Oprah, the Vulgarian
"Well, once upon a time, there was a mean old queen. She lived up in a great big castle. And was that ole' gal rich! She had everythang!" –Mammy speaking to 'So White' and speaking about the Wicked Queen in Coal Black and de Sebben Dwarfs [Google video], a racist [but brilliant] 1943 cartoon parody of Snow White
"We take off into the cosmos, ready for anything – solitude, hardship, exhaustion, death. We're proud of ourselves. But when you think about it, our enthusiasm's a sham. We don't want other worlds; we want mirrors." –Gibarian in Solaris
Yesterday, Bill Harryman in his blog Integral Options Café referenced an article in the new issue of Newsweek, "Oprah Goes to School," about a girls academy Oprah has built in South Africa and wrote, “I don't care what anyone thinks – I admire what Oprah is doing here.”
I feel a need to retort. To my mind, the Integral movement has lost its wheels and skidded off the road into a fecal-filled ditch precisely because it has fallen in amorous love with elitist, wholly narcissistic, greedhead ne’er-do-wells like Mordecai Gafni, Andrew Cohen, Tony Robbins, Oprah Winfrey, Angelina Jolie, Leona Helmsley, Eva Peron, Brian '13' Johnson and Stuart Davis.
This mostly non-productive elitist crowd is exactly the kind of folks that prompted Russian citizens to march in the snowy streets of Moscow ninety years ago carrying red banners. Just because that whole soviet thing that transpired after the storming of the Winter Palace was philosophically misguided and didn’t work out so well doesn’t mean that the Russian proletariat weren’t quite right in feeling aggrieved that the workers in their society were parsimoniously compensated for their difficult labors at a time when a spectacularly well-off elite had easy short-cuts to wealth and lived in a style as if in a different country entirely.
That history is repeating in America, with a new twist on that old story. Our tax laws and societal mores have become lax in ways that create a caste system here, separating (1) the slimy elite and their sychophants from (2) the rest of us; together, and yet apart; two populations sharing the soil of our one country.
As Michael Kingsley wrote in a recent Washington Post editorial, the stock market is rigged, taking money from the little guy and shoveling it into the pockets of the already obscenely rich. A brazen example of this is where boards of directors of public companies, whose duty is to serve their companies’ stockholders, rather routinely arrange for takeovers that force the stockholders out so that members of the boards can grab everything and immediately reap the profits of undervalued assets. If this were done on the street, rather than on Wall Street, it would be rightly characterized as a gangland holdup.
In America, there are few laws that prevent rich landowners from employing illegal immigrants. These much-reviled poor Mexicans, following the entreaty at the base of the Statue of Liberty, climb high walls and risk death to take minimum-wage jobs. And who gets blamed? Why, the damned stinking Mexicans, of course. What is happening to us? When did America lose its heart? and rig the system to move wealth to a few who are politically well-connected or well-placed that is generated by the toil of hard-working poor people?
America has lost its way. It used to be that hard work was the route to financial security. Nowadays – in the Integral sphere, even more so than in our corrupted society – if you work hard, you’re a fool’s chump. The standard now is not to live a comfortable life doing good work, but to gather vulgar wealth by ripping off the hoi polloi, the little guy – like what Ken Wilber hopes to do with his Denver-based enterprises. And then there is a secondary level, the Elite Minus class, that is paid well to tell the elite everything it wants to hear.
Oprah makes $200 million per year just for putting her obscene narcissism on display in a TV talkshow and with a magazine called O, and other enterprises of shameless self glorification. [She also has a fat share of the Dr. Phil Show, making her tens of millions per year for doing nothing, the cause of consternation between her and her former pal, Phil McGraw.]
Oprah, the Vulgarian
According to Wikipedia, Oprah was three years ahead of others in becoming the world’s first black billionaire. Today, she has one and a half billion. Great shame on her, I say. At a time when children, at the rate of tens of thousands per day were dying of AIDS and other quite treatable diseases in Africa, Oprah was amassing a Dragon’s pile of gold to rest her cushy tush atop.Unlike billionaire Bill Gates, who can point to the great efficiencies Microsoft brings to society, Oprah brings in the wake of her tabloid, psychobabble talkshow, just more tabloid talkshows [Wikipedia cites daytime shows with hosts Ricki Lake, Jenny Jones and Jerry Springer following her lead], the dummying down of society, and her self-infatuated self, an example of extreme narcissism for others – mostly bored white housewifes – to fawn over. Oprah is at best the Zsa Zsa Gabor of our age, but with a megaphone that has made her rich as Midas. Twenty years from now, if the world should return to any equanimity or commonsense, can anyone doubt that if Oprah is remembered at all it will be as a bookend to Paris Hilton, her mirror image for being an empty-calorie celebrity?
