The Fame Motive

     In today's NYT we have this article,"The Fame Motive," which considers our desire to find personal validation in the attention of others:

Money and power are handy, but millions of ambitious people are after something other than the corner office or the beach house on St. Bart’s. They want to swivel necks, to light a flare in others’ eyes, to walk into a crowded room and feel the conversation stop. They are busy networking, auditioning, talking up their latest project — a screenplay, a memoir, a new reality show — to satisfy a desire so obvious it is all but invisible.

    I imagine other writers will have already pointed out that yearning for fame may well explain many of the blogs out there, and maybe I am guilty of it, too.  But I found the very last paragraph of the story to be an invitation to bring some Chinese ancients into the conversation.  The question here is: what happens when we do not find the fame we crave.  And the final response, in this article at least, is:

"I concluded that several things could happen, and one of them is to find another source of approval,” he [Orville Gilbert Brim] said. “That might be a great love, if you’re lucky. Or perhaps it is a deepening belief in God. But I think many people suffer with realization that they are not going to be famous and there’s nothing they can do to solve it.”

 Why suffer?  Why not listen to Mencius:

"The ten thousand things are all there in me.  And there's no joy greater than looking within and finding myself faithful to them.  Treat others as you would be treated.  Devote yourself to that, for there's no more direct approach to Humanity." (236)

    Validation and meaning do not come from others, from outside of ourselves.  They are rooted within us, in our innate capacity to figure out proper behavior in any given context, and our willingness to then enact that morality.  That is where joy is to be found: in knowing, to ourselves, that we have treated others with humanity.  No need for fame, then.

     Alternatively, of course, we could follow the Tao Te Ching (22): just give up on the whole fame thing altogether, and, in a way (so to speak!) you will be famous:

Give up self-reflection
and you're soon enlightened.
Give up self-definition
and you're soon apparent.
Give up self-promotion
and you're soon proverbial.
Give up self-esteem
and you're soon perennial.
Simply give up contention
and soon nothing in all beneath heaven contends with you.

Comments

[Alexus McLeod]

Don't forget good old Analects 1.1: "Having others not know you but not being angered, is this not like the gentleman (junzi?)"