Is your idol an animal? Lots of people have their idols. Actors, leaders, businessmen, dissidents, influencers, singers, tech industry giants, and so on.
They idolize them in an absurd way as they are the most moral, attractive, able, and eligible.
Not only that the current human morality makes little sense. But your idol is most likely immoral even by our current standards as most people sin. Also, most people fall into the average position of the Gaussian curve as morality is distributed normally, therefore into 68 %. And it is highly unlikely that your idol is an exemption.
And even if he was about to be found into 1 %, what does it mean to have moral values? Every historical part, every culture, and every person has their own system of what is moral and what is not. The core decision value is highly controversial.
Also, the personality traits of “moral giants” are often quite defective, people like Václav Havel or Mahatma Gandhi remain highly questionable.
Human morality is something animalistic and even if the morality would make sense, people break the rules.
People observe their idols on how to act morally (which is – as I previously claim – highly controversial), and how to dress and behave.
Your idol is an animal and why Darwinism explains it all
Homo sapiens have evolved to learn by watching others, which is efficient and reduces the risks associated with trial-and-error learning. By idolizing successful individuals, people can learn valuable skills, behaviors, and strategies that improve their own survival and reproductive success. However, we don’t live in that era now.
In many social species, including humans, dominance hierarchies play a critical role in organizing social structures. Dominant individuals often garner attention and admiration, leading to their idolization.
Mate selection
Traits that are deemed attractive in potential mates (such as physical attractiveness, social status, and resource acquisition) are often exemplified by idolized figures. This can lead to the idolization of celebrities, athletes, and successful individuals who display these traits.
Certain traits or behaviors serve as signals of underlying genetic quality or resource availability. Idolized figures often display exaggerated versions of these traits, making them particularly appealing. So the idol remains an animal.
The next time you see your idol
But since we are nothing but animals I cannot see any idols in homo sapiens.
Even if we meet the maximum percentile on the Gaussian curve. I mean in morality, ability, attractiveness – yes, the same at once, which means the rarity would be absolutely stunning (for example, one in a billion), we are nothing but animals and should be treated such.
We describe soldiers as heroes despite their actions may have stemmed from primitive instinct to fight. It has little to do with morality.
Our morality is something animalistic to its core: people compete for everything, are selfish, and highly territorial, they don’t care (in terms of doing something) whether someone dies, no justice in who will be born, how happy he or she will live.
You just idolize your idol, he or she may not be able to, there are factors such as clientelism (the big tech, authors, TV stars) – because those who rule us want to make sure you won’t do anything against them.
You cannot emulate them
One could emulate people in prehistoric environments, but the pool of a scale of the given talent was limited.
Of course, personality traits such as IQ appeared even in those times, but we have now 8.1 billion people on this planet.
Not only is the given individual not around you, but since the sample is – compared to those times – extremely large, we have people with IQs of 160 or 180 (these are extremely rare intellect values, this first one has 1 in 30 000, the second one in 20 million; some you definitely couldn’t encounter in an average hunter-gatherer group). And as classical psychology clearly demonstrates, your IQ is connected with talent and creativity.
Musk, Buddha and Jesus
You cannot definitely emulate Elon Musk – contacts, luck in the previous start-up, and stratospherical IQ with related talents and creativity.
Buddha and Jesus Christ were historical figures. Nobody really did their psychological assessment. And if we cannot figure out our history (some large machine that is able to find how history was done – by the means of physics), we will never know.
Your idol is an animal and the conclusion
Maybe it is psychologically vital to have idols. For example, positive role models, overcoming challenges, value alignment, a sense of belonging, and so on.
But we should be aware homo sapiens are animals and we should always expect animalistic behavior as a rule.
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