5.
Being a failure
In Chapter 2 we looked at how individuals may fail across the lifespan. Here the emphasis is on how fallibility, flaws and failings can add up to an experience or perception of enormous, almost embodied failure: being a failure. Three features of the phrase “being a failure” should readily jump out at us. The first is that we undeniably have such a self-concept in our culture, as in the sad statement “I am a complete failure”, which some people make, often with variable accompanying adjectives such as total, abject or miserable. The second is that we may readily accept responsibility for personal failure even when the obvious elements of biological and social failure are quite outside our making or control. The third is that it seems unlikely, if not impossible, for anyone actually to be a (total) failure, in a similar way to being itself not being non-being. Any of us may fail at certain things but none us can be a perfect failure.
In his survey of philosophical views on “status anxiety”, Alain de Botton acknowledges:
The fear of failing at tasks would perhaps not be so great were it not for an awareness of how often failure tends to be harshly viewed and interpreted by others. Fear of the material consequences of failure is compounded by fear of the unsympathetic attitude of the world towards failure, of its haunting proclivity to refer to those who have failed as “losers” – a word callously signifying both that people have lost and that they have at the same time forfeited any right to sympathy for having done so.
(2004: 157)
Returning to my own example in the introduction to this book, I have to concede that in conventional terms of occupational status I have had some success. Regarding my health, well-being and contentment, I cannot fairly describe myself as a failure. If we take the Socratic criterion of the examined life, I am more a success than a failure. But I am past my heyday; redundancy combined with ageing carries some associative sting of being on or closer to the scrapheap, uncomfortably close to the status of has-been. But with regard to certain aspects of my life, there are more cutting and longer-lasting nuances of failure. As a child I had to take part in sports at school, yet no matter how hard I tried in any athletic or other sporting event I always came last or somewhere near the end. I learned early on that I was “no good at” these things and probably never would be. In addition, it became clear that I could not grasp maths or science subjects after about the age of eleven, nor did I have much practical ability. None of this has changed across my life. In some ways I have excelled intellectually in an arts and humanities direction commensurately with failing in other directions. Perhaps one can choose not to measure oneself by the criterion of “all-rounder” and instead be self-accepting with regard to actual strengths.
In at least one important way, as time goes by I fail more often or habitually; I mean in the domain of technology, particularly computer use. Although I regularly use a laptop and indeed depend on it, I encounter frequent IT problems that thwart me and are associated with frustration and unhappiness. We could put it this way: that I fail to adapt to an increasingly technological society. This may sound trivial and to some it appears unbelievable or “defeatist’, but I stand in relation to technology where dyslexics stand in relation to literacy. I find idiosyncratic and cumbersome ways around IT and other technological problems but I will never be “much good” (competent) in this domain. It is a problem in so far as it has become an inescapable part of daily life for most of us, whereas I am not obliged to play, nor am I pressurized into playing, sports (or participating in dancing, drama and so on). It is also an aspect of life in which others freely tease – as in “You’re a dinosaur” or “You’re a technophobe” (which has connotations of nuisance, Luddite, creator of your own problems, etc.) – in a manner that in other domains might be called bullying and disrespectful labelling.
If we take relational endurance or marital continuity as a criterion of success, then in this domain too I have not yet been an obvious success story. However, I am persistent here; relationships matter much more to me than IT does, so I would not call myself a failure. Overall, I might say that I have made the most of the hand of cards dealt me; I have navigated my way around my maternally derived relational fault line, instinctively playing to my advantages and talents and not beating myself up too much about my failures. However, many individuals regard themselves as failures and/or are perceived to be failures, or even a “waste of space”, or the objects of other belittling terminology. We might say that some are born failures, some achieve failure, and some have failure thrust upon them. It is certainly the case that many are born at the bottom of the social pecking order and remain there. Arguably it is far harder to ascend to success from a low baseline than to fall or fail from a position of privilege. People can move in either direction, however, and we may note the common attitudes of downward snobbery and upward envy. Each of us is in principle free to ignore conventional social markers of success and to define ourselves by our own subjective criteria regardless of outward achievements, but this is not easy, requiring resources of self-esteem and tough reasoning that not all possess. Some of us can take comfort from Diogenes’ example of self-determination and rejection of social coercion, and some can possibly emulate him, but relatively few appear to do this.
So, who is “a failure” or “loser”? We have seen some examples in the previous chapter. Consider a personal statement by a nineteen-year-old man feeling suicidal:
19 and a virgin … I will never get laid … can’t do anything right … I was one of the biggest losers in my High School … Girls would laugh at me … I am short, ugly, … I have no skills, abilities, or talents. I am worthless … Deep down I know that I am a failure and destined to die alone and miserable.
(Alejandro 2007)
This painful account contains a mixture of presumed facts and flawed reasoning. Presumably this young man actually is a virgin and short, he may have performed poorly at school, and he may well have been laughed at and bullied. It would not be surprising for someone in this position to feel depressed and even suicidal. Like it or not, taller males are usually preferred over short ones. Talented and attractive people have been shown to have better life chances and material rewards than others. To some extent this nineteen-year-old man has grasped some of life’s cruel realities. He also shows a great deal of honesty. Many of us struggle against such feelings by pretending to ourselves and others to be fine.
