David Goggins is famous for the 40% rule: the idea is that the point where our minds tell us to give up indicates having used only 40% of our reserves.1 Mohammed Ali had a similar idea: when asked how many pushups he could do, he said eight or nine, adding that he only started counting when he could no longer do more.2. The idea is that we have reserves that far exceed our imagined capacity to withstand suffering.
Layered on this view is often the idea that suffering is necessary for accomplishment. Those few who succeed, it is said, have pierced the hymen of discomfort and, as it were, endured an initial period of suffering after which fortunes emerge. On this account, success is roughly construed as effort and resilience. Believers of this view are apt to saying things like, keep going in the face of adversity. This is the meritocratic view, in which agency, insofar as it refers to the freedom and the willingness to set and to pursue one’s ends, is a kernel of the fruit of success.
In meritocracy, each individual is responsible for their circumstances, whatever they might be. If one honestly takes stock, they see that their lives are an aftermath of decisions once made. Elsewhere on this website, I quoted Dr Mark Lamberti who lists four categories of decisions that most likely pivot one’s life. These include who you marry, religious choices, career choices, and where you choose to live. I will call them meta choices henceforth. On the face of it, this list is not exhaustive, but serves as a fruitful start in examining the meritocratic view. After all, it is true that one is most influenced by the person one marries: definitely in terms of the constraints and possibilities that follow from parenting, the breadth and depth of dialogue, growing together, the sharing of values, and from grappling with the administration of a joint spiritual estate. The same can be said about the impact of the other meta choices.
This affirms decision-making as central to how one’s life turns out. But let me add that it is not only from the ripples of one’s own decisions, but from those of others as well that circumstances emerge. The decisions made by one’s spouse, one’s boss, or even distant policy makers can significantly change one’s life as well. At a macro level, we bear witness to the decisions made by heads of state that result in wars, say, in Gaza and Ukraine, or that improve the lot of the many in countries like Singapore and China. These citizens cannot attribute their circumstances to agency alone. Their conditions are better explained by fortune or misfortune, which accounts for the decorrelation between effort and outcome.
Now we are in the murky waters of victimhood and privilege insofar as they are conditions that one enjoys or from which one suffers without having brought them about. A victim, like a civilian of a warring state, grapples with an unwanted situation. A privileged person, on the other hand, enjoys advantages that they likewise have not brought about. One need only point to the apparent inequality in South Africa, not only among blacks and whites, but among the black elite and the black poor to appreciate the effect and extent of fortune in the manufacturing of victims and the privileged.
Perhaps it is worth talking more about privilege first. Some might argue that an entrepreneur, for instance, who has built a business through sheer will and determination is a product of their agency. But consider that they exercise their agency within a fertile context, one with laws, opportunities, social capital and so on. So, this is not to bash the exercise of agency, but to recognise fundamentally that it is best regarded as a gentle contributor rather than a decisive determinant.
At this point, you may want to point to individuals who are born poor and end up rich, or born rich and become poor. Surely, these individuals disprove my thesis that our circumstances are better understood in terms of forces beyond their control. These individuals, it might be argued, did something that changed their circumstances. They made good or bad decisions. And if we are draw on the meta-decisions we discussed earlier, we might find that they relocated, married, changed religion, or changed careers. Nevertheless, allow me to offer two objections against merit:
First. In a podcast, the respected businessman born to humble circumstances, Sizwe Nxasana, admits to having gained significant advantages from Black Economic Empowerment (B.E.E), the bundle of laws and regulations that (supposedly) give black South Africans advantages to redress the past.3 His fledgling accounting firm at the time, he admitted, was assisting small-time doctors and other black businesses. However, it has since grown to a large firm with an international footprint. He attributes his initial success to the economic and political shifts that created opportunities resulting in large contracts from the state. This opened even more opportunities, in which he became the CEO of one of the largest banks in South Africa.
