Perhaps parts of us decay to signify something greater. As little as we treasure wisdom, we might treasure it even less if given the choice to trade our brains for beauty outright. Seeing others become old, realizing that’s us, accepting our situation and trying to make more of it – that’s got to mean something, no?

Yeah, I’m not convinced either. Male-pattern baldness is annoying, not a divine concern. But when all is said and done, why can’t we be resurrected beautifully? God’s “mercy” here sounds like it is by nature. Hair is a natural marker of our vanity. It marks some of us as sexually desirable, vigorous, young. That it goes away means those things go away.

Maybe a perfectly just and good society regards each other as sexless and ageless. But that’s the guardian class of the Republic. What do the guardians talk about? Not much, if speech depends on the recognition of difference. If hair is tied to memories, there is the further problem of being allowed to access who we were. It isn’t clear we were unjust because we were easy to love.