Why "success" is so important to the human individuals, especially in modern times?

Why is this thread full of edgy reactionaries?

Onassis pulled off one of the "magic tricks" in recent times.

He had just signed a deal to become the sole shipper of Saudi oil, with the King of SA. The big petrol companies and many of his shipping rivals became enraged as they realised he would effectively control the oil market and the price of oil, as Saudi oil made an enormous proportion of the global oil supply.

They teamed up and hired a bunch of ex-CIA folk to keep tabs on his operations and work out how to take him down. They found out that a significant part of his income came from his whaling fleet and that if it stopped working, it would create an enormous cash flow problem for him and bankrupt the rest of his business.

To do this, they got the government of Peru to send the Peruvian Navy and seize Onassis' whaling ships, which they promptly did. His whaling fleet ended up stuck in Peru and his whaling operation stopped completely. What the people behind this plan didn't know, is that prior to all this Onassis had used his clout to negotiate an insurance plan on his whaling business with Lloyd's of London, under very advantageous terms and which included incidents such as seizure of ships.

It has been calculated that during the months that his whaling fleet was seized, Onassis made more money from his whaling business than if it had never been seized, as effectively he was receiving payouts very close to what the operation's revenue was prior to the seizure minus the costs of actually running/fueling/manning the fleet.

Legend

Source: youtu.be/6wWhKdTcMKo

The whole documentary is cool though, I recommend it. His private yacht was a converted Canadian Navy frigate, manned with trained soldiers and its own arsenal ready to leave if a crisis broke out wherever he was at the time. He also had millions in gold hidden in each corner of the globe.

If I remember correctly, on his yacht at one of the bars he had stools upholstered with the skin of a blue whale penis and one of his lines was asking women of they'd like to sit on the biggest dick in the world.

Source: saw it on a documentary a long time ago and it still makes me laugh.

What makes you think that older societies never persued excellence?

that's every thread

this is basically, if not entirely, a tautology

lololol
I think it's actually from that documentary. It's cool as fuck. Jet-set Europe in the 60s is one of the time/places that would be amazing to time-travel to if you could go as a filthy rich magnate of some sort.

Driving and sailing up and down the Cote D'Azur, skiing in Switzerland, gambling in Monaco with the few remaining Euro-aristos who still had money, holidays in your own island in Greece with massive parties and no obscene Russians, Chinese and Arabs in sight (for at least another 20 years)

Better metric would be how much one enjoys their life, but that often correlates with "success" and being successful can be why somebody enjoys their life. So maybe that's being pedantic.
Still, some people are "successful" and still don't enjoy their lives, so it's not a good measure of the value of their lives in those cases.

cos thats what the media tells you since you are 5

Are we talking about financial success here? If so, the answer is obvious, just about anything you want to do costs resources, either directly or through some medium of exchange(money, for example). Hence, the more money you have, the more of your goals you can either accomplish, or at least attempt to accomplish.

the necessary prerequisite for success would be conflict. it's a measure of your ability to overcome conflict and an indicator of how you handle future conflict and being alive is constant conflict.

if we're talking success = money, money solves problems.

If you don't believe in anything other than the material world, then you might as well keep busy so you don't notice how horrifying your beliefs are.

Successful people are usually running away from their own mind. They're smart, but not honest. They sensed the void and try to keep their mind away from it by any means necessary.

Isn't success important to every living creature on the planet?

>What makes you think that older societies never persued excellence?
They did, but they had a different definition.

It's funny because motivational successful types often worship Epicurus, who wrote a lot about how you should never waste time on trivial things.

What they don't realise, is that Epicurus was trying to get people to spend more time working through philosophy and pondering virtue, not getting rich.

The old "worthwhile use of time" is exactly the new "waste of time".

because religion died so now there's no longer widespread justification for being poor

whatever your goal, whether it to be a selfless altruist who achieves ego death or an evil capitalist willing to pollute the world so he can afford to live in opulent spelndor and snort cocaine off hookers' asses for the rest of his life, you want to succeed in that goal

>especially in modern times
ok so julius caesar and genghis khan didn't want to become successful, ok

> TFW I wanted to be a soldier from the age I could walk and I did it
Not very successful by society's standards, but I'm happy doing my job. I've had plenty of opportunities to do more, but I like it.

>24
>only make 37k a year

Who /failure/ here?