More Human Than Human

In a society where self-destruction is turning out to be the newest trend, everyone seems to be looking for something to blame for their own actions. Those suffering from eating disorders say that the media for the images of ‘perfection’ they portray and subliminally demand, while athletes suspended from competitions due to the use of steroids whine about the harsh requirements of their sport. The hardest mental illnesses to treat are those that involve how the mind sees some things, including those regarding the self, appearance or not. All these problems stem from everyone’s ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ perceptions of none else but the human body.

However, whether it is in art or the media, all depictions of the human body are similar in one particular aspect. They defied reality.

But where did this idea come from? Where did it all begin?

History tells us that the human species began 150,000 years ago; human beings commenced to make art around 80,000 years ago; and it is 30,000 years ago that humans started to carve up statues.

There is one notable discovery that shows us that even all those years ago, humans from different places around the world (and one must remember that they had no means of communication over long distances back then) created statues of with designs so alike they were almost eerie.

The Venus statues that were uncovered—found in Austria, Russia, France, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Italy, and France—all had the same grotesquely blown up thighs, hips, breasts, and genitals, with minimal attention to the arms and face in terms of detail.

They were created by the Hunter-Gatherers from thousands of years ago, and studies showed that it seems their brains were hardwired to place importance to the parts of the body needed in their environment—a callous ice-land, where fatness and fertility were valued in order to survive.

Nevertheless, it seems that things didn’t last too long in this manner. The climate changed, and soon water became scarce and wildlife and vegetation withered along with it. The Hunter-Gatherers soon gathered near the Nile River, and were now called the Egyptians.

Before, their images were dictated upon by their environment, but now, the people abandoned that way of exaggeration to instead illustrate each part of the body from its clearest angle, making it appear rigid and drawn accurately to the grid. They were able to suppress the natural instinct to overstate certain features because of their culture, which called for consistency, order, and precision. Unlike the nomads, who made small statues that were easy to travel with, the Egyptians built large structures as a symbol of their permanence, and of those traits being handed down to future generations.

So, while the Hunter-Gatherers wanted exaggeration and the Egyptians preferred uniformity, the Ancient Greeks’ inspiration for the perfect body is the athletic body—the body of the gods. They rejected the stiff style of the Egyptians, expressing the desire to make statues based on what their eyes can see, not what they want them to see. They wanted them to be realistic.

There was one such example—a work called the Cretan boy—which was an exact and painstakingly detailed statue, the first time a truly realistic replica of the human body was made.

But this did not last long. A generation passed, and they abandoned this style simply because it was boring. Now, they were programmed to distort the portrayal of the human body, to ask for more than what was possible. They wanted something that was more human than human.

The models used for this paradigm were a pair of bronze statues a diver found in the Mediterranean. The quality of the craftsmanship was astounding, the intricacy of its details impressing even modern artisans. They resembled human beings, but did not follow the human body’s own limitations. It wasn’t anatomically possible for humans to look the way they did in the Greek’s statues.

This only shows a revealing pattern to how humans depict the human body in images—led by instinct and culture, the bottom line is that we humans don’t like reality (Spivey, 2006).

If you think about it, the world hasn’t changed much from 30,000 years ago. Civilization progressed quite well, technology improved immensely, wars tore nations apart and peace treaties brought them back together… but somehow, our way of thinking is the same. Parts of us will always yearn for something impossible, and we will somehow thrive off this need for perfection. This is why the flawless bodies of models and athletes sell. Amidst the envy and resentment we may feel towards them for being perfect and towards ourselves for not being good enough, we are still glorifying them, and their ability to become more human than human.

So will we continue to point fingers at each other, or at least try to understand why we think the way we do?