Suckcess, Wu Wei or Why the right Attitude goes a long Way

D.A. Pennebaker's film "Don't Look Back"

What is success? How is it measured? Is it related to having a fat bank account? Fame? Power? True love? Unlimited Sex? A Family? All of the above?

Many will say, in true existentialist fashion, that it depends on the individual and that everyone makes their own choice. But the truth is that success is almost always about what one doesn't have. The poor dream of money, the rich of true love, while the famous envy us and want to be like us, ordinary people with a simple life.

Often success becomes the phantom that we haunt and that in turn haunts us. People can get obsessed over it. The drive for self-improvement or, in its impossible form, the quest for perfection can be applied to pretty much any part of our lives, be it our personal trials and tribulation or those at work. At the latter, it is the sought-after promotion that goes, more often than not, hand-in-hand with a raise. As your money in the bank inflates, so does your pride.

The counter-culture, often deemed the hippie culture, has time and again challenged our notions of success. They do not believe that it can be measured by material worth. Many, in fact, turned their back on traditional life and values, such as career, family, children, house ... and experimented with notions of free love with an airy free spirit, the (almost unbearably) light feeling that deems itself immune against the push and pull of gravity. In most people's eyes, they were the epitome of failure, while they themselves were laughing at the preposterous and self-deluded vanity of the well-dressed business-person.

When it comes to success, people often see it as a form of competition. As a result, people become competitive. If everyone were successful, let us say if everyone were rich in this world, then money would, in fact, lose its value. Success is having that which others do not have. If at work I am surrounded by CEOs, I can hardly claim to be anybody special or to have achieved anything significant. It is the fact that these positions are coveted and desired that gives them value, intrinsic or not.

Moreover, success, being veritable competition, is all about winning. Nobody wants to lose and be left behind. It is, for most of us, not just about participating but we want to have something to show for. Be it a medal or a degree, any kind of recognition will do to make our efforts worth it all. Few people will brag about losing because let's face it, losing is for losers.

In short, we are driven by ambition to reach or attain that which others do not have. That explains why athletes want to break records and why the super rich are never satisfied with the amount of money and power they have. Success, in its most empowering sense, is a drive for progress, yet in its debilitating aspects, it deprives us of happiness and a balanced life. So how can we aim for success without becoming enslaved to it?

Of course, we could continue deconstructing the notion of success and go into leftist discussions of the harms and dangers of capitalism and the pitfalls of a consumer society or a psychological treatise on the ever-present dark side of human nature, where we never reach full happiness until we die. Yet it can be solved in a rather simpler fashion, namely with the all-important trait of attitude.

Attitude on its own, is something you generally do not want to have. Someone with an attitude are those who constantly complain and think they are better and more valuable than the rest. They are usually closed to learning or new experiences. However, there is such a thing as a good attitude and those are the ones who may be easygoing or even modest in their outlook.

I have previously blogged about humility, and I think it should be an important part of everyone's life, regardless of creed or economic status. By humility I do not condone stupidity; it does not mean that you let others trample all over you nor that you ignore or look the other way. Likewise, I do not think that turning the other cheek is the best philosophy in this world full of hungry wolves.

By humility, I mean a detached, somewhat Buddhist sense of letting things be and develop in their own fashion, what the I Ching would call Wu Wei, “acting without actions.” It does not mean to stop driving for success, but that you watch yourself and that you do not wear yourself out in the process. Having your foot always on the gas pedal does not mean you will get to your destination safe and sound. It is more about knowing when to push ahead and when to slow down.

I believe that athletes may have an ingrained sense of Wu Wei, especially if they are fully in touch with their bodies. You can push your body to amazing feats, but you have to give it also enough time to recover. We can work hard, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with this, but we need to know when to take a break. The time off will not be time wasted but rather time well spent because you are recharging yourself and will be more likely to succeed at whatever undertaking.

The fact that many believe “time is money” has robbed many an ambitious or greedy person of several hours of sleep. And success may be about winning but is not about speed. We can be successful in due time and again I let the variable success open to individual interpretation and meaning-making.

