Tom's Views

Dear [Mentat],

I’m inferring here that you believe that the faster and farther the human race progresses, the better.  But I don’t share this view, at least not so unconditionally. Indeed, practically all the people you’ve cited have raced ahead at blistering paces and accomplished truly remarkable things.  But, I submit that there’s something good to be said for those who can be content with how things are as well.  Change has its place, but so too does capitulation, as a Buddhist might say.  Accepting one’s fate can be just as liberating as breaking out of it, and is often quite a bit easier.  Albert Ellis and Robert Harper make this point in their [book] _Guide To Rational Living_.  In fact, they were the ones who mentioned the old age philosopher who extolled the advantages of having a healthy supply of resignation that I mentioned [earlier].  I don’t see that, generally speaking, either one or the other way to happiness is inherently any more likely to succeed.

Now I know you think that accomplishment reins supreme.  But I’m not sure that the world is in fact, _better_.  It’s obviously more advanced due to these movers and shakers you mention.  But better?  Again, I can’t make such a statement so generally.  Certainly, people have benefited from technology.  But it has problems too.  Now I’m not saying that we collectively should avoid advancements because of its difficulties.  However, its drawbacks should be considered, probably more so than they have been historically.  Short sightedness may allow us to innovate with greater rapidity, but in the end, may actually set us back to a greater degree than the advancements it afforded moved us forward.  The whole global warming business is a perfect example.  In some ways, yes, the world is better off [with the technologies that are creating the greenhouse gases, including the generation of electricity and the burning of fossle fuels for transportation purposes among many others].  However, human advancement has costs that we’re now [...] discover[ing], and whose long-term negative effects are as of yet unknown.

Another thing: Since innovation doesn’t typically come easily, I’m curious about why you [...] think that people must always be advancing in order [for] you to hold them in high esteem.    [If they are in fact, self acualized, then they may have no further need to advance themselves, but instead, take joy from basking in their wonderful life, as it is.]

Now to the upper bound [of success] not being constrained only by effort: Well, at least we agree on this.  But as noted above, I disagree with your dichotomous statement that humanity advances _only_ by overcoming its limits, and not at all by accepting them.  This is not an either-or scenario, because humans at the individual level advance best by _considering_ their limitations, determining what they’re best suited to do, and then accomplishing _that_ if they can.  They don’t advance well by blindly _ignoring_ their limits.  Well, at least, the ones who succeed to the highest degrees don’t.  Those who do, “waste [their] time in fruitless pursuits,” as Harry Flint describes it in the episode “Requiem for Methuselah” in Star Trek, The Original Series.  While it’s true that a good education opens many doors of opportunity, this training cannot be considered truly well-rounded unless the student learns about his limits as well.  A person may work as hard as he wishes.  But if he doesn’t work _smartly_, then no matter how much he works, he’ll probably fail.  Or, if he does manage to succeed, then he will have incurred excessive toil and heartache in the process.  He will have worked harder than he needed to, and this is a sad waste of a good life.

However, if, after careful consideration of limits, one chooses to pursue his dream, then yes, he should, even if it turns out fruitless.  Sometimes, picking the most fruitful pursuits is not the ultimate goal – sort of like my quest for my dream girl.  As fruitless as it has been and is likely to continue to be, I still work at it.  Perhaps when I’m 60, I’ll find her.

How do you know what Ben Carson was contending with at the deepest personal levels?  What makes you so sure that his success resulted from a steadfast refusal to succumb to _any_ limitation he might have perceived?  You’d be hard pressed to prove this negative.

Tom Hesley

Dear [Mentat],

True enough.  When you take the world view, monetary richness isn’t by any means the only measure of success.  However, I’ve used it frequently in my representations of success [in the posts today], because financial gain (or loss) is rather easy to quantify, and because the acquisition of financial wealth seems to be how most people in the west define their own quests for success.  That is, they consider themselves successful if they’ve managed to generate a big enough nest egg to enable them to live the American dream.  The money measurement of success provides a useful, although possibly inaccurate means of contrasting successful people with the ["losers"].

But yes, success has many other dimensions, not so easily measured externally to the person who is succeeding.  In fact, I’d suggest that the most complete definition of success would be the (primarily internal) achievement of a completely harmonious and tranquil mental state; a state of optimal inner peace, a place where the individual wants for nothing.  Now practically speaking, a person may never wholly achieve the status of _wanting for nothing_.  But if he’s reasonably resourceful, then he’ll be able to secure what he does desire in pretty short order, or, he’ll [possibly] be able to eliminate that desire [via totally resigning himself to the impossibility of fulfilling it] if it cannot be satisfied without incurring excessive cost.  In this definition, a person must possess the powers to both satiate his desires through gratification, and to stop chasing desires which will likely lead him to dissatisfaction and little reward.  Making lots of money provides one path to this ultimate success.  But as you point out, there are many paths, some of which involve no additional money made.

