Through the Eye of the Needle

1. It was once said that a man's possessions. his money, are the most tangible of his fleeting ideas of success. I suppose that is why so many have struggled to accumulate, and then felt empty upon this "achievement"

2. Likewise, it has been said that people's memories of their behavior are almost always consistent with their personal beliefs, and have little to do with their actual behavior.

3. People can live together for years, yet many times rarely discuss anything that frightens them. It may be that they fear the response of others, themselves, or how they will be perceived.

Ideas, and our memories and perceptions of them, are what normally constitute our concept of "rich" or success. While many assume to know what rich is, if it is examined closely, what is revealed is the outline of a collective belief, around which we base a series of assumptions. This belief is not related to fact whatsoever, but rather an unspoken agreement with others that we all choose to believe the same thing (i.e. money is "valuable")

Does money have any value whatsoever? The answer is no, it is merely a device, a collective idea we all believe in, that allows it to have power. This idea is reinforced by all facets of our society, from government, to the education system, to the media. Because all of these facets have a stake in perpetuating the idea, its reinforcement continues. The idea is reinforced because it is perceived to have value. You need to look no further than history books to realize that 600 years ago "money" as we know it, did not exist.

Money only has value as long as the majority of people believe it has value. In the end, it is an idea built around collective belief (or confidence) and faith. Green paper and electronic digits have no intrinsic value at all. You need go no further than September of 2008 to see how panicked authority became when they thought people no longer believed money had value.

In our quest for survival, for riches, behaviors are deemed necessary in order to acquire more and thereby achieve 'more' than the competitor. Adversarial competition is the basis of the American economic system, and is a hallmark of all human interaction. The competitor role can be carried by many people who operate under other labels; friend, spouse, coworker, company, state, team, nation. In many cases, the behavior needed to acquire money is not consistent with a person's espoused beliefs.

These concepts were explored in many famous experiments such as the Milgram experiment. In this now famous simulation test, unwitting subjects were told to electrically "shock" a victim to death by an imposing authority figure, despite repeated cries of pain from the unseen victim. The result was that almost all the test subjects willingly followed the orders of the authority figure to kill the "victim", even though they had no personal reason to do so.

My point in mentioning this is that our society's economic survival, based on money and competition to get it, is dictatorial in nature. That is, it is based upon authority figures telling workers to execute a given profit strategy. Often such a strategy is at odds with the purported beliefs of those people who are executing the strategy. Our government may be nominally "democratic", but most workplaces are dictatorial. In other words, there is always an authority figure guiding, dictating and regulating behavior. If one does not follow this figure, one's access to money, and by extension, survival is often perceived as threatened.

This power dynamic of authority over the masses, has been near the center of all human interaction in history except for one. That interaction is the one you are engaging in right now, receiving information via the Internet. It is for this reason that I believe the Internet holds more promise than peril in the future. While everyone needs guidance at some point, the abuse of power that has embraced humanity is beginning to unwind as the floodgates of information open. 50 years from now, the world will look back on this transition and give it a name.

For those seeking, I say, now is the time to define your idea of success. This does not mean no work, or unlimited abundance. What it does mean is that you define your goals, and make them real. Never has there been a better time. Do your own thinking, or harness the almost unlimited capacity for knowledge that is now available. Take little at face value, challenge assumptions, and most of all, don't let anyone tell you what your success looks like.