Celebrities Change with Society

 

George Bernard Shaw

In a remarkable coincidence, four prominent men share a birthday on this day, June 26th : George Bernard Shaw, Carl Jung, Aldous Huxley, and Mick Jagger.  Let’s briefly consider these men, in the order of their birth, and the enormous impact they’ve had on modern society.

George Bernard Shaw      

Born July 26, 1856

Mr. Shaw was a prolific English playwright, whose influence is sometimes considered second only to Shakespeare.  He is famous not just for writing more than 60 plays, but also for being somewhat, um, eccentric.  He admired tyrants such as Stalin and Mussolini.  He was a fan of eugenics.  His views on religion made little sense – he described himself as an atheist, and then aligned himself with Jesus as “a person with no religion.”  He was anti-vax before it was cool, calling vaccinations a “peculiarly filthy piece of witchcraft.”  His overall legacy would seem to be that of a gifted writer with a personal philosophy that ranged from confusing to horrifying.

Carl Jung     

Born July 26, 1875

Dr. Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist who founded analytical psychology after an intellectual and personal split from his mentor and friend Sigmund Freud.  His thinking is very difficult to summarize, but he has had enormous influence in many fields including philosophy, psychology, literature, and religious studies.  In his late 30’s he had a horrible experience which he described as a “confrontation with the unconscious.”  He saw visions and heard voices, and feared that he was losing his mind.  He then seemed to recover and continued working and writing afterward.  It crosses my mind that Dr. Jung was a fan of psychedelic drugs, although I’m not sure if those things are connected.  He was an obviously brilliant man and original thinker.

Aldous Huxley     

Born July 26, 1894

Mr. Huxley was an English writer who was widely considered one of the great intellectuals of his time.  He was nominated for the Nobel Prize for literature nine times, and is best known for his profoundly insightful novel, “Brave New World.”  His brother described his as a child who often “contemplated the strangeness of things.”  He lost most of his eyesight due to childhood disease, which dashed his hopes of becoming a physician.  Like Dr. Jung, he was a fan of psychedelic drugs, and after a long bout with throat cancer, he died of an intentional overdose of LSD.  I consider Mr. Huxley to be one of the great thinkers of the past few hundred years, with the additional benefit of being less insane than George Bernard Shaw and Carl Jung.

Mick Jagger     

Born July 26, 1943

Mr. Jagger is an English musician.  He is known for being the lead singer of The Rolling Stones.  He’s had 70 singles reach the top 40, and in 2003 he was knighted for his services to popular music (an honor that fellow Englishmen Mr. Shaw and Mr. Huxley did not receive).  While Mr. Shaw, Mr. Jung, and Mr. Huxley lived in modest means throughout their lives, Mr. Jagger is worth an estimated $360 million, and has had relationships with some of the most beautiful women in the world.  His performance style has been studied by academics who analyzed gender, image, and sexuality.  He is a fan of cricket and Monty Python and is concerned about global warming.

So I think we can agree that July 26th was a big day for Western Civilization.  What can we learn from these four men?

What strikes me about these gentlemen is that they all were well-known celebrities in their time, but they were famous for different reasons.  These different reasons I think illustrate more about the evolution of our society than it does about the men themselves.

Our society has changed a great deal, and very quickly.  Mr. Shaw, the oldest of the four men, died in 1950 when Mr. Jagger was seven years old.  This is not like comparing Plato to Rousseau.  These men are essentially contemporaries.

Our society has changed.  So the qualities admired by our society have changed.  So our celebrities have changed.

I wonder what celebrities will be like a hundred years from now? For some reason, I’m not terribly upset that I will never know the answer to that…

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  1. Dr. Bastiat Member
    Dr. Bastiat
    @drbastiat

    Franco (View Comment):
    I would say those who have used psychedelics, generally speaking, are closer to sanity than those who haven’t. I’ve used them myself. There is a whole other dimension that’s impossible to describe, to those who haven’t visited themselves.

    I’m not a fan of psychedelics, although there are people I respect who like them.  I don’t know much about them, but they make me nervous.

    Many men in professions which benefit from creative thinking have tried them to expand or clarify their thinking, and it has led to some moderately interesting stuff (Alice in Wonderland) and some less interesting stuff (Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds).  

    There are still psychiatrists that find them helpful in treating certain psychiatric diseases.  Again, I’m skeptical, but I don’t know enough about it to make specific criticisms.

    I had a few friends in college who dropped acid once in a while and they were really, really odd.  But they had a few too many birds on their antenna to start with, so I’m not sure if it was the drugs.

