We seem to live in a society that is almost entirely driven by ambition and the need to succeed at whatever it is we have put in front of ourselves, almost at any cost. Otherwise we might be perceived as "losers."
Accordingly, there is a massive industry — billions of dollars spent every year — centered around giving people all sorts of advice on how to navigate the so-called "grind culture" we have created, and how to succeed in it.
It also seems that if you step outside the parameters and question their veracity, you're regarded as a loser of some sort.
As a lifelong skeptic and questioner I always find myself returning to the core issue of "what exactly constitutes a loser?"
As a follow-up question, I find myself wanting to know who exactly gets to create and implement the yardstick by which we determine who is a loser and who is not a loser. I think that is where I find myself the most inclined to back away from general society, because of this broad assumption that you can turn "the secret of success" — or just the secret for living — into something formulaic that works as a plug-and-play exercise for everybody in the world.
But aren't we all different and unique? In fact, isn't there a very large segment of society that speaks to and emphasizes "rugged individualism?" How can you be an individual while also fitting inside a one-size-fits-all formulaic box?
As always, the tangible ways of the world tend to be self-contradicting!
As much as anything I keep coming back to the idea that so-called success and whatever it takes to "not be a loser" really is more of a marketing program than an actual formula related to being happy.
I'm sitting here noodling these thoughts because I was watching a couple of fairly different YouTube videos this morning with my coffee. One of them went into considerable lengths analyzing the attempts of giant US corporations like Walmart, Home Depot, Target, Best Buy, and even Domino's Pizza to take over Europe, only to fold up their tents and go home after some number of years of complete lack of success.
The second video I watched from a different YouTuber was about how the USA has been far more "successful" than Europe has been over the past three decades. It quickly became very evident that "success" was purely defined in terms of growth and profit, and the YouTuber was busy berating Europeans for "choosing leisure over productivity."
The contrast of the two left me considering — as I have done before — the fundamental question of "successful, ACCORDING TO WHO?"
In the end, watching those two videos really only served to underscore what I already know: Although I really like living here in the USA (mostly!), there are certain ways in which I have always felt like a fish out of water — culturally speaking — and likely always will.
It's no recent realization for me... while in my final year of University in Austin, Texas, I was really more interested in potential employers' benefits like medical insurance and vacation than I was in salaries and potential for advancement to leadership.
In later years — before divorcing the whole corporate thing in favor of self-employment — I even found myself being "coerced towards resigning" because I had little interest in management.
It was the right decision. I'm much better off being a self-employed person... and that has nothing to do with money (I'm actually relatively poor) and everything to do with feeling like I am "better off," without the stress, work hours, competitiveness, constraints and so forth of corporate work.
And I don't really mind being a loser...
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2026.06.30 23:28 PDT
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