As you gain success and as you keep looking forward, do not forget to look back once in a while and remind yourself of being humble. During the victory triumphs of ancient Rome, the generals usually had a slave whisper in their ear memento mori, “remember you will die.” In a moment of shining glory, we often tend to forget the human predicament that we come out of dust and to dust shall return.

The Implications of Chaos and Order – Political, Psychological and Otherwise

There are various types of personalities out there and each of them tends to have their own approach toward organization. There are those who are messy, whose rooms look like the aftermath of a tropical storm, whose hair is generally disheveled and whose shirts are ironed only on very rare occasions. They have a distraught and sometimes lost look on their face; they may temporarily forget on which planet they live. They can be found among the creative professions, such as the field of poetry and / or higher education.

Then there are those who are spotlessly clean and kempt from head to toe. In fact, every single hair is taken into account and is accounted for. Aside from the fact, they never seem to have had a bad hair day in their whole life (not even in childhood!); their shirts are ironed and starched and their color-coded clothes match perfectly. Everything about their demeanor shows deliberately calculated order. These people are meticulous in their plans and hate events that are unpredictable, such as weather or traffic, something that, in fact, may drive them mad.

Most of us will find ourselves somewhere in the middle of the two, but we do have a certain tendency or proclivity toward one or the other. Now let us call the first one Chaos and the second one Order and see how they have different implications.

Of the two, Chaos is the more dangerous one. He is unpredictable and actually does well in vague and uncertain circumstances as he relies mostly on his creativity to solve problems. The Second Law of Thermodynamics does not affect him; Chaos is not really afraid of falling into further chaos as this is already his element and surrounding, but it is Order who fears and dreads the decay and falls into disorder, his avowed nemesis.

Politically, Order will find more joy and relaxation in clearly defined maxims. Hence his outlook is more conservative, which often promises a more stable basis due its reliance on clearly defined rules and concepts. In the ideal world of Order, there will be no acts of vandalism, no social manifestation but a constant assurance of a status quo that provides a safety net. Anyone who breaks this person's idyll will have to deal with the stabilizing (police) force, which is the “magical” group that tries to maintain order in strict logical defiance to the natural laws of thermodynamics.

Chaos, however, is not fazed by revolutionary movements. In fact, change is not something he fears but rather something that he embraces. Chaos is instinctively against order because he feels that the latter will keep him in a stranglehold. Chaos insists on his own rights and those of others. They are the strong supporters of human rights at the cost of creating revolutions or anarchy so that the world may become a more just place. Chaos and police are often in conflict especially when it comes to ideology because police uphold the status quo and order through the means of authority. Chaos does not believe in authority, which he believes, limits his creative powers, conscience and freedom.

When it comes to control, Chaos is the more easy-going. Chaos believes in letting be, going with the flow, of taking one day at a time. Chaos does not plan his day, let alone his life. Order, however, is driven toward future success, and it is also why he values money as a safeguard and measuring stick of success. Order believes one ought not to waste a single moment in life. Order is also thrilled by self-improvement and perfection, and he will not give up until he reaches his set goals. Many of these people may turn to religion, which promises and advocates a harmonious balance between this world and the next.

The political world is run more by Order than Chaos. Government per se cannot exist as Chaos or else it will self-implode. Bureaucracy is Order's best friend as it helps organize and classify people, providing a clear overview for Order and aiding him for control and even manipulation.

The capitalist world is made for the ambitious and relentlessly hungry like Order. They thrive under it more than Chaos. Chaos may like its reliance on freedom, but he soon finds out that laziness equates death in such a rapidly progressing world, where material success defines who you are and what you can do. As a result, Chaos may become a socialist; however, he is often disenchanted with communist forms of government, which is, in fact, nothing but Order in disguise.

Of course, these are the extremes. Every artist will need structure amid the chaotic and creative energy within. Structure is necessary for a good work of art as much as ideas. The only exception would be perhaps Surrealism. Yet then again, the moment a manifesto was written about the Surrealist movement, Order gained the upper hand.

