The Myth of Making It (2019)
longreads.com
longreads.com
Robert Sapolsky has dedicated a large chunk of his career to study the biological underpinnings for this and has written a great deal on it. His research shows that if you compare health outcomes in countries, accounting for all differences in access and care, relative inequality itself causes significant bodily harm as important as material inequality. The induced stress in a population from the hamster wheel mentality literally changes peoples brains.
It's not surprising that actors and actresses even if successful suffer the same fate because they live in a sort of cauldron where that competitiveness and status seeking is dialed up to 11. The drug use, marriage disasters, meltdowns and constant rehab visits that a non-trivial amount of them go through make a lot of sense in that context.
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ZrqCFa...
It's probably different in Hollywood in publishing, but the reasons agents are such a weak link in traditional publishing (to the point of nearly ruining the industry) are: (1) inaccessibility (you can't actually query agents who have any pull; you have to know someone even to get read), and (2) locus of power. To be more specific on the latter, the agent knows that connections inside the industry are her power base, whereas authors are basically interchangeable--from a humanistic standpoint, I don't agree; but commercially speaking, it's the case--so she has every incentive to put the publisher's interests ahead of those of her authors, even though her job is the opposite.
Hollywood is probably a bit different because movie stars have a lot more leverage than midlist authors. So, it may be that there's the opposite problem. Literary agents often push authors to lower their expectations and take crappy deals; a Hollywood agent's probably more inclined to push the client toward aggressive decisions while the iron is hot, so to speak.
Money and accolades are bullshit ideas that do not objectively exist. Most of us have just bought into the idea of them.
If you strive to obtain something just because others value it (money, power, recognition), you're going to wind up feeling empty and unsatisfied.
Make your own meaning in this life and resist buying into the impoverished ideas of the world you were born into.
Sounds crazy, but no - chasing other people's idea of value is crazy.
> resist buying into the impoverished ideas of the world you were born into.
Instead of “resist”, I might instead say, “see clearly” or “recognise” that these concepts are based on fiction, ultimately (like most concepts). They are useful tools, but we try to make them outlast their purpose. That is when they take over our minds and our lives.
When we observe with absolute attention and awareness, the hollowness of these concepts becomes clear and resisting them won’t even be necessary because we realise there is nothing to resist.
Thank you, that's definitely a better way of wording it.
I think that harsh self evaluation is what allowed humans to experience our current state of existence. Maybe we are entering a new phase where competition can ebb and we can evolve towards something more forgiving towards ourselves, but those of us reading this article are trapped by our biology. In other words, the things that I feel seem largely out of my control.
Honestly I don't know why I'm even writing this. In a year or two when I look back I'm sure to feel embarrassed by what I have written. I usually am.
Of course. Consider this - when you're poor - it's not specifically money you're after. You want the baseline items to survive, and money is a convenient way of obtaining them.
But your end goal is not the money - it's what you need.
But beyond that, especially in society, the money has a tendency to become the end in itself. Just get lots of money - it must be valuable because it appears others value it.
Same with power and recognition. Lots of people fantasize about promotions because of what it'll do to their self worth as perceived by them and their peers.
So ... it's not a thought experiment. It's the stone cold truth - money and power are the thought experiments.
Here's a different way to look at money. In the 1800's the British were consistently a few decades of everyone else, so that century was also called Pax Britannica. What they had and the rest of the world did not have was a vibrant financial market. London was the banking city of the world. All the money in the world was going through the London banks.
Maybe money does not objectively exist, but it helps tremendously to organize complex societies.
Note, that doesn't mean I'll be satisfied. But I will have made it.
I was struck by the author's suggestion that "making it" could mean anything less. "Being able to buy a house without going broke". How could that mean you've made it? If you still have to work, you're still a wage slave.
Google, Facebook, etc. employees technically still have to work (if they cannot work from home) but I think they are doing alright. Wage slave is more like retail work.
Those Google and Facebook workers are one bad boss from their lives going to shit. And, whether you like to believe it's the case or not, bad references do happen sometimes and, if word (or rumor) gets out that you were fired "for cause" (which doesn't actually mean anything, but sounds bad) you are basically fucked.
"Middle class" is an illusion. The cultural armor you think you have is paper-thin in a real conflict. If you're a worker, you're on the side of the proletariat; there's no honor in persisting in delusion to the contrary.
Part of this is I have no idea how long I will live. Family history gives me anywhere from 3 more years to 50 more, and medical science can improve the upper range.
I think "making it" really means feeling a sense of certainty that you matter not just to yourself, but to your tribe (however you might define it). It's being needed and valued by them such that you never need fear being left behind to starve to death alone in the jungle.
Everything else is just trappings and indirection.
You did it wrong. Magnum didn't own the Ferrari, he just had a rich friend who let him drive it.
Indeed, I'd argue it's a little dangerous to declare you've "made it" too early, for this reason. Most of the world would consider a stable six figure job to be success. But many of those jobs are very competitive; if you let it go to your head & start to check out, will you still have that job in five years? Will you still be a success then?
One of the most boring experiences is traveling around and looking at things.
I'm happiest when I'm working hard trying to achieve a new goal.
This simply isn't true, Walter, and you know it
1. after retirement
2. after the 70th, 80th, and 90th birthdays
3. after a family event that had been long anticipated
and that "keeping active" is necessary to keep living.
One's body falls apart without regular exercise, and the mind does, too.
The people who are winning awards and accolades (aka “making it”) would literally still be doing what they’re doing if they did not get paid for it.
These people aren’t looking for more money or more awards!p, they’re internally driven and will never stop striving to push the boundaries of their art.
LeBron James would still play basketball if NBA stopped paying him.
Nobody who is a regular employee of a company are in the same game of “making it” as these people.
Which is more than 99.9-99.99% of people. talk about being out of tough. not her, but the concept of the article. There is a big difference between making it and not making it. It's not something vague.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_awards_and_nominations...
Last I checked, admittedly a while ago, The American Dream was not about coming out on top, it was about achieving a level of comfort and security.