Benedict Redgrove, Satellite Manufacture, Cannes, 2010.
(picture credit 10.3)
AMCOR LTD
AUSTRALIAN STOCK EXCHANGE
PRICE CHANGE: $-0.11
OPEN: $8.30 CLOSE: $8.19
We should in addition be prompted to give some thought to the meaning of our frenzied labours. Most of us won’t, of course, ever have heard of Amcor, one of Australia’s most profitable companies and the world’s largest maker of tissue cartons, nappy boxes, toothpaste dispensers, suncream tubes and shampoo bottles, but the great fortunes of our day have rarely been accumulated through the sale of the most meaningful items and services, such as poetry or relationship counselling.
When does a job feel meaningful? When we can, at the end of the day, feel as if our work has in some way, however modestly, helped either to reduce the misery or to increase the contentment of others. We like to serve, and we like even more to experience the impact of our efforts on the lives of our fellow humans. Yet when labour is subdivided into ever smaller parts, when whole careers are devoted to turning out objects which will affect another’s well-being for only a second or not at all, then meaning suffers. Not that the stock markets would care; they would reply that meaning should be something reserved for the weekend.
Stock indices leave one juggling a set of varied feelings: an admiration for the fertility of modern business, a wonder at the extraordinary degree of intelligence and effort demanded to suceed in any industry, and yet a guilty sense of the absurdity and waste of so much of our toil and, in the middle of the night, when the mind tends to avenge itself on the compromises of the day, a pained wonder at what we might be doing with the ever-more precious bit that still remains of our lives.
SAP AG
FRANKFURT STOCK EXCHANGE
PRICE CHANGE: EUR -0.10
OPEN: EUR 59.70 CLOSE: EUR 59.60
We can conclude that the numbers and graphs in financial news are only ever a shorthand for the stories and images that we need in order to understand the world we have built. Business is ultimately too interesting and too significant to be described only for the sake of those who want to invest in it.
A sweeping story that needs a modern Emile Zola to tell it: the software manufacturer SAP’s share price, 2011–13.
V.
Celebrity
Admiration
Interviewer: Usain Bolt is, hands down, the fastest person on the planet … There’s no one else quite like the Golden Bolt … You are my hero. So how does that make you feel?
Bolt: I feel good.
Interviewer: How do you feel? When you get down on those blocks and you’re about to explode, what actually goes through the Golden Bolt’s mind?
Bolt: All you try to do is just relax, really. For me, it’s always just trying to compose myself, try to not think about anything, because as soon as something comes into your mind, then you are going to be in a lot of trouble.
Interviewer: What does it take to be a champion, not just any old champion, [but] to be a great champion?
Bolt: Well, it’s just hard work … Just hard work and dedication.
Interviewer: What is it that motivates you most now? Is it the winning? Is it being the champ? Is it money? Is it fame? Is it the women?
Bolt: It’s everything.
Interviewer: How many times have you been properly in love in your life?
CNN
1.
THE NEWS CONSTANTLY introduces us to a parade of extraordinary men and women: people who can run faster than anyone else on earth, who know how to make us laugh, who have started revolutionary businesses, who can design succulent meals and whose faces are flawlessly beautiful. Their achievements, personalities and good looks excite us as few other things can. As a result, we often want to ask them how they did it, hear them talk about their childhoods, observe what they are wearing, find out whom they are in love with, peek inside their homes, follow them to the seaside and even accompany them across the road when they go out to buy groceries.
2.
THIS SORT OF interest is almost universally condemned by the guardians of elite culture; in serious company, it isn’t generally endearing to reveal a devotion to celebrity news. Partly this comes down to the belief, widely shared among elites, that celebrities can’t reasonably be deemed admirable or worthy subjects of interest when their contributions to society are held up against the backdrop of humanity’s true problems. In the rare case where the merit of a public figure’s achievement is indisputable, the high-minded suggestion is that we should focus exclusively on the actual accomplishment (the business started or the film made) rather than fixate on its author – as we are wont to do, often, to the point where we become obsessed by the smallest details of his or her life, such as whom he took with him to a dinner party or how she tied her hair back at the beach. The elite implication is that there is something demeaning and childish about the need to hero-worship a famous person who is our contemporary but who doesn’t know us: it seems passive and inferior, a confession of inadequacy, a proof that we are insufficiently engaged with our own projects and ambitions and have chosen to ‘escape’ from our lives because we have no idea how to lead them properly.
Emma Watson buys strawberries, New York City, 2012 (Splash News).
(picture credit 11.1)
3.
THIS IS A pity – and rather problematic too, for if serious people judge the very concept of celebrity to be beneath them, then the role of anointing celebrities will fall to organizations entirely untroubled by the prospect of appealing to the lowest appetites.
Furthermore, without proper consideration of the purpose of celebrity, we will find it difficult to think through what we might sensibly want from the famous people who live among us. Can admiration lead anywhere worthwhile? Is there anything substantial or important to be gained from revering others?
4.
THE IMPULSE TO admire is an ineradicable and important feature of our psyches. Ignoring or condemning it won’t kill it off; it will simply force it underground, where it will lurk untended and undeveloped, prone to latch on to inappropriate targets. Rather than try to suppress our love of celebrity, we ought to channel it in optimally intelligent and fruitful directions. A properly organized society would be one where the best-known people were those who embodied and reinforced the highest, noblest and most socially beneficial values, and hence one in which an admission of reverence for a given celebrity would be an occasion for pride rather than a prompt for shame or self-deprecating laughter.
Bravery Heracles of Mantinea, c. 460 BC.
(picture credit 11.2)
Athletic Prowess Unknown athlete throwing a discus, 460–450 BC.
(picture credit 11.3)
Leadership Pericles, 430 BC.
(picture credit 11.4)
5.
IN ITS GOLDEN age, the ancient city-state of Athens was unembarrassed about the act of admiration. The city held a number of virtues dear. It believed in democratic government, military valour, intellectual freedom, civic glory, artistic expression and athleticism. However, its belief in these qualities wasn’t abstract; it focused on a range of exceptional people who realized them in concentrated form – and who found themselves, as a result, celebrated and commemorated in statues, festivals and works of literature. Statesmen like Pericles and Demosthenes, athletes like Philammon the Olympic boxer and Chabrias the chariot racer and musicians like Melanippides and Anakreon were looked up to as practical guides to a life of