Just about everyone back home cuz I am short as hell. But not too many people here.
Seriously:
A whole lot of old profs
Both my Grandmothers
Mommy
My big brothers
(before you think I’m being a cheese-puff, I actually respect and look up to these people)
my friend Geddy
my friend Lily (who is younger than me :raspberry: )
Thich Nhat Hahn
Ben Stein
Yoko Ono
Janis Joplin
Douglas Adams
Amen brother. While still attractive in her 60s, when she was young she was so PRETTY
Chewy’s list
Alexander Hamilton
Andrew Jackson
TR and FDR
Ronald Reagan
Chuck Yeager
Peter Lougheed
Undergrad and grad school profs
Henry Miller
Serge Gainsbourg
The Pogues
My parents
My current boss
Mahatma Gandhi
M. L. King
Ben Franklin
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Payne
Albert Einstein
John Lennon
The Dalai Lama
Bill Clinton (in everything not related to the Lewinsky kerfuffle)
James Randi
Cindy Sheehan
Randi Rhodes
Paul Theroux
My parents
Many of my professors
One or two of my past bosses (but most definitely not my current one!!)
Nearly all of the people listed in all of the above posts are deeply flawed human beings whose lives can be easily dissected and shown to be contemptible assholes given a dose of the “Christopher Hitchens Treatment”. Even Ghandhi slept with nubile teenage girls when he was 70, and sympathized with Nazis during the Big One. Narcissistic junkies like Joplin and Lennon, third world sex tourists like Theroux, liars like Clinton and Nixon…too easy targets.
There aren’t any human beings that I idolize. I am mature enough to realize that all people have feet of clay, that heroes are created by distorting reality into mythology. People have a deep psychological need for heroes and idols, and that’s why they create them. Emphasis on “create”. We’re all human and all humans are deeply fucked up - but that’s OK; none of us would be human if we didn’t have flaws. Realizing this simple truth is what separates a mature adult outlook on humanity, from that of a child. Children believe in White Hats and Black Hats. Children read comic books and believe in superheroes. Adults read fiction and believe in characters.
[quote=“jdsmith”]I’ve noticed recently that most of the people I look up to are dead or will be soon, whether they were family members or historic figures.
I have a difficult time now trying to find someone new who is living to look up to.
So the short list, off the top of my head:
Ben Franklin
Joseph Campbell
Walt Whitman
A grad school prof.
Richard M. Nixon
Au Sung Su Chi (but that may just be a lust thing)
Sun Tzu
These are the people and books I turn to when I need some help deciphering the turtle bones of my life.
You would think that with 6 billion people on the earth it would be easy to find new ones.[/quote]
I’m here for ya, buddy.
[quote=“tot”]Shakespeare
[/quote]
I was gonna say this too, but I firmly believe that the actual man we are speaking of was simply an effective stage manager whom the Earl of Oxford used to ghost his scripts. So, I look up to the Elizabethan EofO instead.
And of course, Moliere, who died on stage while performing The Imaginary Invalid.
And Edvard Munch, who hung his work in the forest. That is art for art’s sake.
For more contemporary idolatry, I look to the teachings of Kurt Vonnegut and Jon Stewart.
Noam Chomsky (thought razor; activist)
Michael Parenti (media analyst)
John Pilger (muckraker)
John Ralston Saul (thinker)
Maria Mies (feminist)
Susan George (food economist; debt activist)
Bob Pollard (rock star)
Joseph Cambell (comparative mythologist) - popular guy, isn’t he?
Antanas Mockus (former mayor of Bogota)
Socrates (malcontent)
That certainly may be true, but looking up to qualities of certain people seems… OK.
Upon seeing this post, no one came to mind. When I was younger I looked up to Jackie Chan and Jet Li because of all the cool tricks they could do. Every now and then I meet someone that seems to have a cool setup that I like (like living somewhere cool and working as a Taichi Master.)
I still like to read those comics about Chuangzi (Zhuangzi.) I also like that Sakuraba guy that’s fights in Pride because he often goofs around when competing.
Tigerman
MBJ
Sade
Oprah
My mother(deceased)
Malcolm X
Any woman who is the epitome of grace
My cousins Jackie and Pat
And a few more whom I can’t think of at this moment
[quote=“Paul Simon”]Who’ll be my role-model
Now that my role-model is
Gone Gone
He ducked back down the alley
With some roly-poly little bat-faced girl
All along along
There were incidents and accidents
There were hints and allegations [/quote]
However there’s still actions and principles of certain individuals that can be admired. I admire anyone who can do something repetitively mind-numbing without getting bored or the mailman who gets the mail through rain, snow, storm or shine.
The Earl of Oxford?
Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford died in 1604. William Shakeshafte, better known as William Shakespeare, wrote several plays after that including The Tempest in 1611. Although the precise dates of Shakespeare’s play are unknown, circumstantial evidence gives relatively accurate approximate dates. Circumstantial evidence far more convincing than any would be usurpers claim.
God (and all that that means to me)
My grandmother
My Aunt
My friend Ignus
Nelson Mandela
Desmond Tutu
In historical and military context:
Jan Christiaan Smuts
Gauis Julius Ceasar
Otto Von Bismarck
General Heinz Guderian
Lord Admiral Horatio Nelson
Emperor Chu Huang Ti
Sun Bin
This is funny, as when I started this thread this AM, the PC screen went floopy and I thought it wasn’t there. I even double checked…nope, not a sign of it. Go figure.
Mod Lang has a good point, but my response is that all of these people were in fact human, until proven otherwise.
mod lang wrote:
[quote]
We’re all human and all humans are deeply fucked up - but that’s OK; none of us would be human if we didn’t have flaws. Realizing this simple truth is what separates a mature adult outlook on humanity, from that of a child[/quote]
Some people put into words what we cannot, and that’s why we admire them. We feel a connection and that’s cool.
Actually all of my choices, except my uncle (who despite being hit by 4 heart attacks and 7 ministrokes ate greasy fried eggs until he died and was the sweetest and funniest man I’ve ever met, even though his life was one long blue collar slow torture) I admire them because of what they gave or left the world. I didn’t know them and make no excuses for their personal flaws.
Ben Franklin was a radical human being who swam around the boat as it sailed to and from England; Nixon wrote many excellent books after his disgraceful exit from the White House; Joseph Campbell gave me a way to look at god the metaphor and showed me how to find my bliss; my college prof gave me the encouragement to follow that bliss; ASSchi, well she rocks and makes me tingle.
It’s good to have someone to look up to and no one to worship.
Right now it’s Johnny Cash. What a wonderful human being.
HG
Edit: If you don’t know much about the guy, read the wiki here. Or just sit back and watch this film clip. Filmed two months before his wife June Carter died (she’s in the clip) and four months before he died. See if you can watch it without weeping.
He really should’ve/could’ve been a total redneck. Instead he seems to have trod the most balanced path on so many issues. Typical was his response to the Vietnam war. He opposed it but performed for the troops in Vietnam while at the same time calling for a cessation and a wish that all the soldiers could return and live in peace. (check the track Vietnam Talking Blues, which describes his trip with June Carter to Vietnam. The track ends quiet powerfully on the word peace.)
Oh, and he basically launched Bob Dylan, among others.
He was a god botherer, and usually that would be problematic for me, but somehow that makes sense to me too.
