I recently read an article about the ‘World’s ugliest pig caught on camera’. In it, we were told that scientists had captured the first footage in the wild of one of the world’s rarest, and ugliest, pigs. Now, whilst the article did go on to highlight the threat that these animals (for those interested, it was a Javan warty pig, which lives in Indonesia) face from hunting and habitat loss due to human interference; the aspect of the article that really stood out to me was… the title: the ‘World’s ugliest pig caught on camera’.
I admit that I found the photograph of the pig somewhat hideous; however, what makes the picture of THIS particular pig the ugliest? What metrics have been used to objectively determine its ‘ugliness score’? Is there no other, uglier, animal?
They say beauty (and by implication ugliness) is in the eye of the beholder. Despite this, how many and how often do people accept what really is an opinion as though it were a fact?
I shocked myself at my preparedness to allow someone else, and worse – somebody I did not know or trust, tell me how to feel about the image of a pig. Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda minister, famously said “A lie told often enough becomes the truth”.
Whilst it is impossible to be entirely free from others’ influence, we can control what we watch and read (i.e. the inputs). Words have power and we should be careful that those who we allow to get close to us help and not hinder us along our journey of self-discovery and towards the best version of ourselves.