|
Introduction I'm on the road in New Harmony, Indiana. There were two attempts in the early 19th century to create a utopian society at this place. Both attempts supposedly failed. Anyway, what does New Harmony have to do with celebrity worship? I promise to tie this up eventually. I will say at this juncture that many people's perception of, for instance, Michael Jordan, is that of a life form of a utopian nature separate and superior from the daily life of you, the reader. I don't see it that way and hopefully I can persuade a few people of this life view. This book's journey began with an observation by a friend from China that he does not necessarily want to be like Mike. However, both Mr. China and I would like to avoid the accusation that we are opposed to the strong people of American society. Abraham H. Maslow stated in his preface to the second edition of Toward a Psycholoqy of Being that "Especially must we learn how to transcend our foolish tendency to let our compassion for the weak generate hatred for the strong." I quote Professor Maslow in this regard because it is not my intent in this book to attack "celebrities" but rather my intent is to seek some balance in how we approach them. In seeking this balance I need to ask Ronny (Ronald Reagan) and his followers to meet me in the middle. Specifically, I would ask these individuals to transcend their foolish tendency to let their compassion for the strong to generate hatred for the weak. There will be more on this in chapter 3. Professor Maslow deserves to be quoted again in stating "I had first to give up my stereotyped notion that health, genius, talent and productivity were synonymous.... I very soon had to come to the conclusion that great talent was not only more or less independent of goodness or health or character but also that we know little about it." Id. at page 135. This quotation helped me realize that Michael Jordan's ability to dominate basketball does not translate into sainthood despite the constant media messages to this effect. Mr. Jordan's behavior also helped me reach this conclusion as well. Have you been following Mr. Jordan's handling of his economic relationship with Nike regarding the exploitation of Asian women who work for shamefully low wages to generate unneeded extra millions for Mr. Jordan? Last year NBC broadcast Michael Jordan's last regular season game in the NBA. Doug Collins was one of the broadcasters. Mr. Collins observed regarding Mr. Jordan's approach to winning that "he still can't get enough of it." This seems to have equal application to Mr. Jordan's approach to stockpiling money and things. His dress shirts cost $400.00 apiece and he orders hundreds of them as well. What did the Asian women mentioned above do to deserve this scenario? You probably have a question for me at this point. You probably want to know how I picked Michael Jordan out of the crowd to be the focus of my celebrity analysis. Well, I have a very specific answer to this question. In 1998, Billy (William Jefferson Clinton) was seriously considering bombing Iraq. Poor Billy was not able to generate much support around the world, and in the Arab world in particular, for his bomb plan. Anyway, I then saw a headline that read "Jordan Opposes Bombinq of Iraq." I thought to myself that it was very strange that Michael Jordan would oppose the bombing of Iraq considering his need to focus on his financial empire. It quickly and thankfully dawned on me that His Highness the King of Jordan, and not His Highness the King of Basketball, was opposed to the bomb plan. However, I was left feeling like a fool for having initially been confused. In this regard, chapter 1 will be discussing whether I'm a geek or not. The American Heritage Dictionary (Second College Edition) defines a geek in part as a fool. I will be making some admissions against interest in chapter 1. One more subject needs to be briefly covered before we get started, and that is the subject of synchronicity. The term "synchronicity" was popularized by the famous Swiss medical doctor Carl Gustav Jung. This concept is very difficult to define simply, but can best be reduced to the term "meaningful coincidences" as opposed to an ordinary coincidences. In short, traditional causation or probability theory generally cannot explain away a "meaningful coincidence" because the odds of it occurring totally at random are simply too great. These "meaningful coincidences" are meaningful to the particular individual experiencing them of course, but at the same time they touch more than the individual. I'll try to explain this in greater detail later. Marie-Louise von Franz of Zurich through her writings is going to help us in this regard. Unfortunately, Ms. Von Franz died in 1998. We now return to geekness as our focus. |