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Rehab
I was thinking about when celebrities check into “rehab” specifically, but also do other high profile seemingly dramatic acts. How much of checking into rehab, for them, is actually about changing their lifestyle, so much as it is about paying to have formed as a perception about you that you’re changing your lifestyle? That is, more succintly, that as a wealthy celebrity, you can essentially pay to have your meaning changed in the eyes of others through PR. Most people have to labor over hard work and many hours to change images they hold of themselves and others, and it takes a community of meaning working cooperatively together to actively change the meaning of things.
Sorry for the word salad. I know certain of my readers get bored or annoyed when I move over into one of these stream of consciousness modalities. All I can say is I’m working on something, so bear with me. Something wants to get born into the world right now.
September 4th, 2008 at 9:01 pm
“Sorry for the word salad.”
Blabber on. It takes all kinds to make a world. I like word salad.
September 4th, 2008 at 10:08 pm
Don’t worry, I’m not really sorry.
I guess I’m just anticipating audience responses, perhaps ineffectively.
September 5th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
That’s really all the fame is, the efficient management of your personal image/brand/meaning in the eyes of others, and the adding of value to that by taking different actions (such as going to “rehab”).
This is why striving for the sake of being famous or wealthy doesn’t lead to happiness in itself. If you think that you are adding to yourself by becoming famous/rich, you are also identifying with your own lack of fame/wealth.
On the other hand, if you feel you truly deserve it, you’d won’t be driven to seek it for it’s own sake, you will expect to come to you from your own natural actions. And it will.