Success v Greatness (thank you brother West)

Today's post has been inspired both by a video posted to a friend's facebook page (see, old folks, facebook DOES provoke meaningful discussion from time to time, and therefore has at least some limited value) and by the subsequent discussion.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nAfxFEGF-wY

I have long argued that we, as a society or at least as progressive voices within a society, should argue for a complete redefinition of the word success.  The argument invariably begins with Oprah as a person and an institution and why I find her so problematic.  For me, Oprah is the modern day definition of success, of making it.  She has gone from the rough south side of Chicago to one of the most powerful people in our country, and one of the most influential.  But importantly, Oprah has amassed a huge amount of capital: she has money money money, she has many houses (7? 8? do we even know), including and entire floor of what used to be the Sears tower, we're talking private planes and personal assistants.  She is, by our cultural definition, successful.

And yes, I invariably have to admit that Oprah gives away a lot of money and does, by many standards, a fair amount of good in the world.  But this model of success that she so personifies, where one makes it by making it OUT of the community from which they came and amassing huge fortunes, this to me is terribly problematic.

I've always argued that success should be about community building and change.  Some one is successful in my eyes if they live and love honestly and build relationships within their community.  If they give their life to service, in some way, and understand that the fighting for those in need not through philanthropy but through day to day struggle is truly the way forward. 

I appreciate brother West's video because he clarifies something that I have always failed to make plain.  He offers not only another definition of success (which he calls poisonous, with special reference to the vanilla suburbs) but another word entirely.  He uses "greatness", which I find particularly useful.  It reminds us that rejecting the normative definition of success does not mean that we are content to live mediocre lives in squalor, simply that we are defining our goals differently.  As I said on the faceplace, it means we are rejecting the notion that the happiest amongst us are those who have amassed the most capital. 

And greatness means that those of us who reject the normative version of success have something important to strive for.  We do not reject goals, we do not reject achievement, we do not reject challenges and hard work, we are not White pothead liberals who sit on the couches in our parent's basements and complain but do nothing.  We too strive forward.  We want to change the world, not the number of digits in our bank accounts.  We thirst for greatness, the power to transform not only ourselves but our communities. 

Believing in success implies that one is buying into a system that has been and will forever be built on inequities.  Believing in greatness is trusting our individual and collective power to change that system. 

*Special thanks to Mike Mosley and Daryl Hannah for fleshing out this line of reasoning.  Love you boys.