On the Human Drive for Fame and Immortality
May 31st, 2009
Under the Microscope
Since man is mortal, the only immortality possible for him is to leave something behind him that is immortal… This is the artist’s way of scribbling “Kilroy was here” on the wall of the final and irrevocable oblivion through which he must someday pass.
- William Faulkner, from Lion in the Garden, 1968.
by Glynn Wilson
I logged into my Facebook account today and was struck by a photo of three women on a beach. Not famous women mind you, but looking like someone famous on those blue chairs to go with the ocean and the sky with matching umbrellas, sporting sunglasses and cocktails, like Hollywood actors of old.
After a month on Facebook, I’m wondering if the rich and famous hate the paparazzi so much, why do complete nobodies take pictures of themselves and post them in the public domain?
Could it be that the rich and famous would not have minded the paparazzi BEFORE they were rich and famous?
Maybe that’s the point. Or maybe there are more interesting questions, some without answers.
If it’s true that humans possess a natural drive to seek answers and really know what’s going on, why then do they often turn to all the wrong places to find out?
Gallup has found that 18 percent of Americans still think the sun revolves around the earth, as opposed to the other way around, which is close to the margin of error of corresponding with President George W. Bush’s final approval rating of 22 percent.
Now I’m not saying that all of Bush’s holdout supporters don’t realize the earth revolves around the sun. But let’s say for the sake of argument that a large percentage of this group is the same.
Now for the next piece of the equation, you have to understand how newspapers work. They are sometimes great sources of information and for narratives of what’s going on in our culture. Yet they are rarely definitive.
The Washington Post Sunday magazine carried a somewhat fascinating news feature today about a kid from Baltimore who got famous for making funny faces in YouTube videos.
It starts off as a typical newspaper feature about a person and deals with a modern technological innovation and the phenomenon of fame. Buried deep in the story is a bit of social science research attempting to explain the phenomena of political blogging. What is missing is a further search for the source of the blogosphere map, which leads to Harvard and one of the first big studies of blogging, journalism and the impact on society.
But before you go off reading up on those things, let’s take it a step further and to a question we can answer.
One of the most asked questions today is based on this statement, true or not.
“The urge to be famous has always been a part of human nature. But it’s become worse than ever in our modern society? Why?”
To begin to find out why, I remembered something from a college Psychology class and began to Google updates to the theory of a human drive for immortality in all it’s forms.
There’s actually a grand theory of it all now, and here’s the best quick thing I could find on how the quest for fame complies with the immortality drive I learned about in that Psychology class.
The Immortality Drive plays itself out through three urges: (1) the urge to achieve immortality by extending your physical life and its impact on the world as much as you can, (2) the urge to distract yourself from thinking about the fact you are physically going to die and may not have a spiritual afterlife or reincarnation awaiting you, and (3) the urge to ensure spiritual immortality after physical expiration.
This researcher says the reason fame obsession has gotten worse has to do with how secular our society has become.
As each generation become less religious, the sincere belief in an afterlife also probably decreases, meaning that people have to focus on alternative ways of satisfying their drive for immortality. This causes us to focus more of our energy on wealth accumulation, power, status and of course fame. Fame is an easy way to at least ensure your name and image will endure forever, even if your body won’t.
Another reason for the increased fame obsession, according to this report, is the advancement of technology.
Imagine the days before there was an international media. Before the invention of the telegraph, information could not travel faster or farther than people. And before the invention of the railroad and steam engine, people had severe limitations in how far and fast they could travel. What technology has done is increase the speed with which information travels and the geographic range that information can reach. Fame was much harder for the average person to achieve. You had to do something grand, good or bad, and you had to have some sort of talent. You had to be a war hero, a conqueror, a great politician, an infamous serial killer, etc. Now with television, radio, the 24-hour news cycle, reality shows, the internet and viral videos, 15 minutes of fame is easier than ever to achieve for the average person.
The third reason for this increased fame obsession is the rising narcissism, which this researcher says comes from our modern culture’s self-esteem focused style of parenting. I’m not sure I agree with all of that, but the underlying theory seems solid.
The immortality drive is the major driving force behind human nature.
Fame is the most enduring and potent form of immortality humans can actually achieve, but because it used to be so hard for the average person to achieve people channeled their energy into satisfying the drive for immortality in other ways. But now, thanks to increased secularism, improvements in technology and media choices, less barriers to fame and a stark rise in narcissism, fame seems more achievable than ever to the average Joe, which has driven our obsession with it to new heights.
For those who don’t have the wherewithal to get at this immortality any other way, there is also “immortality by proxy,” where individuals talk about the importance of being “part of something” this is “larger than themselves,” like a person, event, or movement.
