Listen to reason-Part 1

Some days I just don’t have anything to say.

Today is not one of those days. This is the part where I channel the spirit of a crotchety old man and sincerely believe that I know what’s wrong with the world. Because I do damnit!
Why does anybody know the name Wayne Gretzky? Joe DiMaggio? What about Ludwig Von Beethoven? The answer is obvious; because they were good at their respective professions. The famous people, the infamous people, traditionally became one of these social elite through some merit of their own. Great artists, performers, athletes, warriors, industrialists, and entrepreneurs, the list could continue indefinitely. To achieve fame one needs only excel at something to a point that interests the public. Not as easy a task as it may seem. Success is hard work, and how!? It must be difficult to succeed, necessitated by the very nature of being a living thing. If success (ie survival) were easy, everyone would do it. EVERYONE. They would then proceed to pass on their genes. But wait, those genes have not been put to the test, they could be flawed. Following that chain of events, thousands, maybe millions, of years and we have a species riddled with birth defects and genetic liabilities, which would have otherwise been bred out via natural selection. Also, evolution and adaptation are brought about by the pressure to chance or die. So in this weak and degrading species, we have seen absolutely no adaptation, no evolution, they are completely unprepared for life, easily wiped out. For all intents and purposes, they have never evolved past single celled organisms because, hey, why bother? Success, is difficult because it raises the bar, promotes growth.
The entire previous paragraph can be summarized in one sentence; The ultimate function of success (continued positive development) is compromised if the standard of success is reduced. Right? Now, let’s go a little deeper, into the perception of success. Let’s look at how we understand success, the very concept. There is an inherent presence of adversity in our idea of success. One may only be considered good at a given thing if there is difficulty involved. For instance, I have never heard someone comment on how good another is at walking. The phrase, “He certainly is a great breather” is rarely, if ever, spoken. I sincerely doubt that, somewhere out there sits a résumé which reads, accomplished sleeper. The reason being that these are seen as simple tasks, if the majority of the population can do something, the ability to do it is not considered success. Therefore, triumph over adversity in a particular discipline, is not only necessary to the functionality of success, but the very existence of success is dependant upon it.
To finally meander up to my point, those successful people are often very deserving of our high regard. Celebrity is a very logical collateral effect of excellence. And this is what really irks me, Hollywood royalty, rather, how the public feeds into this cheap, hollow type of celebrity. Blame doesn’t fall solely on the public; the media is just as guilty. The entertainment media, often even the so-called “news”, is flooded with stories about Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie. Up to the minute coverage of Anna Nicole Smith’s death, or even more preposterous, the death of her son, fills the airwaves. We don’t appreciate the performance given by Tom Cruise in “Rain Man” or “Risky Business”. We care about his wacky marriage, his social life! We wallow in this cultural filth like sadistic pigs. What has Paris Hilton done to earn celebrity? Come on, you can think of something. Well, even if you can’t, I can think of one thing, just one, her claim to fame, the infamous video. At the severe risk of editorializing, I’ve seen it, it’s not great. Hell, it’s not even good by homemade porn standards. It’s not difficult, it’s not unique, and it is certainly no example of excellence. Paris Hilton was given celebrity for free. Nicole Richie is another, I can’t even think of one insignificant thing she did to become famous. At least people like Tom Cruise, Brittany Spears, and Mel Gibson have done something to reach their respective status.
My question, or complaint, (I haven’t decided yet) is this; Why do we offer our attention so blindly to these under-qualified people? Why are we interested in the personal lives of people with public professions? Does it bother me that Tank Johnson had guns in his house? No more than it would if it were Bill, the accountant. Have we lost so much of our appreciation of the world that we strive to find out how Michael Jackson is raising his children? If we focused the time spent criticizing Mel Gibson for public drunkenness on appreciating his movies, we just might have to think critically for a moment, exercise our atrophied brains trying to understand the philosophical implications of “Lethal Weapon” (of they’re there, people). Our standards are so low that we have people who are famous simply for the sake of fame; we dump heaps of attention on people who have no discernable art. We dump similar attention onto the irrelevant actions of those who do. The media feeds us this tripe, and we gorge ourselves on it, as we are known to do.
I believe this phenomenon is a sign of things to come. This is a symptom of a disease that we have, a serious problem that we face, a degradation of our society. William Shakespeare, author of some of the greatest plays ever written, once wrote a play called Titus Andronicus. It was a gory mess filled with blood, death, war, but had much to be desired on the story end. It was little more than spectacle. Shakespeare saw the potential for this intellectual corruptibility, and that it was addictive like a drug. He knew, as nearly everybody in entertainment or marketing knows today, that trumped up, melodramatic, spectacle plays well with the public. So he sold it, they do now, and it was successful, as it is now, but at what cost? The only restraint previously was a sense of cultural dignity, which I believe to be long gone. We need to take action, not war-like action, not legislation, individual action. Read (a book!), watch movies (the type where lines of dialogue out number explosions), listen to music (it’s all good), turn off the T.V. We are facing and intellectual collapse, and a gossip based media is only a sign of much worse things….If we don’t do something.