Why fame is pointless and life is beautiful

(≈7 min read)

In today’s society, young children are becoming increasingly obsessed by the idea of becoming famous.  An online survey conducted on 3,000 children aged 8 to 12 in the UK, United States and China, asked children what they wanted to be when they grew up.

The results were somewhat insane – the children were almost three times more likely to want to be a YouTuber (29%) than an astronaut (11%).

So what is it about YouTube that’s so inherently attractive?

To put it simply, there’s a biological longing within us all to be seen as desirable or powerful.  Fame ultimately provides us with a taste of this – it serves as concrete evidence that you are desirable to others. It’s no wonder therefore that young children, sometimes even adults, live under the delusion that being famous would induce instantaneous happiness.

If this were the case however, the rate of celebrity suicide wouldn’t be so scarily high.

When a celebrity comes to the sudden realisation that all which they thought fame could provide to fill that empty void has not come, emotional pain becomes almost inevitable. Then to remove that pain, the quick and easy solution many resort to is to drown hopelessness and sorrow with drugs and alcohol. And that’s where the cycle of addiction begins.

Then comes dependency, reliance and then either an intervention where the celebrity rises stronger and wiser than before, or demise. Look, I know this won’t happen to every celebrity but it’s still a conceivable pattern of events that could easily occur when someone believes fame will provide their life with meaning.

Fame simply doesn’t provide us with deep and meaningful connections, connections that end up making our lives wonderful. A study was conducted by the Harvard Study of Adult Development which followed the lives of 724 men placed in two groups for a period of 75 years to find factors that could increase the odds of living a happy and healthy life.

Robert Waldinger, director of the study, said in a TED talk:

“When we gathered together everything we knew about them about at age 50, it wasn’t their middle-age cholesterol levels that predicted how they were going to grow old. It was how satisfied they were in their relationships. The people who were the most satisfied in their relationships at age 50 were the healthiest at age 80.”

Fame cannot buy connection and without connection, we are much less likely to live healthy, happy lives. The quality of our connections is far more important than the quantity. A hundred thousand people all cheering your name will not help to stave off loneliness. And not to be dramatic, but loneliness kills.

Why do we want fame?

Another reason why we gravitate towards fame is because it buys a sort of temporary immortality. It allows us, in a weird way, to transcend death.

How many times, when people are asked about the meaning of life, do you hear responses like:

“I want to be remembered.”

“I want to leave a small footprint on earth.”

It’s no coincidence that one of the deepest fears any of us will ever experience is the fear of death. As Ernest Becker asserts in his book, ‘Denial of Death’, most of us live our lives finding ways to transcend the inevitability of our demise.

Fame provides a way of doing so. Upon death, although you in a physical sense die, your ‘legacy’ will continue for years to come. You will continue to be remembered and so in a sense, never die.

As Banksy puts it:

“I mean, they say you die twice. One time when you stop breathing and a second time, a bit later on, when somebody says your name for the last time.”

A huge proportion of us live in this delusion where we subconsciously view this second death as our true death. If you’ve ever watched The Disney film ‘Coco’, you’ll know what I’m talking about. In the film, when you die physically, you go into the ‘Land of the dead’, where wealth and contentment is based on how many people remember you in the living world. As a celebrity who has a great legacy in the living world, you could live as an almost God in the land of the dead forever. But for almost every other normal citizen, once they are forgotten by everyone living, they die and this time forever.

Now although the idea of legacy provides a warm kind of comfort for people, I’d argue the film, which is predominantly aimed at younger children, only serves to exacerbate this idea that fame and being remembered are the most important aspects of life.

What the film, loosely based off Mexican tradition, fails to establish, is this: there is no second death. There is only a first death and after that, you are out of existence and gone and nothing that happens will ever have any relevance to you whatsoever.

In that light, fame is kinda pointless. Let me ask you this:

What’s the difference between a man who’s spent his entire life in the limelight soaking up attention and a man who’s spent his entire life rotting in a prison cell?

Both will die and both will become distant memories, things of the past. Sure, the famous man might preserve his mortality for a tad longer, given that he’ll probably be remembered, but like anyone, eventually this will fade and his legacy will become non-existent.

If the man in prison spent his entire life simply having fun and actually enjoying his time there, irrespective of whether he was locked up or not, you could argue his life was better than the life of the famous man.

Legacy is a really strange thing. Loads of us want to become famous because we crave the attention fame might bring. But what’s the point in fame if at the end of the day, it’ll all disappear regardless? Why not use the one life you have doing things you actually enjoy rather than chasing something you want just because of how other people will perceive you?

Why death does not make life pointless

When I make the argument that legacy is pointless, people are inclined to immediately rush to the conclusion that if death washes everything you’ll ever achieve away, there is no real point in achieving anything at all. How can life have meaning if any meaning you set becomes redundant upon death?

It’s a good question, and if the argument is sound then you can basically detach all responsibility from your life entirely. A consequence of this might be that now it’s somehow justifiable to commit acts of atrocity because ‘who cares, I’m going to die anyway’.

The Joker in Batman is, in a sense, the bodily representation of this perspective. His actions are predicated on this belief that society is fundamentally flawed and that there is no real right or wrong. His catchphrase “why so serious?” sums up his entire persona.

If life is going to end and death will wash away everything you’ve ever known, why would you ever choose to live life seriously? Look, obviously the joker takes this view to the extreme. He derives his fun not necessarily from murder but from putting people into moral scenarios just to highlight the absurdity of existence.

Clearly, the joker’s perspective on the world is flawed in almost every way. But this readiness to rapidly associate nihilism with his perspective is, in my eyes, kinda ludicrous too.

