Aside: I generally try to stay away from some his work not because it doesn’t resonate or provides value, but because it’s too easy to take the sweeping (almost seductive) generalizations he makes about life too seriously!
Ironically, doing that is probably in direct conflict with some of the stuff he says, but just a thing I want to keep in mind
Notes
Our hopes and expectations in our careers is one of the strongest cultural forces that give us anxiety
The spirit of equality: Nowadays, we’re told we can basically do anything, but the biggest problem with that is envy.
Why? Well because you can’t envy someone you can’t relate to. The closer two people are in age, background (in identifying oneself in another person), the more there’s a danger of envy
It’s probably as unlikely that you’d become as rich and famous as Bill Gates today than it was in the 17th century that you would ascend to the ranks of French aristocracy
but it doesn’t __feel __that way now — with the right mindset “you too can become filthy rich and famous”
meritocracy: nice idea, everyone would agree that we should strive to make society more meritocratic but that also reinforces both extremes: if you really believe that those at the top deserve to be at the top, then you believe those at the bottom also deserve to be there
you deeply (personally) own your success, but you also do the same with your failures
true meritocratic is impossible — (mis)fortunate plays too large a role than we give it credit for
we have a human-centered society: we think very highly of ourselves; our heroes are human heroes (this is very new historically). Because we worship humans (rather than something transcendent), we get pulled deeper into our own competition and own dramas
success: you can’t be successful at everything; you just can’t have it all — you have to admit where the loss is (what are you not succeeding in).
This is compounded by the fact that what we want and how we view ourselves is rarely coming from us — we’re always open to suggestions (other people tell us what success looks like and we believed them)
let’s not give up on our ideas of success, but make sure that it is our own. focus in on our ideas and make sure that we own them
emphasis nowadays is on the justice of success and “I’m a firm believer in justice, I just think it’s impossible. We should do everything we can to pursue it, but at the end of the day we should always remember that whoever is facing us, whatever happened in their lives, there will be a strong element of the haphazard. And it’s that which I’m trying to leave room for”