we don’t always feel comfortable
admitting it to our friends it’s
embarrassing but secretly the idea of
being famous has great appeal Fame seems
to be the solution to so many problems
when you’re famous people will make way
for you in crowds
you’ll get warm smiles from admiring
strangers you’ll be safe from rejection
you won’t have to explain who you are
each new occasion people will be
convinced by you before you even meet
them if ever you’re unhappy about
something your complaints will be taken
very seriously your happiness will
become the focus of everyone’s efforts
you’ll be boss the intense desire for
fame probably has its roots in the
experience from gland in injury no one
would want to be famous who hadn’t also
somewhere in the past been made to feel
extremely insignificant perhaps one’s
parents were hard to impress that’s why
one dreams that one day the world will
pay attention or maybe our parents are
great but it was the wider world
starting with a schoolyard that was
intolerable
after early years of adulation at home
and yet there’s a problem Fame cannot
really accomplish what is asked of it
every new famous person who
disintegrates breaks down in public or
loses their mind is judged in isolation
rather than being interpreted as a
victim of an inevitable pattern within
the pathology of fame
you want to be famous because you want
people to like you but the world isn’t
generally kind to the fails for very
long and the reason is basic the success
of any one person involves humiliation
for lots of others the celebrity of a
few people will always contrast
painfully with the obscurity of the many
being famous upsets people when we
imagine Fame we forget that it’s
inextricably connected to being too
visible in the eyes of some people to
bugging them unduly to coming to be seen
as the plausible cause of their
humiliation symbol of how the world has
treated them unfairly Fame makes people
more not less vulnerable because it
throws them open to unlimited judgment
everyone is wounded by a cruel
assessment of their character or merit
but the famous have an added challenge
install the assessments will come in
from legions of people who would never
dare to say to their faces what they can
now express from the safety of the
newspaper office or the screen you know
from our own lives that a nasty remark
can take a day or two to process social
media hasn’t helped it’s made it far
easier than before to be famous and
therefore by necessity far easier to be
hated the minor celebrity can now
regularly face all the vitriol
previously accorded only to Hollywood
stars psychologically the famous or of
course the very last people on earth
well equipped to deal with what they’re
going through after all they only became
famous because they were wounded because
they had thin skin because they were in
some respect a bit ill and now far from
compensating them adequately for their
disease famed aggravates it
exponentially strangers voice their
negative opinions in detail unable or
simply unwilling to imagine that famous
people bleed far more quickly than
anyone else they might even think the
famous aren’t listening that one
wouldn’t become famous if one didn’t
suffer from a compulsion to listen too
much every worse fear about oneself that
one stupid ugly not worthy of existence
will daily be confirmed by strangers one
will be exposed to the fact that people
one’s never met about whom one would
have only good will actively loathed one
one will learn that detta station of
one’s personality is in some quarters a
badge of honor
sometimes the attacks will be horribly
insightful at other times they’ll make
no sense to anyone who really knows one
but the criticisms will lodge in
people’s minds nevertheless and no
lawyer court case and magician will ever
be able to delete them needless to say
as a hurt celebrity one won’t be
eligible for sympathy the very concept
of a hurt celebrity is a joke about as
moving for the average person as the
sadness of a tyrant
to sum up Fame really just means you get
noticed a great deal not that you get
understood appreciated or loved at an
individual level the only mature
strategy is to give up on Fame the aim
that lay behind the desire for fame
remains important one does still want to
be appreciated and understood but the
wise person accepts that celebrity does
not actually provide these things
appreciation and understanding are only
available through individuals one knows
and cares about not via groups of a
thousand or a million strangers there is
no shortcut to friendship which is what
the famous person is in effects
for those who are already famous the
only way to stay sane is to stop
listening to what the wider world is
saying this applies to the good things
as much as to the bad it’s best not to
know the wise person knows that their
products need attention but they make a
clear distinction between a purely
practical needs of marketing and
advocacy and the intimate desire to be
liked and treated with justice and
kindness by people one doesn’t know at a
collective political level we should pay
great attention to the fact that today
so many people particularly young ones
want to be famous and even see Fame as a
necessary condition for a successful
life rather than dismiss this wish we
should grasp its underlying worrying a
meaning they want to be famous because
they’re not being respected because
citizens have forgotten how to accord
one another the degree of civility
appreciation and decency that everyone
craves and deserves the desire for fame
is a sign that an ordinary life has
ceased to be good enough the solution is
not to encourage ever more people to
become famous but to put massive efforts
into encouraging greater level of
politeness and consideration for
everyone in families and communities in
workplaces in politics in the media at
all income levels especially modest ones
only then will a society give up on the
understandable but erroneous belief that
Fame could guarantee the kindness of strangers
