The power of being usual, regular or ordinary

[Ghost of the dead horse]

I'm seeing this shift from class hierarchy to a classless system where even more and more people see themselves as classless. They see themselves regular, average. It's happening in my home country and it's happening in US.

Major movie stars ponder whether to appear approachable, regular Joes and Janes, or if they want to exhibit their $100M mansions. Anyways, they want to tweet their daily happenings and have a bunch of myspace & facebook friends with whom to share their "regularity".

I wouldn't want to accept this all, but it's happening. Even some hardcore opponents to facebook see how all of this is altering our world.

Some journalists here have said of this: "When someone admits they're just average, it's a secret code for telling they're better".

Really, only the losers seem not to be average today.

Think of the North Korean leaders. They have set their "news agencies" to tell stories of their incredible accomplishements, and they have been the laughing stuff of the world for, how long? Forever. Nobody wants to be a self-important person who's importance can be taken away in a second by today's mass media.

What you think about this change, this phenomenon?

Is mediocrity here to stay?

 

[BlueGray]

I think the benefits of being normal and staying out of the limelight is not new. Someone who is wealthy but doesn't draw attention to themselves is going to have far less people resent their wealth than one who flaunts their differences. I think the big difference is in how the public views these people. Without all this media others wouldn't know much about the lives of the wealthy and famous. Thus the public would say that they do "rich person stuff". Now that specifics of celebrity life is more available it can't just be categorized as "rich person stuff". This does create some extra pressure but the phenomenon itself isn't new.

I think that exposure of the daily life of celebrities makes them seem more normal. Even when that celebrity is showing off a $100M mansion, they will often show their happiness and be more candid. People are able to relate to the celebrity as they could see themselves acting similarly in the situation of having such wealth.

 

[Ghost of the dead horse]

Ooh the attention

Anyways, I imagined a time in the world when describing oneself as "talented" would be equal to revealing they're a child molester. All the talented people would stay very hush-hush and do their talented things "under the radar", or under a guise of normality.

I think there is a movement away from worship of personalities recently. Really, that seems like an oddity, but I think it's that way. People like to come out as just "someone" who is handling these issues X and Y, and just someone who's done a movie Z and W, or just someone who's found out a proof for this new theory. I think this as a means of communication, as well. I think that people have found either more productive, or more catchy ways of describing their efforts than telling "they're awesome".

My wife said there's a celebrity at every corner. There's hardly anything divine being a math genius, celebrated movie director, etc. We are seeing how all kinds of people are being generated out of the system. We can expect that the increase of information in the world is going to give everyone the means to accomplish their relative best, on a new level. I'm not sure if that's what we're seeing.

 

[rav3n]

First come the pioneers or warmongers and after the danger, risk and trailblazing are over, next come the bureaucrats to administer peace. This brings about generations of decadence from the economic prosperity of peace. Then last comes the fall of the civilisation from decadence. And the beat goes on with the human race.

 

[Ghost of the dead horse]

Your words have an eerie sound of truth there.