Alain de Botton suggests that the reason that we often see very short women with very tall men is that each party has an unconscious fear of producing gigantic or tiny offspring. What they are aiming for, unconsciously, is to have children that are closer to the average human height than they themselves are. Langlois and Roggman generated a digital image of the average of several of photographs of real women’s faces and put it among the mix of images of real women and then asked men to rate these women on their beauty. The men ranked the digital image of the nonexistent average woman as the most beautiful. Too bad for them this woman doesn’t exist. They didn’t know that.
Extreme beauty, it seems, is extremely average. We are drawn to extreme averageness—at least part of us. Perhaps the benefit of being average is what de Botton says it is—it’s conducive to survival. If you are of average height, then no one will call you a beanpole or a munchkin and you will be more likely to keep your lunch money, eat lunch, and produce beautifully average offspring. People who don’t participate in extreme sports are less likely to die in extreme ways. Perhaps people who lead very average lives live much longer than average. If you are on the edge of a pack of surfers, you might be the first one attacked by a shark. Being most in the middle of the pack is the safest, and safer than being in the middle of a pack of surfers is being in the middle of the pack of all humans, probably in a central suburb of Omaha, Nebraska.
Perhaps this is why humans are so successful as a species. We are bigger and faster than snails but smaller and slower than lions, shorter than giraffes and taller than squirrels. Perhaps. This probably isn’t the whole story, though, because if it were, then the ideally intelligent person would have an average IQ and extremely handsome men would fall in love with very plain women. But this doesn’t happen. Sometimes we want the best: beauty and brains. But you should be careful what you wish for because if you are extremely rich or extremely powerful, then your kids are probably more likely find themselves in extreme situations such as being kidnapped and held for ransom.
Annie Dillard observes that nature will try anything once. This, of course, includes crack cocaine and heroin, as well as duck with orange sauce. But sometimes it’s good to be different. All species of bananas are currently so similar genetically that they are in danger of extinction because there is a virus going around that not one of them is immune to. So banana lovers are breeding diversity into them. “Be different,” we tell the bananas. That will ensure your survival. Of course, that’s what we tell them as a group. Individually, before they saw the virus, the bananas were each perhaps considering being different but they were all saying to their neighbors, “You go first. I’m too afraid of what people will say.” But now that difference is a lifeboat, there’s a long line to get on board and not all the bananas will make it. Some will and some won’t, and the ones who were closer to edge to begin with will have a head start. Sometimes being different works and sometimes it doesn’t. It depends on the world. You just never know where that lifeboat is going to drop.
Seedless oranges, for example, should naturally have quite a difficult time being prolific. But with their few and small seeds, they are attractive to us humans and our small esophaguses. We cherish them, water them, and go out of our way to make sure they flourish. And we ignore the ones with lots of seeds. Those unlucky orange with lots of seeds are sitting there thinking, “What did I do wrong? I bought 23 lottery tickets and that guy over there bought just one!” Remember: You can win the lottery with just one ticket—if it’s the right one.
If orange seeds tasted like chocolate, well, then we might have a different story. You just never know what will float people’s boats. Most importantly, you never know what will float your boat. You need to be prepared. Or unprepared. Overprepared and underprepared. You should bring a flashlight, a world-class mathematician, and a chihuahua. I think. I’m not sure. I don’t know what any of this means. I’m not any smarter than the next guy. I’m probably the wrong person to ask. Ask the millionaire. Ask the volunteer. Ask the most average-looking person you see what the secret to their success is. Me, I’m going to ignore the oranges and go surfing. And when I’m done, I’m going to spend some of my average wage at an extremely nice organic fruit shop, close my eyes, and ask for something wild—like The Fruit of the Day. Hopefully, part of the world is still bananas.