Whitehead on the Desire
to be Famous
",,,the egotistic desire for fame—‘that last infirmity’—is an inversion of the social impulse, and yet presupposes it. The tendency shows itself in the trivialities of child-life, as well as in the career of some conqueror before whom mankind trembled. In the widest sense, it is the craving for sympathy. It involves the feeling that each act of experience is a central reality, claiming all things as its own. The world has then no justification except as a satisfaction of such claims. But the point is that the desire for admiring attention becomes futile except in the presence of an audience fit to render it. The pathology of feeling, so often exemplified, consists in the destruction of the audience for the sake of the fame. There is also, of course, the sheer love of command, finally devoid of high purpose. The complexity of human motive, the entwinement of its threads, is infinite."
-- Alfred North Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas
Paraphrase
The desire for fame—what Milton called “that last infirmity of noble minds”—is, at its core, a distortion of our natural social impulse. It flips outward connection into self-centered craving. And yet, paradoxically, it still depends on that social connection to exist. We see this drive even in the small vanities of childhood, as well as in the craving for fame among politicians and celebrities.. At its root, the desire for fame is a yearning for sympathy—a longing to be seen, recognized, and admired.
This drive has a narcissistic dimension. It arises from the feeling that our own experience is the center of reality, that everything around us should serve to affirm and respond to our importance. In this mindset, the world only has meaning if it reflects and satisfies our personal significance. But there is a catch: the craving for admiration becomes meaningless without an audience worthy of giving it. The tragedy—the pathology—of this kind of desire is that, in the pursuit of fame, people often destroy or disregard the very community that could have honored them.
Alongside this is a more barren desire: the pure hunger for power and control, which loses any connection to greater purpose. In all of this, what we see is the deep and tangled web of human motives—so intricate, so knotted, that their complexity seems without limit.
Social Media: Intensifying the Desire for Fame
In Whitehead’s time, the pursuit of fame manifested in public performance, conquest, and political ambition. Today, it plays out on a more ubiquitous and democratized stage: social media. Platforms like Instagram, TikTok, X (formerly Twitter), and Facebook invite not only expression but performance—each user a potential celebrity, each post a bid for admiration, each like or comment a sign of validation.
This environment intensifies the ancient craving Whitehead identified: the desire for admiring attention. It also creates a powerful contrast between the fantasy of fame and the reality of invisibility. In the scrolling mirror of curated lives, the absence of online recognition can feel like a form of non-being. To lack a presence—or to have a presence that goes unnoticed—can evoke a sense of unworthiness, as though the person has failed to exist in the ways that matter most in the culture of attention.
The Divine Lure toward Humility
In this context, the lure of God may be a quiet invitation to re-center our sense of worth apart from spectacle—to seek forms of being that are relational, generous, and honest rather than performative. It may be a lure toward self-relativization and humility, a reminder that the value of a life does not rest on its visibility, but on its capacity to care, to connect, and to become.
At least this is how things seem in process thought. In process thought God is not an all-controlling sovereign but a lure—a presence that beckons each person, and for that matter each, creature toward the realization of its best possibilities. This lure is not coercive. It does not override freedom. It calls, quietly and persistently, toward value: toward richness of experience, toward harmony, toward truth, toward love.
But just as often, the lure of God calls us away from something: away from our inflated sense of centrality, our illusions of self-sufficiency. God lures us, again and again, toward self-relativization—the recognition that we are part of something much larger than ourselves, and not its center.
A Deeper Sense of Belonging
This lure is not a diminishment. It is an opening. In relativizing the self, we become more capable of seeing others in their full complexity, seeing the world in its deep interrelatedness, seeing ourselves as participants rather than possessors, contributors rather than controllers. Humility, in this light, is not self-denial but self-decentering. It is the acknowledgment that our own perspective, while real and meaningful, is not exhaustive or absolute. It is one thread in a larger tapestry of becoming.
There is a metaphysic behind this. Whitehead teaches that every actuality—the smallest quark, the largest star, and the human soul—becomes itself by integrating the influences of others and responding to the lure of new possibilities. Thus, every act of becoming is an act of relationship, and humility is the spiritual posture that makes such becoming more attuned, more responsive, more alive to beauty and to truth.
