Probably everybody is aware that when there are problems, they have to rise to the occasion to overcome those limitations and deficiencies -- but frequently, when there are no apparent or familiar ones, they don't recognize that favorable conditions must be optimized further, or they can regress or undermine those advantages -- managing themselves back to failure, nullifying all such advantages. Throughout most of history, people and societies have evolved under conditions of scarcity and hardship -- and so we hardly know what to do under the modern conditions in which the environment predisposes everyone's success, and in fact, that may seem like a totally alien concept that they will deny is so. They have been conditioned to hardship and failure, and literally don't know what to do with success, where to go from there to take it to an even higher level of success. In order to get back into their comfort zone, they will first have to undo any favorable conditions and events that returns them back to ground zero, if not to a position of even greater disadvantage, handicap and/or peril. Thus we better understand, those who seem to expend increasingly greater efforts, without ever seeming to get anywhere, to show any improvement. Life is just a compulsive repetition of the same behaviors, always starting from exactly where they started the last time -- and the time before that immemorial -- without change and/or improvement. The behaviors are designed to ensure that status quo -- as much as they will often complain, that they wish things would be different. Of course their actions speak immeasurably louder than their words; the words are nothing more than a substitute for action, generally rationalizing why any change in action is futile. While they have no intention of changing, they want you to waste your time convincing them why they should change -- BECAUSE they have no intention of changing! Life with these people is frustrating, aggravating and impossible -- and they want you coming back for more. Managing success, therefore, is the freedom from these addictions that ensure that one will never know and be comfortable other than in this troubled, tortured existence that today, is largely a remembered past rather than an actual encounter with the world we live in today -- that might be largely problem-free. But we'll never realize that thinking that nothing in the world ever changes, or has ever changed. The reality has always been that everything changes -- or better yet, that reality is change. So managing success is adapting to change -- and not doing so, dooms one to repeat the familiar failures that drains one of all hope that there could be anything else, anything different, in this truly expansive world we find today.
The culture of the 20th century was famously about overcoming difficulties, barriers, limits -- but what if they no longer exist? What do we do now? Where do we go from here? What is there to motivate us? But here again, there is a presumption that one needs to begin from a deficiency in order to improve -- back to where we started. Without the handicap to struggle against, is it possible to have productive lives? The old mind will instinctively maintain that such thinking will result in a devolution in society and individuals, which naturally leads them to conclude that if no problems presently exist, they must be created -- or resurrected. Of course that ensures that progress is not possible, that we have not truly moved beyond the limitations and concerns of the past. Is it the lack of opportunities that explains why some are successful and others feel they don't have the opportunities to be so -- or might it be that given constant opportunities, a few will make the best of them while the vast majority will fritter them away, ill-using even great advantage to a disastrous effect. Does that seem impossible? -- or might that explain why the many receiving windfalls might actually find themselves in greater deficits than before their good fortune. Has one ever encountered those seemingly blessed with every advantage in life -- and yet possessing such an overwhelming sense of inadequacy and failure? One is puzzled in such encounters that such persons feel a need to minimize or negate whatever they have -- while on the other hand, there are the rare encounters of those who seem to transform little or apparently nothing into something of great value and advantage. The latter are of course the great inventors of the world -- but also the countless many who just seem to thrive when others might think there is just no way. And even when one asks, "How is it possible...?," they might have no idea either, but feel confident that something will materialize along the way. Others will not have that same confidence -- and in fact, will be wracked by anxieties, uncertainties, a great sense of inadequacy, paralyzed by inaction. It's not bad to be uncertain, humble about one's abilities -- however, that is not usually acknowledged but rather the opposite -- pretending to know when one doesn't, and so ensuring that he will never learn that which he is uncertain about. This is the vicious cycle of ignorance, ensuring that there is no escape from the well-known failures of one's experiences -- no moving on to the next level, only a fatalistic doom and gloom. Well-meaning advisors will even warn, "If it sounds too good to be true, it must be." But that is what makes it good. So they condemn themselves to the familiar bad -- fearing that all else than what they know must be worse.
