Success and Uncommon Sense
There have been many ideas that are swirling around in my head for the past few months; ideas like success, outliers, calling, failure, metaphors, and economics. I have been reading Malcolm Gladwell's, Outliers. I have been to Rome. I have been working on roofs. I watched the movie on John Nash Jr. called a Beautiful Mind. Most importantly, I have been finishing the 2017/2018 school year. I have concluded that success is a horrible thing to chase after.
I want to take you through my mental journey of arriving at this conclusion. It starts with a game called "Baldicers." I was introduced to this game at a Middle Year Conference by the guest speaker Kim Campbell. It is meant to be used as a simulation to teach students about world hunger. I use it to teach about economics. The basic premise of the game is that you are the leader of a country. Each round of the game represents one year of you trying to gain enough resources called Baldicers, to survive. There are eight round or years to survive. At the start of the game, based upon what country you randomly get, you have more starting Baldicers than other countries. In fact, the starting amount of resources really can determine whether or not your country will survive to year eight.
I used this game for some years. Invariably there are two types of groups of students who play this game. Group one are students who decide to go it alone. Group two are students who chose to form coalitions. Guess what group does better - the group that builds coalitions. By year two or the second round, it becomes apparent that some countries are going to fail. Usually, these are countries that have very little starting Baldicers. Now, if they borrow Baldicers from a wealthier country, they can last a little longer. However, what usually happens is that the nation that they borrowed Baldicers from becomes in trouble in year 5 or 6 or round 5 or 6. Both countries typically wind up both failing. However, if the nations work together, everyone can achieve more than they can individually. In fact, the wealthy nations, have to sacrifice at first by helping the less fortunate nations but will ultimately be better off in the end. It is often counter-intuitive to the usual individualistic mindset that permeates our thinking. Of course, I am reminded of the verse in Ecclesiastes.
If you have ever watched the movie, Beautiful Mind, it introduced many people to John Forbes Nash Jr. He was a mathematician that came up with some fantastic mathematical formula's that proved there are times when pursuing a goal or an objective, teamwork is beneficial, and there are times when individual achievement is better. In the movie, there is a reference to Adam Smith, the father of modern economics (economics, by the way, is not necessarily about money, it is the study of people's choices on how to get and use resources). The movie summarizes his main idea as "the best result comes from everyone in the group, doing what is best for himself." It refers to one of his main tenets of economics that "In competition, individual ambition serves the common good." Nash's theory demonstrated that "the best result comes from everyone in a group doing what is best for himself and the group." In other words, in Baldicer the way to get ahead in the game is to make sure that all the countries are healthy because it will serve to make your country stronger. This concept is a pretty difficult sell to us in western thinking. We are raised to believe that if you work as hard as possible, you will be successful. This belief is incomplete because if you work as hard as you can, does not necessarily determine success. You will need others around you to be willing to help and cooperate too. The truth is that we can't do this life on our own, we need d help.
Now the other thing I have been doing is reading Malcolm Gladwell's book, Outliers. One of the central tenets of the book is that predicting if someone is going to be successful is difficult because there are many factors outside of the talents and abilities of the individual that influence the success of people we would consider "successful." In one startling passage, for Canadians at least, he states that if you are born outside of the years of January or February, don't bother trying to be a professional hockey player. He statistically goes through the data that shows how people born in those months have a huge advantage over others born outside of those months in becoming professional hockey players.
The book goes on to give an example after example of how outliers (people how are hugely successful) had outside factors that significantly contributed to their success. My take away from this is that success is fickle and demanding to chase because you may be the most talented person in the world but if you do not happen to live in the right set of circumstances, it will elude you.
In an October 5, 2017 post on Crosswalk.com, Jarrid Wilson suggests that instead of chasing success, chase purpose. In fact, I suspect that we recognize that success, is an elusive state, and have modified our language around success. Here is a poster from Bored Teachers that demonstrates how we are trying to alter "success."
In my psychology class, we take a look at IQ tests. These tests are meant to measure a person's ability to process, analyze information, and general knowledge. We spend a lot of time on these lessons about IQ talking about how IQ is not a measurement of success, but a measurement of academic ability. The two maybe correlational but they are not causation. In other words, high IQ does not ensure success in life. We often think that it does and think that the smarter a person is, the more likely they are to succeed because they got good grades at school. However, that is not necessarily true.
The parallel to what we are talking about here is that chasing success does not ensure what I would call the abundant life described in scriptures.
What is this abundant life? I think it is the life where you know your purpose.
We all have a purpose, we have talents, and we have things that we are to be in community with others. In other words, just like in Baldicer the way to have a more abundant life is not all of us to do the same thing, be the same way, or think the same things and to be only about our own goals. The way to have this abundant life is to know where you belong and what you are supposed to contribute. If we were to apply Nash's theory, it is "the best result comes from everyone in a group doing what is best for himself and the group."
I want to conclude with one more thought. In Buddhist teaching, the main idea is that all suffering comes from desire. I think there is truth in this, but I also believe that suffering comes from not know your purpose.
