Fame Seekers

What Motivates Fame Seekers? "For most of its existence, the field of psychology has ignored fame as a primary motivator of human behavior: it was considered too shallow, too culturally variable, too often mingled with other motives to be taken seriously. But in recent years, a small number of social scientists have begun to study and think about fame in a different way, ranking it with other goals, measuring its psychological effects, characterizing its devoted seekers." The New York Times 08/22/06

I’ve touched on this a bit in recent posts. What levels of fame are important to each individual? Art is particularly interesting from this perspective. Many of the famous modern artists of the last 100 years may be completely unfamiliar to most of the friends and family from my youth. So I cannot be motivated to become the next Julian Schnabel simply via their level of understanding. Does that mean I am unattached to the idea of fame? Certainly not; but it does bring into question - Just who am I trying to impress? – DN