because if i don't, i read random articles online that often claim to be news, but are hardly news (but what is news to one person v. another) like this one about tom cruise and katie holmes (tomkat) and how katie wants to have more kids (and really, who cares) but the brain likes to create connections from one thing to another so that it can retain things in memory, so reading it gets me thinking about other random things i have recently read, thought, or heard about which have nothing having to do with my real work (namely an extra-large assignment due for the teaching program which i thought, "i will just take a small little break from...") like, for instance, celebrity gossip, celebrity babies v. real babies, and blindness...which tangent shall we go on first? i think they are all somehow connected although maybe not, and i really should get back to work so i will just be quick so as to let us both get back to work more quickly on those things that really matter to each of us.
so here goes:
question: are we becoming increasingly obsessed with celebrities? i'm not sure because i haven't studied the history of celebrity obsession so i can only hypothesize and think back on my own history (let's see... from age 5 to 16 in chronological order, i was going to marry michael jackson, peter from the monkeys, b.j. armstrong from the bulls, and ed kowalczyk from the band live...). but on a grander scale, i'm guessing we have become more interested in the lives of celebrities: obviously, we see more of them with television and the internet... but why should that matter? why do we even care about them? we don't know them (and okay, some of you are reading this saying, i don't care about celebrities... well, sure... i'm not talking about you)... and this is where my brain remembers reading or hearing something somewhere (and apologies for the lack of acknowledgment to the author of this theory) about looking at this from an evolutionary standpoint... the theory is something like this: for most of our 250,000 or so year history, we lived without photographs or similar technology. if we recognized a face, it was because we knew that face from personal interaction or at least close proximity. fast forward to modern life-- we recognize a celebrity's face, not from personal interaction or even close proximity, but through the marvels of modern technology. we know we don't know that person, but our brains don't necessarily know. Our brains did not develop contemplating seeing and recognizing a face that, in reality, we have never actually seen in person. if we recognize a face, it is because we have been face-to-face with that person. hence, we are interested in that person's life just as we are interested in the lives of people we actually know, because... we think we know that person too. i suppose this doesn't explain why we got interested in celebrities to begin with... but, at least with regard to actors, we saw them on film, as that is their job, and thus started the facial-recognition ball rolling. which i suppose is where we get onto the topic of blindness and a story i recently heard on npr about individuals, who, once blind, have taken advantage of technology allowing them to see and how those who had been blind since early childhood, once able to see, were unable to recognize faces, no matter how many times they saw the same face. the part of their brain devoted to facial recognition, realizing it was going unutilized, devoted itself instead to other tasks. so, (tangent one) i wonder... how much would these individuals care about the tomkat article? i listen to tom ashbrook almost every night on the radio, and i suppose i might read a gossip article about him (not that i imagine such an article would ever materialize) but i guess i don't really care so much about his personal life. i imagine howard stern became more popular and famous after making his movie and putting his radio show on tv. (tangent two) thinking about how infants recognize facial expressions and how humans, including infants, recognize facial "beauty" and the individuals who have regained sight, recognize neither, and why at least the former is important from an evolutionary standpoint and not sure about why the latter is necessarily important, except maybe for procreation purposes or some such something or other. okay, whatever. and tangent three having to do with a conversation i had recently with my mother-in-law about parenthood increasingly becoming a "joy" with each successive generation, no doubt because of increased wealth and resources and thinking again about celebrities and their babies and how celebrities are seemingly at the pinnacle of wealth and resources, and thus potentially at the pinnacle of joy when it comes to raising babies, as quotes from holmes in the above-article seem to imply, and thinking about celebrity adoptions versus some of the first adoptions in the u.s., namely the 'orphan trains' of the 1800's where orphaned children in large cities were sent on trains to midwest (and other) farming towns and how in reality, many (though certainly not all) of those children were adopted for the purpose of having extra farm-hands (but certainly (or hopefully) many or most were treated like the biological siblings).
and this is where i think i have to end my pointless meanderings and get back to work.
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