Successful People Are Boring

We think success is great, but maybe it’s not. Our society thinks successful people are awesome, but maybe we need to think again. Maybe success is boring as crap This idea occurred to me when I was reading Chesterton the other day. You know G.K. Chesterton: the flamboyant, enormous writer and artist from the turn of the twentieth century, who, when he wasn’t writing his own novels, was a literary critic, analyzing the likes of Charles Dickens.

Chesterton noticed that Dickens’ greatest characters were the ones we would not consider to be ‘successful,’ quote-unquote. They were always part of the lower classes, they were always poor. While the wealthy characters in Dickens were almost always stale and boring. Think of the miserable but outwardly successful Ebenezer Scrooge vs. his poor but flamboyant and jocular nephew. Or the larger-than-life Wilkins Micawber, a humble clerk whose larger-than-life personality is more often than not to be found in debtor’s prison. You probably can’t name even one wealthy or successful character in Dickens, because they are all so forgettable.

This isn’t just working class hero, BS. Chesterton argued that Dickens wrote this way because this is the way things really are. Successful people are boring while the truly interesting people are found among the poor, because success and status, and the wealth that comes with it, require us to conform to the fixed standards of society, making us dull, boring people.

Think about how typical jobs work. In order to rise in the ranks of business, you have to walk and talk like everyone else. Dress like everyone else. You have to shrink your personality down to fit a standard of conduct. You have to be professional and vanilla. Convivial, and restrained. cardboard, and predictable.

Chesterton concludes:

“The truth is that our public life consists almost exclusively of small men. Our public men are small because they have to prove that they are in the commonplace interpretation clever, because they have to pass examinations, to learn codes of manners, to imitate a fixed type.”

Being successful in any field means you must imitate a fixed type, you must give up your uniqueness as much as possible, because success is by definition, limiting yourself to submit to the rules, regulations and criteria of a dominance hierarchy in order to come out on top. The one who gets the gold medal is not the one who runs however he wants, but the one who gives up his uniqueness in order to run the way the competition demands. Usain Bolt is a less unique runner than a toddler chasing butterflies, and also less interesting because he is completely predictable—we know exactly where he is going, where he will end, and we know he will probably win—but he is more successful than the toddler precisely because of these things, precisely because he is a more one-dimensional runner.

To succeed we must first conform.

This is why The most successful people are the least unique. The most popular people are also the most subdued, blandly vanilla, cardboard cut outs you can imagine. Think of democratically elected politicians. They have to appeal to the most people as possible, therefore they have to subdue their uniqueness as much as possible. They dress the same, talk the same, and act the same. By and large, they are barely even human.

Maya Angelou said that, “Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.” And Maya Angelou was wrong. That may be a good way to live, Ms. Angelou, but it’s not how society defines success.

To be successful, you have To be rewarded, and to be rewarded, you have to do what other people want. There’s a reason why we say that a genius like Van Gogh was not a success in his lifetime. No one bought his paintings. That’s because he made paintings that, despite their craft and genius, no one wanted. You have to live on the conditions of other people, clock in on their schedule, produce content that they like. The more you do and become what other people want, the more you are rewarded.

Honestly this is all fine and dandy. There’s nothing wrong with conforming to society’s norms. It’s often quite good in fact. Get a job, make yourself useful. If you want to be successful, go for it. If you want the accolades of society, enjoy. But I say, let’s have no illusions about ourselves. If we are fortunate enough to be successful, to have good jobs and good salaries, odds are, we’re boring as crap. Let’s not plume ourselves or hold our heads too high. Success as such is never wrong, but pride, like strutting, is always absurd. And think twice before you put successful people on too high a pedestal, pause a moment before praise them: There are better Gods to worship than these hollow idols of wood and clay.

#Success