Tom Hesley

Dear [Mentat],

[...] One can indeed succeed within the framework established by his limitations.  A blind person might never be able to fly a plane for example.  But he _can_ be a lawyer, a systems analyst, a therapist, and many other occupations for which his limitations as well as his gifts are suited.   Acknowledging the power of one’s own shortcomings does not prevent him from succeeding.  In fact, doing so may make his subsequent success sweeter than if he’d just forged ahead and sought success in disciplines for which he has few gifts and many limitations.  Indeed, the presence of this fatalism serves as an important guidepost that helps a person position himself properly for success, by showing him which directions would likely lead to dead ends or that would limit his success potential more so than he’d like.

Also, consider that it is possible to have a fatalistic philosophy toward one activity while being intensely motivated to succeed at another.   The presence of resignation only keeps one from succeeding if he possesses it for all possible success paths for him. To think that one must ignore his limitations to succeed is wrong.  Indeed, the awareness of one’s limitations, once he tries a few success paths without success, can actually spur him to make progress in areas for which he is better suited to succeed.  [You've got to lose to know how to win, as Aerosmith sang in their hit, Dream On].

As to your question of how people who stick within their limits know how to handle their newfound wealth:  Well, many of them don’t handle it well at all.  In fact, they promptly lose it.  Would you say, for example, that Michael Jackson knew how to safeguard his wealth?  Did he know how to spend wisely or how to invest?  Last I heard, he owes hundreds of millions to his creditors, a debt which, even if he liquidated his estate, could not be paid in full.  He’s one of those cases you cite of someone making a giant leap beyond his bohemian upbringings.  But his lofty rise and quick fall also illustrates that acquiring and sustaining financial success is difficult without the deeply ingrained and success-promoting disciplines, traditions, and values that one gets from multiple generations of his ancestors.

I believe that persons from well-to-do families have, first of all, a better chance of acquiring their own wealth, and then, they are more likely to preserve it once they’ve got it.  The reasons for this number in the tens.   But I’ll just briefly mention a small number of them here:

• They possess knowledge of how to get and stay rich which they pass on to their children.  While it’s true that not all of that would work for the children given the changing economic climates from generation to generation, it at least supplies the offspring with basic wealth-generating concepts; ideas they master at very early ages due to early exposure.
• The way the parents behave also determines in large degree how the children behave as adults.  Indeed psychologists report that the single most important role model a child has is the same sexed parent, with the opposite sexed parent following close behind.
• The many practices and habits of the wealthy who actively engage their children are also passed on, and as noted, become second nature to many of them.  Now you could argue that history is full of children who defy their parents – they don’t want to take over the family business for example.  Nonetheless, the children still have benefited from this inherited habit set, even if they don’t use it as their parents would have preferred.  Their parents impart much general information, which applies to most any venture, and thus, the children are in a notably better position to duplicate their parents’ success if not their professions.

Finally, this ceiling as you call it may not be made of a completely impervious material.  But it is there to be sure, and presents a formidable barrier to practically everyone who reaches it.  It can be penetrated, but not without serious effort, effort which many consider to be too much.

Tom Hesley

Dear [Mentat],

Yes, compared to the ones who didn’t start businesses or whose businesses failed, the people that did succeed, in all likelihood, did indeed benefit from factors working in their favor _besides_ voluntary tenacity. In fact, voluntary tenacity may not be quite so _voluntary_.  Like most of the other aspects of personality, a man’s strength of will can be shown to be a product of his upbringing.  It could have originated either because of that environment, or sometimes, in spite of it.  Yet in either case, whether the child

• learns from his parents what _to do_ to succeed, or what _not_ to do,
• or he’s driven by a desire to emulate his parents or to defy them,

the upbringing contributes markedly to how far he ultimately travels toward success.   

Finally, in reference to the huge conglomerates such as Sun Microsystems, Amazon, and the biotech companies:  It’s important to note that the people who started these [organizations] cannot be given _full_ credit for their growth into fortune five-hundred companies.  These empires, particularly the publicly held ones, got to where they are due to the work and leadership of many people – not just the founders.  So while we might credit the founder for the creation of the company, the company’s growth into a huge economic machine is generally not the sole responsibility of the creator, though admittedly, without him, there would have been no company in the first place. 

Also, discussing success of corporations opens a new can of worms and may excessively complicate our talk.  Why?  Because the dynamics of corporate, or more generally, economic success differ markedly from those for individual success, since the decision-making processes for a company happen so dissimilarly from those of the individual.  Thus I don’t think we can meaningfully treat them as one in the same.  That is: The ultimate success of a corporation and the ultimate individual success of the people who start them are two separate and often disparate entities. 

So just because the company is tremendously successful doesn’t mean that the founding individual is successful.  Specifically, the ups and downs of a corporation frequently don’t track with the ups and downs of its creator(s).  Indeed, many a top-notch corporation has founders that either have become druggies, or lost their families (wives and kids) due to their career-oriented, philandering, overly detail-oriented, perfectionist natures.  Indeed a person’s traits that promote his success in the business world may in fact, preclude success on the home front. 

I’m remembering our landlord, [Darnell], at [...] McKee Place.  Though the realty was named after him, he seemed like a doofus; I had the dubious pleasure of meeting him a few times.  He looked burned out and just not quite there, as though his mind was always everywhere else.  Thus, it’s reckless to blindly attribute all of a corporation’s ongoing successes to its founder(s), and it’s certainly hasty to assume that because a corporation is successful, that its founders are successful too. 

