I’m finding it odd that, during this of all seasons, people think society defines success as how much money one makes. Surely we’ve all seen Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. But not just that. There are countless stories we tell, books we write, plays and movies we make, and songs we write about how someone learns that true happiness and success in life is achieved, not by monetary success, but by establishing and maintaining loving relationships. It might be true that we judge “success in the job world” by how much money a person makes, but I don’t think it’s fair to say that society judges how successful we are as people by how much money we make. Does anyone here do that?
One reason is that money is a much simpler and quantifiable metric than love and relationships.
“Brian is a loving husband, with a wife and kids who love him, and has lots of good friends” =* “yawn, doesn’t every other person in America have that?”*
“Jake is a professional athlete earning $16 million a year” = people stare wide-eyed, “wow, you don’t meet many people like that”
Nope.
The economy has a general rule of thumb for determining worth. It’s income.
The error, that so many Americans have fallen into, is thinking their society is simply an afterthought or a side effect of an economy. That’s exactly backwards. As you say indirectly over the course of the rest of your post.
My point is not to pull your chain, but rather to highlight the underlying cause for what you rightly point out.
My sig line used to be “The day we stopped being Citizens and started being Consumers was the Beginning of the End of Western Civilization.” I still think that’s pretty much true.
There are scores of threads here that point out that women prefer to marry rich men, so yeah, I’d say it’s a factor. Our beautiful art is reflective of cherished values, but probably often, in many cases, wishful thinking. Indeed, a lot of the artistic works you reference point to wealth as a dominating cultural value - they are oftentimes a story, as in A Christmas Carol, of how someone bought into society’s lie to the extreme, and paid a huge emotional and personal toll. There are many, many films that exist to challenge the dominant cultural paradigm that success is measured by wealth. We wouldn’t be so moved by them if they didn’t lash back against commonly accepted beliefs.
Also, it’s way easier to reject something as a measure of success if you don’t have it. It would be stupid of me to place excessive value on attractiveness because I’m pretty mediocre in that regard. Likewise, it behooves wealthy people, or people capable of earning wealth, to hold onto that value. Reminds me of something I saw in a movie (I can’t recall) years ago:
Daughter: But what really matters is that you’re beautiful on the inside!
Mother: Aww, honey, that’s just something ugly people say.
Also, I can’t believe I forgot to mention this, but one of the key findings of positive psychology and Seligman et al is that the one huge consistent among happy people is strong personal relationships. Income matters up to the point that it meets basic needs and then beyond that has diminishing returns. As a statistical measure of happiness, not necessarily success, relationships are everything. They tend to make people more resilient in the face of all manner of personal hardships.
I don’t think that captures the whole story, so to speak. We tell stories to our children in order to culturalize them into the norms of our society. Are there any stories we tell our children that instruct them to ignore relationships and go for the gold? If we re-tell those stories to adults, it’s to re-enforce the negative aspects of straying from what our culture expects. If we surveyed Americans on what makes for a successful life, do you really think we’d end up with “making lots of money at your job” winning over something like “having meaningful relationships with family and friends”?
Again, does anyone in this thread measure a successful life by how much money you make? If not, why are we so sure that “other people” do? (And by “other people”, I mean most, not some.)
Exactly!
Now, of course everyone should define their own ideas of what success is, but if our kids are asking us for advice, what do we tell them? What does our experience tell us that we should relay to them?
Right and besides just quantifiable, also highly stratified as suggested by your example, as opposed to comparing if Brian was a bit short of money and Jake made a nice $100k/yr (or whatever one thinks qualifies as ‘nice’, not to sidetrack on that). It isn’t just that money is quantifiable all across the spectrum of incomes, it’s also that there’s really no meaningful concept of being 300 times more loving/loved than the median like there is to making ~300 times the household median like Jake.
However by same token, and given that 8 (or 7) figure incomes are so rare, most of the people saying ‘job comes first’ aren’t making anything like $16mil. That’s even more true IME of braggarts, people making millions and bragging about it is especially rare*. Not much likelihood the original Guy makes more than say low 6 figures I’d say.
IOW it’s more likely to be ‘Brian has good relationships but job situation not as much’, ‘Jake has not so good relationships but makes a comfortable income’. With of course plenty of other examples bad/good on both counts, and I think you’d find a lot of the people prioritizing relationships are already successful on the money front, not actually choosing one and neglecting the other. Life is just much easier if you have money, all around**. Whereas people who make millions are statistical freaks, who moreover by the nature of things have no real equivalent in being 99.9% tile extremely loving/loved.
*one obvious exception is sure to be raised, there are new threads about him here almost every day 
**and not all studies say that levels off completely at the ‘comfortable’ level, the utility per marginal $ is lower, doesn’t necessarily reach zero
It’s amusing to me that you’d say we don’t tell children to ignore relationships and go for the gold when we celebrate people like Olympians who ignore relationships in order to literally go for the gold.
And in a ton of families, the story is “Your schooling comes first. You don’t need to date yet. You don’t want to get married too early. You don’t want to have kids too soon.”
