-13- Determining Success the Hedonic Way
Some brief thoughts of two very distinct ways of feeling successful: the insatiable will to achieve, and the avoidance of failure.
In the modern age, there are many ways in which we determine success. The qualities that immediately come to mind are external factors such as wealth, status, career, or creative output. These serve as valid indicators, as well as points of comparison if our goal is to measure an amount of success. But for my purposes here I am less concerned with these classical definitions. These are mere consequences of success, not causes for it. I wish to analyze two distinct causes among many.
The insatiable will to achieve.
The first is the inherent drive we possess that craves achievement. How might we describe this? That hedonistic tendency to want more and more. It can be utilized effectively or imperfectly. I think we all know the imperfect ways that hedonism entraps us. We can easily become slaves to pixelated displays of all kinds, or to the lofty promises of predators selling us on "prizes". Yes, we are susceptible to all kinds of addiction, including to that of success. But what does it mean to be "addicted to success"?
To be addicted to success is to be no less of a hedonist for it. Many who talk of the treadmill are missing the point that pleasure can be directly related to achievement in a multiplicity of highly motivational ways. But we do not often think of the ways that might benefit us greatly. We often reserve our definitions of the hedonistic lifestyle to refer to the inconsequential lowly pleasures of satiation. Those pleasures of luck, those pleasures of sedentary play, those pleasures of urgent consumption. Do I need to elaborate any further on these pleasures? Hedonism often deserves contempt, but we must remember that this drive inherent in us — the one that constantly craves more — is also the same one that craves more success. Success is pleasurable!
There is a sense of achievement that is felt upon the completion of certain goals or tasks. We must come to recognize this sense as a highly refined indicator of another beneficial quality: the insatiable will to achieve. What happens after achievement finds you? Some forms of success are inherently unfulfilling, not because they are not satisfying, but because they are not enough. We instead immediately want more — more success, more achievement, more of that pleasurable quality of having done something meaningful. There is no choice to make here, no alternative to pursue, no place to rest. We keep moving forward, we take the next step toward continued success. We become hedonists in the best sense of the form. Success motivates us, but crucially, it does not stop us.
The avoidance of failure.
Now allow me to look at success from another distinct point of view. We also possess within us a certain capacity to feel relieved of burdens. This relief is another highly useful tool for determining what our success means because it can reveal what distresses us. If the first example was an embrace of hedonism, this next one is the opposite — of pushing out against it — of anti-hedonism.
We cannot separate success from the common sense of achievement. This is baked into its meaning. However, achievement itself can emerge with certain sub-qualities that are far more subtle to detect but also render it far less rich. If my sense is that I am relieved by my success, then I must also be grateful to have avoided the experience of failure. Here, I am coloured by something different than a hedonistic lust for more. Instead I am faced with no further craving. I do not wish to continue. The joy of success therefore is enough to satisfy me.
We can just as easily attribute this feeling of satisfaction to the same basic motivational driver — that of the pressure of finding pleasurable experiences — but if the immediate aftermath of this pleasure-induced state is not to want to find more of it, then what message are we to ultimately take away from the experience? It was rejected by the hedonist living inside of us; the success is improperly aligned with an inherent desire to want more.
From this point of view, one would indeed be faced with a decision: shall I stay on this path knowing that I am not motivated primarily by the desire to succeed, but rather more so by the concern for failure? Second to that, am I travelling this path because it is right for me, or because I am a mere coward whose only actual desire is relief?
Here is the part that I must further emphasize: It is easy to be good enough at something such that success is also easy. But if each time you find that success, you are simultaneously breathing a sigh of relief that you did not fail, or that you managed to stick with something against your actual will to do so, then is that not a hollow form of success? Think of the alternative, the first example as I described, where rather than relief, one feels underwhelmed enough to go again. Failure is not a variable to consider in that instance, because we are not deciding based on its potential. Failure, in the first example, as far as it is indicative of anything useful, is an arbitrary message that tells us that there is still further distance left to travel — it actually becomes a virtue; a building block if you will. There is no reason to be afraid of it.
I would not claim that these are the only two examples of how we might determine what causes us to feel success, but I would posit that they are worth considering insofar as they are utterly opposite each other. Success can be felt — as in the body. It can also be rationalized. But when we rationalize success we are also far more susceptible to fall into the category as presented by the second example, because as far as success is determined externally, it still meets with every criteria — wealth, status, career trajectory, and creative outburst to name a few. Therefore, defining success rationally does not ultimately get at what it might feel like to succeed. You may find this a trivial distinction, to which I would say: perhaps you have worked too diligently to muzzle your hedonist.
LP