Shortcuts that take a toll

Being a human being is hard work.

That's why there are so many shortcuts, especially when it comes to sizing up other people. You read about the sorority Delta Zeta that was concerned about recruitment at its DePauw University chapter in Indiana. Seems the chapter wasn't attracting enough prospective members. National representatives interviewed 35 women and told 23 of them to move out of the sorority house.

The 23 included all of the women considered overweight as well as the only black, Korean and Vietnamese women.

Only the hotties were allowed to stay.

I was outraged. But then I thought about it.

Don't most of us make those very judgments all the time and act on them?

These folks were just more obvious about it.

Beauty is a shortcut that reduces the need to think.

People know who'd make a good mate, who's virtuous and who's smart just by looking.

Potential pledges would walk into the house, see a bunch of beauties and know Delta Zeta was right for them, no further investigation needed.

Advertisers use the same shortcut.

We're all hardwired to recognize beauty — facial symmetry, a certain waist-to-hip ratio in women.

I e-mailed the University of Washington Delta Zeta chapter. No answer. I went to their house.

The attractive young woman who came to the door said they were not authorized to speak to me. You have to give up some free will to be in a group.

In a Web-site photo the women in front seemed especially good-looking.

Was that on purpose?

It was easy enough for me to rank them by looks, but to stop there would be wrong. They are more than appearance.

If we've advanced at all, it is reflected not in our reflexes but in the extra effort to add thinking on top of instinct. Acknowledge what comes naturally, then think more deeply.

Another story.

A columnist for the San Francisco-based newspaper AsianWeek wrote a piece titled, "Why I Hate Black People."

He's since been fired, but the paper did run the diatribe.

Stereotypes are a shortcut. They are out of fashion, but practiced quietly everywhere.

Shortcut thinking breaks through the civil surface periodically. Remember Mel Gibson's comments about Jews?

These eruptions spring from fault lines below the crust of society. There is pressure that needs release, friction that needs to be discussed.

But openness without intelligence conflicts with our desire for civility and our aspiration to be better than nature made us.

Honest conversations are possible, but only when people deal with life's complexity.

Being human is hard work when you think about it.

Jerry Large's column appears Monday and Thursday. Reach him at 206-464-3346 or jlarge@seattletimes.com.