The Art of Success
This is clearly going to be a game of semantics, as much of life is. Each of us will define success a bit differently, in part I reckon to justify our own life. We all want to verify our lives as a success. I am never sure what for since we are all dead in the long run----maybe. Despite the strongest faith in the world, any life after death is about as understandable as the origin of life or the origin of God or any something from nothing. Thus, I will define success as pertaining to our lives here on earth.
It seems the goal of success should be contentment. If one achieves anything and is not content, how can that possibly be titled success? I guess, to some degree, one man's hell is another man's heaven. Your key to success may have have little to do with my key to success. Perhaps it starts with not aiming too high. We have all known fools who aim so high over their head as to be pitiful. Of course there are those who aim too high and end up higher. So go figure. When well meaning politicians claim anyone can grow up to be President it is an absurdity (if one eliminates George Bush The Decider). Some claim everyone should be able to go to college. Really? I doubt they have ever been a teacher. Of course not everyone can succeed at college, and not everyone can be a star basketball player or good mechanic, etc. To claim otherwise is just disingenuous silliness.
Fortunately, if the goal set is achievable most everyone can be a success, ie. they can end up contented--in theory. What does some kid in Darfur consider success? I guess staying alive. What does the ugliest girl in high school consider success? I mean really, maybe success to her is just graduating, finding some kind of job to make a living and live someplace where she came escape the stares. If one ever spends much time in the city you find out where most of the misshapen, ugly, deformed, social/sexual outlaws live. I always wonder what years of being social outcasts have done to their psyche. It must be unbearable. If you have a talent that few others have and this talent is needed, then you can make a good living no matter how you look, behave, or dress. But how does one apply the word success to all of this? If you manage to have a long and healthy life with little money is that success? It seems success is virtually undefinable---an elusive concept with multiple interpretations and meanings.
One thing I have come to understand though, and that is this: Few of us can, without being full of shit, proclaim we earned our success. Nobody earned their genes so we can lop off that huge chunk of who we became. Hardly anything in our formative years have we earned---not physical appearance, our place of birth, the quality of our parents, the neighborhood we grew up in, the schools we attended, the religion we practice, and the list goes on. Evolution isn't driven by any organism earning anything, it is driven by diversity and chance and survival of the fittest.
Recently I read a book titled Outliers: The Story of Success. Much of what follows is simply stolen from this book. It explains more eloquently and with interesting examples my long time held notion that few of us 'earned' what we like to think we 'earned'. Success, Malcom Gladwell (the author) reminds us is due, in large part, to 'accumulative advantage'. You must have, of course innate talent for the task at hand. But this is not any earned talent, it is given talent. Most, with innate talent for the task, will never become the best at the task. In a study of really talented musicians no one could be found who floated effortlessly to the top while practicing a fraction of the time their peers did. This and other studies of different tasks generated this principle: 10,000 hrs of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world class expert in anything. I am not convinced this holds true in such a specific way, but the principle seems valid. You start with innate unearned ability and then you practice. To this Gladwell adds unusual opportunity. Unusual opportunity, in my mind, means essentially luck. You don't earn an unusual opportunity. A sociologist named Mills studied the background of the business elite from the Colonial era to the 20th century. Most all such business leaders came from privileged backgrounds EXCEPT those born in the 1930's. THUS, if you were born poor in the 1930's you had a much better chance of becoming a successful business man. To be born at this period in time, for that goal, is luck. No one earns at what period in time they are born. Many of those who are wealthy today did it in the computer field. We like to say, well, they earned it themselves. First of all, to do what any of them did requires a certain innate talent (unearned). Then they had to be born in a very narrow time period (again unearned) and then they had to find themselves with an unusual opportunity (unearned). They did have to act themselves on the opportunity (earned). The dates of birth for Gates, Allen, Ballmer, jobs, Schmidt, Joy, McNealy, Khosla, Bechtolsheim---all the big names in computer success giants are 1955, 1953, 1956, 1955, 1955, 1954, 1954, 1955, 1955. Gladwell then proceeds to identify the 'unusual opportunities' each found themselves in which enabled them to rise rapidly to the top. This means, in essence, that Bill Gates---born in a different year, not placed in an unusual circumstance---would not be where he is today. I can see this sort of reality in my own life. I was able to go to an expensive private college only because of a scholarship. While I wasn't a bad student (because of genetics, where I went to school, and parental environment, all unearned), I only got a huge scholarship because I could run a good distance at a fast pace (unearned). So it would be a stretch to say I got admitted to a real quality college because I EARNED IT. Furthermore, if there had not been a particular energetic new coach who incessantly recruited me to run, I would never have gone out for track or crosscountry. That was an unusual circumstance. Thus, much of what any of us claim WE EARNED is a huge overstatement.