How do people get that way? Obviously, they're conditioned (educated, molded, manipulated) to be that way. The cult of experts certainly foster the belief that the general population shouldn't even attempt to take on anything unfamiliar without first consulting their office. People who offer advice or instruction will try to convince us that we shouldn't try to learn anything on our own (as though we were attempting to do our own brain surgery). Medical practitioners discourage people from thinking that they are first their own "primary caregivers." That's their province, they're quite adamant about. Of course the lawyers will try to convince anybody they can that no disagreement should ever be resolved without first consulting one's attorney. That's how people get to believing that they can't do most things for themselves -- and they are incompetent and inadequate about everything they do, including housework, homework and taxes. It is the primary task of every profession to make life and its activities seem as difficult, complex and perplexing as possible. Money management and investing, those professionals claim, should never be attempted by laymen -- even though the number of successful amateurs greatly outnumber the successful professionals. To be fair, the number of unsuccessful amateurs probably outnumber the successful amateurs in this endeavor but still, it is hardly the rocket science many people still wish to perpetuate. Actually, those rudiments should be the minimum requirements for graduating from high school. If not, then they're lambs being thrown to the wolves at this time, and while most will survive, many will be thrown into a lifelong spiral of disadvantage and handicap, not having it ever suggested somewhere along the line, that it was quite all right to attempt to learn things on their own -- without a programmed course of instruction, which often turns out to be simply the fashionable, approved curriculum provided by "the professionals" rather than any semblance of the real truth. And why is that so? The people who provide the instruction, want to maintain that status quo; nobody wants to put themselves out of a job by suggesting that you don't need their service or product -- even if you truly don't. They have to convince you that you do -- even if it means they must create incompetence where none naturally exists.
That's because the premise of the 20th century culture was the notion that the objective of society/economy was to create more jobs -- which implies more work. Therefore, the thinking is that one maximizes work by identifying or creating more problems -- and exploiting them. Obviously, solving a problem reduces any economic opportunity; the problem simply no longer exists -- at least the familiar old problem. The curious thing about problem-solving is that it doesn't necessarily eliminate all problems -- but allows us to move up the ladder to address a problem requiring higher skills. To successfully meet those new challenges, obviously the human skill set has to improve to this higher level, creating and feeding this momentum for constant improvement. That's the name of the game of life -- constant improvement, or you perish. But that doesn't need to be portrayed by the brutish struggle for survival pitting everyone against everyone else -- because the higher level skill set realizes that cooperating and sharing provides an abundance unimagined in the "winner take all and everything" societies of the past. Obviously, under such schemes, people are not highly motivated to be productive -- if all that they produce can so easily be taken away. But if you let them keep the fruits of their work, people become extremely proficient and productive. So much so that the need and advantage to trade becomes apparent. So the notion of unrelenting, irreversible improvement is not unprecedented in the experience of mankind -- and all of life. It actually seems to be the primal force in life -- overwhelming all objections and resistance. Yes, we may even have to improve in spite of ourselves!
The powerful momentum for improvement is so overwhelming that rather than being concerned that a few (or many) will fail to keep up, the truth of the matter is that it takes increasingly greater time and energy to resist the march of progress. Ironically, this resistance is blamed for the problems of progress -- rather than the failings of the statuus quo, attempting to perpetuate the status quo one more time. As time marches on though, fewer of the faithful defenders of the old ways can be relied on to maintain the ranks and ultimately one day, the call to arms results in an embarrassing rout -- for no one seems to know anymore, what exactly it is, that they are really fighting for anymore. They've just gone through the motions compulsively, reciting the slogans of former battles -- yet no momentum for their cause springs to life to sustain them further. Then they realize, they are not leading the march of human progress and triumph but have been abandoned in battlefields to fight the rearguard retreat -- to maintain the illusion that the war is not already over.
The challenge of an abundant society is not the lack of choices and opportunities but rather the overwhelming availability and access to them -- which has to be managed skillfully or they will be ruinous. In the midst of plenty, some are still conditioned to fail by misperceiving that the lack is not material but mental/psychological. Is the problem that one doesn't have enough money or is it more truly, that of the money one has, he doesn't know how to manage that properly to get the fullest benefit from it? If all one's money goes to cigarettes, alcohol and lottery tickets, is the answer really that one needs more money -- or might one's condition worsen? That's the obvious case. It gets blurrier in the case of one who spends all his available money on fast cars, flashy clothes, jewelry, toys, travel, books, CD's, etc. -- while the necessities go wanting! So it is a matter of degree to which one manages these finances, valuing what is important -- and not that there is inherent value in those things themselves. Even among those things considered essentials, there is widely-differing opinion as to the desirability of cow milk, seal blubber and frog legs. Probably the most universal phenomenon is to project one's own perceptions and perspectives as the natural human limits of all that is known and knowable. That is likely to be the only view one has been conditioned to, defends, and has been taught also to suppress every other notion on. Such a mind obviously has problems in an expansive world of many choices and outcomes. It will cling to the familiar path -- of the same old problems and the same old solutions, and there is no breaking beyond that ruthless cycle. That's why those individuals fail (to adapt) and societies(cultures) composed of such personalities also must fail -- in the world of relentlessly expanding choices, opportunities and possibilities, though they may at first seem to be successful in that mode. There is no possibility for growth, evolution, progress; they have to always start from the same starting point every generation. It's also the history lived out in individual lives. Some will always seem to be starting over, doomed for the same fate each time; a few will not return -- they will move on, transcend the cycle, evolve. They have managed success to another level -- and will to another -- and another....
