If humans are animals, and animals have basic biological needs and processes, then the superficiality of looks-based relationships is human and normal. How to mediate this internally?
As a human with higher thought processes than a lot of other animals, I feel morally repulsed by the concept that looks play a major role in interpersonal communication and relationships. I believe that spending lots of time on your appearance is both vapid and fleeting and shallow from a logical perspective, but also highly important from a low level, baseline, purely biological perspective.
I spent the majority of my adult life rallying against the concept of attractiveness being a primary motivator for interpersonal relationships. I feel that a foundation based on looks is shallow and not worth the effort people put into receiving it, because the prize for all the work and time you put in to "look good" is just superficial validation from someone else almost exclusively based on whether they want to sleep with you. No depth, no real connection, just biology.
I still believe that.
What i didn't take into account is that as an animal, first and foremost, natural biological processes like sexual attraction are an indisputable function of the species. Yes, it's shallow. Yes, it still matters. A male peacock's plumage is meant for sexual selection.
If the logical, higher thinking part of my human brain is disgusted and disheartened by the idea of something as vapid as looks being the main motivator for relationships, but I know that the baseline animal part of the human brain still values sexual selection over everything else,
how do I mediate that?
Whenever I think about the idea of being chosen or kept by somebody mostly for looks, I feel dejected and discouraged. It doesn't feel worthwhile. It feels like every act i take toward that end is a violation of my moral code. I feel disgusted when I interact with someone who's very obviously only motivated to speak to me because they find me physically attractive.
I feel like romantic love as described by movies and poems and books isn't actually real. It's flowery jargon for a fleeting sensation of chemicals produced by sexual attraction that fades and dims as soon as something better looking walks by or you start to age. I feel we are biologically programmed for sex and nothing else, and we are not naturally meant to be monogamous (at least men aren't).
But if humans are animals, then a biological process can't be morally incorrect.
People say that your looks are the least interesting thing about you, and I agree. But now I'm doubting myself and I feel like looks are probably the most important thing about you over everything else. I'm morally disgusted by the superficiality of the human condition, and yet I feel like I screwed up my entire adult life by not playing the game.
Is the superficiality of sexual attraction a low brain byproduct of a lack of critical thinking, or does the biological nature of it prove its value?
TL;DR: should I spend a lot of time and money and mental effort to prioritize trying to look sexually attractive to others at the expense of being disgusted by myself and disillusioned by the prize (a shallow, short-lived connection for shallow, short-lived reasons), for the sake of accepting my human nature and finding companionship?
I find it nearly impossible to motivate myself to engage with something if I feel the outcome or prize is disproportionate to the energy expended to get it. But how can I rationally rally against the human condition?