There are some other interesting tidbits in Gladwell's book. Statistics show that if your I.Q, is 120 or above, it doesn't make any difference to how much success you are likely to achieve in your field. A mature scientist with an adult IQ of 130 is as likely to win a Nobel Prize as is one whose IQ is 180. Intellect and achievement are not well correlated. Studies have also shown that while affirmative action students don't achieve as high a grades in college as non affirmative action students, the success rate after graduation is about the same.This is why a psychologist named Schwartz has suggested that elite schools give up their complex admissions process and simply hold a lottery for everyone above the threshold for admission. The problem with affirmative action is that it got welded to race. Take out race and of course any student stuck in poor educational setting, with the innate ability to perform scholastic tasks, should be given the chance to do so. It doesn't make a lot of logic for someone blessed to have been in a good educational setting to claim "I earned my right to go to college". They simply had the right fortunate circumstances. When we use the term life isn't fair, we are simply being truthful.
What is ethics, when all is said and done, but the attempt to make things as fair as possible for everyone. What is the Golden Rule except the same thing. If I were born in an environment where the educational system was poor, and I didn't have any athletic ability, but had the innate ability to perform scholastic work, why shouldn't I be able to get into a good college? Those more fortunate didn't earn anything. So much of what we brag about is not earned at all.
Galdwell's book has a lot of interesting tidbits. Studies tracked the reading ability of kids in school over short periods of time. During the school year the students from poorer parents kept pace with improvement in reading during the school year with students from wealthier parents but the gap widened every time over the summer. Thus, for these kids from poorer environments the school year needs to be virtually year round to prevent regression and promote progression.
A sociologist named Lareau has studied the culture of middle class parenting with the culture of poor parents. She titles middle class parenting as 'concerted cultivation'. Poor parents tend to follow what she calls 'accomplishment of natural growth. They see their responsibility to let their children grow and develop on their own. She insists that one style is not morally better than the other. BUT, she claimed that "poorer children were often better behaved, less whiny, more creative in making use of their own time, and had a well developed sense of independence. But in practical terms, concerted cultivation gave enormous advantage. The heavily scheduled middle class child is exposed to a constantly shifting set of experiences. She/he learns teamwork and how to cope in highly structured settings. She/he is taught how to interact comfortably with adults, and to speak up when she/he needs to. In Lareau's words the middle class child learns a sense of entitlement."
For every species success is egocentric. Within every species the "I" is always forefront. Even when we sacrifice we do so because "I" think "I" should. Every concept of God by every civilization is "I" centered. It always starts with "what can God do for me". We will put God first if God will reward us. Then humans proceed to negotiate the terms. Ok, I will be moral IF God will then reward ME. We always vision God to be some kind of Father figure who needs us to worship Him or He will be angry. To show public support for the envisioned God we invent all sorts of rituals, ceremonies, and construct all sorts of glittering cathedrals of some sort. Almost always there is some sort of sacrifice involved. We may no longer slaughter animals as gifts to God but we carry out all sorts of prosecution and wars as our committed gifts to God's will be done. For God's will to be done all sorts of cruel and hateful acts are done to others. Every Army is loaded with clergy bestowing blessing on the massive amounts of killing. I wonder if all these proponents of needless war ever ask themselves "suppose God doesn't want me to kill these people". Uh Oh. Sometimes the "I" egocentricity becomes "our" egocentricity. Then it is "our" country or "our" religion or "our" culture or "our race" which becomes a strengthened egocentric drive. There is solace in numbers and the numbers increase the self assurance that "we" are right. I don't think, to this day, most Americans have ever come to real moral terms with what "we" did to 2 million Vietnamese people. We killed them, that's what we did and for what valid reason? If we had subdued them, would have that been a success? Really, the term success needs to be more carefully evaluated.