We may rightly congratulate a founder for generating that initial momentum which propels the small business into fortune five-hundred status.  But the bigger it gets, the less responsible for its ongoing success the founder is. So given that, I’d suggest that we confine our talk to individual success – the wealth and happiness a single individual accrues within himself and at home.  This letter is already very large, and adding explanations of the dynamics of corporate success and how they can make or break the personal successes of the creator would prohibitively increase the length.  So I’ll omit all of that here. 

Also, see my   The Chance Part Of Success   piece. for a discussion of the significant role that luck plays in anyone’s success. 

[A self-starting entrepreneur] would have to be pretty damn poor [before I'd not consider him  privileged];

• no nest egg,
• no help from his parents,
• no affirmative action aid from the government,
• no loans that are granted based on race, financial standing or some other restrictive criterion,
• no donations or trust funds,
• nothing. 

Of course, finding such a truly destitute person (one who started out with truly nothing and went on to create a financial dynasty) would be practically impossible, since we all depend on the achievements of previous generations to varying degrees.  But my point here is that no two people start at the exact same spot on the success track.  Some must travel great distances on that track, while others need only take a few steps.  The person whose parents create a one-hundred thousand dollar trust fund for him has more resources to throw into his endeavors than he who comes from a broken home that provides no financial support. 

In fact, as I’ve probably noted elsewhere in this “book”: You seem to suggest that tradition and success don’t mix, because your examples are of people who you say, broke away from their families to achieve their greatness.  But it also happens that people succeed _precisely because_ they’re carrying on their family’s traditions.  Again, I site Hollywood.  Most of the people living in the mansions of Beverly Hills come from families whose parents and relatives also succeeded in show business.  Particularly in the music and acting businesses, early teaching and encouragement from parents really does make or break the child.  But I think I’ve covered this point enough.  Hmmmm.  I’m starting to forget what I’ve said and what I haven’t.  So do forgive any redundancies.  J

Tom Hesley

Related Posts

• The Chance Part Of Success
• More Than Effort To Outperform Our Parents

Dear [Mentat],

I’ve never said that a person _shouldn’t_  try to improve on his social standing.  What I am saying is that to simply apply brute force elbow grease to the effort [without taking into account our talents and shortcomings] is foolish, particularly when the person’s past familial achievements are not considered.  I don’t believe this idea to be irrelevant because it’s probably among the strongest evidence that proves the logical [rightness] of this philosophy.

Yes, [acknowledging our built-in familial based proclivities and restrictions], in moderation, indeed has positive effects.  It accomplishes, among other things, the following:

• Augments and preserves family harmony by reducing the sort of conflict that often results when children choose vastly differing ways from their parents to succeed.
• Fosters greater togetherness within families by reducing the conflict that so often results when the children opt to follow divergent paths from their parents.
• Increases cross-generational synergy. Since the parents typically spend more time with the child than anyone else during the formative learning years, it is _their_ skills and values that the child is most likely to adopt and build upon. In fact, following in the parents’ footsteps does not necessarily prevent the child from realizing his maximal success potential since he’ll enjoy a tremendous startup advantage.  Sticking with his parents _may even promote his surpassing them_.  Didn’t Einstein say that if he did in fact see the entire forest, that this was because he was able to stand upon the shoulders of giants?  Clearly, he acknowledged this phenomenon with this sentiment.  The same idea applies to children who can stand on their parents’ shoulders.
• Simplifies the career selection process.  For many, the decision of a career path is an agonizing one, particularly when one seeks to differ from his parents, siblings, and relatives by a great socioeconomic distance.
• Offers more support from the family for the chosen career.  If the child picks a path with which the parents are familiar, then they’ll be better equipped to assist the child in his endeavor.  They’ll have more useful advice to offer and will desire to help the child more, owing to the fact that in this scenario, they’ll _know how_ to help him.
• Reduces the chances that the child will pick a path for which he is not well-suited.  Systems like arranged marriages and monarchies have their advantages because they eliminate much of the guess-work from the process of choosing a mate or an occupation.  The problem with them isn’t so much that they assign roles to people, but rather, it’s that they very often don’t match aptitude and available positions very well.  Their methods of matching frequently aren’t very scientific, no doubt because even in modern times, our understanding of how to independently recognize a person’s talents and how long they’ll last isn’t very advanced.  So matching people to occupations according to their _true_ gifts and limitations is at best a shot in the dark these days.  It’s a gamble.  But one day, determining future ability and interest in the child will be as routine and precise as calculating her chances of getting cancer.
• Reduces the stress and angst surrounding the decision. Such decisions can be made more certainly, when the parent supports them.  And this parental support is more likely when the child opts for a path to success that’s similar to the one the parents chose.

For the previously listed reasons, this restrictive philosophy _can actually enhance_ the child’s chances of succeeding big.

Also, this view is not simply a self-fulfilling prophecy, although I’ll admit that taken too far, it can become that.  But in my experience, people don’t ascribe to it merely because they’re lazy or because they’re avoiding work for work’s sake alone.  Often, there are good reasons for this belief, both scientifically as well as experientially based.  Contrary to popular belief, we simply cannot accomplish _anything_ we want.  I talk more about this elsewhere.

