Ironic that this chapter fails to get its own point:
> Turning over a popular magazine, I find a queer and amusing example. There is an article called "The Instinct that Makes People Rich." It is decorated in front with a formidable portrait of Lord Rothschild. There are many definite methods, honest and dishonest, which make people rich; the only "instinct" I know of which does it is that instinct which theological Christianity crudely describes as "the sin of avarice."
And:
> If these writers, for instance, said anything about success in jumping it would be something like this: "The jumper must have a clear aim before him. He must desire definitely to jump higher than the other men who are in for the same competition. He must let no feeble feelings of mercy (sneaked from the sickening Little Englanders and Pro-Boers) prevent him from trying to do his best. He must remember that a competition in jumping is distinctly competitive, and that, as Darwin has gloriously demonstrated, THE WEAKEST GO TO THE WALL."
One of the hugest obstacles in front of most of the people on this forum, who profess to desire to make more money, is a vague and bothersome belief that money is somehow evil.
How can an intelligent person not see that the statement "rich people are avaricious", deeply held as a core belief, is a block against any likelihood of getting rich oneself?
I'm sure the book as a whole is full of useful wisdoms, but this particular passage seems short-sighted to the point of not even being able to see its own nose.
There are many issues with a large proportion of the self-help articles, books, speeches and so on, but to declare that limitations of the self are simply not worth considering is pretty dumb. As any high-achiever knows, most of the battle is not against reality, but against your own limitations. Being aware of those limitations and of how to shift them, remove them, or push beyond them, is essential.
He says there are many methods which make people rich, but only one "instinct" he knows of (avarice). That doesn't imply he thinks all or even most rich people are avaricious.
The point of the passage is that worshiping success is worthless, and moreover success itself is a pretty meaningless term ("To begin with, of course, there is no such thing as Success. Or, if you like to put it so, there is nothing that is not successful.") If you see this as a short-sighted attempt to say money is evil I think you've missed the point. The problem he's getting at is not money, it is that people spend time dreaming of success instead of doing something of value.
The real question is easy to bring out. Hell, it's so easy they asked it several times in the course of Office Space: "What would you do if you had a million dollars?" For today's purposes, let's make it truly unlimited and substitute a billion (milliard, for Commonwealth folks) dollars. Or Euros. Whatever.
Point is, given a de facto unlimited source of funding to witter away entirely as you please, what would you do? Many people can't answer, because we've got a culture that encourages focusing on accumulating capital, which is ultimately a second-order value (useful for doing other things you actually want to do), rather than doing any of the things people actually want to do with money.
He can rightly say that there are few "magic bullets" in life (that are articulated clearly in self-help books of 1915, at the very least), but I think he reveals that he doesn't consider making money; success in business; or managing oneself to be the metaphorical crafts or games that you can read books about and get better at.
Moreover, the author does say that people who seek to get rich are greedy, and not only that, but that they are trying to succeed by being greedy, rather than by "good work":
But what shall we say of the gospel preached to the new Industrious Apprentice; the Apprentice who rises not by his virtues, but avowedly [self-admittedly] by his vices?
If you acknowledge there is skill in succeeding (with a company, say, or in overcoming a bad habit, or tending your goals and beliefs, perhaps even to train more rigorously for that high jump), and that these things are moral or at least not immoral, the author's argument falls apart. It's as if he spins around and says that the best whist players and bricklayers must be propelled by an unhealthy greed or pride, seeing as it's impossible to write a book on such mystical things.
We recognize today that money is not moral or immoral,
but amoral. Perhaps it is dangerous that the economy is one big, somewhat arbitrary game, but so be it. We should see it for what it is.
As for self-improvement, I look forward to collectively pulling back the curtain on the human psyche more and more, continuing a pattern of ever-enlarging consciousness and awareness, shedding light on what was previously mysticism. From this perspective, the author just seems to be saying, "Stop, there's nothing there. Don't sail that way or you'll fall off the edge of the Earth."
You make a fair point that Chesterton seems to have a certain disdain for making money and business, but it seems like you didn't read the essay very carefully:
> If you acknowledge there is skill in succeeding (with a company, say, or in overcoming a bad habit, or tending your goals and beliefs, perhaps even to train more rigorously for that high jump), and that these things are moral or at least not immoral, the author's argument falls apart.
His thesis or argument is that the books and articles of his day on "success" are mainly rubbish. It is not to say that the word "success" is actually no good, or that trying to succeed at some individual thing is not good. A main point of his is that there are individual skills to succeed at specific things, but not an all-encompassing skill of "success."
I will concede that Chesterton sees people whose main mission in life is to make money as greedy, because he strongly, strongly believes that money doesn't make a person happy.