You can lead a perfectly reasonable and rational and moral life and still be a nihilist.

Nihilism doesn’t strip your moral compass away or render everything you do in this life meaningless. Although after death, everything is gone, that doesn’t mean you can’t live a meaningful life while you’re here. And clearly the first step to achieving that is living in line with what you believe in and value.

The key distinction is realising that nihilism is predicated on looking at life in the grand scheme of things. But we don’t live in the grand scheme of things. If we are able to focus our attention on the here and now and understand that life’s finitude, if anything, demands you to care even more about the consequences of your actions, given there is nothing beyond death, then nihilism and the existence of death can be viewed in a positive light.

Why you have the capability of changing the world

There’s this tendency for the existentialists to argue that we are insignificant grains of sand in a huge infinite cosmos and although that might be true, it doesn’t detract from the fact that almost every interaction you ever have with another human being can genuinely change the world.

I know you might have read that and sighed. At first it might seem like a mild exaggeration. But when you consider how the world is essentially just an amalgamation of interconnected webs, it becomes clear just how significant your actions truly are. The best example to demonstrate this is using the simple act of kindness:

Imagine on your way to work, you go to the local store to buy a bottle of water. As you buy the bottle of water, you make an effort to smile at the shopkeeper and ask how he’s doing. Then you go about your day, forgetting this interaction ever even occurred.

What you don’t realise is that this one interaction has a ripple effect. You’ve inadvertently and unknowingly changed hundreds of lives for the better.

Turns out that shopkeeper was having a bad day until you had that conversation with him. After your interaction, the shopkeeper makes the effort to say good morning and smile and ask every customer who walks in how they’re doing. One of the customers, feeling happy from this interaction, decides to send a good morning message on their work group chat, which inspires some of the people on the chat to say good morning to people they know etc. One of the customers was having a bad day too but this interaction cheers her up and on her way to work she starts a conversation with a boy she, in her previous mood wouldn’t have. This leads to them getting married a few years down the line.

The possibilities are endless but the point is, everything that has happened would all be down to you choosing to be kind in that one moment.

I know this is a fictional scenario but it’s not exactly unfeasible. There’s a kind of ripple effect present in every action you undertake. One random act of kindness can inspire a mini ripple across the world.

The average western human will know about 600 people (source) who in turn will know 600 people who again will know 600 people. You’re interactions with every single one of those 600 you know is unwittingly influencing the interactions these 600 people will have with the 600 people they know. The same can be said for every other person you meet. You therefore easily have the capacity, even just living a boring, ordinary life, to change the world in a positive way.

If you deem your life to be insignificant and meaningless you’re not looking at the full picture; every action you take is significant. Every interaction you partake in has the capability of altering the world.

Why the finitude of life makes it beautiful

Dr Piers Steel, author and economics professor, devised the following formula for motivation.

If you want to learn more, check out his book, ‘The productivity equation’, but for now I just want to focus on the variable ‘delay’. Steel suggests the longer we have to complete a task, the less motivated we will be to complete it.

Let’s think about what the repercussions of this formula might be if life was infinite.

As ‘delay’, in the equation tends to infinity, motivation would simultaneously tend to zero. You’d lack motivation to do anything meaningful because there’d always be an infinite amount of time to do it. The whole reason anything in life actually means something is because one day you’re going to get old and die and never get to experience that thing again.

If we were able to do things over and over forever, we would lose appreciation for them entirely. It’s the finitude of life; the fact that everything comes to end that motivates us to do painful things. The procrastination that would ensue if life was infinite would be immeasurable – we could always do that painful activity tomorrow.

And it’s usually the painful things in life that are the most beautiful. You can’t have love without fear of failure. You can’t be healthy without working out. You can’t get good at anything without being willing to fail repeatedly.

If life lasted forever, nothing would hold any significance – we’d get accustomed to everything.

Imagine the difference between an average person eating a meal and a prisoner eating that same meal but knowing it is their last. How might the experience differ for each person? Who would appreciate the food more and be more present whilst eating?  Clearly, the idea of finitude, of time being finite, is what makes things meaningful.

In my article, ‘How to stay motivated while pursuing your dream’, I discuss the ‘last time’ technique.

Every time you are about to engage in an activity, let’s say for example going to the gym, remind of yourself of two things:

• That there will be a last time you ever do this activity

And:

• That there is a possibility that this time, right now, is the last time you will ever do this activity

For all you know, tomorrow you might be involved in a terrible accident or be diagnosed with a certain kind of illness that strips your ability to move as you currently do. This time in the gym may very well be your last. Now take a moment to think about how this consideration might change your workout.

I know it’s not exactly pleasant to remind yourself of the fact that one day your capability for physical movement will vanish and you’ll become a vegetable and that you don’t know when that day will come, but this thought is what helps us to motivate ourselves to do anything.

We’ve already established that you have the capacity, just as one little human being, to influence a huge amount of people and that means you need to take responsibility for your actions.

Nihilism does not represent a complete abdication of responsibility. You can be perfectly aware of life’s finitude, the unnerving fact that death will eradicate every achievement you ever have whilst simultaneously striving to take responsibility to become the best version of yourself possible in the time you do have. With death in mind, you can still go towards maximising the odds of you doing every conceivable thing you want to do before your time comes.

Nihilism is not necessarily a ‘bad’ philosophy. All it is, fundamentally, is a deep understanding that life will end and that therefore it is essential, almost morally obligatory, to live the absolute best life you can before that moment comes. So take the reins and start living life before it’s too late.