A lot of Americans cannot understand why so many others in the world have lost so much respect for us. Perhaps it goes way back to 1902 when the argument raged across America whether or not we should annex the Philippines. Senator Albert Beveridge put forth the argument for American subjugation of foreign lands very bluntly, the same arguments used today by the religious political right without the pretense and subtleties used today. Here, in his own words, describes what he means by success: "Mr. president, self-government and internal development have been the dominant notes of our first century; administration and the development of other lands will be the dominant notes of our second century......And we will move forward to our work giving thanksgiving to Almighty God that He has marked us as His chosen people, henceforth to lead in the regeneration of the world.....God has made us the master organizers of the world to establish systems where chaos reigns.....He has made us adept in government that we may administer government among savage and senile peoples. And of all our race, He has marked the American people as His chosen nation to lead finally in the the regeneration of the world. This is the divine mission of America, and it holds forth for us all the PROFIT, all the GLORY, all the HAPPINESS possible to man (wow, that is some success---all the profit, glory and happiness possible).....Pray God the time will never come when Mammon and the love of ease shall so debase our blood that we will fear to shed it for THE FLAG and its IMPERIAL DESTINY". Those who feel this way today are a bit more polished, more subtle. But their feelings are still the same, they are motivated by the same end points. This is their definition of a successful foreign policy, all of course being done in the name of God. To me it sounds like the Leader of Iran (I can't spell his name) who feels the same way about his country and his God. This is exactly why the world is so dangerous.
I am no longer sure success is so egocentric. God created an evolutionary process. Success, at least to God, might be the success of His process. By any measure the process has been amazing and in fact, is the reason we all are here today, in this "little gleam of Time between two eternities". I guess each of us, all part of the evolutionary process, contributes to the success of the process. But frankly, to the extent all of this may be true, I then don't feel particularly important and I certainly don't think my own success at anything is remotely important to the big picture. Rather, I am reminded that ashes make good fertilizer. We know grass is important because it helps fertilize the ground so future plants and trees can grow. Damn, maybe, in reality, we all live in some fashion or other, and any lasting success is as fertilizer for the evolutionary process. Ashes make good fertilizer. Maybe our real purpose is to make an Ash of ourselves. Smile.
This still does not negate individual success, it just puts it in a broader perspective. Many people, for differing reasons, are just not destined for personal success. That saddens me, it kind of dampens how I feel about my own success. Earlier in my life I would have felt I earned my success, however little or great it may have been; a bit older and wiser now I know this is poppycock. I didn't really earn much of anything. I have been quite lucky with all kinds of unearned timely advantages. At the very most, I simply took advantage of luck. I didn't just stand and watch the world go by: I saw openings and took them. Most people on the earth don't get any advantages nor do they get any openings. For them life is a bitch and then they die. The orphans of Darfur, children in our Drug War ghettoes, Palestinian refugees, the Jews in Germany during World War II, the Vietnamese in Vietnam during the Vietnam War, and the list goes on and on and on---the still sad voices of human misery.
I came, I wandered about, I saw, I contemplated, I had a full range of feelings, I appreciated diversity, I sided politically (in the end) with the oppressed everywhere, I loved, I won, I lost, I counted my blessings, and in the end appreciated God's evolutionary process and my role in it---ashes make good fertilizer. If there is to be any Addendum to life it is beyond my ability to logically postulate. As it is with God's evolutionary process, whatever will be will be. The laws of evolution control it, and that is why the process is so successful. That is success. Yes, glory be to God.
