In class discussion there was a comparison of sophist to
modern celebrities or self-help authors which I found extremely interesting in
that it points to the nexus of money, status, and influence. This perpetual
relationship is intriguing too because it seems that each component is either
not as strong or non-existent without one or both of the others.
Now you may be thinking, aren’t money, status, and influence
one in the same? And you’d be right to think that. At this point we have
naturally grouped them since where we see one we typically see all three. But
indeed they do differ. Money is wealth, assets, and income assumingly earned or
inherited. Status can be social, political, or economical according to a class
system. And influence seems to be a little more different than that, signifying
some skill or reputation that gives one the ability to prevent or make things
happen. Certainly they can each exist without the other, so then they must be
different. But the fact that our very connotations of the terms link them bring
even more truth to the average person’s idea of the celebrity or in ancient
Greece, the sophists.
Moreover, though they can exist without each other there is
a consensus that they are all stronger even if only one is magnified. For example,
Donald Trump gets richer the more status and influence he gets. Conversely, if
one is mitigated it could follow that the others would suffer too, i.e. when Mc
Hammer went bankrupt he no longer had the status of a good artist nor could he
influence music or music lovers in a significant way. This of course, like any
argument, has its holes because one could argue that my very mention of Mc
Hammer must mean he retained some status/influence. Nevertheless, sophist were
still the celebrities of their time, having an excess of status(wisdom),
influence and of course money.
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