“The Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls”
The Newsweek article tells us that Winfrey’s school in South Africa cost $40 million – a tuppence to obscenely rich Oprah, of course, but a noble sum that, in the right hands, could be of tremendous aid to a great many dirt-poor children in South Africa.
But, the school that Oprah built, “over 22 lush acres, spread over 28 buildings” -- and named after herself, of course -- will house just 152 girls to begin with, aged 12 or 13, for a year, two or three of instruction to become Oprah Mini-me’s. According to an AP story, "Eventually the school will accommodate 450 girls." Oprah plans on doing some of the teaching, via satellite.
The school is opulent in a poor land, like one of Saddam’s castles built overlooking crumbled Baghdad. According to the Newsweek article, “the South African government had planned to build the school with [Oprah], but it pulled out amid reported criticism that the academy was too elitist and lavish for such a poor country.”
The article goes on to say that Oprah “personally chose the china and the pleated uniforms, the sheets and the beds …. She also insisted that the dorm rooms and the closets be extra large, even though the girls have minimal amounts of clothes. ‘People asked me why it was important to have closet space, and it's because they will have something,’ she says. ‘We plan to give them a chance to earn money to buy things. That's the only way to really teach them how to appreciate things.’”
One applicant to the school asked Oprah if she really spent $500 to get her eyebrows done, to which Oprah laughed.
Says Oprah, “I understand that many in the school system and out feel that I'm going overboard, and that's fine. This is what I want to do. I wanted to take girls with that 'It' quality, and give them an opportunity to make a difference in the world.”
Oprah, Self Enchanted
Oprah is wholly lost to self-enchantment. Her false epiphany is that enlightenment is causal for her to remake the world in her image. She is God. The girls at her academy aren’t seen as themselves; they are indeed IT girls, things, to be formed into IT likenesses of Oprah.
Oprah, now, is the racist – establishing a mini-apartheid situation in South Africa. If only she could see beyond herself, she might understand racism.
“We don’t want other worlds; we want mirrors.” The words of Stanislaw Lem. How easily some people gravitate to the mirror, and their notion of doing good in the world is to somehow transform everything into THEM by killing off anything that is something other.
Technorati tags: Oprah Winfrey, Oprah, Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls, South Africa, charity, Newsweek
16 comments:
There may be some similarities between Wilberian integralism and what Umberto Eco has termed Ur-Fascism:
http://www.themodernword.com/eco/eco_blackshirt.html
(quote)
10. Elitism is a typical aspect of any reactionary ideology, insofar as it is fundamentally aristocratic, and aristocratic and militaristic elitism cruelly implies contempt for the weak. (unquote)
In the unhealthy portions of the enlightenment industry, if you look closely, what you see is a craving for power and a corresponding fear of vulnerability--an essential hatred of what it is to be human.
'vulnerability' derives from a latin word for wound. To be vulnerable is to be 'woundable'. It means you're human, interconnected and because you can be harmed, you have a claim to be cared for by others--and also have the responsiblity to care for others yourself. Vulnerablity is hard to face, but it is at the root of all genuine spirituality and in the end, it ties in to the essential source of human dignity.
Buddha, the prince, started on his quest when he confronted human vulnerability by seeing persons who were sick, who were elderly, had who had died.
But the toxic parts of the pseudo spiritual celebrity scene fear and hate vulnerability--hence the constant pursuit of wealth, fame, attention, power. Because this scene has money, it can produce lots of flashy TV shows and magazines. In its hands, yoga has become a fashion parade.
Just listen to the way people are shouted down when they report being harmed by abusive gurus. They are sneered at for being too weak to appreciate that the brutality was exalted wisdom and are sneeringly told not to wallow in victim mentality.
But..watch what happens when a powerful, abusive guru runs into bad publicity and is called to account for his or her abuses--or falls ill.
Right away, the devotees express compassion, they offer prayers, and they never, ever accuse the guru of wallowing in victim mentality.
In this warped world, only powerholders are entitled to compassion. Anyone who reports being harmed by a powerholder is unworthy of compassion. This double standard reveals when one has ventured into toxic territory--into a portion of the enlightenment circuit that is not spiritual at all but that secretly worships authoritarian power.
