Idols

Must be wonderful having someone to idolize, someone to look up to. You always have a goal, a wish, something to want. Someone that blinds you, cannot do anything wrong in your book. In fact his or her signature in your book will actually mean something for you. (When in fact most of us put down our signatures daily at least five times, and it doesn't sell better on E-bay one bit.)

Could be a movie star, that you've fallen in love in. It could be an author whose stories or poetry you admire, an athlete whose performance sent you in raptures (strangely enough, win or lose), a scholar whose theories speak to you, an religious figure that you believe in. It could even be mom or dad.

What if you didn't have all that? You'd be unimpressed by pretty much everyone around you. That could be easily mistaken for arrogance, although that wouldn't be the case per se. There are just no qualities in anybody else that justify you idolizing them more than the next person. You'd also have to be self-motivated, because pretty much no one else would be able to. No one else in this case would be able to set goals or examples for you.

With global mass media the exposure to people whom you could potentially idolize has grown exponentially. You get to see them from much farther away, as we get live TV feeds from the Pacific, the southern-most tip of Latin America or the deep Arctic. The range of people is also bigger, because we have local news that covers only what dogs a family in Lutjebroek, Pennsylvania keeps, and specialized news that covers South-Eastern Asia. There's talent and reality TV shows for god knows why (Idols, Who wants to marry..., MTV Made etc.).

So all in all everyone of us has a huge number of people to select an idol from, with performances that are - by nature of numbers - growing more insignificant.

Don't blame me for not being easily impressed. Blame television.