On The Modern-Day Legendary Statistic

There's too many people these days. It's harder to be special, to stand out above all the rest. Perhaps as the economic and educational gaps become narrower (growing middle class, proliferation of college education), the "rest" are simply becoming harder to beat. You have to jump much higher now than you used to. It seems as though the situation has destroyed the environment that used to nurture the unique. People with potential were easier to single out then than they are today, or at least there weren't so many as to make such attention impractical. Everyone has a fighting chance now. Which is good for society as a whole, but not for the development of the legendary.

In the first half of the twentieth century, legendary people were true icons: Einstein, Babe Ruth, Frank Sinatra... these people (to name a few on a rather impressive list) defined their genres and were remembered for it their entire careers. They were never "washed-up," even when they no longer contributed. They had done everything they needed to secure their immortality. Nowadays how long do the legends last? A few years? A decade at the most? Michael Jordan, Sammy Sosa, Brad Pitt, Britney Spears... every time someone comes along now, they're replaced within a decade by someone better... or worse: by many more just as good. These recent "legends" are irrelevant now in the sea of others doing just as well as they were less than ten years ago, and I wouldn't say it's their fault. There's just too many people.

It seems that as more and more people turn up, better educated and with more money in their pocket than the last, society as a whole improves and develops itself more than it has in the past, but at the expense of the individual. There are just too many people to hand-pick and nurture those with unusual potential.