Only To Be A Success

There are many people in today’s society who have consulted a psychologist over a lack of success. “I have so much potential. I just want to make a success out of my life.”

For some reason or another these people can’t find their own path to success; they keep hitting barriers; nothing ever goes their way. The media, too, dedicates serious space to the importance of success in in everyday life. “Why do extremely successful people swear by this 5- minute daily habit?” “Do successful CEO’s sleep less?”

Today being ‘successful’ takes centre stage; in the Middle Age the word didn’t even exist. Success in the 16th century meant “to follow or succeed something”; in other words, something happens if I do this. To distinguish oneself as ‘successful’, and therefore superior to others, was simply not possible, writes Enrich Fromm. “Today, we have the feeling that ‘success’ must be one of the oldest words in the history of mankind” But in previous times, to say someone was ‘successful’ was a s nonsensical as calling them ‘purple’.

"Concepts such as 'success', which appear to us to be natural in our language, are purely sociologically conditioned concepts that exist just as infrequently in many other societies as  the concept 'exploitation'," writes Fromm. The word 'successful' is a key term for describing humans in our competitive individualistic culture as it keeps people striving, bettering, competing, and working- activities that are necessary for the social structure to survive and prosper. Indeed, 'success metrics are good for the economy but not so good for the human soul. 

- Jacques Ellul, New Philosopher, Issue 11 Technology and Your Brain

Beyond the Golden Mean

Picture this: billboard signs rest mighty atop colossal concrete, looming over with blinding neon pixels, flashing animatedly in disarray sequence. Honking of taxi sears through the murmuring of commuters spilling out of the tube station. Plastic carriers pregnant with loot fresh from the high streets rustle like white noise. And as you heave in, an inhalant of perfumes, exhaust smoke and steamy asphalt fills your lungs and overcomes you. Just in the instant you are sedated momentarily. 

It is a world of over stimulation. 

We [need to] explore the effects of living in this great excess. To understand the realities of reaching beyond the 'Golden Mean', a governing concept the Ancient Greeks once swore by to ensure harmony and balance as not to rival the excesses of the gods. Perhaps in this secularist time, the idea seems archaic. But it still poses a valid question to re-examine our human limitations and to restore a sense of restraint for us to exist more meaningfully. To eventually let the drowning out and indulge in its simpler composites. And really, just so we can breath more easily.

- Nabil Aliffi, Vulture Issue 2 Excess