People vs. people

Is it fare that some people attract more public attention than the others? Why should I be more interested in the life of someone related to a royal family, or a popular musician, or a movie actress, than in the life of an ordinary man next door? Why any event involving an "eminent" person should be more important than the same event with a man-in-the-street? Does it agree with the claims of equality so often heard and cherished?

People are equal as long as they are people, that is, when they act like conscious individuals driven by reason (which is a subjective reflection of universal necessity). No titles, ranks, or possessions, could make one person better than another - especially, considering that no such distinction is given for the actual deeds of the person. Even if it had been so - but it was not - why should we judge about a person by their past? And even if a person were really valuable and acted in a universal way, why should it require any special attention or rewards? Isn't it the highest reward possible to feel like a real subject of activity, consciously re-creating the Universe?

The death of Lady Diana has attracted the attention of mass media, as if it were somewhat different from millions deaths occurring on the Earth every day. A person who just had a chance to be born in a rich aristocratic family, and whose acts were hardly anything but one more play of over-satiated idleness (when not mere ritual), was pictured as a mean of angel and hero, of a most extraordinary kind. Popularity? - it was largely exaggerated by press playing on the most base and primitive envy. Charity? - it looks humiliating, to give a pound to the poor while robbing them on millions. They wrote that the flowers brought to the house of Diana after her death cost 50 million dollars - at least a hundred families could have happily spend the rest of their lives, if this money had had been divided among them!

The death of Diana was of importance for a few her relatives and acquaintances only - but it in no way was an event of global importance. Thousands of people die in the wars, or of hunger, and many of them are surely much more valuable for the development of humanity than all the royal families of all times, plus presidents and prime ministers.

Exactly the same holds for popular writers, artists and actors, political leaders, scientists and philosophers... They are often said to leave us too early, and there are many guesses about what they could have done if only they had lived a little longer. But there are many other people on the Earth, who could do much better, if their lives were just a little less miserable. Every act of reason is equally valuable in the Universe, and it is a sign of under-development of the human society that it does not consider them as such.