Our world seems in the grips of a strange personality cult: it used to be kings and queens – now it’s all about movie and rock stars called “celebrities”. We constantly hear of their escapades and are supposed to care about their daily drama. While in previous decades there were at least some iconic personalities in politics or philosophy who used their public platform to contribute interesting concepts and ideas, the public discourse of today’s celebrities is often without interest or value to our lives. The amount of attention and power a 20-year old celebrity wields just by having acted in a movie is grossly out of proportions with his contribution to this society. Why do we listen? And who put him or her in this position in the first place?
Throughout human history, there have always been individuals that were considered more powerful than others. Their lives mainly played out far from the unconcerned populations. Today’s corporations have created the “Superstar Cult” in order to maximize profits for their mass media outlets and merchandize departments. We have blindly adopted their self-serving priorities with religious fervor. The average American spends more time consuming mass media (the delivery device for celebrity gossip) than communicating with their own families and friends. Are those really our priorities?
Many “celebrities” can influence millions of people with their words or deeds. They use and often abuse their social power for their own profit and vanity. What do we, the audience, get out of this??
From a spiritual point of view, the celebrity cult serves to redistribute consciousness and power from the masses to artificially created energy-hubs under control of corporations. Distracted populations give their power away and absorb self-destructive ideas (negative self-image, obsessive shopping and consumerism, social envy designed to increase consumerism) instead of focussing on urgent needs in our social systems. Redirecting so much energy from populations to celebrities deprives a people. It is an act of stealing their wealth, resources and consciousness. Corporations use celebrities to suck our lifeblood dry like vampires.
I believe that each individual consciousness in this world contributes equally to our mass consciousness network. There is no difference between people claiming to have “evolved consciousness”, between a self-declared simple-mind or a self-obsessed celebrity. All of us together create this consciousness energy field just as we are all influenced by it.
If this energy field reaches a certain critical mass regarding an issue that needs addressing, it creates an “outlet” – a person or phenomena that crystallizes all the available energy on itself, channeling it. Depending on the issue at hand, the mass consciousness then produces a Ghandi or a Trump. Whatever is needed to reestablish a balance will be expressed by the mass consciousness. It’s like a society therapy-ing itself. This occurs subconsciously, totally devoid of any good-or-bad judgment of the entire system. A mushroom does not grow out of itself but is the result of a “mushroom mycelium”, a intricate network of underground root systems. The mushroom is pushed to the surface by a much larger, invisible society, comparable to our mass consciousness. The idea that one individual has far-reaching, personal powers over millions of people (as we are made to believe by the mass media) is unrealistic. An individual who is brought forth or expressed by our mass consciousness is a channel created for and by our energy. They feed off our energy field.
The entertainment industry has short-circuited this natural self-regulation mechanism of our society. Our society has not naturally “expressed” today’s celebrities. They have been artificially created, nourished and implanted in our midst for two purposes: they create monetary gain for corporations. And they diffuse our energy with mindless distraction in order to keep us tame, complacent and disempowered. As we are competing with each other to impersonate various celebrities, we get stuck in the hamster wheel grind of making money and consuming and lose focus on what we really want. This way, we are easier to control and to “govern”.
The artificial creation and promotion of celebrities has hurt our societies in many ways: they have gotten in the way of our natural expression of urgent topics that move societies forward. Their sticky-sweet, self-obsessed messages have clogged up our sensory organs. The media saturation with celebrities is comparable to a polluting oil film over the topography of our society. We can no longer perceive ourselves feel and think. Political and environmental activists can no longer be heard through the noise of paid-for celebrity advertisement. The healthy mechanisms of self-regulation and detox of our societies are destroyed by constant bombardment with celebrity toxic slime. We need to take the power back from these fake idols and listen to what is really needed in our neighborhoods.
The celebrity who takes their success personal and lets it go to their head has not understood nor contemplated the origin of their “power”. They are investments and products to enhance shareholder’s value. Their celebrity isolates them and their ego has lost conscious connection with the energy field that once fed them. Their “art” becomes uninspired. Celebrities need to learn how to serve the society that carries them and to tune into and represent their issues. If they don’t have the stomach to do it or are too concerned with enriching themselves at society’s expense, they have the social responsibility to step down and make their platform available for activists who truly express important societal issues.