The Role of Public Success in Society

In his book The Theory of the Leisure Class, Thorstein Veblen writes the following:  “Purposeful effort comes to mean, primarily, effort directed to or resulting in a more credible showing of accumulated wealth” (pg 34).  To put this in modern language, meaningful work is that which builds visible wealth.  This prevalent concept of success has consequences, both good and bad.  One of the positive results can be an increased motivation to work.  This is shown in that over the course of history as man has invented more efficient means to accomplish time-consuming tasks, society has continued to work just as hard, if not harder.  This reflects the above concept of success and the work drive that it leads to.  Work is elevated in importance because it provides a means to become rich, and visible wealth is equated to success because it is something tangible that even one’s enemies can’t refute.  This concept of success can then have positive results if it supplies a lazy person with motivation to work. 

In investigating the personal consequences of this definition of success, I want to consider the implications of the need for the wealth to be visible.  In today’s society, it is possible to buy expensive items on credit.  This means that people can live a lifestyle that suggests that they are rich, even though they don’t really possess as much wealth as it appears. They can drive fancy cars, go on exotic vacations, live in luxurious houses, all without owning any of it because it is all on credit.  To the observer, they are rich, and therefore, they are successful.  However, the individual knows that it is all a charade.  They are being crushed by the debt that is to their name, knowing that at some point it will catch up to them. 

This way of living doesn’t result in satisfaction, but rather in worry and stress.  And once one has bought into this concept of success, it is hard to find a way out.  Peer pressure to “stay on top” so to speak leads to extreme competition.  As material wealth becomes the basis for one’s value, his or her identity and self-worth become unstable because the standard for wealth is always in flux.  Success then becomes relative to everyone else’s levels of success as measured by visible wealth.  The consequences of this selfish mindset are manifested in families and communities, which suffer because each individual values him or herself above the community.

So how do we manage to keep the positive corollary to this definition of success, such as industriousness, while rejecting the negative repercussions on the individual, family, and community?  I propose that we both modify our definition of success and that we stop deriving our value from success because as long as we are constantly comparing ourselves to others, we will never consider ourselves truly successful.  We all fail at some point in our lives, but we don’t have to choose to let that failure define who we are, but that is most often the result when we allow success to define who we are.