It seems to be a human condition, the need to stand out from the crowd, male or female we need it, but just go about it by different routes. Once apon a time it was just sufficient to be extremely good at what you did, craftsman, sportsman, juggler, gladiator, seductress, just to be the best in your patch. Unless of course you had access to infinite money, when all you had to do was accrete around you land, property, desirable objects, countless minions and then display all, for your piers to revere your undoubted wealth.
No problem with all any of that. We should all respect the long hours of application and subjugation required to become skilled at whatever. We may choose not to rate say gladiatorial skills but surely must acknowledge the physique, adroitness and mastery of weaponry need to be good at it. A fitting reward for those endless hours of practice and perfecting needed to become better than good but to excel within your patch. Likewise to assemble wealth, invest shrewdly to maximise the display of it and to put it in a best setting, all takes tenacity, a preception to see a need and a touch to understand the marketplace. My only problem I have here is the manner of wealth accumulation. Too often it is achieved by crimes against the less well off, less able to defend their limited means. Whether from land grabs off small farmers, or holding people in virtual slavedom or to selling totally bogus and inflated goods or services that just don't deliver. Lets pretend for this blog that all wealthy people acquired it from inventing some life enriching thing, paperclip or biro or whatever and made piles of money selling it at a realistic price, filling a much hole in loads of peoples lives. We can pretend.
What we have now is just banal exhibitionism, anything to gain attention for that moment. At its crudest most devoid of content we have stripping off the shirt to show the tits or its male equivalent dropping the trousers and mooning. All the better if caught on camera and fame has arrived if taken up by YouTube. Really? The media fuels this drive with its endless parade of talentless wannabies that shoot to public notoriety for that brief spark of notice only to sink back to well-deserved oblivion. What is on parade is not talent or skills but just novelty and in the ever escalating pressure to win attention, the more there is a underlying suggestion of ridicule, stupidity, voyeurism, farce or even cruelty so much the better, anything, it really does seem that anything will do, so long as it attracts that all desired attention. It matter not whether it is talent or product or service set out for display, the same attitude prevails
Sad. This endless display and flaunting of mediocrity debases all of our experiences of what should be the appreciation of the heroes of our societies. It dulls and desensitises all of us so we lose the will and interest to spot the real skill or talent emerging, drowned in all this over-hyped noise from those wannabies. The noise is so shrill and insistent it is almost impossible to ignore the clamour of see me, watch me, I bet you have never seen this before. Really? Are our sense and experiences so dull and so limited that we have never encountered any of humans rich palate before but only done or presented better? I do doubt that.
We each have the choice and must make it to ignore the clamour and reserve our praise and attention to those who really do deserve it, who are able to contribute something significant and outstanding examples for us all to aspire to. Lets not look to the gutter but to the heights of human achievement.
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