POPULARITY
Popularity is defined as “the state or condition of being
liked, admired, or supported by many people.
To become popular one must be genuinely kind, friendly, helpful,
sympathetic, dynamic, progressive, fair, impartial, unbiased, honest, trustworthy
and interested in public welfare. These qualities should be for everyone
without discrimination. Moreover, they should be natural and perpetual , not opportunistic
and ephemeral.
What one should aim at is lasting, not temporary popularity,
and for this one should be respectable on the basis of being permanently humble,
honest and un-corruptible.
Needless to say a popular person is superior to a number of
his rivals and is not unreliable. He should keep his promises and should not
take the help of excuses for not fulfilling them.
The English poet William Shenstone (1714-63) said: The love
of popularity seems little else than the love of being beloved; and is only
blamable when a person aims at the affections of a people by means in
appearance honest, but in their end pernicious and destructive.
According to the Roman poet Horace (65 BC-8 BC) : the common people are but ill judges of a man’s
merits; they are slaves to fame, and their eyes are dazzled with the pomp of
titles and large retinue. No wonder, then, that they bestow their honours on
those who least deserve them.
Hypocrites, turn-coats, fair-weather big guns, and unstable statesmen
cannot preserve their popularity for a long time. Any revelation of their moral
weakness destroys their popularity in the twinkling of an eye.
To conclude, this is what the American
President Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) said: You can fool all of the people some of the
time, and some of the people all of the time, but you can’t fool all of the
people all of the time.
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G.R.Kanwal
6th
January 2025
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