The Elites

Kyle Petras

2/27/16

Gubanich

Blog #5

The Elites

In history, there have been people that have wowed us to the extent of being put in textbooks. They have shown their science breakthroughs, their amazing journeys, and their extreme wealth. There are specific types of elites. The ones who pushed the limits and the ones that seek money for fame. These people have different in that they represent two separate ideals. In this blog, I am going to delve deeper into a quote given to us in an article. I am going to see how her “idea of the current culture mirrors the culture in Brave New World”.

Marie Curie, John F. Kennedy and Neil Armstrong were people who pushed the boundaries of mankind. From innovations to going where no man has ever gone before. These people changed the world. Marie Curie was a chemist and physicist from Poland and France. She discovered the x-ray and researched into radioactivity. She was also the first woman to receive a Nobel Peace Prize, twice. John F Kennedy was president of the United States. In 1963, he was assassinated in Dallas. His presidency only lasted from 1961 to 1963. And lastly, there is Neil Armstrong. Neil Armstrong was the first man to walk on the moon. He gave his famous speech, “ One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”. These 3 people broke the boundaries of the world. Nice people left great legacies and are remembered for what they did.

On the other hand there are three other people. Bill Gates, Rupert Murdoch and Mark Zuckerberg. These are the people that are remembered for their great achievements. Bill Gates begin a company called Microsoft. He is now known as the richest man in the world. Rupert Murdoch began The News Corporation. He also became director of Australia's news Limited. Lastly there is Mark Zuckerberg who created Facebook. All three of these people have billions of dollars. These people changed the world around them. Their wealth equals power and fame. We know Gates, Zuckerberg and Murdoch because of their great achievements.

There were some words in the article that were more sophisticated than the others. They were relevance, myopic, and narcissistic. Relevance means that there is something important to the matter at hand. Myopic means nearsighted or lacking imagination. And narcissistic means having an excessive or erotic interest in yourself. So, when the quote says “myopic success”, it means that that a person focusses on one thing to be successful. “Showers of narcissistic applause” means that someone lives for people to worship them and bawl over how good they are.

A line shot out to me as being interesting. “Results sometimes came to overshadow the deeper cause”. The author is talking about the results of the causes of Gates, Murdoch and Zuckerberg. The results of these people are large companies that bring in millions and billions of dollars. The author talks about a deeper cause and that is what Curie, Kennedy and Armstrong did. The deeper cause is that there were people who didn’t live off of billions and still did amazing things in the world. The results overshadow the causes because fame and money is everything in this day and age. People look at the Jenners and see how they have so much money, when Malala is creating a school for girls in the middle east.

“Our moral compass points towards money”. This means that humans are wired and build to love the idea of money and fame. “More rocks, less moonlight” means that the more achievements you make that are actually good for the world, the less limelight will be shown on you. This whole quote has a message and I think it is, you don’t have to have all the money in the world to be an achievable person. If people looked past the fame and beauty and saw the deeper meaning, I think this world would be a very different place.