> It is all very stirring, of course; but I confess that if I were playing cards I would rather have some decent little book which told me the rules of the game. Beyond the rules of the game it is all a question either of talent or dishonesty; and I will undertake to provide either one or the other—which, it is not for me to say.
This false dichotomy between "talent and dishonesty" is an example of what rubs me the wrong way, and it's no small thing. It still shows up today when people get frustrated that the "best" things or people don't always succeed. If you have a band, for example, is thinking about how to promote yourselves on the side of greed rather than just being talented? What about an engineer who could use some networking advice to find a better job? The athlete who lacks discipline, or who needs to connect more fully with his dreams and motivations to burst forth and excel?
You could say these are still specific skills, just enlarged ones, but I believe there is such a thing as skill at every level of generality.
The 20th century saw new awareness of the imperfect correspondence between quality and success, for example in the form of marketing -- think cigarettes, or Bush Jr. There's also some new understanding of talent vs. success. It used to be you just called a talented but unsuccessful person "lazy." Or, I suppose, insufficiently greedy.
Yes, he basically dismisses self-improvement and wisdom pertaining to the self as inherently mystical, and he also lacks a model where entrepreneurship and/or getting rich is moral and challenging in a way that requires strengths and virtues, not just sufficient greed.
>Ironic that this chapter fails to get its own point
You're not making your case very well.
The two passages you excerpt are about useless vagueness in "success" books/articles. You are completely missing the point of the passage about "success in jumping," which is that "success" books and articles of the time (around 1908), are vague pump-you-up bullshit that any idiot could write.
Chesterton never argues that all "rich people are avaricious." Chesterton believes money and prestige are not really worth putting a person's main passion and energy into, which is what the Success books (circa 1908) seem to advocate. This essay is mainly a criticism of particular Success books and the Success idea; it is NOT an essay about getting rich or about limiting beliefs. It is also a criticism of the worship of rich and powerful men.
Chesterton never "declare[s] that limitations of the self are simply not worth considering."
You don't seem to realize that the this essay goes much deeper that criticizing how to be successful, but the very idea of "success" itself.
You're confusing the process for the result. Money isn't evil. Exploitation is evil. Denying people dignified and humane lives is evil. Capitalism, at least as we know it these days, in which you do these two things to make money, is evil.
I also want to note that the anti-financial hatred I hear from people also disturbs me. Finance can be exploitative, yes, but not in much of a different way from normal exploitation. That's the real problem with finance: it always demands exponential growth, and a large portion of the time tells itself pleasant lies about receiving it that explode into nothing later on.
(Said the anticapitalist in the process of getting his retirement and brokerage accounts sorted.)
I don't think folks here believe money is evil. Rather, they believe money must be earned through novel, respectful means. In other words, it's not all about the money here. Some folks care only for money and don't mind selling boutique items import/export. But most people here find that less worthy of a life. In that sense this article is spot on: the folks here chase impact more than money, where money is somehow the proof.
"At least, let us hope that we shall all live to see these absurd books about Success covered with a proper derision and neglect." - G.K Chesterton, 1908.
Chesterton is railing against exchorational books, some of which are useless. However, this deeply conservative man seems to be focused entirely on the action and ignored meta problems which are just as useful, and if solved often enabling by huge multipliers. Chesterton ignores the mind, the problems of concentration, focus, mental health and so forth. We are nothing without good process, and self-help books or the actions they describe are hugely useful with that, if we heed their advice. This piece is a deeply anachronistic and flawed essay, a sunday paper kind of opinion piece, and part of the unworthy section of any great person'w oeuvre.
Chesterton's one of the UK's most famous essayists and my dad grew up with his Father Brown stories. The age of the piece is precisely why I said it was anachronistic! It's possible that the obvious issue of its age could have been clearer, both in the posting, and in my comment, although its presence on gutenberg.org is a good enough clue for most HN readers.
This is clearly not his best work. I suspect he had a hangover, just as Beethoven clearly did during some of his more inane piano writing. Even the greats have off days!
A witty essay from 1908 observes that "success" is a ridiculously vague idea and that "success" books/articles of the day are vague useless drivel. Also, people should stop worshiping rich guys and mainly just try to be good at what they do.
I thought Outliers by Malcom Gladwell was a good book, but maybe it's an exception. It really shed some new light on life in general, so I'm glad I read it as a high school junior. It's ignorant to write off an entire genre of books, even if much of the genre is comprised of convenience store bookshelf "Become a millionaire overnight!" title bait books on the subject; when an author takes a closer look at what success really is, it can actually be a worth-while read.
Success books aren't so much wrong as self-referential.
People with unconditional ambition-- they don't care what the world looks like, so long as they're on top-- are a plague. Even worse are the dishonest ones who use the word "success" to (thinly) conceal their less socially acceptable desires: money and power. For such people, though, there is a route to what they want: degenerate social climbing. At the top of society, there really is no there there. The bad of this is that it reinforces what we've suspected for a long time: the world really is run by idiots. The good is that anyone who is sufficiently dishonest can get up there (with a bit of luck, some extortion, and a habit of self-reinvention).
