Picture Perfect - are we headed toward a dystopian world?

Have you looked at pictures from history? We were not attractive looking, by modern standards.

Terrible teeth, dishevelled hair, cracking skin. Even royalty was not spared. Look at the images of kings and queens in a museum.

But things changed.

Our image of what is beautiful and reality both converged in an iterative process.

Likely, this happened as we started travelling and marrying beyond our local pool combined with better nutrition and grooming. In the last one hundred years, we also got cosmetic surgery.

Personally, I don’t have an opinion on whether you should or shouldn’t change the way you look.

But I do have an opinion of how it affects children.

Over the past few months, I have noticed videos of famous songs from the past. Except the people singing it are picture perfect and not the original artists.

You guessed it. AI generated images and videos.

For some strange reason, when building AI, it was designed to make things picture perfect. Perhaps because in the early days, it produced warped images of twisted hands and feet.

So imagine an entire generation of children growing up watching videos and images of perfect people. They sing like Adele, dance like Jackson, and look like Khan.

Except they are not real.

Most children could not possibly aspire to emulate them. Or if they did, it would require years of effort, time and money. Not to mention the physhological damage during the process.

Growth, development and progress are wonderful things. Aspirations are necessary. But creating a utopian world in which everything should be perfect, could not possibly be progress.

So what can we do?

I speak with the limited knowledge of a parent of two.

Ground your children. Give them self confidence and conviction in who and what they are. Teach them to grow and learn.

Most of all teach them that what ever they are, they are just what they ought to be.

They do not need to judge or compare. Either themselves of those around. Each of us are wonderful in our own ways. Flaws included.

We cant and should not ever aspire to be an artificial version of our reality.

Reach out to me on twitter @rbawri Instagram @riteshbawriofficial and YouTube at www.youtube.com/breatheagain