Role model: who is yours?

[100%JR]

Lance Dopestrong, sorry armstring, used to be a role model

Still is now and probably more so than he was 99-05.
He still will be in another 20 years

[gbnz]

Role model

MYSELF (Nb. I'm sure A N Other will have posted the same, earlier in the thread)

[Cyril Haearn]

Sam Tan, Fireman Sam, from Pontypandy, he is exemplary, too good to be true

[Mick F]

I still think this ......................

A Role Model is someone who makes you think that you wish were a bit more like them.

This is what I cannot comprehend.
Why would anyone want to be like someone else?
Personally, I'm happy and content being me, and always have been.
I can admire different people for their attributes/qualities etc, but I wouldn't want to be like them.

"Role Model" idea seems a sad idea to me.
It smacks of being a person who aspires to be someone else.

[Bonefishblues]

Think about it as an individual who displays characteristics and behaviours that you would like to adopt, as opposed to wanting to 'be like' them.

I'm quite keen on the idea of being more like a NI EuroLottery Winner at the moment

[Cyril Haearn]

I still think this ......................

A Role Model is someone who makes you think that you wish were a bit more like them.

This is what I cannot comprehend.
Why would anyone want to be like someone else?
Personally, I'm happy and content being me, and always have been.
I can admire different people for their attributes/qualities etc, but I wouldn't want to be like them.

"Role Model" idea seems a sad idea to me.
It smacks of being a person who aspires to be someone else.

May I adopt Mick F as my role model? He did LeJoG on a Chopper, +858 (miles)
I have not done LeJoG yet, not even been to Cornwall, yet

[Cugel]

I still think this ......................

A Role Model is someone who makes you think that you wish were a bit more like them.

This is what I cannot comprehend.
Why would anyone want to be like someone else?
Personally, I'm happy and content being me, and always have been.
I can admire different people for their attributes/qualities etc, but I wouldn't want to be like them.

"Role Model" idea seems a sad idea to me.
It smacks of being a person who aspires to be someone else.

May I adopt Mick F as my role model? He did LeJoG on a Chopper, +858 (miles)
I have not done LeJoG yet, not even been to Cornwall, yet

Chopper-riding LEJOG is not a role I would like to play. In fact, you can keep LEJOG, as there are much nicer routes over which to do 858 miles.

How do you feel about those folk ascending the height of Everest by going up their street 793 times because of the bit of a slope it has? Mad, them!

Still, many have taken one mad person or another for a role model. Oswald found Adolf a splendid example, for instance. I knew many a lad in my yoof who looked up to and copied the antics of one local psychopath or another......

Cugel

[NATURAL ANKLING]

Hi,

I still think this ......................

A Role Model is someone who makes you think that you wish were a bit more like them.

This is what I cannot comprehend.
Why would anyone want to be like someone else?
Personally, I'm happy and content being me, and always have been.
I can admire different people for their attributes/qualities etc, but I wouldn't want to be like them.

"Role Model" idea seems a sad idea to me.
It smacks of being a person who aspires to be someone else.

Yes respect for some thing people do, especially altruistically.
I am in that camp.................Mick's camp................we are one and the same.............dammed by some

[Patrickpioneer]

My role model? My Grandad.
Pat

[gaz]

Lance Dopestrong ... used to be a role model, doubtless for many on here

I'm not sure how Lance will feel when he hears that he is no longer your role model.

I wonder what he did to lose that status?

[Cyril Haearn]

'Saint' Regina Hildebrandt, East German politician, died 2001
Reading about her at lunchtime, had to laugh a lot
'Erzaehlt mir doch nich, dasset nicht jeht!', she would bark in her lovely Berlin accent
(Don't try to tell me we cannae do that!)

[cyclop]

Ken Russell-1952 tour of Britain winner.No team,next to no help from his back up vehicle(too slow),did it on his own.A massive chapeau.Not a role model though,just total respect.

[Cyril Haearn]

Greta Tintin Thunberg
* 3.1.2003
Travelled to Davos by train not by private jet!

[Oldjohnw]

I don't have role models. There are aspects of the behaviour and character of some which I have admired and respected and tried to learn from or even tried to emulate.

Everyone has feet of clay.

[Cugel]

I still think this ......................

A Role Model is someone who makes you think that you wish were a bit more like them.

This is what I cannot comprehend.
Why would anyone want to be like someone else?
Personally, I'm happy and content being me, and always have been.
I can admire different people for their attributes/qualities etc, but I wouldn't want to be like them.

"Role Model" idea seems a sad idea to me.
It smacks of being a person who aspires to be someone else.

Hmmmm - is this not just the perspective of a common-or-garden modern individual, unsure of the meaning of "social" ? One may read about past and present societies in which there is no such individualism and the folk regard themselves as an exudation of their history and culture, highly connected to all the others therein. The Far East has many such societies, for example.

In truth, even we Westerners are not at all individual, despite our wish, belief and craving that we are so. Very few of us indeed could survive, physically or mentally, without being part of a vast number of social and cultural institutions wrought and provided by history. In practice, we all copy each other most of the time. The essential function of language is to provide for this, as it shares not only the noises we make but their meanings. It also transmits our requirements of others - how we wish them to behave, believe and generally co-operate.

So the concept of a role model, although a little inimical to the more rabid notions of individualism, makes sense. We look to those providing the best examples of co-operative, considerate social behaviours that fulfill our requirements of others, particularly ourselves and those others we believe to be righteous.

Sadly, the very notion of individualism - especially in it's most rabid post-modern formats (think Trump and similar self-centred little skinbags) - undermines notions of social co-operation, common-feelings, behavioural expectations and other features of a civilised society. Instead, our current individualistic notions demand that we are able to do as we want; and that we expect others to do so too.

Such individualism is self-enforcing. When everyone seems to be nothing more than a self-centred little skinbag of greater or lesser degree, who is left acting in the righteous fashion we would wish to both benefit from and emulate? No one (hardly).

I do have a role model, though - the ladywife. I am also hers. This is known as "being married" in the old-fashioned way, in which there is always tolerance, compromise and co-operation, leading to contentment and happiness. There are other kinds of marriages in which two individuals remain as such. Far from being each other's role models, they often become bitter enemies.

Cugel