eh, I used to think this too, but time spent studying anarchism (hey, its intellectually interesting) has left me with the conclusion that its a natural human t

eh, I used to think this too, but time spent studying anarchism (hey, its intellectually interesting) has left me with the conclusion that its a natural human tendency in any social system. Simply put: no matter the idea or society involved (even if the idea is anti-hierarchy, anti-status like anarchism), it is easier to remember the idea if there is a face you can put to the name. Put into practice, that means that most cultural, ideological, social or matters of importance will end up having at least one person associated with them. Those people, in turn, then become celebrities by virtue of the fact that lost of people then associate the idea or phenomenon with the person. Advertising and propaganda then catapult that into the phenomenon we have today of celebrities, but that's ultimately just making 100x more potent what would otherwise be an unavoidable (and I saw unavoidable because even anarchist communities can't get away from it) aspect of how humans interpret and remember things about the world. Put another way, I think this is a similar side of the coin to the fact that most people tend to (consciously or not) put together lists of: "X knows about this better than me, and I trust X, and don't have time to devote to learning about this topic, therefore if I ever need to know more about this topic I can call X" for almost every aspect of our lives. Note: I have no source here, this is just personally derived observation. A real study on this would be quite interesting. Though I'm sure when we discussed its results, we would do so by discussing the scientist's name and reputation.