admitting it to our friends it’s
embarrassing but secretly the idea of
being famous has great appeal Fame seems
to be the solution to so many problems
when you’re famous people will make way
for you in crowds
you’ll get warm smiles from admiring
strangers you’ll be safe from rejection
you won’t have to explain who you are
each new occasion people will be
convinced by you before you even meet
them if ever you’re unhappy about
something your complaints will be taken
very seriously your happiness will
become the focus of everyone’s efforts
you’ll be boss the intense desire for
fame probably has its roots in the
experience from gland in injury no one
would want to be famous who hadn’t also
somewhere in the past been made to feel
extremely insignificant perhaps one’s
parents were hard to impress that’s why
one dreams that one day the world will
pay attention or maybe our parents are
great but it was the wider world
starting with a schoolyard that was
intolerable
after early years of adulation at home
and yet there’s a problem Fame cannot
really accomplish what is asked of it
every new famous person who
disintegrates breaks down in public or
loses their mind is judged in isolation
rather than being interpreted as a
victim of an inevitable pattern within
the pathology of fame
you want to be famous because you want
people to like you but the world isn’t
generally kind to the fails for very
long and the reason is basic the success
of any one person involves humiliation
for lots of others the celebrity of a
few people will always contrast
painfully with the obscurity of the many
being famous upsets people when we
imagine Fame we forget that it’s
inextricably connected to being too
visible in the eyes of some people to
bugging them unduly to coming to be seen
as the plausible cause of their
humiliation symbol of how the world has
treated them unfairly Fame makes people
more not less vulnerable because it
throws them open to unlimited judgment
everyone is wounded by a cruel
assessment of their character or merit
but the famous have an added challenge
install the assessments will come in
from legions of people who would never
dare to say to their faces what they can
now express from the safety of the
newspaper office or the screen you know
from our own lives that a nasty remark
can take a day or two to process social
media hasn’t helped it’s made it far
easier than before to be famous and
therefore by necessity far easier to be
hated the minor celebrity can now
regularly face all the vitriol
previously accorded only to Hollywood
stars psychologically the famous or of
course the very last people on earth
well equipped to deal with what they’re
going through after all they only became
famous because they were wounded because
they had thin skin because they were in
some respect a bit ill and now far from
compensating them adequately for their
disease famed aggravates it
exponentially strangers voice their
negative opinions in detail unable or
simply unwilling to imagine that famous
people bleed far more quickly than
anyone else they might even think the
famous aren’t listening that one
wouldn’t become famous if one didn’t
suffer from a compulsion to listen too
much every worse fear about oneself that
one stupid ugly not worthy of existence
will daily be confirmed by strangers one
will be exposed to the fact that people
one’s never met about whom one would
have only good will actively loathed one
one will learn that detta station of
one’s personality is in some quarters a
badge of honor
sometimes the attacks will be horribly
insightful at other times they’ll make
no sense to anyone who really knows one
but the criticisms will lodge in
people’s minds nevertheless and no
lawyer court case and magician will ever
be able to delete them needless to say
as a hurt celebrity one won’t be
eligible for sympathy the very concept
of a hurt celebrity is a joke about as
moving for the average person as the
sadness of a tyrant
to sum up Fame really just means you get
noticed a great deal not that you get
understood appreciated or loved at an
individual level the only mature
strategy is to give up on Fame the aim
that lay behind the desire for fame
remains important one does still want to
be appreciated and understood but the
wise person accepts that celebrity does
not actually provide these things
appreciation and understanding are only
available through individuals one knows
and cares about not via groups of a
thousand or a million strangers there is
no shortcut to friendship which is what
the famous person is in effects
for those who are already famous the
only way to stay sane is to stop
listening to what the wider world is
saying this applies to the good things
as much as to the bad it’s best not to
know the wise person knows that their
products need attention but they make a
clear distinction between a purely
practical needs of marketing and
advocacy and the intimate desire to be
liked and treated with justice and
kindness by people one doesn’t know at a
collective political level we should pay
great attention to the fact that today
so many people particularly young ones
want to be famous and even see Fame as a
necessary condition for a successful
life rather than dismiss this wish we
should grasp its underlying worrying a
meaning they want to be famous because
they’re not being respected because
citizens have forgotten how to accord
one another the degree of civility
appreciation and decency that everyone
craves and deserves the desire for fame
is a sign that an ordinary life has
ceased to be good enough the solution is
not to encourage ever more people to
become famous but to put massive efforts
into encouraging greater level of
politeness and consideration for
everyone in families and communities in
workplaces in politics in the media at
all income levels especially modest ones
only then will a society give up on the
understandable but erroneous belief that
Fame could guarantee the kindness of strangers
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