In short, God does not crush the ego. God invites it to loosen its grip, to join a wider network. To feel this lure is to feel the sacredness of all that is not the self: the stranger, the tree, the silence, the suffering, the stars. It is to realize that others matter just as much as we do. That truth is more important than being right. That goodness is larger than our need for recognition. That love is deeper than our craving for sympathy.
-- Alfred North Whitehead, Adventures of Ideas
Paraphrase
The desire for fame—what Milton called “that last infirmity of noble minds”—is, at its core, a distortion of our natural social impulse. It flips outward connection into self-centered craving. And yet, paradoxically, it still depends on that social connection to exist. We see this drive even in the small vanities of childhood, as well as in the craving for fame among politicians and celebrities.. At its root, the desire for fame is a yearning for sympathy—a longing to be seen, recognized, and admired.
This drive has a narcissistic dimension. It arises from the feeling that our own experience is the center of reality, that everything around us should serve to affirm and respond to our importance. In this mindset, the world only has meaning if it reflects and satisfies our personal significance. But there is a catch: the craving for admiration becomes meaningless without an audience worthy of giving it. The tragedy—the pathology—of this kind of desire is that, in the pursuit of fame, people often destroy or disregard the very community that could have honored them.
Alongside this is a more barren desire: the pure hunger for power and control, which loses any connection to greater purpose. In all of this, what we see is the deep and tangled web of human motives—so intricate, so knotted, that their complexity seems without limit.
Social Media: Intensifying the Desire for Fame
In Whitehead’s time, the pursuit of fame manifested in public performance, conquest, and political ambition. Today, it plays out on a more ubiquitous and democratized stage: social media. Platforms like Instagram, TikTok, X (formerly Twitter), and Facebook invite not only expression but performance—each user a potential celebrity, each post a bid for admiration, each like or comment a sign of validation.
This environment intensifies the ancient craving Whitehead identified: the desire for admiring attention. It also creates a powerful contrast between the fantasy of fame and the reality of invisibility. In the scrolling mirror of curated lives, the absence of online recognition can feel like a form of non-being. To lack a presence—or to have a presence that goes unnoticed—can evoke a sense of unworthiness, as though the person has failed to exist in the ways that matter most in the culture of attention.
The Divine Lure toward Humility
In this context, the lure of God may be a quiet invitation to re-center our sense of worth apart from spectacle—to seek forms of being that are relational, generous, and honest rather than performative. It may be a lure toward self-relativization and humility, a reminder that the value of a life does not rest on its visibility, but on its capacity to care, to connect, and to become.
At least this is how things seem in process thought. In process thought God is not an all-controlling sovereign but a lure—a presence that beckons each person, and for that matter each, creature toward the realization of its best possibilities. This lure is not coercive. It does not override freedom. It calls, quietly and persistently, toward value: toward richness of experience, toward harmony, toward truth, toward love.
But just as often, the lure of God calls us away from something: away from our inflated sense of centrality, our illusions of self-sufficiency. God lures us, again and again, toward self-relativization—the recognition that we are part of something much larger than ourselves, and not its center.
A Deeper Sense of Belonging
This lure is not a diminishment. It is an opening. In relativizing the self, we become more capable of seeing others in their full complexity, seeing the world in its deep interrelatedness, seeing ourselves as participants rather than possessors, contributors rather than controllers. Humility, in this light, is not self-denial but self-decentering. It is the acknowledgment that our own perspective, while real and meaningful, is not exhaustive or absolute. It is one thread in a larger tapestry of becoming.
There is a metaphysic behind this. Whitehead teaches that every actuality—the smallest quark, the largest star, and the human soul—becomes itself by integrating the influences of others and responding to the lure of new possibilities. Thus, every act of becoming is an act of relationship, and humility is the spiritual posture that makes such becoming more attuned, more responsive, more alive to beauty and to truth.
In short, God does not crush the ego. God invites it to loosen its grip, to join a wider network. To feel this lure is to feel the sacredness of all that is not the self: the stranger, the tree, the silence, the suffering, the stars. It is to realize that others matter just as much as we do. That truth is more important than being right. That goodness is larger than our need for recognition. That love is deeper than our craving for sympathy.