On the mortality of reputation.

Yesterday, I came across a strange document on the Internet. It was an old 19^th century paper on Irish genius, by geographical distribution. It was more of a list of “great” people than anything else, since there was relatively little analysis in it. What interested me most about it, was the tale it told about reputations.

Each of the people referred to, was held up as an example of “talent” or “genius”. Each person was spoken of as if their greatness would be apparent to the reader, with little explanation. Many were declared as if the reader would know them, for sure. Words such as “worldwide reputation” were appended to people whose names, most curiously, are utterly unknown to me. Of one author, for instance, the writer said: “I am sure his work shall be forever known”…or words to that effect. Yet, I had neither heard of the work, nor the author. It could, in fact, have been a work of fiction, for all the familiarity the names had for me. I recognized perhaps one name in several hundred. That is, much less than 1 % of these people, whose reputations were great enough in the 19^th century, to be held up as examples of enduring “talent” or “genius”, were now known to me. All the others, their entire works, their lives, their names, had faded utterly from memory. It was as if they had never been.

Now, I am sure that the 19^th century is no exception in this matter. The phenomenon that can be observed in this paper, in which the list of “great names” is now without any meaning or substance at all, will, most assuredly, apply to our own times, too. Look around you at all the names offered up to us, by the media, as examples of “talent” and “genius”. Look at all the “famous” people, now spoken of as if they truly matter. Were a list of them to be compiled, by an academic today, and published, as the 19^th century paper was, then, by the 23^rd century, anyone reading it, as I have the other paper, would experience the very same sense of puzzlement: who, on Earth, were these people? Why did they matter in their own time? Were they truly special? Has the passage of time made their works unimportant, or were they not so important to begin with?

What struck me particularly, was the air of confidence, of the writer, that the names he offered up, were truly worthy. The writer was clearly an Irishman (one D. J. O’Donoghue!) – and he was clearly boasting of the greatness of his countrymen. Yet, today, almost none of these people matter to us. Almost every one of them, has been forgotten.

Almost all of the public figures who are now respected, eulogized, famed and courted, will be completely forgotten in a similar span of time, as the 19^th century figures. When seen in this context, modern fame doesn’t really matter. It is so fragile, so fleeting, so perishable, that it is almost as if it were not there at all. Very, very few, of the people now thought “important”, will be seen so, with the passage of a century or two. Only true giants will be remembered – and, of them, there are very, very few. In a few centuries time, only a handful of people from our era, will be known to the common man: everyone else, no matter how “famous” now, will have been completely forgotten. Thus, it can be seen, that “fame” is not really fame, unless it endures for the future course of human history. If a person is known, however brightly, for a brief time – like, say, Tom Cruise is likely to be – then that person is not truly famous. Their familiarity to us, now, is a temporary aberration that will soon pass. I cannot tell you how many people have arrived on my blog asking, for instance, “What did Patrick Swayze do for a living?” and “How did MacCaulay Culkin become famous?” Even relatively recent cultural figures soon begin to be forgotten. It doesn’t take centuries, to become unremembered – it only takes a couple of decades.

Would people seek fame so strongly, if they knew it would pass, almost as quickly as it had come? I am not sure. Some only think in a short term manner: they see their fame NOW, as evidence of their “success”. They choose not to look ahead, to the future time, possibly within their own lifetimes, when they will have been forgotten.

I think it is an interesting exercise to consider the achievements of famous people, today and ask: what will future Man remember? What will they see as important enough to recall? Is anyone, today, doing anything significant enough to be known, by the common man, of five hundred years from today?

The answer, I think you will find, is that, for very few of the presently famous, is it so, that their lives and works will be worthy of remembrance. What they are doing is not truly significant – it is just well marketed. That marketing will not continue, long after they are dead – and long after anyone cares about them. So, in time, their “fame” will be no more. They will become as those puzzling names in the Irish genius paper: totally unknown.

Many people are envious of the famous. They need not be, however, for this understanding of the true nature of fame and its fragility, shows that what the famous have, for the most part, is illusory. It is a possession that will evaporate with the passing of a few decades. In truth, the “famous” are no more famous to posterity, than the average man, with very few exceptions. History has a great facility for forgetting, all but the most memorable.

