The so-called mind-body problem
is one of the greatest and most quietly painful
conundrums in philosophy, and more importantly,
in everyday life. The problem is rooted in the fact
that in the eyes of other people, all of us are automatically and
stubbornly associated with our bodies, which includes, of course, our faces. The way we look is the overwhelming factor that dictates how others assess
our natures and our characters. Whatever lip service we might pay
to less punitive ideologies, in the practical world,
who we are is taken to be how we look. The sweet face is assumed to
contain a gentle, benevolent owner; the large, red face with narrow eyes
an angry and suspicious one. We trust that personal identity
is indivisible from bodily form. Yet there is one dramatic exception
from this rule: our own cases. When it comes to ourselves, we know,
usually with considerable an ongoing sorrow that the way we look is
obviously not who we are.
We are profoundly aware of a large gulf
between our understanding of ourselves and the suggestions emitted by our bodies. Inside we may feel tender, inspired,
inquisitive, playful, and young. But the face we see in the mirror is
indelibly imprinted with an atmosphere that may be stern, grave, humorless, and ever more akin to that of an
insipid elderly uncle. We may bravely push
the hair this way and that, or soften the appearance with
the help of a slightly brighter jumper or some intrepid shoes or dab some kind
of cream or powder here and there. But nothing can ever overcome
the monumental injustice, to which we appear to be subject. It isn’t merely that we feel unattractive: we feel something bigger: misrepresented, as if we have been forced go into
the world as an ambassador for a country we don’t actually really
inhabit or identify with. The English essayist George Orwell
once remarked that at 40, everyone has the face they deserve. This is as absurd and cruel as to suggest
that everyone might have the illnesses, the income or the life, fate they deserve.
No one, not even with 40 years of trying, has ever managed to
change their facial appearance by an effort of the inner will
so as better to reflect their identity. No one who has passionately
thought of themselves as a button-nosed person
over half a lifetime has ever thereby shrunk their proboscis
by even a quarter of a millimetre. In fact, quite the opposite
tends to happen: our characters are liable
to mould themselves to the personalities
implied by our faces, as a result of years of
other people assuming that this must be who we are and
treating us in the light of our appearance. The gentler sides of someone
who looks gentle will thereby constantly
be invited to the surface by the expectations and
encouragement of others.
The person who is routinely
assumed to be a bit sly because of the
slope of their eyelids may end up fitting with
the prevailing story of who they are. The mind-body problem leads us
to understand some of what love, in its most generous, imaginative guises,
should really involve: a commitment to remember
that the other is not how they appear; that their body was imposed and not chosen and that there may be a
very different character trapped within their physical envelope. The writer Cyril Connolly,
who struggled with his weight all his life, and felt sickened by his round full cheeks, bald head and what he termed ‘accountant’s
expression’, once wrote poignantly: ‘Inside every fat man is
a thin one trying to get out…’ But the phenomenon shouldn't be
limited to the fat-thin dichotomy. Inside a distressing number of us,
there is someone else trying to get out, perhaps a mellow 65-year-old man from
the body of a 25-year-old woman, or a thoughtful nerdy girl from
the body of a middle-aged irritable male. The best we can do to overcome
the mind-body problem is not to fiddle with our clothes,
invest in hairdressers or endanger our health
with plastic surgery.
We will never be able properly
to align mind and body, by outward sculpting. The solution is to recognise that the problem is
an existential part of being human. And therefore, that we must
always strive to remember, in spite of all the visual evidence,
and in a spirit of love, that the bodies and faces
of others are very separate from the character of their minds, in the hope that others will in time give us completely generous
and kind interpretation when their gaze turns to
our faces and bodies.