There are plenty of reasons to strive to better one’s self.  On the other hand, there are plenty of good reasons _not_ to try.  I’m not so sure that the consequences of this philosophy are [all that dire].  Many a person has lived a full and happy life while attaining only similar success to his parents.  Some folks are in fact, quite proud that they’ve been able to uphold and pass on familial status and tradition.  I’ve seen numerous Chinese restaurants where three, and sometimes four generations of family members work side-by-side without any harm [...].  So my question is this:  Is the act of following traditional values any less notable than that of discarding tradition and creating a new path?  I don’t believe this question to be rhetorical, because the correct answer is: It depends!   It depends on the individuals involved.  If a person is truly not happy with the status quo, then yes, he owes it to himself to explore other destinies.  However, if he’s content, then there’s no good reason for him buck his familial system.  Change therefore, is not always good.

Tom Hesley

Related Posts

• More Than Effort To Outperform Our Parents

Dear [Mentat],

Yes,   recognizing   successful people is one thing society should do. But   glorifying   them? Probably not. Such veneration indeed can do significant harm. For example: few people, if any, deserve to be treated like gods due to their successes. Yet I was reading about how CEOs working for fortune five-hundred companies earn over four hundred times as much money as the folks working in the mail room, compared to the sixties, when they made only twenty times as much. If as a society we spent too many resources celebrating the folks at the top, and too little recognizing the people at the bottom, then we’re doomed to repeat the cycle of revolt, war, and forced redistribution of the available wealth that’s plagued humanity throughout its history. The degree of poverty in a society is a good measure of how happy the overall population is. The more poverty, the less happy and thus, the greater the chance that someone will fight back.

Also, obsessively revering the highest crust of achievers propagates the message that if a person does not achieve greatness to the levels society adores, then he’s not worth knowing.  Then, people exclude him from their friendly circles. While it’s true that this person (if he studied Albert Ellis’   rational emotive behavioral therapy (REBT)) might successfully combat his feelings of inadequacy that typically result from repeated rejection, many do not do this effectively. I’d suggest that this whole behavior of flocking to the most successful people while thumbing noses at the underachieving and lonely people leaves much of the rest of society dejected and sad.  This raises crime rates. Indeed violent crime perpetrators do so believing that society has collectively rejected them by thwarting their efforts to achieve acclaim though accepted practices and behaviors. So they try deviance, a clearly harmful strategy to society.

Further, if you don’t think that this chewing up and spitting out of average performers is harmful, you should watch American Idol sometime. There, the Fox network representatives scour the country, looking for the next   American Idol,   which they define as one who sings the best out of thousands and thousands of people they audition. That person then gets to record an album and travel the world to promote it. Yes, every year, they find one winner – people like Kelly Clarkson, Ruben Stoddard, and Carey Underwood to name a few.

While these winners typically advance to rewarding musical careers, the rest fare not so well. Many are devastated, and get humiliated on the show by Simon Cowell, one of the judges. Some leave the stage crying, cursing, and generally angry and hurt. This makes for some rather amusing TV content to be sure. It’s funny to see how many times the contestants tell Cowell to f-ck himself. This built-in conflict is a big reason why the show enjoys [such] high ratings. Yet I do not feel that this sort of thing is good for society. This show underscores how much more we need to develop our techniques of recognizing talent as well as how to reward it when it’s found, and how to dismiss people lacking it in the most dignified and least harmful ways. I could go on about how glorifying success can have far-reaching and harmful effects on society. But I trust you get the idea.

A person’s inability to climb as far as his heroes as you put it, can breed those feelings of inadequacy we’ve been discussing, yet another pit fall of society’s neurotic obsession with the successful; particularly when the inevitable question arises: Why is this hero any better than me? Why should he get all the attention when, to a large degree, he’s able to accomplish what he did under auspices that are beyond his control? For instance: If I was gifted with greater height, dark hair, and a commanding air, I might have made president of a division at [work] by now. But I wasn’t, so I didn’t, and probably wasted too much time trying to get that which the company continued denying me.

The point is this: To assume that a person has nothing worthwhile to offer merely because they’ve not been publicly rewarded for their achievements hurts all of us. In society’s quest to get with the most successful people, we often overlook the useful traits in the less successful and thus,   under-utilize   them. In short, focusing too much on the highest realms of success, blinds us to other useful dispositions. America no longer enjoys its revered position on the world stage these days, and a key reason is our inability to effectively recognize and then utilize the useful traits in   all   our people.

Now to your comments about Maslow: There are   many   good answers to his “rhetorical” question: Why not you? This is actually a   non   rhetorical question because clearly, not everyone is cut out to be a revered psychologist, and even if they were, not all of them would have the motivation to do it. Since we cannot easily direct our deepest motivations, and since favorable motivations appear invariably in society’s highest achievers, it is incorrect to attribute the high achiever’s successes exclusively to his strength of will or other qualities derived from predominantly voluntary effort.