Of course, this meditation leaves a problem for those who wish their lives to have lasting meaning: what can any of us do, to make an enduring effect upon the world? The simplest way, of course, is to have children for that can connect our lives to all future history and make of us, part of the web of human life, forevermore. So it is that the ordinary family man, can leave a more lasting impression on the future, than all but the most famous childless “star”.

Some are fortunate to endure in both reputation, and descendants – but very, very few. Whom do you think, living today, or having lived in the last century or so, will be remembered five hundred years from today? How will they be remembered and thought of? What will they be remembered for?

Please reflect on these questions and give your answers below.

Thank you.

(If you would like to support my continued writing of this blog and my ongoing campaign to raise awareness about giftedness and all issues pertaining to it, please donate, by clicking on the gold button to the left of the page.

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To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 5, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

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Please have a read, if you would like a critic's view of this blog. Thanks.

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This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)

Einstein's lost last words.

Einstein's last words will never be known. When he spoke them, the only person in attendance was a nurse, who didn't understand German. She was subsequently unable to remember what he had said, for others to understand.

It is quite a sad scene. That such a great man should be dying without any friends or relatives present strikes me as a pity. Why was it a nurse who witnessed his last moments? Where was everyone? In effect, Albert Einstein died alone for what would the nurse have meant to him?

Let us hope his last words were not significant ones.

(If you would like to support my continued writing of this blog and my ongoing campaign to raise awareness about giftedness and all issues pertaining to it, please donate, by clicking on the gold button to the left of the page. To read about my fundraising campaign, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-in-support-of-my.html and here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/01/fundraising-drive-first-donation.html If you would like to read any of our scientific research papers, there are links to some of them, here: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2011/02/research-papers-by-valentine-cawley-and.html If you would like to see an online summary of my academic achievements to date, please go here: http://www.getcited.org/mbrz/11136175 To learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 7 and Tiarnan, 4, this month, please go to: http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity. There is a review of my blog, on the respected The Kindle Report here: http://thekindlereport.blogspot.com/2010/09/boy-who-knew-too-much-child-prodigy.html Please have a read, if you would like a critic's view of this blog. Thanks. You can get my blog on your Kindle, for easy reading, wherever you are, by going to: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Who-Knew-Too-Much/dp/B0042P5LEE/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&m=AG56TWVU5XWC2&s=digital-text&qid=1284603792&sr=8-1 Please let all your fellow Kindlers know about my blog availability - and if you know my blog well enough, please be so kind as to write a thoughtful review of what you like about it. Thanks. My Internet Movie Database listing is at: http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/ Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/ Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/ Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is at http://www.genghiscan.com/ This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)

What did Patrick Swayze do for a living?

Bizarrely, someone arrived on my blog having asked that very question. Now, where do you think this person came from? Togo, perhaps? Outer Mongolia? Pitcairn Island? Have a good think. Please come up with your own idea of where someone who didn't know what Patrick Swayze did with his life, might have come from.

Well, the answer is the United States of America. That is right, the person who asked that question was surfing from Indiana, in particular the Indiana Department of Education.

Now, personally, I was surprised that a US citizen would not know what Patrick Swayze was known for. Yet, it made me think. I don't think that this is Patrick Swayze's particular problem. I think he exemplified a simple phenomena that we might wish to forget about: most people, no matter how prominent at one time, are going to be forgotten.

Patrick Swayze was most famous for "Ghost" in 1990 and "Dirty Dancing" in 1987. He was, at that time, a "big name"...everyone knew who he was. Now, of course, that is not so. Many people - perhaps the one who searched - have been born since his heyday. These young people may never have seen his work. They may have heard the name, but not known any work to which the name was attached. Then again, others who did see his work, may have since forgotten him, or have reached the state of "not being able to quite place him". In time, this will happen to almost all film stars and similar people. They are able to attain intense fame, over a period of years, or decades, but that fame simply may not endure. The people who know them, grow old, they forget, and the young never know. In time, all who knew that person's work, directly, pass on - and those that are left probably never encounter the work of an "antique" actor.

