‘Fame, fame, fatal fame/It can play hideous tricks on the brain.’ :) The idea that fame is a kind of immortality is an ancient one that shows no sign of losing its attraction. But why? What good does it do the dead to be famous? What does Glaucus gain from his posthumous B-list celebrity? On the one hand, we can all understand the impulse to make a name for ourselves and leave a legacy; yet on the other hand, as soon as we think about it for a moment, it seems like madness. Fame seems a very flimsy thing to die for. And where we find an idea that is both pervasive yet flimsy, it suggests that there is something deeper at work, some inescapable oddness – or error – in the way we see the world.... John Milton wrote that ‘Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise... to scorn delights, and live laborious days’ ‘If I stay here and fight beside the city of the Trojans, I shall not return home, but my glory shall be everlasting; whereas if I return home to the beloved land of my father, my glory will be gone, but there will be long life left for me.’ Achilles By dying young, Achilles and James Dean gave up opportunities to reproduce biologically, but successfully managed to reproduce themselves culturally – and on a grand scale. Countless images of both, from marble busts to film reels, have populated the world like an army of clones. our compulsion to seek renown – to culturally reproduce – is built into our brains. ‘I would rather work the soil as a serf to some landless peasant than be King of all these lifeless dead.’ aeon.co/magazine/philosophy/why-we-still-believe-we-can-life-on-through-fame/ Ramnath Subbaraman Venkataramanan KrishnamurthyMaggie Whitehead and many others too :) sd find this quite intrsting
Posted on: Fri, 19 Dec 2014 17:28:31 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015