You’re correct. There’s nothing wrong with people aspiring to be great at things they’re interested in. But a problem arises in the attitudes toward others that they typically acquire on their way to that success. They tend to expect the same sorts of achievements in others; jeering at those who don’t get as far. I believe that Albert Ellis in his   Guide to Rational Living   advised his readers that the true nature of success doesn’t involve feeling contempt or disgust for the people beneath them on the mountain. True words of wisdom I’d say.

At least we agree that worshiping anyone, for   anything   they do, is probably not good. Yes, determining how much recognition to give a person challenges employers and anyone in a position to evaluate others, and I expect that we’ll be wrestling with how to fairly distribute wealth for centuries to come. Clearly, the hard workers deserve to receive more than   no   success for their efforts. However some at the top deserve   less   than they get as well.

Further, people undoubtedly have   some   control over how their lives turn out. One may choose for instance, to cultivate an inborn talent by way of some inborn tenacity. For others however, tenacity is an act of pure will which taxes their physical and psychological energies much more than the person who has developed it from their natural potential, or learned it from their parents. For all the rest, some quantity of their tenacity comes with them out of the womb, or at least, appears at very early stages of development, while the rest results from willful dedication to their pursuits. These folks must fight agonizingly for every advancement they make. Obviously, the balance between natural and willful tenacity varies widely from person to person, and since it’s easier for those who received these gifts at birth, as well as harder for those who didn’t, it follows that various people must exert varying levels of effort to achieve the same level of success. Success occurs with little effort for some, more effort for others, maximal effort for still others, and for the rest, it does not occur, no matter the effort. We can’t assume that everyone receives the same gifts at birth, and can easily demonstrate that they don’t.

So given that, a certain level of success occurring in one person doesn’t demonstrate the same character traits as it might in another. More specifically, five units of success in one person might demonstrate the highly esteemed virtues of success like reliability and honesty. But in another, those same five units of success could reflect less desirable qualities. Success is not always good, nor is its level of reverence the same across all people.

Unfortunately, people gloss over this difficulty when they make statements like, “You can be or do anything you want if you just put forth the effort.” Teachers used to tell us this in school all the time. But what they neglected to say, was that all the effort in the world can’t make up for lacking desire to accomplish, and that all their compulsory learning tactics probably do not forge true desire. Many of them actually blamed kids for not wanting to work a particular task. [Our music teachers] come to mind here. Even [the electronics teacher] tended to be overly hard on students at Connelley who were struggling to learn the material, poking fun at them right in front of the class, yet offering few if any alternative tasks for them to do, that would accomplish the same learning.

Since I’ve been old enough to understand it, I’ve always struggled with teachers and bosses who humiliate their students and subordinates for lacking qualities that derive from largely inborn or hereditary ingredients. Talk about punishing the son for the sins of his father! But this happens all the time. Perhaps it does no good therefore to complain about it, other than to make people aware of it, and inspire hope that someday society will treat its citizens more justly, and better utilize its members in ways that best capitalize on their inborn traits, as opposed to the traits it can force out of them.

I agree that people with longer odds against success, should get more credit for whatever success they achieve, than those for whom success came easy. Likewise, people with those same long odds who   don’t   manage to achieve much external success, should not be outcast and regarded with so much distain. There’s just so much more to a person besides how much he earns or how many trophies he sports on his walls.

Many folks fail to recognize this, with their mate-seeking strategies that involve ruling a man out if he’s not a millionaire. Here’s where my lacking compassion for such individuals shows through. After reading countless thousands of ads on the web-based dating services, and after listening to countless tens of thousands of profiles on the telephone dating lines, I’ve concluded that most of these gold-digging women will in fact, never get what they want because there just aren’t enough millionaires to go around. And to that I chuckle and say, “Good for you. You deserve to live alone if you judge men so single-dimensionally.” Obviously, I’m somewhat bitter about how society rewards successful men – with the beautiful women. Against this system that has kept my longest-running dreams from coming true, I certainly rebel.

Finally, I truly doubt we’d still be in caves [even if people were less obsessed with becoming highly successful, and being glorified for it]. Success can be attained and thus advance society in ways less harmful to the less successful. We might not have advanced as   quickly   as we have, if things weren’t so cut-throat. But in my opinion, we’d be in the main, far better off if we treated the poor a bit better, and the rich a bit more like the rest of us flawed humans.

Tom Hesley

Related Posts

• Disputing REBT
• Limits of Success
• Money Not Only Measure of Success
• Self Esteem Vs. Others’ Esteem
• Tom’s Love Quest –> The Falacy of Hero Worship

Dear [Mentat],

Well, perhaps the word preferential is not quite so accurate a description of what’s actually going on here.  No, he didn’t get   preferential treatment   just because he went to a top notch school and his parents loaned him money to get started. However, his parents’ hard work and the scholarship did indeed place him in a position more favorable to succeeding than those who received no such assistance.

It also seems that through this particular scenario, you’ve made my very point, that parents and the support they provide, can be integral in the child’s overall ability to attain success.  The more successful the parents, the more opportunities they can create for the child, and thus, the better his chances of finding his true niche, and  becoming successful himself.