Of course, I cannot take away from his capabilities once at the helm, that is, his ability to learn quickly, think at a high level, build relationships, and add value thereby realising the potential in the opportunities. However, the opportunity itself depended entirely on a context ushered in by the politics of the time. In other words, he could not have single-handedly created B.E.E. and the political environment, chosen the right career (if those carrer options were not available by law), met the right people, and brought about all the conditions that influenced his counterparts to consider him for certain appointments in the first place. He, and many others, were born at the right time, with the right skin colour, and fortuitously chose the right career. In other words, he and many others were fortunte or lucky.
On the face of it, luck might appear to undermine what I have already mentioned as inherent to realising opportunity. But my idea of luck was best articulated by Warrant Buffet in an address at the University of Florida:
You don’t know if you are going to be born black or white, rich or poor, male or female, infirm or able-bodied, bright or retarded. All you know is you are going to take one ball out of a barrel with 5.8 billion (balls). You are going to participate in the ovarian lottery. And that is going to be the most important thing in your life, because that is going to control whether you are born here or in Afghanistan or whether you are born with an IQ of 130 or an IQ of 70. It is going to determine a whole lot. What type of world are you going to design?
Even those who work much harder to achieve their goals (not to suggest that the B.E.E elite did not work hard), I argue that if they were in a warring state, for instance, they could not have even dreamed of such opportunities. In other words, the context in which one exists significantly impacts the potential that one realises in oneself. This context, I argue, is largely outside one’s sphere of influence.
Second. I am seconded by The Hamilton Project, a study on social mobility.4 The study shows that children of families in the top 5 income percentile see significant growth in family income throughout their lives. On the other hand, children in middle-income families hardly see any real changes, and those born in the lowest 35 income percentiles experience a worsening of family fortunes over time. In other words, the rich get richer, the poor get poorer and not much happens in the middle. The study further shows that children in high-income families and those in low-income families do not have real differences in intellectual capacities. What shapes their lives are the opportunities to which they are born and of which they have access, largely determined by the reosurces available. This evidence further supports my claim that our circumstances is largely determined by conditions outside our control, or that our context determines our circumstances more than we think.
I am not refuting effort and resilience as important ingredients in one’s success. However, my project is to show that one’s agency is only a contribution to one’s success. Furthermore, it can be argued that one’s agency is a small contribution to one’s success considering the forces that can impact one’s life. So, we are better off understanding our lives as shaped by the forces far beyond our sphere of influence and agency.
The ancient greeks seem to have understood this idea. Their belief in a constellation of gods, like the god of war, the god of love, the god of fortune (and so on), seems to portray a reality whereby agency and fortune coexist. This view, of course, no longer appeals to us. We rather conceive of a world where we are in control of our fate and we direct our lives to a desired end. But maybe something can be said about espousing a life where one is partially in control, or perhaps largely not in control.
Here I imagine two leaves falling from a tree. One falls on the ground next to the tree and the other is whisked away by the wind and falls into a stream. Without effort attributable to itself, the leaf that fortuitously fell into the river flows and covers unimaginable distances. And if it were human, it would revel in its success and maybe fashion itself as a teacher, preaching about its success on social media. But maybe, just maybe, we are leaves on a great stream of destiny, aiming towards ends of which we have little to do in bringing about. Maybe we are as much a product of ripples of fortune than we would like to accept.
Reference
[1] Haden, Jeff (2022). Can’t Overcome the Navy SEAL 40 Percent Rule? Embrace the Mindset of High Achievers. Inc Magazine. https://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/success-persistence-seal-40-percent-rule-high-achiever-mindset.html
[2]: Loper, Chris (2018). Mental Toughness. Becoming Better, https://becomingbetter.org/mental-toughness/
[3] Penuel Mlotshwa (2024) ‘The Konvo Show: Penuel In Conversation with Sizwe Nxasana, Sizwe & Co, Telkom CEO, First Rand CEO’. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvlJjX3y8zY (Accessed: 29 October 2024).
[4] Greenstone, M. et al. (2013) ‘Thirteen Economic Facts about Social Mobility and the Role of Education’, Brookings, 26 June. Available at: https://www.brookings.edu/research/thirteen-economic-facts-about-social-mobility-and-the-role-of-education/ (Accessed: 27 June 2020).
