Many thanks to Grok I live on a different planet. I come down to 'earth' every now and then. To have a look to see if anything has changed. Call me God if you like. On a recent trip to a planet a really clever man called Mr. Ex invented a fantastic labour saving device called IA . Now, for each hour of labour worked, and dollar of capital employed, 1000 times more wealth could be produced than before Mr. Ex invented IA. All thanks to IA. People started planning to escape this planet called Rent to move to planet Rent+1 there was going to be so much money to be made there. And many believed people would not last long on planet Rent. But for some reason in spite of all the new wealth very few people could afford a house on planet Rent+1. Especially the young who started to complain angrily about old people, who themselves once had similar complaints. The young were not listening and just wanted free stuff and a target to blame for not getting it. Largely by thr...
I'm going to talk about what I call 'celebrity events'.
As a highly active political campaigner, on occasion I would get temporarily famous through TV, Radio or newspaper interviews etc. I called this a 'celebrity event'. A short period of time where ones name is projected into the limelight.
The best political leaders and actual celebrities, somehow manage to maintain these events for extended periods of time, to the extent it becomes a permanent position. I never managed to possess that kind of talent.
Nevertheless, it happened to me on the odd lucky occasion and was always a huge ego trip. Until I realised what was happening to me as each celebrity event played out. This game requires very high energy to remain active and mentally healthy. These ego trips contributed significantly to maintaining the necessary energy, given it was not a natural talent.
Following each event, the biggest surprise was that other celebrities and political leaders in this large network would suddenly start speaking to me, while prior to that they would ignore me totally. Trust me, I spent huge energy trying to get a response from them during campaign work.
For some reason, once a light was being shone on my ego, it attracted other 'successful' ego's too. Like flies around honey. Particularly if it was topical politically. The biggest example of such an event was the Occupy protests where I became a 'light' for expertise on political economy on camp. Several more came about from standing twice as a candidate for a parliamentary seat in UK general elections.
The feeling I got from this network of more highly seated celebrities, activists and politicians was one of 'wanting a piece of me'. Almost literally. Suddenly famous people would invite me to lunch and pay for it all. Suddenly I was on the front page of a national newspaper. Or the centre spread of the nations top Sunday paper. People came flocking. Whereas before I would be treated without neither honour nor respect.
I had not worked harder or created some fantastically innovative piece on how to save the world, for it. Something in the ether had projected my ego into the limelight. I never discovered if this something might have been Power. It was not a controlled activity. The closest I can say I got to figuring out the source of this sudden praise, was that the collective of people had decided it, unconsciously. There was no election or conscious decision making process by the great masse.
Here's how the thing got even more mysterious. As soon as I stopped getting the high press coverge, the same people disappeared in a flash. Not a nice and graceful way where 'friends' I'd made during the life of the event would remain. I cannot think of a single acquaintance made during a celebrity event who wanted to remain friends once that mysterious power had subsided.
There had been no falling out with anyone, which prior to a celebrity event were commonplace so I can see that exactly. All there had been had been an 'event' where suddenly I was 'wanted'.
So the collective is easily satisfied and has a short attention span. So short thats its not really aware of its own activity.
What is the meaning of all this?
People, whoever they are, no matter how much they profess to be saving the world, only ever pay respect to the celebrity of wealth and power.
Just like everyone else.