Does anyone?

… Who Pulls John Gray’s Strings? | The American Conservative. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Gray turns his attention to French Marxist Guy Debord, finding “nothing of interest” in his standard Marxist schema but noting that Debord was ahead of his time in analyzing celebrity. With work no longer giving life meaning, it is necessary that our “culture of celebrity” offers everyone “fifteen minutes of fame” to reconcile us to the “boredom of the rest of [our] lives.” He quotes Debord on the rising social importance of “media status”: “Where ‘media status’ has acquired infinitely more importance than the value of anything one might actually be capable of doing, it is normal for this status to be readily transferable…”

This quote gets at the heart of why in 2015 we see headline coverage of a dispute between singer Elton John and fashion designers Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana on the proper form for the family. Are fashion designers or pop songwriters experts on child development or the ethics of the family? If not, why is anyone paying any attention to this feud? Well, because they are celebrities with high “media status,” and that status is “readily transferable” to any other field whatsoever.

John Gray is interesting and well worth reading because he does what a philosopher is supposed  to do: He thinks, changes his mind, tries out this notion, then that. One may  not agree with his overall viewpoint, whatever that is exactly, but it is hard not to be taken with his observations and insights when applied to particulars. And he is surely not the only one who suspects the secular experiment may end badly.