by Richard G. Lanzara

Created on: August 20, 2008

If we take the average number of words spoken per minute at about 200, then over fifteen minutes you would have roughly 3,000 words to speak to the world during your 15 minutes of fame. This is quite a substantial number of words - almost a short story. If you practiced, you could tell a very condensed version of your life story or you could give the world an ear-full of your accumulated wisdom and advice. Alternatively, you could make a pitch for your favorite cause or charity. You'd also be in a prime position to advertise or endorse some product that might leverage your success and extend your 15 minutes of fame by continuing advertisements.

You might tell people how to spot the future evil despots of this world such as by their pictures or statues prominently displayed and dutifully worshiped. However, as we've seen, these despots may stabilize otherwise volatile regions of the world. Most of us living under an advanced democracy would never wish to be subjected to the rule of a despot, but the rest of the world is a very difficult place to survive and those people trying to survive may prefer living under a despot to the alternatives of uncertainty and potential chaos. So how are we to judge? Just because we suddenly acquire 15 minutes of fame doesn't make us wise or knowledgeable.

Perhaps our message should be "judge not, lest ye be so judged" or "do unto others as you would have them do unto you". Perhaps these sound like old sayings that aren't cool enough for today's world. Most people might ignore them as too old and trite. Not that the trite and true is necessarily bad advice... So instead, maybe we should find something cool enough so that we can leverage our 15 minutes. However, trying to leverage 15 minutes may produce endless acts of leveraging such that we end up constantly having to say or look like a famously "It" person. This can be self-destructive and lead to endless cycles of self promotion as we often see with many celebrity figures today.

Therefore we have to come up with something new... Something that the world has never before witnessed or heard... Something so outrageous that it just might be true. Like the idea that all of our senses and the entire universe function as systems in equilibrium that can be perturbed as a simple balance can be perturbed to new equilibrium positions. Or that the way cells divide is to produce new membrane. Or that cancer is a defect in the calcium gate of cells. Or that we're all angels, fallen or otherwise, it is just that some of us don't realize it yet...

We can't all be geniuses who create new futures for mankind, but we can offer our two cents worth of experience and advice that just might tip the balance during our 15 minutes of fame. In the final analysis we're all trying to create a better world either for ourselves or others and 15 minutes of fame gives us our sounding board, so you'd better be ready if it ever happens to you.

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