Thought for the Week: The challenge of success

Roger Iredale reflects on the concept of success

The other night our neighbour was found dead beside his bed. Friends and relatives had broken into his house to find him. He was an eccentric, gifted visionary but a lonely character with a history of peaceful protest who had been physically ill for some time. He was downcast by the deprivation of state benefit following an interview with a person of dubious medical qualification from a private organisation, representing the state. We can only speculate on the impact of this on his deteriorating health – a theme in Ken Loach’s powerful film I, Daniel Blake.

It is ironic that I write in condemnation of privatisation. Our Quaker forebears established our reputation on success in business. But it was a success based on compassion and conscience, not on the naked pursuit of wealth. This obsession with wealth was, I feel, illustrated by our prime minister at a security conference recently, when she asked foreign ministerial allies to abandon their ideologies and dogmas, as if we ourselves are dogma-free. Never was there a better example of Jesus’ warning that we should first strike out the mote in our own eye. The ideology of competition and superiority, I believe, permeates our culture, and the cult of privatisation is at the root of sub-standard, expensive railways, electricity, gas and water; miserable prisons; inadequate care; decreasing legal aid; and failing mental health services.

Personal success and the creation of wealth are goals in a wilderness of private interests. Quakers understand the power of striking out for themselves to create success. But the question is what you make of it. ‘Success’ has widely come to be defined in terms of superiority over others. Our system of knighthoods and damehoods – the invidious use of ‘Lord’ and ‘Lady’ – symbolise a power structure where outsiders are tolerated, and often quietly absorbed into a corrupt environment. People motivated by greed, like the authors of devastated pension funds, suddenly and mysteriously reappear in positions of authority. It is as if history has ceased to exist.

Those with the courage to expose them are vilified. Recent media expositions relating to the House of Saud and the huge-scale laundering of the ill-gotten gains of oligarchs and dictators through the City of London, for example, portray the corruption. Armaments, for some, are more important to our wellbeing than the lives of underprivileged Yemeni families. Empty luxury flats are more desirable than homes for people. This presents a challenge to Quakers. Condemnation is not the way to tackle the cult of success. We need successful artists, business people, musicians, actors, social workers, doctors, scientists and engineers – and we must find ways of stimulating and supporting them.

A redefined concept of success will lie in focusing on the huge potential of every single member of our society, and not just those with the existing resources – physical, mental, economic – to realise themselves.

We did our best for our neighbour; but we collectively failed him.

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