All of those things are “Put off relationships. Go for the gold.”
Again, just speaking from experience with this one (very large, 200-person extended) family, a lot of things that people that wealthy do is a brag. They don’t have to say anything because everything they own is a brag. I’ve never once heard anyone in the fam say, “Oh, look at us, we are so wealthy!” but if your typical birthday party involves an open, custom carved spirits bar made of solid ice with the family name emblazoned into it, or you put fresh-cut flowers in the urinals, you’re bragging. (Those aren’t even the weirdest things I’ve seen.) That’s why I made the comment upthread that it all feels like one perpetual brag.
From the outside, it definitely looks like bragging. After fifteen years, my best coping mechanism is to make fun of it, to reassure myself that just because I’m becoming more comfortable in this culture doesn’t mean I’m a part of it.
I have weird issues about it, though, like this terror of becoming spoiled and entitled. I grew up in a very working class culture, like, “As soon as you’re 18, you’re out on your ass” kind of bootstraps unbringing. (And I actually became financially independent at 17.) Just the idea that parents often pay for college was bizarre to me. I married a guy with serious career goals but a palpable disdain for the wealth of his family. Throughout the years, we’ve both had to come to terms with the fact that, for all our problems with this culture, we have a lot of advantages we never earned as a result.
No, they aren’t, at least not necessarily. Many of those same parents who say “schooling comes first” so you don’t need to date yet are also saying schooling comes first so you don’t need to get a job yet.
And I think you’re interpreting “relationships” too strictly. Kids have relationships—with their family and friends—long before they have boyfriends or girlfriends or spouses or kids of their own.
I think admonitions like the one you cited are about not growing up too soon or limiting your options too early, not about favoring jobs over relationships.
Right: Conspicuous Consumption.
(Although there do exist wealthy people who don’t show off, and show-offs who aren’t nearly as wealthy as they’d like people to think they are.)
The OP asks a really interesting question for me, because I am a firm believer that success has a large amount of chance involved with it. Relationship success can hinge on who you know, where you were born, specific timing, minority status, etc. Work success is the same way. Were your parents educated/rich/social? Did you live in an area with opportunities? Are you of the most advantageous ethnic/racial/religious background for the area?
So I tend to view success squishily. What did I do with the things that were (or at least appear to me to be) under my control?
The sacrifices someone makes to be an Olympic-caliber athlete (since that’s the example I used) are impacting every single relationship. I was not limiting it to romantic ones. It’s not rare for these kids to actually leave their entire families behind to move halfway around the world to train for the Olympics. They are admired for their drive and determination, not treated like Scrooges. In other contexts, it might be “Leave your whole family behind so you can go make a success of yourself.” The idea that kids are not told these stories is incorrect.
Oh! There’s a term for that.
Surely not everyone does it. I’m not exactly sure how wealthy my grandfather is, but I know he has ammassed a lot more money than you would ever guess. He still drives a fifteen year old truck, does all repairs himself and wears the same style of Levi jeans year after year. In a lot of cases, this is how people get wealthy… By not spending money on stuff they don’t need.
I think in Sr. Weasel’s family, what happened is his grandparents started as dirt poor immigrants, worked their way to the top, created this financial empire, and see their wealth as directly correlated with their hard work. I think it’s also influenced by the fact that in their time, people from their culture were discriminated against, so they are also proud to represent their culture in a positive way. Their pride from that angle is relatively innocent. But in developing this culture of conspicuous consumption with their kids, who never earned a penny, they created a many-headed monster.
They know it, too. They recently donated a sizeable chunk of what would have been family inheritance to charity. And some of the adult children and grandchildren pitched a royal fit, which basically illustrated the point.
I think this is true in an economic sense, but I don’t think it is used to evaluate someone’s social worth. At least not commonly. Maybe around the richie rich, but not the rabble.
When is the last time you read a headline like “Woman Worth $50K, Killed by a Pitbull Driving a Mack Truck.” “Mother of Two” is a much more common descriptor.
I think people are much more likely to care about what you do rather than what your income is. I think most people attribute high worth to individuals who do something that’s high profile (TV reporter, newspaper editor, politician), altruistic (medicne, running a non-profit, ministry, etc.), lucrative (businessman), or creative (artist, inventor, researcher, etc.). I’ve never gone to a party and had people ask how much money I make, but I have fielded lots of questions about what I do (“You used to work with alligators! Get outta here!”) I think a lot of people assume that if your job is interesting enough or cool enough, then the money of course follows. My aunt initially assumed I was making crazy bank when I first started out after graduate school, because OF COURSE someone who flies around in helicopters just to catch some fish would have a nice salary.
I think the whole “love what you do” philosophy arises out of this idea.
I think income does matter, though. But only in a relative sense. A lot of people compare where they are against where their parents were at their age to gauge their “success”. So a person might have a comfortable salary in comparison to the masses, but may feel like a failure if it falls shorts of what their parents had.
There is a somewhat old book on this very subject called “The Millionaire Next Door,” on how the appearance of wealth does not mean wealth. It has its problems, but I think it is pretty accurate on this subject.