Only this kind of success is really success -- beyond and out of the pattern of the familiar failures, placated and relieved by fleeting moments of surcease. The great cultural and moral imperative, the prime motive, is to move on, to grow, to expand the possibilities relentlessly. Of course that kind of life is threatening to all, as well as exhilarating to a few. With change comes the possibility of change that one has not accounted for, cannot control, knows not the fullest implications and ramifications of. So rather than embracing and welcoming the great possibilities, there is great loathing for the world in which his secure and familiar place will be swept away. However, while most have these apprehensions, not all do. Not surprisingly, there are personalities and predispositions that thrive in an environment of uncertainty, probabilities and change. These are the leaders -- true leaders, whether designated and recognized as so or not. It is not a profession though; they exist among the many fields of human activities and endeavors. They are not leaders because they want to be; they are leaders because that's who they are. Such leaders do not lead by coercing others to go their way; instead, they go their way and others gladly follow -- once they realize that this individual moves with the conviction of confidence -- which is this extraordinary thing unlike a boisterous show of confidence that is quickly seen through and evaporates with every test.
Thus leaders who only manage the status quo ultimately fall by the wayside while managers who can deal with success must be constantly breaking new ground, creating precedents that even they will not revisit again. There are no fixed reference points for such leaders; they move on and take everyone with them -- because they have created new possibilities for themselves -- that didn't exist for anybody before! But they are not content just to be recognized as the "creators" and the "first" because their challenge always lies ahead -- in that which is yet undone. They don't need the motivation of undoing to create the need for doing; they do not need to destroy in order to build. There is no lack of space, nothing to be undone; there is only fulfillment of purpose in everything.
Is this a fanciful utopian ideal? Actually, I think it is the reality of the world we live in now. It doesn't matter that "most people" do not live in that reality now; what is critically important is that a few do. That few will always be the leaders -- and not the mob with its numbers and crude means of enforcing its will to maintain the status quo. That struggle is always lost by brute force -- more so now than ever before. It onlyy takes a few to break away from the solidarity of the mob before a trickle of dissent becomes a flood -- and those first few will always be the most independent minded, the capable, those who can stand alone. This has to be recognized as a movement whole in itself and not a reaction, the resistance to the old merely feeding the ebbing strength of the old, needing a target to focus its energies as a reaffirmation of its purpose and meaning -- because it has really lost it all. It is merely its own reason for being -- simply because...
Any success therefore, is the seed of its own undoing -- requiring an ever greater success or the triumph turns to complacency, arrogance, the undoing of great advantage. It is the fate and destiny of all life to succeed -- because if it fails repeatedly and consistently, it cannot be. Failure eliminates itself and success propagates itself; that is the nature of all phenomena, the simple reality of the matter. What works, will eventually work even better; that momentum takes on a life of its own. It is life -- the greater being even more real than its individual parts. The (w)holistic approach is not simply more enlightened; it is more practical, more effective a way of understanding what is going on -- than the specialized, fragmented, divisive approach that seemed to work in yesteryear.
So why is it different this time? It's always been different, unprecedented, discontinuous. Progress hasn't been a slow, steady grind towards fixed, clearly defined objectives, managed by self-appointed leaders. There have always been quantum leaps of insight and action -- and the reactive, resistive reflex to maintain the status quo, banish change, vanquish the heretics of other ways. Ironically, those who think they are the most liberal in embracing change, will be the staunchest defenders of the status quo. For they will be those with the most to lose if there is real change; they merely want to modify the existing program more to their advantage. They are the rearguard of the battle front and not the vanguard. They are trying to patch and preserve a dying carcass -- and it takes increasingly greater resources to maintain that life whose time has come and gone. So once more, they resurrect the slogans and banners to that "glorious" past -- that never really was. They trot out the icons but they fail to inspire.