True, the help of the parents is not a sufficient condition for success.  But it sure has a decidedly positive influence on the child’s destiny.  Indeed, the better the parents treat their kid, and if that treatment is better than others treatments, then it could be deemed as preferential treatment when considered by someone not treated so well.

Further, I disagree that a family’s multi-generational nest egg building means nothing.  A wealthy family embodies beliefs, traditions, practices and such, that can take many generations to evolve.  In fact, most of the actors in Hollywood come from families where the parents also acted in some fashion – in plays, musicals, and such. The children can, if so inclined, pick up where the parents leave off when they retire.

Obviously this positions the child farther ahead than those who must start from scratch, without any success of their parents upon which to build.  This sort of fateful preferential treatment (as in the way fate seems to treat some here on earth better than others) indeed complicates life for those not so favored by their destinies.  Surely you can see that strong and proper pushing by the parents can hurl the child on a trajectory toward a more positive and rewarding destiny. While the parents do not completely control the destinies of their children, they can make them or break them with how well they rear them.

Tom Hesley

References

• Fate   definition

Dear [Mentat],

Yes you can have it both ways if you consider the nuances of what I was relating. I’m saying that the media glamorizes those few people with   many   stories each. How many stories over the past year would you say have been done on Anna Nicole Smith? I’d say at least several hundred. They inundate us with many, many stories about very few people. Spend some time watching the TV talk shows like Oprah, Montell, Larry King, and the in-depth scoop shows like Inside Edition, Hard Copy, Entertainment Tonight, The Insider, and so on. We could even throw in the news shows like Prime Time, 60 Minutes, 48 Hours, and Dateline, which often devote entire segments to successful celebrities. What the heck? Let’s even include the magazines and national newspapers that feature success stories. Now if you were to add up all the different people discussed in these venues over the past six months, I believe you’d be hard pressed to find more than ten thousand acclaimed souls covered with more than just a sentence or two, much less those whose pictures appear. The media tends to report on the same few people over and over.

The number of stories geared to reveal the success of people who have never been publicized before, discounting routine news stories, would seem very much lower than those that revisit someone covered previously. Thus my point was that the media spends much time glorifying a very small percentage of the over all population and that the sorts of high-level success they typically cover is indeed rare. I consider ten thousand reported successes in six months out of 300 million potential successes in this country quite rare. That’s less than one on-hundredth of one percent of the total US population who achieve enough success to be celebrated extensively.

No, the chances for success are almost   never   zero. But then, who said that the only time we should ever give up a pursuit is when there is absolutely   no   chance of succeeding? Sometimes, it makes perfect sense to give up a dream, even when the odds of achieving it are far from zero.

The media simply doesn’t have the bandwidth to tell all the stories of success, nor would people want to see them all. They seem to focus on   the most noteworthy   success stories. So yes, many successful people we hear nothing about.

Unfortunately,   prejudice   helps determine what society considers   noteworthy.   That said, prejudice creates significant challenges for its victims. Certainly, I’d never suggest that one should simply lay down and accept it just because it seems unbeatable. Prejudice is unjust, and thus, our culture would do well to get rid of it in spite of the effort this would require. But there are other limiting forces acting to augment or reduce a person’s potential, which, though not unjust, still exist and are still quite formidable. Some forces (particularly those unjust ones) are worth overcoming. Others however, are not.

I’d also suggest that whatever a person’s familial background, some form of success, to greater or lesser degrees, is possible for them. However, the background exerts an almost overpowering influence on the particular form and degree of success they attain. I’d argue that regardless of whatever successes you care to mention, the background of the person played an essential role in it. Without their particular backgrounds, successful people would not have attained success in the way they did. Hopefully, this is self-evident.

Yes, certainly there is more success being achieved out there than we learn of through the media. However, when you look at the health problems and the accompanying growth of the medical establishment in this post industrial age in the west, it’s easy to see that living the successful life has high costs. Indeed, it may turn out eventually that society has defined success incorrectly. Perhaps success has less to do with fast cars, lavish homes, and wide-spread popularity than it does with good health, simplistic living, and truly living one’s dream irrespective of the earnings potential.

Tom Hesley

Dear [Mentat],

Well, this view [that we cannot easily rise above the limitations we inherit] is decreasing for now.  But with the emergence of   Evolutionary Psychology   and the discovery of the forces that are powerful influences over a person’s destiny, this idea may again come into vogue in the future [, as we discover more and more just how much our nature drives the amount of success we achieve].

I’m reminded of a discussion we had back in the 1990s.  I had received information on how the signals from radio station WWV work to convey time data to radio controlled clocks which are so popular these days.

The system involved the transmission of varying length 100 Hz. pulses to form binary coded decimal digits, that depict the current date and time.  Since one decimal digit takes four seconds to transmit, then in order to send a complete date and time stamp, this scheme requires a whole minute.

I remember you saying how antiquated you believed this system was because today, such information can easily be transmitted in only a few microseconds.  You felt that the government ought to replace it because much faster means are available today.

