humans have always seriously messed up
their lives but the way in which failure
has been viewed has a long and
fascinating history that it may help us
to know about Athens four to nine BC
it’s the premiere of a tragedy called
eat up as the king written by the great
playwright Sophocles it’s the story of
an honorable capable and highly
resourceful man who nevertheless messes
up his life in a catastrophic way but
the audience doesn’t leave the theater
thinking of Oedipus as a loser
Greek tragedy was designed to show
audiences that terrible things can and
very often do happen to good people
and therefore we must remain sympathetic
and kind in the face of failure the
Greeks force this message upon
themselves again and again at
prestigious annual festivals the Greeks
also loved the story of the Spartan army
at Thermopylae where a small contingent
of warriors held out to the last man
against a vastly larger Persian force
the Spartans were utterly defeated but
their failure was seen as profoundly
noble you can lose and be good that was
the moral Rome 46 AD Julius Caesar
celebrates yet another triumph over the
enemies of Rome the Romans worship
success they believe that success in the
here and now is all that counts and that
success means three things money fame
and military glory which creates a lot
of anxiety around failure Germany 9 AD
the Roman general virus kills himself
after losing a battle in the Teutoburg
forest not far from modern-day Hanover
in the north of Germany he’s made some
major strategic errors in deploying his
troops his suicide is an expected
consequence failure is so humiliating
and shameful that it shows one doesn’t
deserve to go on living
the Romans represent a society where
failure is thought of as naturally
accompanied by shame when big things go
wrong you just kill yourself
no excuse a small hill overlooking the
Sea of Galilee 30 ad a former carpenter
an itinerant preacher delivers a tender
speech which has since become known as
the Sermon on the Mount Jesus Christ
tells his followers blessed are the meek
for they shall inherit the earth
in other words the unsuccessful are in a
way more successful than the successful
in the eyes of God because their
failures erode arrogance and invite
dependence on the divine for hundreds of
years
Christianity lends glamour and prestige
to failure and challenges the worldly
values of Rome privileged in poverty
obscurity and weakness over wealth Fame
and strength not simply a you not meant
to commit suicide when you fail failing
is a sign of being blessed eastern India
sometime in the fifth century BC a
wealthy young Indian Prince Siddhartha
Gautama later known as the Buddha the
enlightened one comes to a key
realization about human beings all of us
are deeply maladjusted unhappy creatures
worldly success power riches love can
mean nothing and will never satisfy us
we must learn to renounce our desires
and escape from constant cycles of
craving and wanting in Buddhist eyes
true success means utter failure in the
eyes of a Roman soldier or a modern
American it means living under a fruit
tree owning nothing but a loin cloth and
begging from passers-by Paris 1799
Napoleon Bonaparte inaugurates a new
social order which will begin to be
known as a meritocracy no longer will
success go only to members of the old
corrupt aristocracy he wants to launch a
meritocracy marked by what he terms a
galley air vet or tallow Careers open to
the talented rather than just the
privileged
france acquires a new honor system based
on merit the legion donor which is given
to people of all classes who had judged
not by ancestry or wealth but by
military scientific or artistic prowess
suddenly success comes to seem a lot
more fair and deserved which is very
advantageous in many ways but it also
means that failure starts to be
recategorize as not merely accidental or
morally neutral as the Christian ideal
had implied but also in some ways
deserved Paris 1863 the French
government sponsors its annual artistic
Salo
where the most successful painters are
exhibited and celebrated the jury headed
by the court to novak Akaka
the head of the academy of fine arts is
that year extremely conservative and
rejects two-thirds of the paintings
presented including those of corbeil
Edouard Manet cami Pissarro and Whistler
the rejected artists and their friends
are outraged and protest the Emperor
Napoleon the third eventually relents
and allows the rejected artists to set
up their own rival exhibition gradually
the public and critics recognize that
the officially successful artists people
like Alexander Bernal and France vintage
Alta are terrible painters and that the
unsuccessful ones are in fact the true
geniuses but this will be a theme
throughout the history of 19th and 20th
century art and society more broadly the
genius is at first rejected by a stupid
blinkered world but eventually comes to
be accepted and celebrated this is what
happens to among others John Keats
Vincent van Gogh muscle Proust Janis
Joplin and Steve Jobs real successes
aren’t successes immediately goes the