What this correspondant sees, both in Wilberismus and in large sectors of the 'enlightenment industry' (term coined by journalist John Horgan) are:
Claims to be spiritual when the actual agenda is a covert worship of authoritarian power, by supporting the claims of various and sundry 'crazy wise' gurus
Covert kinky cruelty manifested by insisting that brutality, when perpetrated by a crazy wise guru is actually necessary for human development and that anyone who disagrees is inferior and unworthy
Elitism. Only special people, only powerful people are considered worthy.
Wilberismus uses the language of spirituality but, IMO what its really all about is celebrity and authoritarian power.
Spiritual attainment is equated with celebrity and with authoritarian power.
Manipulativeness is emphasized at the expense of relatedness.
Intensity is valued at the expense of presence.
For a Wilberian integralist, heaven means becoming special, like a guru. Damnation means remaining an ordinary human being.
Problem is, if everyone becomes enlightened and no longer needs a guru, there's no need for a leader.
Therefore a leader who wants to remain special has no incentive to help his students become enlightened, no matter how much he insists he wants them to become so. Because if they all became enlightened, the guru would no longer be special in relation to them.
What have you done for poor africans lately? I'd venture to say nothing. It is your mentality that will keep Africa poor and behind every other nation in the world. Why not give something back. After Europeans raped the land, women and resources this is the lease that we deserve.
I am in favor of doing an enormous amount for Africa. But doing the right things is important.
The world in the very recent past has tossed money at the problems in Africa, only to end up arming and emblodening many sociopathic leaders there.
We should be doing the best things; the right things. Are 152 Oprah clones what South Africa most needs? I think that the $40 million Oprah spent on an academy named after herself could easily be better spent.
Why such a fuss over a few poor black girls? Their own government wouldn’t support such educational opulence for the impoverished damsels. Of course, a chicken coop-styled schoolroom would have been more appropriate. And, how dare Oprah donate her hard-earned money to South African children, pleading for school uniforms, while American children have needs for new iPods.
But, who would blink an eye to build an elite prep school in America? Let’s compare a couple of US schools to Oprah’s $40 million academy, scrutinized for being “too elitist, lavish [and] extravagant.” Hotchkiss School in Connecticut has a $382 million endowment, museum art gallery, 660-seat theater, ice rink, pool and boathouse, and Henry Ford II among the distinguished alumni. Lawrenceville School in New Jersey, where Disney CEO Michael Eisner attended, has a $232 million endowment, high-tech science lab, 15 grand pianos, and palatial athletic center. There are thousands of prep schools scattered across America, extra-ordinarily built by the rich for the rich and ordinary.
As for the top 4% of 3,500 nominated for “exceptional leadership potential” in South Africa, one of the richest countries in the world, Oprah’s academy should be nothing less than “spectacular.” Imagine what this group of dynamic young ladies can do when armed with quality education, positive self-esteem, and high class expectations! Oprah’s academy will undoubtedly produce leaders in a country where millions are suffering from a lack of basic human rights.
Who else will “effectively” lead the disproportionately poor blacks in South Africa, where a half million people are projected to die from AIDS next year? The western world has failed South Africa, which is routinely raped of her resources by corporations while the minority white population continues to grow wealthy and privileged.
This academy will have exponential power for the country. If just one of promising young ladies should become to South Africa what Coretta Scott King, Mary McLeod Bethune or Harriett Tubman became in America, the academy will be worth more than ten times the investment.
Tom,
I admit that I don't know all that much about Oprah. That is, I've seldom watched her talk show, I've never read her magazines, and I don't pay all that much attention to tabloid and "legitimate" news of her latest business ventures and other activities. However, what I thought I knew about her is quite at odds with the damning words you've written.
So, I went online and did some reading up on her, and I discovered that, yes, she has purposefully used her gifts of high intelligence and other talents to accrue fabulous wealth and to live lavishly, but she is also one of the most charitable people on the planet, having donated an estimated $250 million of her own money to worthy causes throughout the world while also raising tens of millions for these causes through her various philanthropic organizations. I also believe that she has had a net positive effect on American culture with her talk show and other business enterprises by emphasizing mutual understanding and tolerance, wholesome lifestyles, the vital importance of education, the potential for positive self-transformation, the need to give to the community, and the importance of basic integrity and goodness.
