Reputation is oft got without merit and lost without crime

Reputation is oft got without merit and lost without crime.

The latest air-head pop star shoots to fame on a lucky-break record and sustains their place in the media spotlight with moronic, outrageous behaviour. A passably attractive girl becomes the girlfriend of a successful star and achieves celebrity status by association. A military commander achieves a victory because his even more incompetent opponent was having a worse than usual off day. Second-rate politicians win elections simply because the public are totally disillusioned with their opponents. These people will often rationalise their success and believe it was due to their inner greatness. When their balloons finally pop they disappear into media oblivion.

People of genuine ability can remain unknown and be "born to bloom and waste their sweetness on the desert air". Those who do gain recognition for their genuine ability are always at the mercy of the undeserved smear or dictates of fashion. Having built someone up the media grow bored and then, like schoolboys who have patiently constructed a sandcastle, take fiendish delight in demolition.

"Life", as they say, "is nine parts cards one part skill".

Reputation is commonly measured by the acre.

Reputation is commonly measured by the acre.

In the day and age when most wealth was in the form of land ownership this saying would be readily understood.

We all know people whose standing in a community is assessed not on their abilities or achievements but on the wealth that they own. There is an observable tendency for people to hero worship success and ascribe great worth to those who have acquired the things we all tend to envy. Inherited wealth might fall into the hands of a naturally able person who is given a good education by wise parents and this can lead to a flourishing of someone's talents, albeit as a result of privilege. It can also fall into the hands of unsuitable persons who will abuse the luck that fortune has bestowed.

The individual who succeeds on their own merit is not immune to folly either. A singer, for example, might become fabulously wealth by using their God given talent and the masses will wish to follow their styles, clothes, haircuts etc. and regard their every utterance as gospel. But very often they are one-trick ponies and their opinions and activities outside their one area of competence are no better and probably worse than average.

In assessing a person's ability it is important to go on the facts and not judge by appearances or possessions.