story they might need to wait for a long
time perhaps until after they’re dead a
consoling story with echoes of the
Christian idea of redemption New York
October the 5th 1987 the right wing
economics magazine Forbes publishes its
first list of the richest people on the
planet the richest man is your hockey
Tsutsumi who is at that point worth 20
billion dollars the tone of the magazine
is celebratory and unknownst reflecting
an uncritical acceptance of the idea of
the American dream he who is richest
finishes first it’s a small irony there
for the two weeks later on October the
19th the world stock markets collapse
destroying wealth on an enormous scale
and shaking everyone’s
confidence in the merit and sanity of
the economic system New York September
2011 following yet another global
economic meltdown a group of protesters
occupies Zuccotti Park in the financial
district of Manhattan that protest is in
a narrow sense about the corruption and
blindness of America’s financial
institutions but more broadly the
protesters are arguing that a narrow
elite the 1% as they call them have
twisted our ideas of success in the good
life the so-called heroes people like
Jamie Dimon the head of JP Morgan who’s
paid around 20 million dollars a year
are in fact the villains being a decent
person doesn’t necessarily mean making a
lot of money
it means acting wisely and kindly
towards others and the planet the
protesters have a good few months in
which to make their case which sounds
remarkably like that made by Jesus in a
Sermon on the Mount
before the forces of contemporary
capitalism hose them down and shut them
up
slowly the economy recovers which also
means that the battered American Dream
ik waiting nobility with financial
success becomes dominant once more most
of us are going to enjoy horrific
failures in some area or other of our
lives were an extremely successful world
and define success by some very narrow
normally financial criteria there’s
endless talk about opportunity and
well-meaning efforts to make sure that
everyone can have a chance but there is
a deep silence about what happens when
you fail to weaken the power of the
narratives of success we used to have
religion and we used to have art we have
less of that now the very idea that
failure could be Noble has entirely
disappeared we need to go back in
history and fetch some ideas that could
stop us from being fatally hard on
ourselves when we mess up in the eyes of
Forbes magazine and the American Dream in general
their lives but the way in which failure
has been viewed has a long and
fascinating history that it may help us
to know about Athens four to nine BC
it’s the premiere of a tragedy called
eat up as the king written by the great
playwright Sophocles it’s the story of
an honorable capable and highly
resourceful man who nevertheless messes
up his life in a catastrophic way but
the audience doesn’t leave the theater
thinking of Oedipus as a loser
Greek tragedy was designed to show
audiences that terrible things can and
very often do happen to good people
and therefore we must remain sympathetic
and kind in the face of failure the
Greeks force this message upon
themselves again and again at
prestigious annual festivals the Greeks
also loved the story of the Spartan army
at Thermopylae where a small contingent
of warriors held out to the last man
against a vastly larger Persian force
the Spartans were utterly defeated but
their failure was seen as profoundly
noble you can lose and be good that was
the moral Rome 46 AD Julius Caesar
celebrates yet another triumph over the
enemies of Rome the Romans worship
success they believe that success in the
here and now is all that counts and that
success means three things money fame
and military glory which creates a lot
of anxiety around failure Germany 9 AD
the Roman general virus kills himself
after losing a battle in the Teutoburg
forest not far from modern-day Hanover
in the north of Germany he’s made some
major strategic errors in deploying his
troops his suicide is an expected
consequence failure is so humiliating
and shameful that it shows one doesn’t
deserve to go on living
the Romans represent a society where
failure is thought of as naturally
accompanied by shame when big things go
wrong you just kill yourself
no excuse a small hill overlooking the
Sea of Galilee 30 ad a former carpenter
an itinerant preacher delivers a tender
speech which has since become known as
the Sermon on the Mount Jesus Christ
tells his followers blessed are the meek
for they shall inherit the earth
in other words the unsuccessful are in a
way more successful than the successful
in the eyes of God because their
failures erode arrogance and invite
dependence on the divine for hundreds of
years
Christianity lends glamour and prestige
to failure and challenges the worldly
values of Rome privileged in poverty
obscurity and weakness over wealth Fame
and strength not simply a you not meant
to commit suicide when you fail failing
is a sign of being blessed eastern India
