The man pictured above, in the banner, is Toshiro Mifune. It didn’t occur to me when I changed it that some people wouldn’t recognize who that was. At various times, I have built shrines to great men. Men I admire yet identify with and aspire to. My idols. My pantheon. The embodiment of the qualities I desire for my ideal self. Individuality, depth of emotion, strength, intelligence, intensity, sensitivity, humor, rebelliousness, and beauty. My religion is the worship of humanity in general and the worship of individual men and women.
Here are a sampling just off the top of my head. They should possess all of these qualities in varying degrees:
John Brown, Havelock Ellis, Voltaire, Bruce Lee, Paul Newman, Morrissey, Jesus (my idea of him), Marcus Aurelius, Kurt Vonnegut, Che Guevara, John Lennon, Marlon Brando, Albert Einstein, Toshiro Mifune, Charlie Chaplin, Wilhelm Reich, Jiddu Krishnamurti, Carl Jung, Mark Twain, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Clarence Darrow.
What piece of work is a man
How noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form
And moving how express and admirable, in action
How like an angel, in apprehension how like a god :
The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals
Hamlet (Act II, scene 2, 303-307)