The Haughtiness of “Success Magazine”

New Thought, Stoicism, and the pitting of reality against vain delusions

If you’re rich you deserve it. If you’re poor, you deserve it. If you’re happy, you should thank yourself because you earned it. If you’re sad, blame yourself and snap out of it. You control your destiny, so take responsibility for what you’ve become and for what you’ve earned or haven’t earned.

Strive for success and you can achieve your dreams. And if you fail or meet with setbacks, a true champion will get back up, try harder, and overcome all obstacles. We deserve what we get or don’t get in life. So stop looking for scapegoats and be a winner, not a loser.

These are the pearls of wisdom you can expect to find in “Success Magazine,” which was founded in 1897 to promote New Thought’s self-improvement craze. Gracing the magazine’s recent covers are the proud, smiling faces of such luminaries as Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Martha Stewart, Tony Robbins, Joel Osteen, TJ Jakes, Scarlett Johansson, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Robert Downey Jr.

The “About” page of the magazine’s website says, “SUCCESS is the only magazine that focuses on people who take full responsibility for their own development and income…Our readers understand and embrace that they are responsible for their own long-term success and happiness, and need to be proactive in finding the inspiration, motivation and training to achieve their goals.”

Thus, the magazine “offers advice on best business practices, inspiration from major personalities in business and entertainment, and motivation to improve their mind and body so that our readers are in the best possible mental and physical shape to compete and reach their goals.”

The obnoxiousness of this self-improvement twaddle sinks in when you reflect on the advice’s implications and on its dubious assumptions.

Stoicism and New Thought

To understand this self-improvement charade, we can compare the movement with Stoicism since Success inverts that ancient philosophy. Stoicism is a form of pantheism which says that nature is a divine rational power, consisting of matter and Logos, passive material and a divine soul or rational energy animating the flow of the universe, thus generating what we perceive as the natural order.

If we’re wise, then, our task is to submit to that order. Instead of naively resisting the fate decreed by the universe, as it evolves towards an intergalactic end that makes a mockery of our vain, self-centered pretentions, we should be dispassionate in recognizing what’s naturally necessary. As in Buddhism and Daoism, we’re happiest when we understand how the real world must unfold and when we’ve weaned ourselves from our infantile egoistic reactions which beguile us into thinking we can change the course of nature. We’re only embedded in God, and our special power of reason enables us to reflect on what nature would do anyway, regardless of whether we approve of that end.

For Stoics, wise, virtuous people learn to approve of natural necessities because they understand the futility of resisting them. Unwise “people” are only puppets led around by their emotions, the latter being the strings nature pulls to use those puppets to fulfill its ends. Only sages are free in that they’re liberated from the chains of anger, envy, fear, and jealousy, and they choose inwardly to submit to nature by committing themselves to the power of reason they share with the universe.

Like Stoicism, the New Thought that’s at the root of Success Magazine and of the self-serving claptrap of many boastful, wealthy Americans implies that God is in control. But New Thought’s God is the Christianized abomination that projects human nature onto the rest of the universe, as though nature were the handiwork of an architect, just like a house or any other artifact of human ingenuity.

The Christian God has power over his creation just as we human creators have power over our inventions. Thus, whereas the Stoic observes that nature is evidently in the divine process of shaping itself without the need for miracles, the New Thought self-improver says God gives us the power to miraculously overcome all apparent natural processes that resist our will.

That’s the crucial difference. Stoics were philosophers who honoured the majestic self-creativity of the natural order by deifying it, whereas New Thought spiritualists are quasi-Christians who are taken, rather, with the human power to overcome nature and to act like gods.

The latter view, of course, is closer to the much-demonized satanic line taken up by secular humanists. But New Thought spiritualists get away with calling themselves “Christian” — partly because mainstream American Christianity has been taken over by capitalist egoism, and because New Thought merely stipulates that God approves of human earthly ambition.

You wouldn’t know it by reading the New Testament in which Jesus never tires of showing why the last will be first and the first will be last. But the option of reading their scriptures is a bridge too far for most American conservative “Christians.” They’re too busy making money and idolizing authoritarian bullies and insufferable show-offs.

