People vs. People
[P. J.] [RU] [FR]

People vs. People

Is it fare that some people attract more public attention than the others? Why the life of a royal family (or a popular musician, movie actress, famous sportsman, etc.) should be more interesting than the life of an ordinary man next door? Why any event involving an "eminent" person should be considered as more important than the same happening to a man-in-the-street? Does it conform to the declaration of a universal equality that is cherished by the bourgeois ideologists?

People are equal as long as they are people, that is, when they act like conscious individuals according to the definition of reason as a subjective reflection of the universal necessity. No titles, ranks, or possessions could make one conscious being better than another, especially considering that such distinctions are never awarded according to the true merits of the person, and even in that case there is no reason to judge about the present by the past. Those who are truly creative and who act in a universal way don't need any special attention or rewards; they are only doing what they must do. Anyway, is there a higher reward than a feeling of master, the taste of consciously re-creating the Universe?

For instance, the death of Lady Diana has attracted the enormous attention of mass media, as if it were any different from the millions of deaths occurring on the Earth every day. A quite mediocre personality, who has never done anything valuable, spending her life in ceremonies and primitive pleasures and knowing no suffer except suffering from her own idleness, was pictured an angel and national hero, as something extraordinary. Popularity? It was largely exaggerated by the press playing on vulgar Philistine envy. Charity? It rather looks like humiliation, giving a pound to the poor while robbing them of millions. The media were in raptures stressing that the flowers brought to the house of Diana after her death cost 50 million dollars; a hundred families could have happily lived the rest of their lives on that, thousands of people could escape death of starvation!

The death of Diana was of no real importance to anybody, save a few relatives and acquaintances; and, of course, it was in no way a global event. Thousands of people die in the wars and catastrophes, from maladies and poor living conditions, and many of them are much more valuable for the development of humanity than all the royal families of all times, to add all former, present or future presidents and ministers.

The same holds for popular writers, actors, political leaders, scientists and philosophers... They are often said to leave us too early, and there are many guesses about what they could have done if only they had lived a little longer. But there are many other people on the Earth, who are as creative, and who could do even better, if their lives were not spent in utter misery. Every act of reason, in any domain, is of equal importance to the Universe, and the selectivity of the public attention is an indication of the under-development of the human society.


[Assorted Notes] [Unism]