Another interesting GRE essay. The prompt was as follows: “Sports stars and movie stars have an obligation to behave as role models for the young people who look up to them. In return for the millions of dollars that they are paid, we should expect them to fulfill this societal responsibility.”

If I had more time, I would have certainly alluded to passages from Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments.

It is man’s innate tendency to search for idols and to lionise those he sees as superhuman. But the extent to which this lionisation and idolisation is appropriate and healthy is up for question. According to the claim presented, sportsmen and thespians ought to be held to higher standards of conduct because they earn copious amounts of money and tend to provide inspiration, especially for the youth. However, this stance suffers from many issues: it correlates ethical action with high incomes; it assumes sportsmen and movie stars are paid for this expressed purpose; and that such payment construes a moral and ethical obligation to be well-behaved and pose as “role models” for the younger generation. I will seek to argue that this is not the case: that being a sportsman or a movie star has no relation to their ethical conduct or their excellence, that what happens off screen and off the field is of no bearing to these professions, and that the sum total of this expectation is misplaced because it pushes into the domain of obligation for a few what ought to be the domain of all.

While the claim posits that movie stars and sportsmen ought to behave as role models because they are held up as such by the youth, such argument is prone to tautological definition. One ought to look up to someone as a role model because they are considered to be exemplars of virtue or skill in a particular field, but in this case, the claim presupposes that the youth look up to men in these positions because they are merely there. It defines role models in perfectly circular terms: it does not seek to establish what one must look for in a role model. But why are movie stars and sportsmen held up as exemplars? The answer, here, implicit in the claim, is that their sole contribution is being rich and famous. However, this does not incur an obligation to be well-behaved, broadly understood, as it ought to be distinct from other members of society. What happens on screen and off the field is of no bearing to their professions, unless it contravenes the rules of their profession. For example, the cyclist Lance Armstrong, who won back-to-back Tour de France championships after he had a long and arduous battle with cancer, fell from grace not because of some perceived impasse in his personal life but because it had been revealed that he, among others in the US Postal Cycling Team, had engaged in the use of performance enhancing drugs during competitions, giving them an unfair competitive advantage and engaging in cheating and doping. In this case, Mr. Armstrong was dropped by his sponsors, including Nike, because he had violated the rules of the game and partook in unbecoming conduct related to the sport. On the other hand, multiple footballers have been featured across British tabloids for their nocturnal antics, including one that famously crashed a sports car in the middle of the night. But their activities have nothing to do with their performance on the field; such footballers, while certainly not behaving in an appropriate and becoming manner of any individual, do not deserve to be dropped from their teams for their antics off the field until and unless such antics infringe on their sporting abilities.

This brings me to my next point, which is that movie stars and sportsmen earn immense sums of money because they are at the top of their professions: they are excellent actors and excellent players of the sport. This has no bearing on their conduct outside: they were not selected for knowing what virtue is and acting in accordance with it, but for being excellent sportsmen and excellent movie stars. They are paid for winning games and for acting in popular and critically aaclaimed movies, not for being exemplars for the youth. To suppose that this incurs an obligation beyond what is expected of each and every individual to behave in a moral, upright manner is to seek to hold them to different standards, and not because they ought to be held as such: it is perfectly reasonable to expect politicians to think about the practical wisdom needed to be politicians, to rule and be ruled, but also to uphold them to higher standards because they exercise power over many others, and must be free of taint. Those who revel in immoral activities cannot know the form of the good, as Plato notes; even Aristotle, who differs so famously from his teacher, remarks that because the polis, the city, aims at the highest possible good — human flourishing — those expected to run it, in whatever form, must contribute to it by being exemplars of virtue. But no such political power is vested in such an individual who may find himself succeeding on the silver screen or the football pitch. Tiger Woods, a remarkably successful golfer, was found cheating on his wife, and while his conduct off the green was sordid and unbecoming, it does not make him any worse as a golfer: he was being paid solely to play golf — nothing less, nothing more. The claim’s argument — that “in return for the millions of dollars that they are paid”, we should expect them to behave in an upright manner — cannot stand because it assumes that those who occupy such positions have a special obligation to behave well, more so than other people. This violates, in broad strokes, even that Kantian categorical imperative which has so fastiduously and rigorously been the source of much moral decision making: one ought to treat others like one ought to treat oneself.

However, if sportsmen and thespians do not act in a manner commiserate with virtue and excellence, with moral strength and ethical insight, they ought not to be held as role models — one ought to search for one’s role models in those who are already excellent. It is better to have Socrates as a role model than Lance Armstrong, better to look to Marcus Aurelius than David Beckham, to Aristotle rather than Leonardo di Caprio. We should seek role models not in the rich and the famous but in the virtuous and the wise, those from whom we can learn and become better individuals. Movie stars and sports men exhibit excellence in their spheres of action, and we must respect them for that, but no more, and no less: unless they positively show it to be true, they are not role models worthy of veneration and idolisation.