed not to see. Yet many of us spend barely any time improving on, trying to understand or learning about the one thing we see all the time –inside our mind.