On obscurity
Fame is time-bound. So does wealth. I explored how obscurity took charge after fame and fortune ends, and how should we embrace it.
Fame and fortune are impressive. We know that. People seek fame and fortune in the hope to leave their mark on the world. To create change, or, be different.
But how much should we differ? When will it stop? What if, in the bigger picture, we are just another small spot in the big universe (in which you actually are already)? A bunch of different colored pixels on a TV screen and you are a part of the noise. Why do we strive to stand out from the rest?
Being different and standing out in a bunch of noise is something we all strive for. But, on the nihilistic side of things, it means nothing.
Ruins of the past
When I was in college, I traveled once to a mountain in southern Bandung, Indonesia. It was the place where students would take part in a training camp, something like a boot camp for the freshmen. I went there with my fellow student organizer. There was a moment you feel like strolling mindlessly through the thick bushes and dark forest. And I did.
On that track, as a pedestrian of nature, I saw something down the small river stream. A building lies under a layer of mosses and ferns. It was the ruins of Radio Malabar.
Radio Malabar, in colonial times, was a long-wave trans-continental radio transmitter receiver. It connected Indonesia, or the Dutch Indies colony, with the continental Netherland. It was a celebrated victory of science. They employed a set of copper cables that span between two big mountains — Mount Puntang and Mount Haruman — over the Malabar gorge. It was a huge feat of technological advancement at the time. At the time of the launch, it was one of the farthest distances a radio transmission can connect. The first transmission they sent was a congratulatory message for Dutch independence to their lord, the Queen of the Netherland.
That huge asset, that celebrated victory, was all but damp rubble covered with dirt, down the river.
It used to be a building that people would look at and say “wow!”. Now, it’s dead. They became the forest they once were. Nature took charge from there on. They became a part of the ecosystem, practically indistinguishable (if not for the reconstruction initiatives by a famous celebrity).
Obscurity takes place, then. What I walked into was not a man-made wonder. It was nature in action. Something so great and tremendously artificial was then lying dead in the dirt. Being indistinguishable, being so similar to other things around, it became one with the rest. Unseen, yet exist someplace somewhere. The verge of being and not being.
Escaping obscurity; escaping the inevitability
Obscurity is inevitable as people die and idea withers, yet people keep finding a way to escape from it.
One of the ways is to be synonymous with something bigger than oneself. They became an icon, gaining either positive fame or negative notoriety. Mahatma Gandhi is remembered to be an icon of pacifism. Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr, and Obama are remembered as an icon of black identity and the pride of the American black. Hitler became synonymous with white supremacy, racism, and genocide, even when the Soviets might be doing the same thing down the line. They escaped obscurity, at least in this lifetime.
But still, obscurity is inevitable. Someone so famed and fortuned in one part of the world might be as obscure as a random tourist lost from their tour group. We heard the news about someone famous suddenly giving up their fame: they feel secure in the obscurity, to a point where they enjoy being unknown. Being obscure, being unknown, being unrecognized, blending in, indistinguishable from the rest, is indeed bliss for some.
Embracing obscurity is something great people would do. Some even deliberately reject fame, avoid fortune, stay low, and stay obscure, because it’s a nice thing to do. The Bandung ballad singer community is saddened by the death of Mukti-Mukti earlier this August. For some, even fellow Indonesian, the name is rather unheard of if not unknown. Mukti-Mukti never wanted fame. Yet he did a great career that spans around 30 years. He’s a great singer-songwriter, his songs touched people that are unknown and unseen: the common people. He sang for the rice farmers, the ones that are forgotten even when Indonesia is one of the major rice consumers in the world. He sang for the obscure people, for he was obscure and he loved obscurity.
The most noble of you…
In the spirit of defining the essence of things, as quantum scientists and astrophysicists strive for, everything in this very universe is nothing but a bunch of particles made from dead stars and unborn galaxies. We already are the noises. Then someone — or something — sort of builds those raw materials into souls, consciousness, life, and hence humanity. Humans were created out of luck. Humans are a perfect mix of those celestial materials that can think of themselves. In the spirit of defining the essence of things, we are already indifferent to the rest.
How, then, should we try to differ from the rest, if it’s what we should be searching for?
Muslim believe that what differentiates a person from the others, what makes someone more noble than the others, is their virtue. “The most noble of you in the sight of Allah is the most righteous of you (the Qur’an, 49:13). It is not what we made from, or where we begin. But what we do during our lifetime, our deeds, our actions, is what defines us.
In the Crusade film ‘Kingdom of Heaven’ (Ridley Scott, 2005), the character Balian of Ibelin questioned the same thing: what makes a knight in Crusade truly a knight? Is it from the inheritance, political affiliation, or else? “for a poor man in the village of France, in the Holy Land is a master of a city. A master of a city, in the Holy Land, begs in the gutters.” Balian got it from his father, Baron Godfrey of Ibelin. Balian came from a humble beginning. He lost everything and surrender himself to fate, as even God did not speak to him. When he inherited the knightly position from his father, he never took it too deeply. So when Jerusalem fell, he never thought of his position, his inherited wealth, nor his God. He turned his attention to his people and their safety.
What is it, then, that define who’s who among the people, if not their deed and actions?
