Success and Failure

I've been thinking a lot recently about the meaning of "success". What does it mean?  And who defines what it means.

There's a bunch of reasons I've been contemplating this, but it is an interesting question in a way.  I wonder if, individually, we're satisfied with the societal definition of success, and whether as a society of over 300 million, we're capable of really tolerating the individual definition of success?  The answer to the latter is, I think, yes, but it's not a clear matter.

We only live once, in spite of what Hindus may assert, so this go around is it.  Given that, our time on earth is quite short compared to eternity, and our own definition of success hardly matters. Even the most successful amongst us ends up dead and forgotten.  Who remembers the individual rich in Rome?  Not many.  I'm sure you could find some of their names if you were of an academic bent, but by and large, all secular success yields to the Roman Maxim that "All Glory is fleeting."

On that scale, the only success is a life worth living on a metaphysical scale, a standard that is not likely to get you much accolades, and even fewer physical items, than any other sort of success, but which is still a true success.

But, while keeping that in mind, let's consider the smaller definitions of success.

In this day and age in the United States, the only real standard of societal success is considered the accumulation of money. That is, you are a success, society will hold, if you make a lot of money, both annually, and over a lifetime.  This has always been somewhat the held up standard in the United States, but it is virtually the only standard right now.  It's the standard that schools aim for in education.  It's the standard that is talked about in the news.  It's the standard that Americans are supposed to shoot for.

This cannot be overemphasized.  Individuals are expected to leave home and family to achieve an education that allows them to achieve this.  They're expected to follow that brass ring where ever it goes.  If that means leaving a small town and ending up in a string of big cities, you are expected to do it.  It means that perhaps you are supposed to end up in a wealthier subdivision of a sweltering hot southern US city that you will virtually never leave during the average week.  If you are female, it means you are to postpone marriage and children for a career, and when you marry, you are to marry based on wealth, not on any other factor.

And some people do indeed crave that sort of life.  I guess they are the societal models.

The problem is that it is quite well established that this sort of life doesn't lead to personal happiness, and actually tends to destroy it, for most people.  Money and trinket acquisition generally doesn't make people happy, but people are sacrificing everything to get it. Why?

Well, partially they do it because it's an instinct.  Back in our early, aboriginal, days, acquiring what you could was good insurance against the coming lean periods.  That was true for many people many millennia later as well.  Of course, in those days you couldn't acquire on credit, so acquisition really was a hedge against starvation.  Say, the lean times come and I need to get some food for my family. . . will you take seven horses?  So it made sense at that time.  Now, of course, as the Seven ATVs and the Condo in Ft. Lauderdale were acquired with credit, that won't work.  The instinct remains, however.

Partially do that, however, as modern society schools us accordingly.  Study hard, go to a good college (on credit) get that good paying career, and follow it.  Postpone marriage, children, and live where they send you.  People are taught this, and most people are very obedient to what they are taught.

This was not always the case.  Really, up in to the 1950s there were entire sections of the population, perhaps even a near majority of the population, that was taught to emphasize family.  People didn't feel compelled to uproot, or to force their offspring to uproot, for a job.  People often found local work, married relatively young, and didn't move much. Family, church, and local society tended to be their focus.  They were likely much happier than people generally are today.  Get in close with people living "the dream" and you find many are not very happy.  Indeed, entire occupations and demographics are bitterly unhappy, mostly because they ended up where they are by focusing on career and money.

But now, with our current society, do we even have a choice? The American economy is in trouble, we all know. But it depends on this model.  Basically, our economy depends on the sale of really cheap goods manufactured overseas, and sold by those making low wages, which the rest of us buy through money acquired by our careers.  If we don't focus on career, who is going to buy the condos, the Lexus cars, the ATVs, etc. etc?  So, we are making ourselves largely miserable in order to support a system of misery.  Our entire modern economy depends on it.  In order to escape working for the Walmart Empire of Doom you need to be educated to fit into a career that will free you from the lowest economic level, seriously, which will tie you into a career of economic slavery and nomadism.  The economy truly depends on it.

Not all societies are as enslaved to this system as we are.  Even today, Europeans, particularly those European societies currently being dumped on, are not.  We seem to irrevocably be, however.