The clearly defined battle lines are not where the war is being fought -- only where the most people are deployed. It's not a battle of numbers that determines the outcome. It is won by the idea (culture) that consumes all the others -- digests, consolidates, assimilates, integrates into a simpler, more powerful, comprehensive understanding; always has, always will. The partial, fragmented understanding cannot withstand the onslaught of the more all-encompassing one. And this is the most notable characteristic of managing success -- that it always takes the argument to the next level of perspective at which it is no longer a problem but merely a lack of comprehension of what is really at issue. The well-defined problem is clearly not the problem. It is merely where they want the battle to be fought, under their terms, conditions, choice of weapons, etc. So the first thing one learns in managing success is not to get bogged down in quandaries one cannot win. Just move on up to the next level and take the victory unconditionally offered to you. The person conditioned to struggle, to accept only what he produces for himself (and cannot recognize the productive efforts of others on his behalf), cannot graciously acknowledge and accept opportunities handed to him on a silver platter. His sense of justice will not allow him to accept the generosity of the universe -- which is the momentum of the collective efforts favoring success for anyone (everyone). There is nothing wrong with that; there is a natural bias towards prosperity rather than calamity; it just makes life easier for everyone.
It is equally fallacious in receiving such good fortune to believe that one is uniquely blessed with divine powers and is worthy beyond all others for such subsidies as his birthright. It doesn't take advanced degrees in business management or psychology to realize that people with such attitudes will be highly-demanding, unproductive types. Their lot in life is to complain about all the things that everybody else is not providing for them. They grow quite indignant at the suggestion that they might provide those things for themselves -- if they really want them, and feel thhey truly deserve them. They will of course feel greatly insulted by the insinuation -- of which you should be greatly ashamed; you are the sole source of their unhappiness in life. You owe them. Never mind that you may not have encountered them before this circumstance; you owe them. So one learns to avoid people like that -- and quickly extricate oneself from being thus victimized. The greatest cause for a lack of success and fulfillment is associating with people who rob them of that equanimity. In many cases, it is someone close to them but there are also many who are very good at ingratiating themselves so that one wonders why he is trying so hard to please a perfect stranger, one whose opinion should not matter. And why should any opinion matter? What matters are the facts -- and too many are all too willing to express an opinion without first spending any time discovering what the facts are. They find it sufficient just that they have an opinion about everything -- no matter how ill-informed they might be on the subject. They think that is what everybody does -- at least the people they see on television, hear on the radio, or read in the newspaper -- people boldly asserting their opinion, never bothering to discover any facts. All one needs to do is to sound like one knows what he is talking about -- because all the others don't know what they are talking about either. It is a game of pretending to know, pretending to be, the world as we know through the media; not an authentic moment in the lot. Those are the role models for many, at least frequently promoted as images of success, or why would they be rich and famous?
Those appeals should be meaningless to the truly rich and well-known -- those who know themselves well. For surely it doesn't matter how many people know you; what matters is how well you know yourself. It seems like that is the key to knowing everything else. Because then one can distinguish what is from what he would like it to be, and making that distinction well, is what makes those successful and others not. When one sees these things clearly, as they are, how can one go wrong? Conversely, when one doesn't see these things clearly, how can one ever do right, no matter how hard he is willing to work? He just doesn't know what he is doing; he is thrashing about blindly hoping hopelessly for the outcome he desires -- out of random chance. Meanwhile the person clear on who he is and what he hopes to achieve with his understanding, seems to put out remarkably little effort, maximizing a great result. The difference between the two is not that the latter knows beforehand the result he will obtain. The difference is the latter is learning more than he started out with -- while the former is not. The learning as he is doing allows the successful to achieve a result he could not have imagined when he began. He is not preoccupied from the beginning with the eventual result; he is focused on how to begin -- confident he will learn the rest as he needs to along the way, in the course of things. Those are the powerful beings becoming more common in the 21st century world. They evolve in their own lifetimes; they transform several lifetimes in their one. They have the ability to change, to adapt, to prosper -- without success becoming their undoing; they are not destroyed by success. They recognize success as a challenge to be perfected, not merely preserved, repeated, enshrined.
It is a tiresome person who always wants to express an opinion on every matter, proving to the world they are the singularly most intelligent person in the world. Why should people think that is what intelligent people do? That is probably the furthest thing from what intelligent people do -- entertain the chronically bored, those needing to be compulsively stimulated to maintain minimal functioning levels. Real problems get solved by real people in a position to make a difference; everybody else expressing an opinion simply because it is the topic of the day is a waste of time better used to address the real deficiencies of our lives. Low functioning people are never at a loss for solutions to solving all the problems of the world -- except those affecting their own real existence. The energy is misallocated, misdirected; but the energy is there.
