The Secret of My Success

. . . And other concepts to assiduously avoid.

Fairly early on in his book A People’s History of the World, Chris Harman explores the question of how wealth inequality began in the first place. Harman presumes that there was a time when humans lived in small groups, or perhaps networks of clans, where typically no one experienced scarcity unless everyone experienced scarcity. How exactly do you get from there to something like, say, a Pharaoh and a ruling elite towering over vast numbers of peasants and slaves?

It’s an interesting question. One possible explanation is that class distinctions were first created when groups of people went to war and the winners dominated and enslaved the losers, and it’s easy to imagine that this contributed to the formation of complex societies. Harmon offers another idea, though, which I find much more interesting.

Once communities began to develop surplus, he says, one might suppose they needed a place to store the surplus, and that storage space needed a steward. The theory is that these stewards began to grow in influence, simply out of their proximity to the surplus, and first roles like chiefs developed, and later whole empires eventually arose.

Below is Paul K. Piff’s 2013 TEDx talk about the behavioral changes famously observed when two people played a game of Monopoly rigged in favor of one of the players. Repeatedly, the benefactor of the rigged game became more directive of the other player. They spoke more favorably about themselves and more derogatorily about the other. They consumed more of the pretzels in the bowl strategically placed next to the game board. They made louder sounds when they moved their piece around the board.

Piff’s group’s research found that, in various controlled circumstances, people who felt wealthy were more likely to cheat and take candy set aside for children. People who are actually wealthy were less likely to share a cash gift than poorer people. People with more expensive cars were less likely to stop for an experimenter posing as a pedestrian at a crosswalk (in California, where the law requires the driver to stop). Wealthier people were found to be more likely to endorse cutting corners and other unethical behavior. They were found to be less compassionate, less empathetic, more entitled, and more self-interested.

What I find most interesting is the idea that these behavioral changes can emerge in real time, right as the increase in success does. It’s possible to see a fault line open up moment by moment. I find this fascinating. It seems to me to suggest that one of the most practical ways to prevent oppression altogether is to watch this line in ourselves continually, the way one would watch the amount of ice cream one consumes, or the number of glasses of wine.

In his talk, as Piff describes the cognitive shifts associated with wealth and privilege, the audience laughs in a way that I find disturbing. To me, they appear to laugh knowingly — as though on some level they identify with the “haves” he is describing. They appear to be laughing because they do not appear to know, or at least do not really feel, the deep pain that genuine oppression invariably causes.

This is the attitude at an institutional gathering where people feel they are remaking the world in good, groundbreaking ways. And it seems to me you can feel this combination of confidence in good work, and essential rotting of character, in many, many places where we badly need it not to be.

Poise without commensurate ability abounds. Leaders with leading personalities step up with little vision — as though they are very simply climbing atop the surplus just for the sake of being there. Genuine expertise dwindles as increasing ranks of ambitious people proudly tote degrees without an accompanying life-giving ability to think. Democratically elected officials defend the wealthy alone, and sometimes they defend wealth alone.

And yet, virtually everything in our culture is inflected with the esteem of personal success. Really, what is even remotely as valued?

Amidst all of this ambition, greater and greater scarcity is created — or, at least, the perception of scarcity. A sort of arms race develops. Some people are driven towards self-centeredness by the promise of personal gain, and some are driven by the fear that, if you aren’t self-centered, then you will fall through the bottomless abyss at the bottom of society, forever.

A key underlying principle is simply what we do when we feel we are not enough. To no small extent, the excessive pursuit of personal success is something that is born out of feelings of emptiness, and which begets emptiness in return. A key remedy, then, is to be able to inhabit those feelings of emptiness without anxiety, toward a richer, more life-giving truth.

The past year or two, I’ve been fairly obsessed with the books of Chico Xavier, a Brazilian medium who wrote extensively about life on the “other side.” Xavier’s narrator, Andre Luiz, primarily reports from two realms: Nosso Lar, a spiritual colony of service and transformation, where discarnate beings live and work together for the good of all, and the Umbral, a turbulent, hellish realm where some lost souls arrive after death, and where some of the most refined denizens from Nosso Lar work to rescue those who are most available for enlightened assistance.

According to Xavier, in the radiant astral realm of Nosso Lar, it is clearly and universally understood that the greatest success is to be of humble service to others. It emerges as a system of purely virtuous cycle. There are distinguished people, but their distinction is in the fact that their presence is an inspirational gift to everyone else. The distinguished claim few privileges, and any privileges they do claim they claim reluctantly, and often these are conveniences that only make it possible for them to be of greater benefit to others.

This speaks to me as a true model of shalom. I’m sure that when we pray the ancient prayer, “Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven,” this is part of what we can pray for:

When we begin to lose ourselves in loving contribution to one another, when the need for status and exceptional personal gain increasingly dissolves in wave after wave of cooperation toward the common good, we all fill, and thrive, and rise. Success becomes primarily a collective phenomenon. Distinction is given back, as a gift.

Personal success is pleasurable and comforting. Also, I think the truth is that personal success is genuinely dangerous.

We can at least be aware. We’re not here for ourselves, and we’re not here just to have things. And though we may grow heterogenously, one of us a bit here, another a bit there, some more or faster than others, I think the basic truth is we enter the kingdom together — or not at all.