Probably the homo sapiens has not changed that essentially during his biological evolution. Perhaps we ought to be glad about it when we take into account man has much more in common with the ordinary pig than he can be enthusiastic about given his unsettling nearness to the monkey. We can state clear mutations in the cultural realm, though: the incresing virtuality of human experience. In the past the empirical world was focused on immediate perception data mankind could dispose of within the strictly limited range of seeing and hearing. But with the aid of language human beings found a memory medium for what was locally, but especially temporally remote. So experience did not require the immediate participants' presence anymore, but became retirevable over the genrations. That way mankind had created a comfortable virtual niche; after all, it is far more pleasant to be informed of dangerous environmental events than to experience for oneself. By making events retrievable, language keeps them distant.
Still, one cannot help thinking past language use was quite more ecclectic when it came to communicating experience than today. We can demonstrate that when we look at modern celebrity. In antiquity and the Middle Ages there were the powerful, and those without power could at best be made aware of after their death - on condition they had acieved or experienced something exceptional in their lifetime. Only this was the access ticket into collective memory - as legends.
Well, those times have gone, as the tabloids teach us. Instant celebrities have replaced legends. Those celebrities are a typical example of how modern social systems work - above all the public and its supplier, the journalism. Originally a secular equivalent to the legends, the celebrities' attraction was based on the increasing human self-interest. They mostly consisted of persons who neither belonged to politics nor to religion, but to the emerging new social systems. What we nowadays call the media was largely intended to report about those who were already publically known, that is to amplify celebrity by reporting. Like today especially the human touch perspective was popular; it balanced the tension between the detached status of the object on the one hand, its everyday problems and joy on the other. During the course of time the procedure has become autonomous to such an extent (like anywhere else) that the principle of reporting about well-known people cannot be distinguished anymore from the media construction of a celebrity. In other words: the media's procedure rules have understood they are no longer dependent on event inputs from the outside to help them fill their columns; the media generates it on its own. Stars are still being born and found, but nowadays they have been produced and looked for. So celebrity reports have become an end in itself whose proceeding tries itself out in an auto-referential way. Casting shows work that way. Maybe cynically, perhaps amazedly, but anyway in a good mood the broadcasting stations test their power. Modern stars accordingly serve as the journalistic self-assurance in the flesh it does have an impact. The celebrity cannot sing? Makes no difference? The celebrity cannot tell cocaine from icing sugar? All the better. Headlines will be headlines.
The inevitable acceleration leads to short-term memory's prevalence. Legends are bound to die out, which again amplifies the tendency inventing celebrity is more interesting than the celebrities themselves. Those will be only relevant as to the category they fit in before they will be dismissed into anonymity again. This is cultural evolution at its best: accidentally we find something new, reflect upon the proceeding, intentionally repeat the proceeding (which makes it a re-inventing creation), copy the copy, repeat the procedure recurrently. That way it crystallizes the act of inventing celebrity is the true constant matter.
While past persons had to risk their lives to -maybe - become immortal legends, today only the readiness to lose one's reputation is at stake - for the sake of the much-cited five minutes of immortality which results in spending the rest of the life as a public zombie.
Still, one cannot help thinking past language use was quite more ecclectic when it came to communicating experience than today. We can demonstrate that when we look at modern celebrity. In antiquity and the Middle Ages there were the powerful, and those without power could at best be made aware of after their death - on condition they had acieved or experienced something exceptional in their lifetime. Only this was the access ticket into collective memory - as legends.
Well, those times have gone, as the tabloids teach us. Instant celebrities have replaced legends. Those celebrities are a typical example of how modern social systems work - above all the public and its supplier, the journalism. Originally a secular equivalent to the legends, the celebrities' attraction was based on the increasing human self-interest. They mostly consisted of persons who neither belonged to politics nor to religion, but to the emerging new social systems. What we nowadays call the media was largely intended to report about those who were already publically known, that is to amplify celebrity by reporting. Like today especially the human touch perspective was popular; it balanced the tension between the detached status of the object on the one hand, its everyday problems and joy on the other. During the course of time the procedure has become autonomous to such an extent (like anywhere else) that the principle of reporting about well-known people cannot be distinguished anymore from the media construction of a celebrity. In other words: the media's procedure rules have understood they are no longer dependent on event inputs from the outside to help them fill their columns; the media generates it on its own. Stars are still being born and found, but nowadays they have been produced and looked for. So celebrity reports have become an end in itself whose proceeding tries itself out in an auto-referential way. Casting shows work that way. Maybe cynically, perhaps amazedly, but anyway in a good mood the broadcasting stations test their power. Modern stars accordingly serve as the journalistic self-assurance in the flesh it does have an impact. The celebrity cannot sing? Makes no difference? The celebrity cannot tell cocaine from icing sugar? All the better. Headlines will be headlines.
The inevitable acceleration leads to short-term memory's prevalence. Legends are bound to die out, which again amplifies the tendency inventing celebrity is more interesting than the celebrities themselves. Those will be only relevant as to the category they fit in before they will be dismissed into anonymity again. This is cultural evolution at its best: accidentally we find something new, reflect upon the proceeding, intentionally repeat the proceeding (which makes it a re-inventing creation), copy the copy, repeat the procedure recurrently. That way it crystallizes the act of inventing celebrity is the true constant matter.
While past persons had to risk their lives to -maybe - become immortal legends, today only the readiness to lose one's reputation is at stake - for the sake of the much-cited five minutes of immortality which results in spending the rest of the life as a public zombie.
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