If you’ll quit worshiping celebrities, their antics will quit shocking you

By David McElroy · August 27, 2013

Remember when Madonna was shocking and outrageous? Back in the early ’80s, she combined sexuality with religious imagery in ways that shocked and angered many people. (Personally, I thought Weird Al did it better in his parody than she did.)

Who else has shocked you? Lady Gaga and her meat dress or her recent nude video? Or maybe you’re old enough to remember when John Lennon shocked people by proclaiming that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus.

When I got online Monday morning, it seemed as though the whole world was talking about something scandalous that Miley Cyrus did on an MTV awards show Sunday night. On Facebook, it seemed for awhile that half the posts I saw were about her — some outraged, some disgusted and a few defending her.

I honestly don’t know the specifics of what Cyrus did to get everybody upset — and I don’t care to know. As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t watch television, but this isn’t something I’d have been watching even if I did still watch TV. It’s apparently popular with millions of people, but it’s beyond my comprehension to understand why. It’s not that I think I’m too good for a pedestrian medium such as television or something like that. I just don’t think that participating in most of pop culture is very good for me — and I don’t think the culture that’s emerged is a healthy one for anyone.

Maybe there’s always been a popular culture that has shocked older generations. That’s definitely been the case ever since the mass media have been around. Maybe it’s my imagination, but it seems as though celebrities seem to be going to ever-increasingly lengths to shock people — to change their reputations, create talk and make them more valuable in the long run.

So why does anyone care what Miley Cyrus does? She’s a 20-year-old with no special claim to fame other than some singing and acting roles over the past six or seven years. Why would millions of people — literally — have been talking about her Monday? Why do these non-entities have this sort of power over the public?

They have the power because you worship them and follow them like royalty. You treat them like they’re important. Maybe not you personally, but “you” in the sense of the public. The media treat them as though they’re news because millions and millions of people watch anything put on television or posted on the Internet about them. But don’t blame the media. Blame the public. It’s the market driving their decisions about what’s important.

The United States and Great Britain are probably about to launch an attack on Syria, but the media were too busy pushing the Miley Cyrus story to care too much about that. And why would they? They’re giving people what they want. Although this is satire from the Onion, this fake explanation from CNN about why the Miley Cyrus story was the lead story on CNN’s website is too close to the truth to ignore.

I’m not outraged by whatever Miley Cyrus did. I just don’t care. I’m much more concerned that so many people care what she did than I am about whatever silliness or lewdness a 20-year-old did for attention.

If you find it as silly as I do, tune celebrity culture out and encourage others to do the same. Don’t wait until they shock you. Enjoy their movies when you want and enjoy their music when you want, but don’t worship the stars. Don’t pay attention to their private lives. Don’t turn them into heroes. You’re giving them way too much power over our culture when you do that.

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I’ve come to believe that some of us — including me — aren’t very good at knowing how to be happy. I don’t mean that in the sense that happy talk and positive thinking should be able to make us happy regardless of the circumstances. I mean that some of us had so much experience with being unhappy when we were young that we were trained to be unhappy — and that being happy is an unconsciously uncomfortable thing. When I look at times in my past when I should have been happy, it rarely lasted. I believe now that I found reasons to be unhappy — and caused real problems for myself — because being comfortable and happy felt so foreign to my programming. If I’m right, this means that some of us have to do more than just change our circumstances. It means we have to learn how to accept the happiness that we unconsciously fear we don’t deserve.

After I wrote last night about being happy, I thought of an old song that mirrored what I was feeling. After listening to the entire album, I found it remarkable how well the emotions of that music match my own heart at this point in my life. Bob Bennett’s “Matters of the Heart” came out while I was in college. Even after all these years, it holds up really well, and you can listen to the entire album on YouTube. The specific song which matched my feelings last night was “Madness Dancing,” but I still find every song on the album to be strong with the exception of the eighth and ninth. (The song about his parents, called “1951,” is especially poignant.) In fact, the opening and closing songs paint a picture of my heart at its best now in these lines: “A light shining in this heart of darkness, A new beginning and a miracle, Day by day the integration of the concrete and the spiritual.” It’s old music that you’ve probably never heard, but it means a lot to me.

Narcissists tend to turn their children into narcissists — and since a narcissist doesn’t realize he or she is a narcissist, there’s no bad intent. How does this happen? I watched a YouTube video over the weekend from an Australian psychologist who does a nice job of summarizing how it works. None of this is new to me, but I thought it was useful for those who haven’t spent years digging through books and articles about it. The same psychologist has an excellent summary of something which confuses a lot of people about narcissism. You’ve all seen examples of the loud, boisterous and overbearing narcissist, but what about the ones who are more introverted and vulnerable? This type is called a covert narcissist (or a vulnerable narcissist), and this is what my father was. In the first video, I strongly see myself in the ways my father treated me and in the second video, I see what my father was almost successful in making me become.

It’s National Dog Day in the U.S. and Lucy is here to remind you to go express love and appreciation to your favorite canine. Not only does your doggie friend give you love and affection, but he or she also protects your home from intruders — such as birds, squirrels, mail carriers and other undesirables who deserve to be barked at vigorously. Where would we be without that? And if you think this service is actually unnecessary, ask yourself how long it’s been since your home was the victim of a vicious squirrel attack. See? The doggie defense works. Keep barking at ’em, Lucy.

I’ve spent a tremendous amount of time over the last couple of years thinking and writing about love and connection. I’ve come to understand that this lack of love and connection is at the root of a lot of human tragedy and unhappiness, including addictions and depression. As I talked with others and researched the psychology behind the issues, I ran into the surprising fact that researchers are increasingly using psychedelic drugs to allow volunteers to have experiences which are giving them a sense of connection which they’ve lost — something that allows them to feel connected to love and God in a way they didn’t understand before — which is having dramatic effects in combating things such as depression and addictions. In this 15-minute TED talk — without an audience in the age of COVID-19 — Johns Hopkins researcher Mary Cosimano shares her experiences with guided psilocybin sessions being used to treat addiction, depression and end-of-life issues. One of her key observations is the importance of love and connection. She said that it seems love is literally part of the answer. In her role as director of guide/facilitator services for the program, Cosimano is responsible for training and supervising session facilitators.

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