People who peddle "success crack" have shown a capacity for taking their "fake it till you make it" campaigns and making them public and, thus, far more lucrative. The seed is a knack for telling people what they want to hear. This spins into a speaking tour or a book deal, which makes them legitimately "successful", which accelerates peoples' interest in hearing what they have to say.
The problem with success crack is that it comes from people whose successes are non-repeatable. Motivational speakers lecture on how to be successful, but the number of people who can be successful in that small, peculiar, niche is very small.
Well put. People seem to forget that success is an event and not a lifestyle (or being rich). I prefer to read about failure due to how it tends to teach more than success.
Success is a result. No one can control results. In fact, the better you are, the less control you tend to have over results, because you relinquish control and reliability in favor of high-risk, high-expectancy plays.
(As I get older, however, I'm starting to realize that some of that risk-seeking is pathological. I'd rather have a stable lifestyle business where I can do work that's good for the world and live, reliably, quite well... than a 10% shot at a $200m acqhire welfare check that leaves the rest of the team hosed.)
There was an interesting discussion on "pickup artist" books quite a while ago that I found insightful[0] and was reminded of here.
To reiterate the point: Success Books are part of a cargo cult, making the cargo (success) the priority, with little understanding of what usually accompanies success (work, talent, social responsibilities etc.).
33 comments
[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 88.1 ms ] threadTranslation: The fallacy of thinking one can correctly type a submission title.
Link to mobile site http://m.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11505.mobile
Desktop http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11505
> Turning over a popular magazine, I find a queer and amusing example. There is an article called "The Instinct that Makes People Rich." It is decorated in front with a formidable portrait of Lord Rothschild. There are many definite methods, honest and dishonest, which make people rich; the only "instinct" I know of which does it is that instinct which theological Christianity crudely describes as "the sin of avarice."
And:
> If these writers, for instance, said anything about success in jumping it would be something like this: "The jumper must have a clear aim before him. He must desire definitely to jump higher than the other men who are in for the same competition. He must let no feeble feelings of mercy (sneaked from the sickening Little Englanders and Pro-Boers) prevent him from trying to do his best. He must remember that a competition in jumping is distinctly competitive, and that, as Darwin has gloriously demonstrated, THE WEAKEST GO TO THE WALL."
One of the hugest obstacles in front of most of the people on this forum, who profess to desire to make more money, is a vague and bothersome belief that money is somehow evil.
How can an intelligent person not see that the statement "rich people are avaricious", deeply held as a core belief, is a block against any likelihood of getting rich oneself?
I'm sure the book as a whole is full of useful wisdoms, but this particular passage seems short-sighted to the point of not even being able to see its own nose.
There are many issues with a large proportion of the self-help articles, books, speeches and so on, but to declare that limitations of the self are simply not worth considering is pretty dumb. As any high-achiever knows, most of the battle is not against reality, but against your own limitations. Being aware of those limitations and of how to shift them, remove them, or push beyond them, is essential.
The point of the passage is that worshiping success is worthless, and moreover success itself is a pretty meaningless term ("To begin with, of course, there is no such thing as Success. Or, if you like to put it so, there is nothing that is not successful.") If you see this as a short-sighted attempt to say money is evil I think you've missed the point. The problem he's getting at is not money, it is that people spend time dreaming of success instead of doing something of value.
Point is, given a de facto unlimited source of funding to witter away entirely as you please, what would you do? Many people can't answer, because we've got a culture that encourages focusing on accumulating capital, which is ultimately a second-order value (useful for doing other things you actually want to do), rather than doing any of the things people actually want to do with money.
Office Space is a profound movie, btw.
Moreover, the author does say that people who seek to get rich are greedy, and not only that, but that they are trying to succeed by being greedy, rather than by "good work":
But what shall we say of the gospel preached to the new Industrious Apprentice; the Apprentice who rises not by his virtues, but avowedly [self-admittedly] by his vices?
If you acknowledge there is skill in succeeding (with a company, say, or in overcoming a bad habit, or tending your goals and beliefs, perhaps even to train more rigorously for that high jump), and that these things are moral or at least not immoral, the author's argument falls apart. It's as if he spins around and says that the best whist players and bricklayers must be propelled by an unhealthy greed or pride, seeing as it's impossible to write a book on such mystical things.
We recognize today that money is not moral or immoral, but amoral. Perhaps it is dangerous that the economy is one big, somewhat arbitrary game, but so be it. We should see it for what it is.