Could she give away more of her money? Sure. Could she be less self-promoting? No doubt. Could she do more good overall? Probably. But I just don't see her as the unequivocal and corrupting "vulgarian" you've painted her to be. And, so far as her school in South Africa is concerned, I'm all for it. As others here have commented, if the relative opulence of this school can raise even one girl to a position of great positive influence in South African society and culture, it will have been well worth the cost. And I suspect that it will do better than that.
A few quick points for now -- I just have a little time.
I highly recommend the first comment in this thread. There is a bit on the Internet re Ur-Fascism which I believe clearly relates to Oprah and Wilber.
Capitalism DOES NOT distribute money properly; capitalism is of value because it is the NECESSARY distributer of wealth. Gates and Buffett know this and recognize an OBLIGATION to give their money back to society; they are not constructing monuments to themselves. Even Dale Carnegie believed that the money he was amassing was mostly not ever his. While Carnegie named libraries, etc., after himself, they were constructed to fit the needs of the population. Rockefeller, somewhat similarly. Also, Gates, Carnegie and Rockefeller did create something for society of lasting worth in their work, though certainly Rockefeller, especially, was a robber baron.
Also, interesting news today: The top guy at Home Depot was FIRED and got a severence package worth $210 million. Are you guys telling me that that was "hard earned" money. I submit that it wasn't and neither is the one-million dollars that Oprah makes for each episode of her show.
Oprah is almost exclusively an homage to herself. Her academy is being built because Oprah wasn't told she was pretty as a little girl. GIVE ME A BREAK. Oprah was a beauty queen -- Miss Tennessee, I think it was. Get over it, Oprah.
Also, would somebody please tell me what ritzy academy Coretta Scott King, Mary McLeod Bethune and Harriett Tubman went to? I would be very interested in the development of that line of argument. [MORE TONIGHT]
One tiny correction--it was Andrew Carnegie, not Dale who was the tycoon-philanthropist. But aside from that minor point, Tom's argument neverthless holds.
The branch library in our neighborhood was Carnegie-funded.
Thank you, anon. Andrew Carnegie, yes!
An aside, relating to the first comment in this thread, I will want to explore Ur-Fascism, later, in a new post. It is a fascinating issue from some articles I've printed out but not yet carefully read and it all relates to Oprah and Wilber, I am convinced.
But I am also interested in the idea -- which I think is mostly false -- that we get our best leaders from elite academies and heavily endowed universities.
I recently read Barack Obama's two books. How different and 'stunted' he would be had he been born to priviledge. Yes, he was very accomplished as a Harvard student, eventually -- but his cultural mooring and the splendid qualities of his mind come from living among wonderful nonprivileged people. Ditto Abraham Lincoln who is practically unschooled. And Shakespeare, for that matter. And Dickens, and Bill Clinton, and Coretta Scott King [lived thru the Great Depression; went to the local high school], Mary McLeod Bethune [born to former slaves; made her way thru and unnamed college]; and Harriet Tubman [an escaped slave; little education].
Our leaders find us; we don't manufacture them.
Plus I don't think we should over exert ourselves in making downy beds for possible leaders. The better the general education and compassion of the populice, the better leaders will come forth in governance and industry.
Somehow, to me, I think we should concern ourselves with those who are suffering and not worry about creating conditions for an elite. An elite class will need no aid arising on its own and then we will have to work at pruning it.
I think an example of catering to the elite class is shown in the new movie The Good Shepherd. It becomes a bit of a Good Old Boys clutch, a confederacy of friends that can wall out others of great ability.
We see this in the Bush Administration, on several levels. Bush was constantly given things in his life [including the windfall of a chunk of a baseball team, worth millions, at the expense of citizens in an area in Texas], and I believe he has grown to lack a full sense of ability to identify with young men he sends off to war.
Bottomline, it seems to me it would be better if Oprah were to help more people, allowing her money to be spread further. It would also be far healtier if Oprah was not trying to control every detail and choosing every student. She should want 'other worlds,' not mirrors.
This article has an interesting perspective.
http://www.mushin.eu/en/blog/2006/06/15/abuse-in-spiritual-circles
In the comments section following the article there's an extended discussion from several viewpoints concerning unexamined biases in Wilberismus (eg covert infatuation with power and covert fear of human vulnerability) , and the problems that may ensue if sincere practitioners fail to recognize these covert biases and then unknowingly allow these to skew their own spiritual practices.
