I'm in little position to proselytize, to be sure, but I believe my anxiety pins together the myriad pains, boredoms and tribulations. Without an actualization of this we all see ourselves as something far less than complete, without an honest evaluation of its degree we merely prolong our inevitable disappointment and yet this personally variable concept goes without extrapolation for most of us.
Without a definition of success every point of pride is easily diminished, every failure unacceptable yet expectable, every step merely that and not neccessarily up or forward.
As people, and thus inward thinking and a bit feeble, it may be easiest to look at how many self-proclaimed successful individuals quantify this elusive success:
1) Money:
The world is run by very rich people, the richest of whom virtually always gaining their wealth well within the laws of a "free society" and yet with utter disrespect for those they'd shared a nursery with. Wealth is a welcome byproduct of success and a possible indicator of influence (more on this later) but what is this more than the acceleration of quite primitive desires and a degree of paranoia manifested in compulsion? Is this not the animalistic survival instinct (that is, tooth and nail struggle for life's essentials) exaggerated by our species' unprecedented means? Is greed any indication of a mental evolution? While the root of greed may be an essential (the push to obtain life's neccessities) hardly anyone could call it's apex personal success, no matter their creed.
2)Piety:
It can be said that when all else fails there is god. When the profound questions of the universe stand in stark challenge to the handful of knowledge we typically have, the readymade answers are easiest. One can sleep at night in the warm glow of their powerful imagination, comfortable in the knowledge that when all this anguish is over he or she will be rewarded by having held tight to what they'd been told. Faith trumps all for many: fact, impulse, aspirations, ability, determination. Faith treats success as it treats all other aspects of life, in the simplistic terms of conformity, repression. Faith allows one to give up all the wonder of life on earth to the easiest , simplest possiblity. I believe it was Nietzche who said: "For every difficult question there is an answer that is simple, clear and wrong." Faith allows success without effort, or rather with the effort it takes to fail classes or lose jobs. To truly define success we must understand what the point of all this sputtering and bustling is, faith restricts this question's investigation
3)Influence:
Virtually anyone labeled "successful" has had at least the degree of influence to attract that label. Influence can come politically, artistically, interpersonally (that is, affecting change in the life of another) or philosophically (for convienence let this category include religion). Influence is not positive or negative; however, the concept of influence introduces the dicotomy of good and bad into the discussion of success.
"The Dichotomy of Good and Bad"
Despite scientific abberation to describing things in terms of human perspective, influence can only truly be measured under the subjective terms of opinion. This condition does not stress popularity as much as it does demonstrable impact on the way groups change their behavior, performance or belief. Influence frequently comes as a result of one or more of efficiency (the "Engineer" definition of improvement, objective completion, conservation in pursuit of goals, problem resolution or mitigation, etc), innovation (introduction of something new and useful, be it idea, product or process) or "by example" (typifying any of society's wirtues of reliability, bravery, strength, creativity, honesty, foresight etc etc).
This, at best, only slightly clarifies the problem of defining success. Great heroes and great villians can both still be considered successful in the vagaries I've detailed. To further understand what success means, the human perception of positive action and negative action must be explored. Human beings rely on a strict morality that has essentially been handed down since time immemorable; this morality is often thought of as universal, manifesting among the faithful as God being the ultimate good and Satan being the ultimate evil. However, the precepts of these simplistic morals are in two ways flawed:
1)They speak only to humans:
An age-old argument for the existence of god goes something like this:
"Do you believe in a universal good and bad?" Asks the theologian, noting with pride how reluctant anyone would be to answer in the negative. Moral relativism is on par with evil even amongst the most agnostic minds.
"Why, yes" responds the athiest.
"Can you think of anything that is good that is not related to a person or a group of people?" the theologian continues.
After a moment of contemplation the atheist answers: "Not as such, sir, no"
"Then how can the ultimate good in the world not be personified?"
This trick, of course, is expected to leave many a slack-jawed doubter and set one on the course to conversion. The issue with this isn't whether or not moral relativism exists (more on this later), but the second question. The athiest is stumped in this part of the "proof" because, in essence, it is a trick question.
We, human beings, have evolved to a certain, arguably advanced, stage of mental power. At the root of this mental power is a "drive" to increased development based on survival and proliferation. Somewhere, likely very early, we developed a binary categorical impulse; we learned to put everything in our environment into the "good" category or the "bad" category. Our basis for these categorizations was, of course, what these items meant to US or our tribe. Edible plants are good, poison ivy is bad. Fire is good to keep warm by, but it is bad if it touches your skin. Everything is categorized by what things do to us and what things can do for us when properly manipulated. We never had a reason to wonder whether the wind was good for the air, whether the river was good for the rock, or whether we were good for the deer. Even now we would have a difficult time saying any of these things were good or bad unless they somehow affected us. For example, if we kill too many animals (through force or deforestation) there may not be anything for us to eat. The reason the athiest in the above example cannot think of anything "good" outside of humans is because our brains simply do not work that way. The theologian points to God simply because he lacks imagination (as do we all); he favors the simplest explanation that requires the least investigation. Whether there is an ultimate good or not, the conditions of it will not be limited by our imaginations.
2)They consist of only "Shall Not"
Among the morals handed to us are a great many "Thou Shalt Not"s, most of which we can all agree on. However, the more nuanced positions of these same institutions are often left ignored by all but the most devout. While "Thou Shalt Not Kill" is a commandment, "Thou Shalt Realize Thou's Potential" remains an unimportant vow. it would be exceedingly difficult for an individual of any faith to deem a fellow human "successful" merely because he or she never murdered anyone or coveted their neighbor's wife (BTW: do women then only have 9 commandments?) , thus it seems willfully lazy to imagine that simply following these simple rules ("commandments") are enough to be "successful".
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