    So I plead ignorant.  But the idea of clarifying your thought by scrambling your own eggs intentionally seems iffy  – I don’t have the guts to try it.  

    I just wrote an article comparing Aldous Huxley and Mick Jagger.  Do you want this brain on acid?  

    No.  Bad idea…

    • #31
  2. Dr. Bastiat Member
    Dr. Bastiat
    @drbastiat

    Dr. Bastiat (View Comment):

    I just wrote an article comparing Aldous Huxley and Mick Jagger.  Do you want this brain on acid?  

    No.  Bad idea…

    Full disclosure – I took an acid trip once, but it was accidental.  I mixed Mefloquine and alcohol once when I was in West Africa.  I forgot about the side effect of hallucinations and vivid dreams from that combination.  Nice job, doc.  Holy crap.

    That’s another post – long story.

    But holy crap.

    • #32
  3. Franco Member
    Franco
    @Franco

    Hoyacon (View Comment):

    Franco (View Comment):

    Hoyacon (View Comment):

    After reading these capsule bios, I’m left with the impression that Mr. Jagger, in addition to being the sanest of the four, is also the most benign in terms of influence in his time.

    Huxley and Jung were insane and malignant?
    What?

    That’s not exactly what I said.

    Right. It’s what you didn’t say. Mick Jagger is the “sanest” certainly implies the three are less sane than a wiggling rock star,  and his influence, widely derided by many as being subversive ( not me) is more benign than their ideas on the culture, so what am I to take away from that but that you believe those characters to be somewhat insane and somewhat malignant?

    • #33
  4. Franco Member
    Franco
    @Franco

    Dr. Bastiat (View Comment):

    Dr. Bastiat (View Comment):

    I just wrote an article comparing Aldous Huxley and Mick Jagger. Do you want this brain on acid?

    No. Bad idea…

    Full disclosure – I took an acid trip once, but it was accidental. I mixed Mefloquine and alcohol once when I was in West Africa. I forgot about the side effect of hallucinations and vivid dreams from that combination. Nice job, doc. Holy crap.

    That’s another post – long story.

    But holy crap.

    Another post.
    But forgive me doctor, you should know that ‘acid’ is an unfortunate slang for LSD which is a psychedelic. I didn’t know what Mefloquine was, so I looked it up. It has side effects in some of hallucinations and possible psychosis episodes. Because one “hallucinates” during psychedelic experiences does not mean that all hallucinations are the same or the experience is even remotely the same. Or that drugs that induce hallucinations are psychedelic or even relative to psychedelics.
    Ive taken LSD, psilocybin, and mescaline. Each was different but quite similar in the sense it was psychedelic. And I’ve also had hallucinations coming from severe lack of sleep. This was not a ‘psychedelic’ experience at all. It was just crazy hallucinations. A few experiences from smoking opium, which provided odd extremely relaxing waking dreams, but again, very unlike psychedelics.

    I don’t and can’t know exactly what your experience was, but that drug is not classified as a psychedelic by chemical structure, and no one who has taken both substances to my knowledge claimed it was a similar experience.

    However, any time spent in an altered state even if uncomfortable, informs us and gives us another perspective. That would include dreams and nightmares which we all are familiar, and IMO informs us about our waking consciousness  more deeply than most of us realize.

    And psychedelics aren’t like dreaming either, although closer to ‘dreaming’ than to ordinary waking consciousness. Incidentally, when dreaming is deprived, after two days people will begin seeing things to the point of full blown hallucinations after 3 or 4 days. That phenomenon of how dreams regulate our sanity is very interesting to me.

    • #34
  5. I Walton Member
    I Walton
    @IWalton

    I liked them.  Not the singer,  if I heard him briefly while changing radio stations, I didn’t know it.  Shaw appealed to me as a teenager, I read all of him, but even then his prefaces, which were longer than his plays were  outrageous.  I out grew him in my late twenties but still liked his plays, but haven’t read one for 40 or 50 years at least.   Huxley seemed to grow up now and then, and  he was fun but here is something about being a brilliant writer;  perhaps they get stuck in their youth when the imagination is so powerful and silly ideas appealing. 

    • #35
  6. James Lileks Contributor
    James Lileks
    @jameslileks

    Dr. Bastiat (View Comment):

    You think Cardi B is bad for society? Try Ibram Kendi.

    Good point. Different impact in different sectors of society. What’s interesting about the current movement is that all people elevated above the throng have the same corrosive anti-American effect. 

    • #36
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