Matthew Clapham
1 min readJan 7, 2024

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I think beauty will often tend to turn one into Pygmalion's Galatea, an artificial and superficial construct of what society sees us as, but more importantly what we ourselves see in the mirror, and are distracted by.

That outward presence is likely to conceal or distort the person within.

Inherited money without intelligence apparently gets you the job of POTUS, and I wouldn't fancy that at all...

I wouldn't swap my intelligence for either of the other options. It earned me a degree from Oxford, which I know from experience is often a door-opener of sorts, and in some company can have the same effect as can evident beauty or wealth in others. As a signifier of a personal possession that may serve as a useful facilitator. Or an embarrassment elsewhere, of course, though it can perhaps more easily be concealed, or its trumpet muted.

But it also tends to come with the ability to perceive problems both real and imagined, present and future, which we are often powerless to avert.

A little like a truncated Neo in The Matrix, perhaps. You see the bullet coming towards you in slow motion, but know you can't physically dodge it.

The curse of Cassandra.

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Matthew Clapham
Matthew Clapham

Written by Matthew Clapham

Professional translator by day. Writer of silly and serious stuff by night. Also by day, when I get fed up of tedious translations. Founder of Iberospherical.

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