Perfection
Utopian and dystopian societies are commonly portrayed in literature and philosophy. For instance, “The Giver” by Lois Lowry depicts a society where pain and conflict are removed through this ideology called “sameness”. While theoretically, making everyone’s lives the same by sucking out the emotion, memory, and differences in people does remove pain and conflict, it also takes away much of the humanity and uniqueness that used to be present.
In achieving perfection, individuality is sacrificed.
Corollary
Take a look at beauty standards, for example. The beauty industry thrives off of people’s insecurities, selling this “ideal” standard of beauty for everyone to conform to. Instead of encouraging people to strive to be their unique selves, each with their own unique beauty, it pressures people to resemble a “perfect” image, with deviations being seen as flaws. I’ve seen some people struggle to distinguish certain K-pop idols, and I think that’s a result of idols and agencies trying to conform to a certain “gold standard”. (People have noticed that some ENHYPEN members, for example, have very similar noses, and while it’s possibly coincidental, it’s also possibly (and arguably more likely) a result of cosmetic surgery.)
I recently read a short story, “Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut. (It only takes a few minutes; you should totally read it too). It satirically depicts a society where everyone is equal under a totalitarian government, and this equality is enforced by the Handicapper General. Everything is handicapped to be equal—intelligence, looks, athletic ability, etc. If someone has above-average intelligence, they would have a “mental handicap radio” in their ear, required by law. If someone had a prettier-than-average face, they would be forced to mask their face to appear average. In this way, everyone is made to be equal.
In achieving complete equality, we forfeit our uniqueness.
Accompaniment
With the ever-increasing usage in generative AI, texts written by LLMs have become more common. As a result, trying to distinguish between human-written and AI-generated text has been a growing problem. But humans are vastly different, and the way we come up with what to write can vary drastically between people. LLMs, on the other hand, are trained on massive amounts of data, and are designed to generate a response based on probabilities. This results in the most commonly found structures and clichés surfacing to the top, and its responses seeming “bland”, or “formulaic”. Even though people are generally bad at spotting AI-generated text, it is often riddled with distinct characteristics or just an off-putting feeling. Humans write one way, and LLMs write another way. As technology advances, the disparity will shrink, but as of now, AI-generated text is still as unoriginal as ever.
I’ve seen something similar in the field of college admissions. I’ve been told that to get accepted to a “top college” (whatever your definition of top college may be), I should do certain extracurriculars, volunteering, leadership, etc. “Oh, you should do ISEF”, or “you should do competition math” or “you should start a nonprofit” or whatever it may be, a similar message gets spewed out to many aspiring high school students. I think trying to achieve great things is a wonderful pursuit, but if we do it solely for external reasons such as college admissions, then we lose the internal reasons that matter a lot more. Because of these factors, many students end up submitting very similar applications (picture the Buzz Lightyear clones meme), and would fare better pursuing what they enjoyed.
In seeking someone else’s idea of perfection, we lose something much more valuable. We lose our unique qualities; we lose the very thing that makes us special.
Life Update!
We qualified for Science Bowl Nationals! Saturday was fun—we won every game in the round robin, and we only lost to Cherry Creek once in the finals (they’re really good, what the heck). I reread parts of The Art of War on the car ride there and quoted it several times throughout the day, so that must be why we won (post hoc ergo propter hoc)!! I also opened my MIT decision during lunch, and to no one’s surprise, I was rejected. Oh well, we just have to wait for more decisions now.
And finals went amazingly! I arrived at AP Microeconomics ten minutes late, and my teacher took his sweet time handing me my test. To spite him (it’s not that serious, I was just a bit annoyed), I finished the test in forty-five minutes (we were given ninety), and got a 98%. AP Physics C was really hard—we were given eighty minutes to solve 40 MCQs and another eighty for 4 FRQs, which is not nearly enough. I got a 99.87% somehow thanks to the curve. The AP Chemistry midterm was much more manageable, and I got a 58/60. All three were extremely overkill, and I don’t know why I worried so much.
On another note, next week is spring break! I can finally clear up the backlog and fix my sleep schedule.
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