"Success is the disease of me" is a very interesting quotation. Its borderline paradoxical. You're combining success, which is something that almost everyone in life wants, with disease, which I can't think of any disease that, yes, I'd love to have that. The opposition is what makes this quote so memorable though. It's a statement that is very open to interpretation though. Does it mean that all success, or is it like the whole "too much of a good thing," concept? People have differing opinions on this.
We know that Gladwell is borderline obsessed with success, look at his book, it has success in the title. It's jam packed with stories of how people became successful. The only story about an unsuccessful person was basically to prove a point that he should've been successful.
So how would Gladwell respond to the statement, "Success is the disease of me?" First he would probably see it as an opportunity to write a new book, or at least a sequel to outliers. The he would probably laugh at the notion. As noted earlier, success is like crack to Gladwell, he can't get enough of it. Telling him success is bad is like telling a surgeon that he shouldn't perform that heart surgery he's about to perform, they'd both call you crazy. To him, success is like hollywood, there's no such thing as bad success. Look at one of the examples Gladwell uses, the Beatles. Yes, they were one of the greatest bands in the history of music, but eventually they split up, three of them went on to have decent solo careers (poor Ringo...), even being elected into the Rock and Roll hall of fame as solo artists, but how much of that success do you think came from being associated with the Beatles? Getting success off of a name, is that really the "right" kind of success? to Gladwell, it doesn't matter, its still success.
To me, I think there can be bad success. If you didn't work to get it, it will get you in this false sense of believing that you can do anything with little effort. Also success where the ends don't justify the means. Congradulations, you're successful, but how much did you throw away, how many people did you step on to get that 15 minutes of fame? Was it worth it? If its hard earned success, then more power to you, you deserve what you got, and it'll make you a better person in the long run anyway. Sometimes the success isn't even the most important part, its what you pick up along the way that counts.
So basically, success is good, Gladwell will back that up by writing 285 pages about it. It can be a bad thing though, it can get to your head and affect you, or its sometimes just not worth what you have to do to get to that point.
You are most definitely right about there being bad success. When someone becomes successful without having to work for it, they don't really appreciate it and it just becomes a huge ego trip. They don't care who they hurt or what they do as long as they remain on top.
ReplyDeleteI agree with basically everything you talked about in this post. I definitely think Gladwell is obsessed with success, and I don't think he would ever consider it a bad thing. And I think you're right in saying that sometimes success can be negative. If people constantly succeed without hard work, they will most likely start to believe that they are too good to put in effort. This would affect them in the long run because a lot of the time, like you said, its what you pick up on the way that counts.
ReplyDeleteGood post Toby, I agree with you on the fact that success is a good thing. But, like I said in my post, it depends on the type of mindset someone has. To a growth mindset, success would be great, but to a fixed mindset, success would be the "death" of them....Kelsey I like the last sentence in your comment.
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