I took issue, saying that this system works very well – which it still does in fact.  While it may take more time to convey the data, its error rate, even over thousands of miles, is   very   low. Thus, unlike the faster packetizing methods one might use today, it requires no error correction software to decode, which lessens the cost of the receivers.  Then too, due to the simplistic nature of the scheme, the supporting equipment is very easy to troubleshoot and repair, since it contains very few specialized components, which further increases the reliability of the whole system.  The system thus, does what it was designed to do very well.  So why   would   one wish to fix it if it isn’t broken?  Sometimes, this attitude makes perfect sense [and need not always indicate weakness, laziness, or stupidity on the part of the person who holds it.  Sometimes things are really good, just as they are, and do not need improvement].

The same is true of the less tangible aspects of humanity.  For example, many traditions, like the WWV system, function very well also.  That’s probably why most customs in fact, become traditions; because over time, they’ve proven to be the over all best way to fill specific societal needs.  The time-tested technique of hand washing prior to surgery has been practiced for centuries by doctors without much alteration, except for perhaps the soaps and towels used.  It still accomplishes very well what we expect of it – drastically reduces infection rates among patients.  So, again, why would we want to change it?

It’s simply not enough for urging that something be replaced, just because it’s old, a point illustrated by the episode “Relics” from Star Trek: The Next Generation.  You’ll remember this one, where Scotty helped the Enterprise crew free their ship from the Dyson Sphere.  LaForge said to Scotty, something like, “Just because something’s old doesn’t mean that you throw it away.”  He was referring to Scotty himself, who had begun feeling useless, being from a time eighty years earlier.

Yes, again, the view may be decreasing in strength.  Certainly there are invalid reasons for invoking it, particularly to justify sloth.  And as people discover more opportunities, the prevalence of this view, at least insofar as that part of it which is motivated by these excuses, will continue declining.

However, I don’t think we’ll ever totally eliminate the valid reasons for refraining from progress.   Very often, sticking with tradition is the better way to go.  Another case in point:  Consider that sometimes, the progress-hungry push for advancement just because the advanced idea is new, and not because it will create a marked improvement in operations.  This used to happen at work a lot.  These young, hot-shot software engineers thought they knew more than us older folk, who’d been working there for decades.  So they’d arrogantly proposed the gutting of perfectly functional systems (say, those written in C++ or Pascal) just so that they’d get to rewrite them in Java, and acquire the role of expert in the system, in effect steeling that role from the older engineers.  At [work], many such efforts were mounted, motivated by these sorts of cut-throat maneuvers, though the actual functional improvements of the systems that resulted were often marginal at best, and sometimes measurably worse.

This jumping on the “It’s New New New” train generates much more contention than necessary in software development groups, and often the seasoned people who know better are forced to just keep quiet because management is typically seduced by the whole new-is-betteridea.  It’d be interesting to do a study about all the efforts that failed at [work] because the new-hungry didn’t stop to consider the broader canvas.

When I started working there in 1988, the search and retrieval infrastructure was based on IBM mainframe processors and disk drives running the MVS operating system.  There were at least three attempts during my career there to replace these systems with various versions of Sun processors and the UNIX operating system.  Well, none of them succeeded, costing the company millions to fund projects that eventually got scrapped.  When I left in 2003, the search and retrieval functions were still being executed in mainframe environments although there had been some successful migration of the user interface parts of the original systems to UNIX and Windows NT systems.  The point is that being too eager to push for change can end up costing much more than the proposed change saves, and in fact, it very often does.  Change does not always produce the best outcomes therefore, particularly when holding with tradition offers productive solutions.

At [work], there were basically two camps of software developers:  Those that worked in the real time system (RTS), and those that programmed the newer UNIX and Windows based technologies.  The RTS was the mainframe-based functionality, and The UNIX and Windows people used to poke fun at the RTS folks, calling them the keepers of dinosaurs, old timers, and such.  But interestingly, the vast majority of the company’s revenue in the 1990s came from programs running on those older RTS systems.  In fact, people used to say that RGS stood for _Revenue Generating System_ and not real time system; their way of joking back at the UNIX people.  The problem therefore with always concluding that newer is better is that very often, as proven by experience in this environment, it is not.  New is _not_ always better.  [...]

Tom Hesley

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Dear [Mentat],

In certain situations, people may feel a sense of liberation when they exceed their parents’ accomplishments. Sometimes, yes, they find that they can achieve a more fulfilling life by shedding some of their ingrained hardships. In this specific and limited sense, I agree with you. That is: Folks can indeed rise above their raising. But whether or not this is   always   the right thing to do is quite another story.

You speak of this   self-fulfilling prophecy   as you call it [where acknowledging that we might not succeed more than our parents did guarantees that we will not].   [You imply that] there are no valid reasons for people to believe that they’re most likely to achieve approximately what their parents did, and then to tailor their careers accordingly. You say that you recognize them.

But your comments suggest that you tend to excessively minimize their restrictive impacts of a person’s upbringing. I take issue with that, because heaps of evidence establish how supremely important the role of one’s raising is. I grant you that the   complete   dismissal of one’s greater potential is fool-hardy. But also, it is reckless to assume that   absolutely no   hardship is inherited that limits one’s greater potential.

