American Success (2023)

This year, one of the biggest news stories concerned a fraudster now viewed on a similar level to infamous figures like Bernie Madoff who had done it all through the rising popularity of cryptocurrency. Apparently he stole billions of dollars, something I cannot even comprehend. I saw this story all over and realized that I recognized the man’s name. Once it was revealed that he was released on bond, despite his crimes that media outlets were painting as quite heinous, and ordered to live at his parents’ house in California, I was sure of it. I had been to the Bankman-Fried household before. I remembered it vividly because of the sparkling water that came from the tap.

The Bankman-Fried parents were out of town and a mutual friend had convinced a young member of the family to throw a party. Parties were also something I did not enjoy, even though it seemed like I was supposed to. This one was admittedly different. At sixteen years old or possibly younger, I couldn’t really see things getting any more successful than sparkling water from the tap, even though I did not enjoy sparkling water at the time. Even though I was not, and most of the attendees of the party were not born into deep financial struggles, the level of opulence in this house was stunning to all of us. My friend’s parents stepped in to end the party before teenagers caused an irreversible amount of damage to the house.

The opposite of success, or unsuccess as we should call it, is somewhat easy to agree on in American society. When we see, as we too often do, people who seem to be at their wit’s end, with no love in their lives, no home to return to, and not a dollar to spend, we are probably unlikely to view them as a successful person. When an individual is incarcerated, we are also unlikely to view them as successful. After all, advertising and popular folklore tend to suggest that the United States of America is a free land in which every person has the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, so it is easy to perceive these people who are trapped where they are as having failed.

When you ask an American what success means you are likely to receive different responses. Before my research, my understanding of American culture had led me to assume that most Americans measured success in “status-oriented, comparative, or zero-sum ways” which a recent report by Populace and Gallup states is a belief held by less than 10% of Americans. Interestingly, the same report claims that Americans largely believe that other Americans measure success in these ways, as I did. I admit I had these preconceptions because of how much success as wealth is promoted in American mass media, which clearly is not a perfect representation of actual American people. Most respondents seemed to care more about personal success, and separated that from societally perceived success. Factors such as income apparently only mattered in determining personal success to an extent, with relationships, health, quality of life and other things holding just as much weight. Of course, the poll for this report only had a limited number of respondents, and it is debatable whether or not these figures accurately represent the views of American people.

The format of this report did not sit right with me. It is easy for me to claim that I do not measure my success by the amount of money I make. I have not experienced incarceration, which often happens on unfair grounds outside of the incarcerated individual’s control (as proven in Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow), nor did I have to face financial struggles at critical ages, nor was I born with a major disability or addiction. I have always had some amount of freedom, including the freedom to define what success means to me. I have been able to focus much of my time on making friends, dating, purchasing artwork, attending shows, and building a typically risky career in music that has resulted in some amount of acclaim. It is easy to understand why abject poverty and incarceration are easier for me to avoid than they are for individuals who were not born with the same privileges. 

Nowhere in the Gallup report on success was altruism, or service to others asked about or mentioned as an aspect of success. The closest aspect to this mentioned was “relationships” and “character”. It is important to note that in modern capitalist society, concepts such as relationships, health, character, work, quality of life, and education are all extremely commodified. It is no secret how many Americans are unable to receive healthcare or higher education due to financial or familiar restrictions. There was no opportunity for the poll’s respondents to go deeper on what success means to them. Perhaps measuring success in and of itself is an act of commodification. How can caring about things such as healthcare and education in a country in which these things cost money, which requires good jobs (which many people do not have and are unable to get), be considered non-financially and non-comparatively oriented? Perhaps Americans such as myself would like to think that we care so deeply about things that are completely unrelated to money in order to distract ourselves from the control money will have over our lives until we die.

Many people I grew up around were all but forced by their family into an academic and professional path, to various degrees of personal satisfaction. Similarly to most of the respondents in the poll, I consider personal and societally perceived success to be two different things, with aspects of the former category being more important to my overall happiness. 

My personal success consists of learning from my mistakes, having a positive impact on others, and living according to my values. I would also consider a third category of learned success which consists of living according to values instilled in me by others, a form of success I try to value less but still care deeply about. My societally perceived success comes mostly from my career in music; often others will approach me to praise my success in my music career, despite the fact that most of the accomplishments they mention rarely give me any feelings of success, satisfaction, or having lived according to my values. Personal success is indeed the deepest and most important aspect of success for me. However, no matter how much I am able to live according to my values, I do not and can not see myself as more successful than any individual born into a significantly lower amount of privilege than myself. 

It is true that I have accomplished many things in my life, and I feel lucky to be able to have done so. However, does this reflect positively on my character? Why would a prisoner of war that was tortured to death for following orders that if disobeyed would also lead to death, considered less successful than me in any way, shape or form? When the cryptocurrency fraudster made his billions, was that success? Was it success when he avoided prison and returned from the Bahamas to the house with the sparkling water faucets? Was being ordered to stay in said house a punishment? What did he want with billions of dollars? Was I born successful? When Kurt Cobain took his own life, was his success over, or just beginning? Was he ever successful if his life led him to such a grisly conclusion? Did Cobain ever think that success would fix his problems? Was his suicide a result of success, the lack thereof, or was it totally unrelated? These are unanswerable questions.

Death awaits every living thing in the world, and no amount of success can transcend this fact. Is there any compelling point to measuring success? One can go quite far with this nihilistic way of thinking (is there any compelling reason to be alive?) but my inclination is to move away from success as a measure of my life. I am grateful to be able to experience my life doing what I love, but do not think it makes me more valuable than people who are not able to do what they love, or do not know what they love. It is more possible to measure the individual successes of actions - successfully putting a piece of furniture together, successfully finding some water to drink, successfully completing an assignment. For many people, success is making it until the end of the day without losing their sanity or their life. For some people, it is being surrounded by friends and loved ones, or being what they consider a “good person” as much of the time as possible. For many others, it is the ability to walk up to the sink and draw a perfectly bubbly glass of soda right from the tap.