So, the most famous of the famous, now, are almost all destined to be forgotten, before even this century is out. Very few will be remembered in centuries to come. Perhaps, not even the greatest film stars, will be remembered. Their fame is bright, but brief. It is not the kind that endures. That latter type subsists on work that future generations have reason to revisit, again, and again across the centuries and millenia. Modern film is unlikely to "fit the bill". Few people trouble themselves to watch films even twenty or thirty years old - so how many would bother to watch work that was a hundred or five hundred years old? Only historians would do so. Thus, in a remarkably short time, the people we now see as most famous, will be forgotten, known only to experts in the field.

The people who are remembered longest are not, paradoxically, I think, the ones whose work is most intensely regarded, necessarily, in their lifetimes. It is the work that offers most complexity, most difficulty. Thus, the less popular contributors, may, in the end, be the most famous, to posterity.

To those who doubt this, I invite them to name one actor from the time of Aristotle. It is not possible for anyone who is not a specialist dramatic historian, to do so. Yet, the average man can name at least three philosophers of the time: Socrates and Plato being the other two. Anyone even slightly knowledgeable about the era, can name a dozen more. Yet, none of these people would be able to name an actor, or a singer, or any other of those kinds, most given to attracting attention DURING their lifetime.

Thus, it is, that those whose work is more complex, and deeper, proves more enduring. This is so, because later man has REASON to revisit the earlier work: it still has something to offer.

To understand this, is to realize that attention is given to the wrong people, in our time. The ones least likely to be of interest to future generations, receive most attention. The ones most likely to be researched by future generations, live relatively quiet lives, perhaps in academe, or on the shelves of bookshops. They are not, necessarily, the "stars" of our time. The stars, on the other hand, are convinced of their own immortality based on their fulgurant public presences. Yet, that dazzling brightness will fade remarkably fast and this is something of which they are delusively unaware.

Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are now, known to all - but once they pass on, their memories will fade catastrophically fast. A century from now, only film specialists will ever have heard of any of them. There may even come a time, when they are too obscure even for film specialists to have heard of. Their "fame" is, in some ways, an illusion of our own, foreshortened view of time. We live brief lives, so it is difficult for us to conceive of what happens beyond the scale of a lifetime. To understand this phenomenon, however, we can just look up some old films, online...something from the 1930s perhaps. Doing this is a sobering experience, since the "stars" of the day, largely consist of forgotten names. So many of them, who might, in their day, have been "names" are now nothing more than arbitrary collections of letters, alongside each other. They have already become lost to the awareness of the common man. So, too, will it be for modern "stars". They won't shine brightly, for long.

If you want to know who will be remembered, by future generations, you need to look to thinkers and creators, whose work does something new. These people have a habit of being discovered, considered and respected by times to come. I can't tell you who they are, however, because their work can take some while to come to be appreciated. Yet, they are out there, perhaps sitting in a cinema, watching the "stars" unaware that future generations might think of them, more highly, than the people they spend their money to watch.

Yet, Patrick Swayze is not without a kind of victory, despite the fact that it is possible for an American not to know he was an actor. At least, they still know his name. One day, of course, not too long in the future, they won't even know that. Yet, he shouldn't despair - because alongside him will be almost all the other "stars" too.

(If you would like to learn more of Ainan Celeste Cawley, 10, or his gifted brothers, Fintan, 6 and Tiarnan, 4, this month, please go to:
http://scientific-child-prodigy.blogspot.com/2006/10/scientific-child-prodigy-guide.html

I also write of gifted education, child prodigy, child genius, adult genius, savant, megasavant, HELP University College, the Irish, the Malays, Singapore, Malaysia, IQ, intelligence and creativity.

My Internet Movie Database listing is at: http://imdb.com/name/nm3438598/
Ainan's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3305973/
Syahidah's IMDB listing is at http://imdb.com/name/nm3463926/

Our editing, proofreading and copywriting company, Genghis Can, is at http://www.genghiscan.com/

This blog is copyright Valentine Cawley. Unauthorized duplication is prohibited. Use only with permission. Thank you.)