You and I have a purpose. It is unique to who you are and to who I am. God has set apart this purpose for you. It is not to be successful. It is working within a group, a community, a church. By chasing success, we cause ourselves suffering because it could be a distraction from a true purpose. We are to chase our purpose.
I want to take you through my mental journey of arriving at this conclusion. It starts with a game called "Baldicers." I was introduced to this game at a Middle Year Conference by the guest speaker Kim Campbell. It is meant to be used as a simulation to teach students about world hunger. I use it to teach about economics. The basic premise of the game is that you are the leader of a country. Each round of the game represents one year of you trying to gain enough resources called Baldicers, to survive. There are eight round or years to survive. At the start of the game, based upon what country you randomly get, you have more starting Baldicers than other countries. In fact, the starting amount of resources really can determine whether or not your country will survive to year eight.
I used this game for some years. Invariably there are two types of groups of students who play this game. Group one are students who decide to go it alone. Group two are students who chose to form coalitions. Guess what group does better - the group that builds coalitions. By year two or the second round, it becomes apparent that some countries are going to fail. Usually, these are countries that have very little starting Baldicers. Now, if they borrow Baldicers from a wealthier country, they can last a little longer. However, what usually happens is that the nation that they borrowed Baldicers from becomes in trouble in year 5 or 6 or round 5 or 6. Both countries typically wind up both failing. However, if the nations work together, everyone can achieve more than they can individually. In fact, the wealthy nations, have to sacrifice at first by helping the less fortunate nations but will ultimately be better off in the end. It is often counter-intuitive to the usual individualistic mindset that permeates our thinking. Of course, I am reminded of the verse in Ecclesiastes.
If you have ever watched the movie, Beautiful Mind, it introduced many people to John Forbes Nash Jr. He was a mathematician that came up with some fantastic mathematical formula's that proved there are times when pursuing a goal or an objective, teamwork is beneficial, and there are times when individual achievement is better. In the movie, there is a reference to Adam Smith, the father of modern economics (economics, by the way, is not necessarily about money, it is the study of people's choices on how to get and use resources). The movie summarizes his main idea as "the best result comes from everyone in the group, doing what is best for himself." It refers to one of his main tenets of economics that "In competition, individual ambition serves the common good." Nash's theory demonstrated that "the best result comes from everyone in a group doing what is best for himself and the group." In other words, in Baldicer the way to get ahead in the game is to make sure that all the countries are healthy because it will serve to make your country stronger. This concept is a pretty difficult sell to us in western thinking. We are raised to believe that if you work as hard as possible, you will be successful. This belief is incomplete because if you work as hard as you can, does not necessarily determine success. You will need others around you to be willing to help and cooperate too. The truth is that we can't do this life on our own, we need d help.
Now the other thing I have been doing is reading Malcolm Gladwell's book, Outliers. One of the central tenets of the book is that predicting if someone is going to be successful is difficult because there are many factors outside of the talents and abilities of the individual that influence the success of people we would consider "successful." In one startling passage, for Canadians at least, he states that if you are born outside of the years of January or February, don't bother trying to be a professional hockey player. He statistically goes through the data that shows how people born in those months have a huge advantage over others born outside of those months in becoming professional hockey players.
The book goes on to give an example after example of how outliers (people how are hugely successful) had outside factors that significantly contributed to their success. My take away from this is that success is fickle and demanding to chase because you may be the most talented person in the world but if you do not happen to live in the right set of circumstances, it will elude you.
In an October 5, 2017 post on Crosswalk.com, Jarrid Wilson suggests that instead of chasing success, chase purpose. In fact, I suspect that we recognize that success, is an elusive state, and have modified our language around success. Here is a poster from Bored Teachers that demonstrates how we are trying to alter "success."
In my psychology class, we take a look at IQ tests. These tests are meant to measure a person's ability to process, analyze information, and general knowledge. We spend a lot of time on these lessons about IQ talking about how IQ is not a measurement of success, but a measurement of academic ability. The two maybe correlational but they are not causation. In other words, high IQ does not ensure success in life. We often think that it does and think that the smarter a person is, the more likely they are to succeed because they got good grades at school. However, that is not necessarily true.
The parallel to what we are talking about here is that chasing success does not ensure what I would call the abundant life described in scriptures.
What is this abundant life? I think it is the life where you know your purpose.
We all have a purpose, we have talents, and we have things that we are to be in community with others. In other words, just like in Baldicer the way to have a more abundant life is not all of us to do the same thing, be the same way, or think the same things and to be only about our own goals. The way to have this abundant life is to know where you belong and what you are supposed to contribute. If we were to apply Nash's theory, it is "the best result comes from everyone in a group doing what is best for himself and the group."
I want to conclude with one more thought. In Buddhist teaching, the main idea is that all suffering comes from desire. I think there is truth in this, but I also believe that suffering comes from not know your purpose.
You and I have a purpose. It is unique to who you are and to who I am. God has set apart this purpose for you. It is not to be successful. It is working within a group, a community, a church. By chasing success, we cause ourselves suffering because it could be a distraction from a true purpose. We are to chase our purpose.