CONNECTING THE DOTS

If we gain fame, what then? We are likely to be miserable.

The problem with fame is that it resides in other people’s heads, and as the nineteenth-century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer observed, “other people’s heads are a wretched place to be the home of a man’s true happiness.” Because fame requires the cooperation of other people, it puts us at the mercy of those same people. In particular, when a person is inflated with fame, the rest of us have it in our power to deflate him, and perhaps plunge him into misery and anguish, with a few well-chosen words.

In every walk of life each man puts on a personality and outward appearance so as to look what he wants to be thought. In fact, you might say that society is entirely made up of assumed personalities. The image we project, however, will typically be quite unlike the “real” us. In the words of Schopenhauer, “A man can be himself only so long as he is alone; and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom; for it is only when he is alone that he is really free.

The social mask we wear, however, is uncomfortable. We cannot wear it twenty-four hours a day but must periodically remove it so our skin can breathe—so our real selves can emerge. This is why we value privacy. When we are alone, behind closed doors, we can finally quit acting and be ourselves.

When someone invades our privacy—in particular, when someone drops by without warning, enters our house, and gets a glimpse of how we really live—we are upset. We have been unmasked. The effort we invested in creating an image has been undermined.

Which mask do you wear today? Leave your thoughts in the comments.