sometime in the fifth century BC a
wealthy young Indian Prince Siddhartha
Gautama later known as the Buddha the
enlightened one comes to a key
realization about human beings all of us
are deeply maladjusted unhappy creatures
worldly success power riches love can
mean nothing and will never satisfy us
we must learn to renounce our desires
and escape from constant cycles of
craving and wanting in Buddhist eyes
true success means utter failure in the
eyes of a Roman soldier or a modern
American it means living under a fruit
tree owning nothing but a loin cloth and
begging from passers-by Paris 1799
Napoleon Bonaparte inaugurates a new
social order which will begin to be
known as a meritocracy no longer will
success go only to members of the old
corrupt aristocracy he wants to launch a
meritocracy marked by what he terms a
galley air vet or tallow Careers open to
the talented rather than just the
privileged
france acquires a new honor system based
on merit the legion donor which is given
to people of all classes who had judged
not by ancestry or wealth but by
military scientific or artistic prowess
suddenly success comes to seem a lot
more fair and deserved which is very
advantageous in many ways but it also
means that failure starts to be
recategorize as not merely accidental or
morally neutral as the Christian ideal
had implied but also in some ways
deserved Paris 1863 the French
government sponsors its annual artistic
Salo
where the most successful painters are
exhibited and celebrated the jury headed
by the court to novak Akaka
the head of the academy of fine arts is
that year extremely conservative and
rejects two-thirds of the paintings
presented including those of corbeil
Edouard Manet cami Pissarro and Whistler
the rejected artists and their friends
are outraged and protest the Emperor
Napoleon the third eventually relents
and allows the rejected artists to set
up their own rival exhibition gradually
the public and critics recognize that
the officially successful artists people
like Alexander Bernal and France vintage
Alta are terrible painters and that the
unsuccessful ones are in fact the true
geniuses but this will be a theme
throughout the history of 19th and 20th
century art and society more broadly the
genius is at first rejected by a stupid
blinkered world but eventually comes to
be accepted and celebrated this is what
happens to among others John Keats
Vincent van Gogh muscle Proust Janis
Joplin and Steve Jobs real successes
aren’t successes immediately goes the
story they might need to wait for a long
time perhaps until after they’re dead a
consoling story with echoes of the
Christian idea of redemption New York
October the 5th 1987 the right wing
economics magazine Forbes publishes its
first list of the richest people on the
planet the richest man is your hockey
Tsutsumi who is at that point worth 20
billion dollars the tone of the magazine
is celebratory and unknownst reflecting
an uncritical acceptance of the idea of
the American dream he who is richest
finishes first it’s a small irony there
for the two weeks later on October the
19th the world stock markets collapse
destroying wealth on an enormous scale
and shaking everyone’s
confidence in the merit and sanity of
the economic system New York September
2011 following yet another global
economic meltdown a group of protesters
occupies Zuccotti Park in the financial
district of Manhattan that protest is in
a narrow sense about the corruption and
blindness of America’s financial
institutions but more broadly the
protesters are arguing that a narrow
elite the 1% as they call them have
twisted our ideas of success in the good
life the so-called heroes people like
Jamie Dimon the head of JP Morgan who’s
paid around 20 million dollars a year
are in fact the villains being a decent
person doesn’t necessarily mean making a
lot of money
it means acting wisely and kindly
towards others and the planet the
protesters have a good few months in
which to make their case which sounds
remarkably like that made by Jesus in a
Sermon on the Mount
before the forces of contemporary
capitalism hose them down and shut them
up
slowly the economy recovers which also
means that the battered American Dream
ik waiting nobility with financial
success becomes dominant once more most
of us are going to enjoy horrific
failures in some area or other of our
lives were an extremely successful world
and define success by some very narrow
normally financial criteria there’s
endless talk about opportunity and
well-meaning efforts to make sure that
everyone can have a chance but there is
a deep silence about what happens when
you fail to weaken the power of the
narratives of success we used to have
religion and we used to have art we have
less of that now the very idea that
failure could be Noble has entirely
disappeared we need to go back in
history and fetch some ideas that could
stop us from being fatally hard on
ourselves when we mess up in the eyes of
Forbes magazine and the American Dream in general
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