My daughter got into the field of Judgement Decision making when her boyfriend’s father got fired and promptly bought a new car. I think that is a self-worth thing, thinking you can buy prestige even if you can’t afford it.
I almost mentioned that book! I haven’t read it but that’s the sort of thing I was thinking about.
I was thinking this stuff over earlier because I don’t think entitlement is limited to the wealthy - I know plenty of poor people or people not as well off who have the same conspicuous consumption and entitlement issues. What it is, I think, is that if you have a lot of money, you are less likely to face any consequences for doing stupid stuff. Like the guy who lost his job and then bought a car, I’m willing to bet he felt the sting of that pretty quickly. Whereas if trust fund child #1 does the same thing, his parents are going to be able to bail him out and he’s never going to learn anything.
Re bragging and being “conspicuous”.
Can this not apply to both wealth and relationships? I’m asking from a place of genuine ignorance.
I’m reminded of something my father told me a few years ago. He’s an avid Facebook user. All his page really does is showcase family photos and pictures from various parties, backyard BBQs, family vacations, etc. He also talks about family going-ons on his Facebook. There will no doubt be an update next week.
So while I was visiting home one day, my father shared with me a dilemma he was facing. He was thinking about his Facebook page and putting himself in the shoes of his best friend, who is divorced and estranged from his kids. He wondered whether his Facebook page was throwing salt in his friend’s wounds. Well, I don’t know his friend, but I do know that being bombarded by people’s online highlight reels can make some folks feel depressed. Possibly his best friend isn’t negatively affected, but mayhap he is. No one can say. But assuming he is hurt, what should my father do about it? Not talk about what his kids and grandkids are up to? Not show off their pictures? I didn’t have any advice to give him (other than to throw out there that maybe his best friend didn’t spend a whole lot of time on Facebook), but I was impressed that he would have the compassion to think about something like this. Most people flash highlight reels and don’t think about the consequences at all.
(Interestingly, my father sometimes brags about how many “likes” he gets on his posts. It’s hilarious because I would not expect an “old” man to care that much about what his friends think. I do question whether this is a good thing, though.)
Sorry for rambling…
This morning, a former coworker who I haven’t seen in 8 years emailed a group of us family photos and provided an update on everything her family has been up to over the year. There wasn’t any information in the email about what she has been up to other than being her kids’ devoted mother and her husband’s doting wife. Most people would not say she’s bragging, because talking about one’s family more than oneself is seen as not only normal, but exemplary. However, it is impossible to talk about one’s career in the same way and not risk looking like a braggart douchebag with misaligned priorities. As someone who feels the stigma of not being partnered or having children, the whole “let me talk about how wonderful my family is for the eleventy-billionth time” thing isn’t my favorite thing to listen to. It kind of feels braggadacious even though I intellectually know it isn’t.
Based on societal notions and expectations, defining your self-worth based on relationships does seem like “normal” thing to do. I still question whether it is inherently healthier than defining one’s worth in other ways, however. I can envision us heading towards a society like the one portrayed in that Black Mirror episode, where everyone is scored based on their popularity and the specific friends they have. That would be a nightmare for me! It sounds just as bad as a society where everyone is rated based on income or some other financial metric.
As soon as I wrote that I thought somebody would counter with ‘bragging, though they aren’t saying anything directly’. OK maybe in some cases, but OTOH IME if you do well and don’t go to extremes hiding it, some people are going to say you are ‘bragging’. Sometimes that really just means ‘your wealth makes me feel bad’. Actual bragging is somewhat subjective, what exactly about their wealth does a person have to say to be bragging about it? (again IM perhaps different E in real life it’s rare for people who genuinely make a boat load to want to talk about the topic at all, even indirectly). But once you open it up to any negative reaction other people have to visible evidence of the wealth of others, that can get stretched pretty far.
Again if limiting it literally to flowers in urinals (I’ve never seen that, interesting ) OK I guess. But referring to another recent thread about Rolex watches, some people see it as ‘bragging’ to wear one. That stretches the term too far IMO, makes it too much in the eye of the beholder. To some lights it seems there’s no such thing as envy anymore, envy is always just a reasonable reaction to ‘bragging’.
I mostly get my self-worth from being a valued and appreciated person, either at work or in my relationships (platonic or not).
I’ve reached the salary where I am now in the lucky position of being able to choose to stay in a job because I am valued and appreciated. And not have to take the next job, even with its significant salary increase, because I knew that I would just be another cog in the machine.
In my personal life, I’m aided by my introverted nature, that I don’t need to be appreciated and valued by a large number of people, in order for it to ‘count’. But that the people who I value, value me. And I am good with that.
I don’t think it’s going to be healthy ever to define our self-worth on anything external to us. Or maybe “safe” is the word I’m looking for. Reliance on outside validation means that so many of us would be vulnerable to lack of that validation for reasons that are beyond our control. I think that’s why I like the idea of not comparing ourselves to others but trying to evaluate what we are doing, or what we could be doing, that is more than what our circumstances dictate.