Idolatry: Part 2

Two things made me think to add this addition to the subject matter. First, at work, an avid AZ fan had gone to the Super Bowl. His explanation of how he felt when his team lost mirrors this line from Jack Lemmon in one of his movies, "I want to be in love with something."

The AZ fan lived a serious part of his life through his football team. The character Jack Lemmon played wanted the exact same thing--something; a pet, a team, a person, a thing to live a serious part of his life through. It's the same thing you see on American Idol for those who do not make it--they feel their lives are over.

I wonder to what degree this is a natural part of our life. After all, we've all experienced the ups or downs (the pulling of our heart strings, as it were) when something we like fails or succeeds. Or is this filling a gap in our modern world?

Ernest Becker, in his book, Denial of Death, reviews this exact subject matter. He covers art, passion for another person, religion all as ways of handling the fact that we know we are going to die and that we don't want to think about it. We want to deny our mortality. An interesting question here is, how does this tie into Julian Jaynes' theory of the origin of consciousness? Did we "know" we were going to die before consciousness "came about"?

I'm not going too deep here, the books are out there for further exploration if one chooses. So, let's tie this all back to the original point. I believe that a fully mature, mentally healthy adult realizes and lives his life knowing life comes from within, not from without (I am not, unfortunately, one of these individuals, nor do I know very many--perhaps one or two in my lifetime). While I may enjoy watching my team win, the win shouldn't feed something missing in my life, after all, I, me didn't DO anything. I achieved nothing. It was an outside entity that achieved that win. Conversely, I shouldn't feel bad inside that my team lost because I didnt' lose anything.

The same is true of "wanting to love something"--we should love ourselves (not narcissism here). We shouldn't need something or someone to fill us up.

As for love, Erich Fromm's book is a good source for those interested in exploring further. Here's a great quote from from that is appropriate:

There is no meaning to life except the meaning man gives to his life by the unfolding of his powers.