Hi Tom -
I would have appreciated a more sober analysis of Oprah's pros and cons and how they may be able to do more for society in more productive ways. Instead, I found a one-sided, mean-spirited rant that really didn't add anything interesting. Sure Oprah may have narcisstic tendencies. But then so does absolutely 100% of the human population. Calling her names is less effective than capturing her contribution ways that give her credit where credit is due.
Myself, I admire Oprah tremendosly and feel she is one of my heroes. I rarely watch any daytime TV, but when I do I can learn much my watching a master of her craft at work.
Perhaps you have a WOMAN thing. Most of Oprah's perspective is, after all, very feminine and very relational and communitarian. I would invite you to look at whether you are diss'ing her because you are unable to see her full magnificence in all that she types, in part because her style is so antithetical to your own.
Then again, I may be wrong about that. So take it for what it's worth.
Joe Perez,
The post is over-the-top, written rather spontaneously in response to Bill's line in support of Oprah in an Integral Options Cafe post.
But this idea that criticism of Oprah says the critic has shadows or hates women is crazy talk, Joe.
Oprah has more that one magazine she appears on the cover of every month. [I believe there is an O Home Magazine to add to regular O magazine, now.]
She is truly quite grotesque. It is true that we are slipping into an era of vulgar wealth, and she is not alone. But if her narcissism is not THE extreme, the display of it that she orchestrates is probably #1.
I submit, Joe, the harm that Oprah does far, far exceeds the good.
If you are truly a Christian, Joe, explain to me how Oprah could get through that needle's eye.
Thats the problem with what journalist John Horgan has termed the enlightenment industry. (which overlaps with the human potential movement)
Spiritual attainment is tacitly positioned alongside power and celebrity.
Enlightenment teachers position themselves as celebrities.
There are even magazines with glossy photos on the covers and readers dote on these teachers the way teens dote on their favorite pop singers and movie stars.
It all adds up to being ordinary and human is not enough. One has to become 'evolved'and invulnerable.
(what follows is my opinion, not Horgan's) Because the real religion behind the 'enlightenment industry' is power, and very often elitist, authoritarian power, we are forbidden to question it in any way that is objective and emancipatory.
In this linkage of celebrity, authoritarian power and pseudo spirituality, women can and do play this game and get rich, just as the fellows do.
Any attempt to question this celebrity dynamic, this covert love affair with authoritarian power that is sugared over with spiriutal language--is met with quick accusations of shadow projection.
One of the Bodhisattva precepts warns of the danger of praising oneself at the expense of others.
It is just as delusional to devalue/disempower ourselves and then use this disowned dignity to construct a pedestal for some spiriutal celebrity to perch on.
Envy is an afflictive emotion, but if carefully traced, it can be a subtle wake up call for us to examine the power patterns and sociology of our interdependent world.
Engaged Buddhism calls us to examine ourselves and the social network of relationships that surround us and to ask whether these support practice/bring life, or donate our energy to the dance of illusion.
Some teacher said 'Following one illusion cannot liberate us from other illusions.'
<< I submit, Joe, the harm that Oprah does far, far exceeds the good. >>
How so, Tom? What "good" do you think she does, what "harm" do you think she does, and why do you think the latter "far, far exceeds" the former?
Tom quoted Stanislav Lem as saying we dont want to find other worlds we want to find mirrors.
It may be that many who sincerely believe they want to find enlightenment or find satguru are actually seeking a mirror in which to see their own ideal selves.
We have to achieve this task in early childhood before adult spiritual seeking is possible.
The problems arise when we have not been able to resolve this mirror hunger successfully 'on schedule' as children. Parents get very little support in society, and many of us reach legal majority still seeking a mirror in which to construct a viable self.
Problems arise when, without knowing it, we try to turn celebrity gurus into mirrors and are in an entire social scene full of people doing the same thing.
It may be that people who pursue celebrity gurus (Ophrah, KW, etc)
are not really relating to Ophrah or Ken, but are actually using Ophrah and Ken's public persoae as mirrors.
What the devotees may be doing is relating to thier own ideal selves as mirrored by the celebrity guru. If the relationship with the mirrored ideal self becomes long term and addictive, one is trapped, rather than liberated. Feelings of bliss may disguise that one is actually trapped and that the sitautation may feel delicious but is not serving reality, that one has become trapped in a mirror.
A real guru would tell us this is happening and assist us to see it as soon as possible. But celebrity-gurus let us stay trapped in the mirror.
As long as the celebrity guru holds up a dazzling mirror for devotees to see thier ideal selves, the devotees will refuse to concern themselves with anything else.