As for self-improvement, I look forward to collectively pulling back the curtain on the human psyche more and more, continuing a pattern of ever-enlarging consciousness and awareness, shedding light on what was previously mysticism. From this perspective, the author just seems to be saying, "Stop, there's nothing there. Don't sail that way or you'll fall off the edge of the Earth."
> If you acknowledge there is skill in succeeding (with a company, say, or in overcoming a bad habit, or tending your goals and beliefs, perhaps even to train more rigorously for that high jump), and that these things are moral or at least not immoral, the author's argument falls apart.
His thesis or argument is that the books and articles of his day on "success" are mainly rubbish. It is not to say that the word "success" is actually no good, or that trying to succeed at some individual thing is not good. A main point of his is that there are individual skills to succeed at specific things, but not an all-encompassing skill of "success."
I will concede that Chesterton sees people whose main mission in life is to make money as greedy, because he strongly, strongly believes that money doesn't make a person happy.
This false dichotomy between "talent and dishonesty" is an example of what rubs me the wrong way, and it's no small thing. It still shows up today when people get frustrated that the "best" things or people don't always succeed. If you have a band, for example, is thinking about how to promote yourselves on the side of greed rather than just being talented? What about an engineer who could use some networking advice to find a better job? The athlete who lacks discipline, or who needs to connect more fully with his dreams and motivations to burst forth and excel?
You could say these are still specific skills, just enlarged ones, but I believe there is such a thing as skill at every level of generality.
The 20th century saw new awareness of the imperfect correspondence between quality and success, for example in the form of marketing -- think cigarettes, or Bush Jr. There's also some new understanding of talent vs. success. It used to be you just called a talented but unsuccessful person "lazy." Or, I suppose, insufficiently greedy.
There are so many things wrong with that statement that I don't know where to begin. Maybe with the question, Where does he say that?
You're not making your case very well.
The two passages you excerpt are about useless vagueness in "success" books/articles. You are completely missing the point of the passage about "success in jumping," which is that "success" books and articles of the time (around 1908), are vague pump-you-up bullshit that any idiot could write.
Chesterton never argues that all "rich people are avaricious." Chesterton believes money and prestige are not really worth putting a person's main passion and energy into, which is what the Success books (circa 1908) seem to advocate. This essay is mainly a criticism of particular Success books and the Success idea; it is NOT an essay about getting rich or about limiting beliefs. It is also a criticism of the worship of rich and powerful men.
Chesterton never "declare[s] that limitations of the self are simply not worth considering."
You don't seem to realize that the this essay goes much deeper that criticizing how to be successful, but the very idea of "success" itself.
I also want to note that the anti-financial hatred I hear from people also disturbs me. Finance can be exploitative, yes, but not in much of a different way from normal exploitation. That's the real problem with finance: it always demands exponential growth, and a large portion of the time tells itself pleasant lies about receiving it that explode into nothing later on.
(Said the anticapitalist in the process of getting his retirement and brokerage accounts sorted.)
but if there is no such thing as success, then surely there is no such thing as failure.
Just how friggin' much is he supposed to do in one short essay?
His FIRST criticism is that the books and articles about success are vague (i.e. lacking in specific actions) and ineffective (not actually useful).
> This piece is a deeply anachronistic
You are aware this is an essay from around 1908?
This is clearly not his best work. I suspect he had a hangover, just as Beethoven clearly did during some of his more inane piano writing. Even the greats have off days!
People with unconditional ambition-- they don't care what the world looks like, so long as they're on top-- are a plague. Even worse are the dishonest ones who use the word "success" to (thinly) conceal their less socially acceptable desires: money and power. For such people, though, there is a route to what they want: degenerate social climbing. At the top of society, there really is no there there. The bad of this is that it reinforces what we've suspected for a long time: the world really is run by idiots. The good is that anyone who is sufficiently dishonest can get up there (with a bit of luck, some extortion, and a habit of self-reinvention).
People who peddle "success crack" have shown a capacity for taking their "fake it till you make it" campaigns and making them public and, thus, far more lucrative. The seed is a knack for telling people what they want to hear. This spins into a speaking tour or a book deal, which makes them legitimately "successful", which accelerates peoples' interest in hearing what they have to say.
The problem with success crack is that it comes from people whose successes are non-repeatable. Motivational speakers lecture on how to be successful, but the number of people who can be successful in that small, peculiar, niche is very small.
(As I get older, however, I'm starting to realize that some of that risk-seeking is pathological. I'd rather have a stable lifestyle business where I can do work that's good for the world and live, reliably, quite well... than a 10% shot at a $200m acqhire welfare check that leaves the rest of the team hosed.)
I wrote about this before anyone knew who I was: http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2011/03/23/stop-writing-...
To reiterate the point: Success Books are part of a cargo cult, making the cargo (success) the priority, with little understanding of what usually accompanies success (work, talent, social responsibilities etc.).
[0] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3217266