A One-Sided Debate

Here, then, is how the debate might proceed. A Stoic would say to a writer for Success Magazine that this writer has the temerity to anthropomorphize the divine power in nature, to attribute a will and a benevolent personality to it rather than just the power of rational self-organization. New Thought advocates are just puppets led around by their hubris, narcissism, jealousy, and fear of the shame of failure and weakness.

Nature uses “winners” like these as prods to organize society around corrupted institutions. This is a perfectly natural process found in dominance hierarchies throughout social species in the animal kingdom. The fittest members of the group are first in line in the pecking order for mates and for food. Human animals have bigger brains, so when their dominance goes to their heads, they’re liable to inflict their derangement on others in more appalling ways. But the power dynamic is comparable, which is to say it’s natural, not miraculous.

In reply, the New Thought self-improver would say that Christianity proves the truth of monotheism, not of pantheism, so we can be confident that God loves us and wants the best for us.

But contrary to Jesus’s mission of sacrificing yourself in this life to help others and to win God’s favour in the next life, we ought to pretend we’re interested in Christianity while secretly taking up the satanic or promethean business of secular humanism. That business is to empower our species at nature’s expense, thus thwarting God’s creation and living like gods in the artificial worlds we build to improve on nature without much hope of an afterlife for which all earthly success should be sacrificed.

Apparently, that incoherent New Thought response comes to nothing, but it’s the one that incorporates New Thought rhetoric and practice.

The Wisdom of Perseverance?

But maybe I’m being unfair to Success Magazine because I’m jealous of its success and resentful towards its Ayn Randian message that we should admire so-called self-made winners. Let’s have a look, then, at one of the magazine’s articles, chosen at random. Here’s one, called “The One Thing You Never Hear About Becoming Wealthy,” written by a married pair of “rich and regular” millennials, Julien and Kiersten Saunders.

Whereas most gurus say that if you want to create wealth, you should “start yesterday,” meaning there’s no time to lose and it’s all about having a one-track mind and an endless supply of manic, selfish energy, this dynamic duo wants to suggest it’s not so easy. There will be setbacks which call for perseverance.

Thus, the Saunders point out specifically how they persevered and won out against the odds. The house they bought in 2007 lost most of its market value, they say, but they didn’t panic, renovated it, and eventually sold the house for much higher than their original asking price.

In 2014, the Saunders say, they invested in an index fund and had the courage to keep their money there even when the fund lost thousands of dollars the very next day, trusting that in the long run the investment would pay off. Seven years later the fund has doubled its value.

The business they started built up momentum only for the pandemic to halt everything in its tracks.

“In each of these instances,” the Saunders say, “there was no good choice but to do nothing — to stick it out, staying the course even if it was uncomfortable or the future was unclear.” Rather than making impulsive decisions based on the latest wave of information on the internet, “maintaining an optimistic outlook through the good times and bad is key in determining financial outcomes. Your attitude is what makes your patience and persistence bearable.”

The Saunders say they’ve “learned that when the dust settles, those who keep a level-head, maintain a positive attitude and act in line with their long-term goals are the ones who end up ahead.”

Should We Cheer on Winners?

Here’s what I would want to say about that.

Of course, perseverance can be wiser than making a snap decision out of fear. But the perspective that shines through this Success article is shallow and appalling.

Have the Saunders stopped to wonder what becomes of the even bigger winners in American capitalism? Aren’t those winners the very folks on Wall Street and in Washington who were largely responsible for creating the 2008 market crash in the first place, by capitalizing on short-sighted political policies of privileging home ownership and deregulating the banks and the accountants, suckering vain wannabe winners into timebomb mortgages? Wasn’t that market crash part of a scheme perpetrated against losers by the winners of the American economy?

Thus, is it really perseverance that proven winners should prize or is it amoral greed? If the market crash was so onerous for the Saunders and they have some moral misgivings about rich people’s involvement in defrauding people, shouldn’t they be writing against a pseudo-philosophy that celebrates the winners of runaway capitalism? Remember, too, that it was Friedrich Nietzsche who said that morality is for losers, so the Christian doubt about Wall Street amorality would conflict with the Saunders’ upbeat attitude towards the social Darwinian dynamics of American capitalism.

