2013-02-01 - If looks could kill

I was listening to the radio a while ago and “Games without Frontiers” by Peter Gabriel came on. It’s an interesting song but one line in particular caught my attention, “If looks could kill they probably will”. Now I’ve heard the statement “If looks could kill” many times but this got me thinking about what would happen if looks could kill. Now the obvious, and trivial, answer is that the human race would have died out. For some reason I feel the need to be more positive about it though.

If we assume that people wouldn’t all instantly die off if looks could kill I think it might actually be a good thing. The main idea behind killer looks is people annoying other people to such an extent that they give them a dirty look. If these looks could kill people would have to be much more mindful of them and they’d have to try and avoid them. That would mean that people couldn’t just be absolute bastards without natural selection taking over. It would also give people an excuse not to deal with annoying people. A cashier could tell their manager that they need to step away for a second because they’re going to kill their customer and the manager would let them as it could really happen. So if looks could kill people would have to be nicer and more considerate of other people.

Of course that’s never going to happen because people always get annoyed and then we’ll just slowly wipe ourselves out.

Update on previous post: HA! Steady state, that lasted long.