There is no lack of choice in today's world. Most problems are due to the proper choices not being selected from the abundance. The underactualized inevitably choose the known and familiar over the unknown and untried. They're encouraged to do so BECAUSE that maintains the status quo of the expert thinking for the under-informed. The media is the middleman for this relationship. It is the third party that impartially-validates the pronouncements of the status quo powers that would like to remain so. Their worst nightmare is for everybody to be well-informed, independent thinkers, beyond their manipulations and intimidations. The media are flooded with reports and analysis that are nothing more than thinly-veiled propaganda -- but they are no match for the iconoclasts who can slice and dice their arguments like a laser through butter. One more oligarchy falls -- and they are the ones that bring us the news, shape our attitudes and opinions; they wish to remain the authority, the objective mediator. However, they cannot separate their own self-interest from what is actually happening. Every story is one more opportunity to write oneself into the history books, win that Pulitzer prize, make something out of nothing. If a story is not there, one has to create one. It will never do that the world is at peace, that there were no problems to report on today. More than a few are addicted to those problems, seem to delight in reading of the latest catastrophe, want to pour more fuel onto an existing argument. But the first are beginning to walk away from those problems of the past -- giving them no more time and energy; and so those arguments die of sheer indifference. They don't have to be solved by more arguing; they just need to be put aside -- so we can move on. That is the tactic of the status quo desiring no change -- to get everyone bogged down in the old arguments, insisting that the irresolvable have to first be resolved before we can move on. And so in that way, all our resources are spent, leaving nothing available for alternatives.
"Managing success" is relentlessly moving on. We don't need to go over the proven grounds of failure; we need to find the fertile fields of opportunities, possibilities, beyond the limits of our own thinking. Thought is both liberating and a limit to our functioning. We have to be able to distinguish the limits of our thinking from the limits on the possibilities. That may be the great problem of the present moment -- maybe always has been. We like to think that was just a problem one hundred years ago -- or ten, or with a previous generation. But it is always the problem of the moment. Under extraordinary circumstances and challenges, it is well-documented that many have gone beyond, broken through to access tremendous forces not ordinarily available. At times like those, nothing else was possible. Some seem to be able to access great abilities without first having to put themselves in such peril. They build a kind of human capital that continues to appreciate and compound throughout the balance of their lives. The boom and bust cycles seem to have been repealed. Some people get to that point in their lives while others seem never to. It's heartbreaking to witness. I think it is largely a self-fulfilling thought process. It is not so necessary to clearly conceptualize the limits of ultimate possibilities -- as it is not to prematurely constrain them! That seems to be the quality of mind that distinguishes a sustainable life of unprecedented successes -- there is no preconceived upper limit to the possibilities. The mediocre mind, the mind of failure, presumes to know the ultimate limits of man's possibilities. That is the theme to look for -- in all one's inputs.
Those are the people who will not turn a momentary triumph into a greater calamity; they will not abuse their advantage, privilege, honor, good fortune. Others are not demeaned by their success; their success is the success of humankind magnified. They are not separating themselves from the rest of mankind; they are mankind. They are not competing against everybody else in society for all the spoils; they recognize the abundance is enough for everyone -- if people would just realize that. Buut many had their minds made up years ago on what the world is. It might have been in first grade when they recognized that there was a whole other world beyond kindergarten. It doesn't matter when their minds stopped accepting new possibilities -- first grade, high school, Ph.D. A closed mind is the same closed mind regardless of whether it can quote Shakespeare, Jesus or Einstein. It just may be a little more clever at deceiving others that it is not a closed mind. But a closed mind is a mind that long ago decided what the limits of human possibilities and knowing was all about -- so that now in the prime of his life, his highest social duty is to disabuse others that it is other than he says it is. He is proud to be a skeptical man, a pessimist, a realist, joyless, a cynic -- and thinks that his truth is the light of the world, the salvation of mankind. That it has an appeal to some should be disturbing and perplexing. Why choose sorrow, misery, deprivation, struggle, contention as the ultimate manifestations of human possibilities? That may be where we all came from but we don't need to go back there again -- unless some convince us we must, that that is our inevitable and proper fate. If there are no problems, their highest civic duty is to create them, perpetuate them, resurrect them. To them, there can be no virtue without pain and suffering; it is a deeply ingrained cultural teaching, a puritan ethic, witch burnings for the nonbelievers, children schooled to loathe learning, curious minds disciplined for straying from the straight and narrow path.
Now an average person has the computing capability of the entire nation fifty years ago. How does one manage overwhelming success?