I am definitely not advocating that people should become lazy or have no dreams. I am myself enough Order to be disenchanted with any form of anarchy. Revolutions have brought up more of the same old, sometimes even more Order and less freedom. But what I am hoping is that those who are Order will loosen up a little and let some Chaos leap into and seep through their mindset. Chaos is loyal to playfulness and a little play, as the saying goes, will not be bad for Jack's (mental or otherwise) health.

The Insecurity behind Macho Behavior and the Sensitive Man

Man is obsessed with manhood. The idea of the supermacho, be it Rambo, GI Joe or its android equivalent of Terminator is a source of fascination for the testosterone-driven, fast and furious macho-macho man. And this idea has somehow managed to skip and hop across borders and cultures making us wonder if it is a case of really well-executed marketing or -- God forbid -- a DNA defect on the Y-chromosome.

Unfortunately, the Judeo-Christian tradition has also given the “benefit of the doubt” to women, both sexualizing, i.e. demonizing woman, while at the same time making her an eternal symbol of impossible purity, the case of virginity even beyond childbirth. This comes from a tradition that sees adultery as a man-given privilege, one of the first recorded instances of a double standard. A man could have intercourse with any unmarried woman but he was not allowed to have sex with another man's wife, which was considered a sin. On the other hand, a woman was not allowed to have sex with any man, married or not, save her husband. 

All this I claim has pumped up the macho ego. By being allowed to act out his fantasies and by being encouraged by peers and society to state and assert his manhood, man has come to not only strive toward an unhealthy image of himself, but also project what he is not. Any type of weakness -- and feeling has been labeled so in that twisted mind -- is to be strangled to protect the false image of manhood.

This may explain highly damaging behavior like shaking hands of sons instead of hugging or kissing them goodnight, a concept that the psychologist Watson once proposed to ensure a “manly” upbringing. Men are not supposed to cry and must always suck it up, while anything else is considered effeminate and gay. By stifling each other emotionally, man has created his own version of hell and suffering.

Yet that image of the macho is of course only intended for men. If women adopt that kind of attitude, such as a “boyish” (out)look or aggressive behavior, then these women are shunned since they are perceived as a threat and as an unwelcome rival to masculinity. Indeed the Victorian era tried its best to instill women with a fake sense of honour and sets of so-called lady-like behavior and occupation. As such, men are supposed to wear the pants and when they do not do so, they become the laughing stock of their peers.

But I am not meaning to point the finger nor lay blame on something that has gone wrong over various centuries. In fact, I am going to show us -- of the male persuasion -- how we would benefit much more from accepting our feminine side and to reiterate what women have been reproaching us for eons.

In fact, those gun-swinging, steak-slinging cowboys at heart are full of insecurity. They are limited not only in their perspective (and sometimes alas intelligence), but they are constantly afraid and feel always threatened by any one who does not fall into the same trap. If a man decides to stay home and take care of the kids with his wife bringing home the proverbial bacon, then the macho man sees it as a personal threat to his macho prison.

Likewise, this explains why gay men so much terrify them because they embody the feminine aspects that the macho would like to embrace but dares not to do so. Not to mention that this life-long steroid ambition has made him infatuated with all things masculine and has inadvertently created a homosexual -- but deeply frowned upon -- fascination for other men.

Yet the “sensitive” man who is in tune with his female nature, who embodies both yin and yang within is more at peace with himself and in fact more confident in his wide range of talents. He can fully accept and develop any talents that are considered feminine to begin with, anything creative, educational or health-oriented. Yes, that includes male nursing.

This sense of freedom creates more opportunities and diminishes fear and paranoia. The man who is not insecure in his personality can also have homosexual friends without the fear of being accidentally converted or subverted, as some claim. 

The sensitive man has no need to prove his manhood by taking on or watching aggressive sports, nor by getting into fights or pushing wives and girlfriends around. The sensitive man can also cry whenever it suits him and show compassion and empathy toward others, not because he is weak, but he is much stronger than any macho man can dream of.