Why Most People Can’t Be Rich

As for the stock market, I wonder whether the Saunders are aware that as of 2019, as the NY Times points out, “the top 1 percent of Americans in wealth controlled about 38 percent of the value of financial accounts holding stocks. Widen the focus to include the top 10 percent, and you’ve found 84 percent of all of Wall Street portfolios’ value.”

Doesn’t this vast wealth inequality show what happens in a winner-take-all society? More precisely, is it possible for all Americans to be millionaires or would that literally require a miracle to overcome the plutocratic rigging of the US economy that prevents such an outpouring of wealth-creation or redistribution? What’s the point of being successful and rich in a pseudo-Christian, capitalistic paradise if you can’t lord it over the losers?

The top one percent need the herd of losers just as the Pharaoh needed his slaves and the sadist needs his submissive. The whole world can’t consist of Wall Street bankers. Some folks need to clean the toilets, take out the trash, care for the sick, paint pictures, write poetry, or perform other menial or marginalized jobs.

Now Success will insist that these losers choose to fail. But follow it through by asking yourself what would happen if all American adults became Tony Robbins’s enthusiasts and joined the cult of self-improvement. Suppose everyone fervently tried to become rich. Would everyone thereby succeed?

The main reason they couldn’t is that most wealth is created in the US by some degree of fraud. That’s the nature of a postindustrial economy, after all. Wealth isn’t created there by manufacturing products that people need, but by manufacturing desires based on balderdash and hot air (known as “advertising” and “public relations”). That’s how you maximize your profit margins. You need suckers to buy the products they don’t need and that are produced unsustainably by trashing the biosphere. American winners are created on the backs of losers in that the former con the latter with fallacious associative ads or with demagoguery or cultish effrontery like that peddled by Success.

Can’t you just hear the founder of Success, the smug New Thought self-improvement author, Orison Swett Marden, extol the American pioneers who kept a level-head and persevered through many hardships, coming out ahead in the long run because of their gumption and positive attitude? No thanks would be given to the slaves who picked the cotton or who built the railroads, and little remorse would be spared for the indigenous Americans who had to be cleared out by virtual genocide. Such negative historical realities would only impede the positive attitude of winners like the readers of Success.

When Nature Has Its Say

Finally, the Saunders seem immune to the more sobering lesson of the Covid pandemic. Surely what the pandemic shows is that having a positive attitude isn’t everything since the rest of the world has its say, and nature doesn’t care how we feel.

The pandemic wasn’t just a “frightening economic downturn.” Over 600,000 people died from the pandemic in the US, and over 4 million worldwide. Can those who die still turn things around by persevering with a go-getter attitude? Do the Saunders want to say that those who died from the pandemic deserved to die that way? Did the victims secretly want to perish and was God only humbly fulfilling that wish via the pandemic?

We do bear some responsibility for how our character forms because of our formative and later choices, and we’re responsible, too, in part, for the income we end up having, as Success’s “About” page says. For example, there’s some reason to think that men are more aggressive negotiators for pay increases than women, which helps explain why men are still often paid more than women for doing the same work.

But no one is fully responsible for any of those things or for anything else. No one, neither the rich nor the poor, neither Americans nor the Congolese, neither the ancients nor the moderns have absolute control over anything, including their mental states. To suggest otherwise is to appeal to the miracle of a supernatural, immortal spirit, and if you apply that kind of wishful thinking consistently in business, you’ll swiftly lose your fortune.

This is more of the incoherence of the sanctimonious rich person’s thinking. She uses reality-based observation and planning to negotiate the marketplace, but in her spare time she indulges in spiritualist hogwash to feel better about being such a cold-hearted Machiavellian while at work. It’s a double life that makes about as much sense as the laissez-faire pseudo-Christian’s insistence that Jesus wants him to be a multimillionaire by conning the masses in an unscrupulous business environment.

How foolish and infantile, then, these self-involved gurus sound when their vanities are paired with reports of nature’s evident indifference and staggering power, or when their platitudes are contrasted with the much sounder advice of Stoicism! Obviously, we don’t have as much control over events as we presume when we’re at our most self-congratulatory moments, such as when we achieve some success in life due in part — as always — to luck.

How appalling must the winner’s narcissism be when she takes the lion’s share of the credit for her winnings even after the pandemic demonstrated the overwhelming role played by an indifferent, inhuman natural environment in everything that transpires.