The guru can change the content of his or her teacher in a million contradictory twists, re-write history, fire devoted employees one after the other, have a zillion temper tantrums etc.
Yet the guru's behavior will be ignored or rationalized as long as that guru serves as a mirror in which the devotee can stay addictively dazzled by his or her own idealized self.
**To defend the crazy wise specialness of the guru is to defend one's own specialness.
The devotee stays focused on what he or she sees mirrored by the celebrity guru.
Meanwhile, the outsider notices the way the guru actually uses money, sex, power and can see how the guru functions in his or her relationships.
**The outsider and the devotee are using different data sets to assess the situation.**
Despite the professed love, the devotee doesnt see the humanity of the guru at all--just his or her ideal self mirrored by the guru.
Anyone who reports that a celebrity guru is behaving harmfully is shouted down by devotees who dont want the mirror ripped from their hands.
And this may be why so many celebrity gurus run into trouble.
Their public personae attract all the attention from devotees hungry for mirroring.
A good guru insists that we pay attention to this mirroring and not get trapped in it. A cultic guru encourages mirroring and will actually drive away any devotee who tries to relate to the guru as a human being, not as a mirror.
A leader who demands that all employees adore him as a mirrorf for their idealism, rather than telling him the truth will run his organization into the ground.
The human dimension of the guru goes unfed and ignored. The devotees dont want to know anything about the human part of the guru--same reason why they refuse to listen to any report that the guru is having a bad time with embodied relationships.
Eventually there can be tension between the guru's over fed public personal and his or her starved and neglected human true self.
That may be why so many celebrity gurus who already are rich remain insatiable in their pursuit of more money, and why those already famous demand yet more followers and why still others have trouble with sex.
The celebrity gurus are not actually being loved as people. They are being used as mirrors.
This mirror hunger appears so common throughout the enlightenment industry that it is equated with bhakti yoga--a very great mistake.
Nagarjuna,
The Anonymous comments preceeding and following your comment address your question more expertly than I could.
But the economic point for me is that nobody living as luxuriently and amassing as much wealth as Oprah has is being generous in her charitable actions. Her wealth is not "hard earned." It has come to her and she has a responsiblity to give it back. Her viewers and readers are the ones who truly 'paid' for all the money Oprah controls by allowing themselves to be subjected to all the advertising that flows through Oprah's businesses.
Also, the lesson of Oprah is personal narcissism and accumulation, much the opposite of what is spiritual. Her fans are likely to be harmed, more than benefit, from exposure to Oprah's enterprises, imho.
To paraphrase Stanislav Lem, it may be that many of us think we seek enlightenment or seek a guru, but what we are really seeking is a mirror in which to see our idealized selves.
The idealized self is not buddha nature. It's our own movie, projected outward, using the celebrity or guru's public persona as the movie screen.
We will not be relating to that celebrity or guru as a human being but as a mirror.
It appears that THE way to become mega rich and famous is to craft a public persona that serves to elicit and then mirror the onlooker's idealized self.
You gaze at Ophrah or at Ken Wilber or at some other guru-du-jour and see not the human person of Ophrah, or Ken, or the guru, but are actually your own idealized self reflected back to you.
To defend the celebrity or the celebrity guru is to defend one's own adored self image. You're not actually seeing the humanity of the celebrity or guru at all.
To defend the entitlement of the celebrity to wealth responsiblity or the entitlement of the guru to power-without-responsibility is to defend the right of one's own aspirations to omnipotence and total entitlement. This fantasy of entitlement is embarrassing that most of us cant bear to admit that we want this for ourselves. So its safer to want it for our beloved guru or secular celebrity who then serves as mirror for our own secret desires.
Those who crave total power and cant stand to admit it consciously will use crazy wise gurus as a mirror in which to safetly view and savor these forbidden desires. The crazy wise guru has to be outrageous and not be caught or held responsible--that way we can feel fulfilled in these desires, by our mirror guru
acting out and getting away with it.
As long as the secular celebrity or guru functions as a mirror reflecting back our own idealized selves, we will defend them, because in doing so we defend our secret cherished idealized selves, and our forbidden desires for total wealth, total power and zero accountability--the impossible dream of realizing both unconditional love and care of babyhood and total adult autonomy and power with zero adult responsibility.
The trouble with celebrities and untrained gurus is one risks getting addictively trapped in this mirror--and of equating this with becoming more evolved, when its actually blissful regression and leads to pain and suffering when applied to embodied relationships.
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