We understand today that parents can all too easily wreck a child’s chances through improper rearing practices; anything from poorly prepared meals and bad nutritional habits to improper sexual contact, to substandard educational systems. So to assume, just because some people manage to rise high, that everyone   should [do the same] and are wanting if they don’t, greatly lacks compassion as well as a complete understanding of humanity; particularly, how knowledge, ability, and motivation propagate from generation to generation, and the large degree to which they do. There are legitimate and formidable negative influences with which we all contend, that come from our ancestry as well as our environment. Thus, one’s accomplishments in life are not simply a matter of the choices he makes, which I’m sure you understand.

One must also examine what motivates his choices. Upon doing this, he’ll find that some choices appear easier to make than others, and some have consequences that can be better accommodated than others. How hard a choice can be to make and sustain, in addition to the specific amount of will in the person, depends on what Spock described in   The Wrath Of Kahn   as a person’s   gifts.   A given choice for you for example, is easier for you to implement than it would be for me. Also, there are choices that I might consider easily made and implemented that you would not make, and even if you did, could not see them through to completion. When figuring out a person’s worthiness to receive reverence, the matter is more complicated than simply figuring out who is lazy and who isn’t.

Indeed, external factors that seem to stack up against a particular choice of career for example, can reak havoc on a person’s health.  For details, see my    Push The Wrong Way, Die Too Young!   post.

Keep in mind [...] that a strong desire to break free of the mold doesn’t mean that the mold is not in fact, logical. There are very compelling reasons that the mold exists; reasons beyond mere superstition. It is not simply an outgrowth of unenlightened thinking, but rather, of extensive multi-generational experience; history that is governed largely by genetics, ingrained traditions, and external environmental circumstances. People think this way because it often turns out to be true.

Scientists and anthropologists have demonstrated repeatedly that people mirror their parents in many ways, including level of achievement. If you consider how many for whom this is actually true, and how many have proven it false, you’d find that it’s true very much more often than not. So if sheer numbers are any indicator of society’s propensities, then the tendency for the upper bound of a particular human’s achievements   naturally   hovers close to his parents’. This is not to say that we cannot exceed this bound. We certainly can, given circumstances that favor such a change. But if one decides to excel in ways that drastically differ from his parents’, then he’ll likely incur severe psychological or physical costs, as discussed above. If he chooses to run against the prevailing currents of his life, then he also chooses to bear all the resulting hardships; difficulties that will often kill him before his time.

Also, it appears that we’re muddling at least two distinctive ideas regarding this self-fulfilling prophecy mold. Consider that this mold derives not simply from people’s beliefs that they can only succeed about as much as their parents did. In fact, there are many reasons a potential immigrant for example, might see his opportunities as too limited in his home country, and thus wish to come to America. [...] These include governmental, economic, religious, and human rights curtailments, not to mention official corruption within these morally decrepit regimes.  However, many immigrants make great sacrifice to come here only to find disappointment and disillusion.  See my piece on   Sad Immigrants   for a discussion about why not all immigrants have managed to rise above thir raisings even though they made it all the way to America.

No doubt, American society offers perhaps the greatest opportunity for people of all walks of life. Yet there’s still room for improvement. It’s not good to favor the status quo simply because, as you say, it’s better than it’s ever been before. If software companies operated with this attitude for long, they’d be out of business, and so too would America. No matter how good things are, we can’t afford to grow complacent and start believing that they’re good enough, and thus need no further changes.

So while I agree that America corners the market on the number and diversity of opportunities it offers, I’d temper that by saying that there’s never a good reason to stop pointing out shortcomings and then seeking to eliminate them. As I see it, a major chink in America’s armor is conservative society’s tendency to blame fully a man for his failures.  This is cruel, ignorant, and certainly something we ought to stop doing in centuries to come.

Next, I’d only partly agree with your comment about this nation’s success being the result of more people   rising above their raisings.   I suppose that in a very basic sense that‘s true. But there’s a chicken-in-the-egg scenario brewing here. Is it people rising above their raising that makes America so great (as you say), or is it that America being so great actually enables people to rise above their raising? I suggest that it’s both. America, by virtue of its laws, established infrastructures, climate, and hundreds of other factors is indeed the land of opportunity, and I think it’d be hard to demonstrate that all of these points in America’s favor originated in a person’s desire to outdo his parents.

As I’ve said before, the forces opposing one’s realization of his maximal potential are varied and many. It’s certainly not the case that the only reason people haven’t achieved more is because they believe themselves bound by hereditary destiny. For a description of some of the many other forces of at least equal limiting power, see my   Bonds Of Manifest Destiny   post

So given all of this, unlike you, I don’t believe that the dominant factor in restricting a person’s maximum potential derives from his being resigned to doing only about   as well as   his parents. This is indeed a factor to be sure, but it’s only one of a great many, most of which he can’t control himself. An attitude of resignation may be   the   reason for a person’s stagnation. But we can’t know that for sure until we learn what motivates that attitude. You are correct that some people, even given the best of external circumstances, would still shy away from achieving, and this is sad. But I suspect that much more frequently, their willingness to default to “the old ways” or to be lazy comes from having to cope for generations with the formidable forces listed above as well as others. Myths generally have a basis in fact.

Tom Hesley

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