It is fairly clear where he is incorrect (without wishing to add to his heavy list of negatives). Quite probably, one day he will get laid, he almost certainly does do some things right, does have some skills and abilities he doesn’t recognize, and cannot know that he will die alone and miserable (although he may). He certainly feels this bad subjectively. But we would be able to find young people fitting this description whose lives turned out well enough later on. In other words, even many short, ugly, bullied and unhappy people eventually have somewhat decent relationships, overcome their inner distress, resist suicidal thoughts and live somewhat contented lives. We could also point to the lives of people who face much worse adversities than this and overcome them. But it does not follow that if many do turn such misery into a degree of success, he himself can or must. He may not have the natural resilience, the fight, that others have; or he may simply decide that it isn’t worth the fight for the sake of the few positive returns he may obtain.
He may feel no obligation to any moral argument against suicide, perhaps instinctively realising, as Benatar (2006) claims to demonstrate, that human existence is invariably more painful than pleasurable. Perhaps this example also shows that most of us are conditioned not to accept accounts of failure and suicidal wishes without putting up a pro-life, optimistic argument. In other words, few of us are likely to agree with his reasoning or intentions, or even to keep an open mind about these matters: an interpretation of one’s life as a failure pointing to the desirability of suicide seems anathema to most (but not all) of us. This might suggest that
a profound sense of potential failure, or simply the prescience of our own inescapable death, sits inside all of us, demanding fierce denial. Long before Freud formulated his views on the “death instinct”, Socrates had spoken of philosophy as a lifelong preparation for death (Desmond 1988).
In my view the poorest kinds of argument against a position such as this young man’s are (i) the “stop feeling sorry for yourself” kind and (ii) the denial kind. The first kind brings us back to the linked questions of rationality, free agency or volition, and the problem of akrasia: why can’t this young man simply put his bad memories and negative predictions behind him, see his present choices clearly, and start a programme to enhance positive behaviours that will improve his life chances? (Indeed, why can’t we all freely and sensibly do this?) The second kind argues thus: “You’re not so short, ugliness is all in the mind, lots of girls would fancy you if you gave them the chance, …”. The first one at least has the merit of examining options, and potentially generating hope and new planning strategies, while the second is challenging but logically and psychologically flimsy.
Perhaps those freakishly perfection-approaching specimens of optimal beauty, intelligence, charm, wealth, fitness and health set the bar high for success and leave the rest of us dimly aware of our comparative failures. And perhaps in sheer, unfair statistical terms, there are those who are truly the obverse of the above: ugly, unintelligent, hard to like, poor, unfit or infirm. Socrates, famously ugly himself, in dialogue with Critobulus was said to have argued for the superiority of ugly facial features, and certainly seemed not to suffer any low self-esteem due to his own. But then he did possess a superior intellect and high status. And Sartre, renowned for his ugliness (he was very short, half-blind and had bad teeth), almost took pride in his indifference to his body while nevertheless attracting many women.
Social animals do not have the language to refer to each other as failures or to internalize such self-concepts. Nonetheless, it is often abundantly clear who is the alpha male, who has mating rights, and priority for food. In some cases smaller mammals have been said to resort to trickery and rape in order to get what they want. It may or may not seem feasible to present this phenomenon as grounds for supporting the proposition that failure is an intrinsic part of all life. My viability is necessarily tied together with my fallibility. If I am low in any hierarchy I may face increased threats to my reproductive prospects and to my very life. I either have to submit to the conditions of my social order or find ways of compensating for my lowly position, whether by deception, making myself useful and subservient, finding allies or other strategies; and my tactics and risk-taking may backfire. This seems to hold true for many animals as well as human beings.
We can certainly draw on the argument that we are all successful, since we have been born and survived the challenges of birth, illnesses and accidents. Theologically we can say that each of us is equally precious in the sight of God. A common default position in a great deal of philosophy is the assumption of universal and equally distributed rationality. That is, if anything can be demonstrated to be objectively logical then it applies to all human beings, and all should be equally able to implement its conclusions. In other words, we are all or should be rational agents limited only by the degree of our willingness to live virtuously. Of course, not all philosophers share this view. For example, Jonathan Jacobs argues that “we typically regard ethical failures as failures to uphold standards grounded in principles or criteria that are (at least to some extent) understood and acknowledged by the agents who have acted badly . But not everyone is ethically capable” (2001: 35). Being ethically disabled by delusion or cognitive impairment is what Jacobs has in mind. But arguably a spectrum of ethical ability exists, some possessing innate strong will and others being weak-willed and/or impaired by subtle addictions, obesity, deficits of empathy and so on.
Of course, there are many examples available in literature, anecdotally and online, of people who have fallen from grace but picked themselves up, dusted themselves off and started all over again; or those who have hauled themselves from nowhere and overcome huge obstacles to become successful, rich and famous. A fair amount of literature describes such narratives and their lessons, for example Steve Young’s popular Great Failures of the Extremely Successful (2002). What we comment on rather less are those whose success is so entwined with their status and hubris that even when they display spectacular moral failings sometimes causing misery around themselves (I am thinking of Tony Blair, vastly overpaid bankers of the early 2000s, and their like) they seem to escape the epithet of failure.
This is all part and parcel of the American dream. It is the view of Sandage (2005) that the term “I feel like a failure” was not used in the personal sense until around 1860 and then it was as a direct result of bankruptcies and economic failures stemming from the surge of American commercial activities. In Sandage’s detailed historical account, credit reports, police records and school grades share responsibility for the construction of the distinctive sense of personal failure. I doubt that this is true beyond the specific modern connotations of the word “failure’, since the sentiment “I am a miserable sinner” has a much longer history (with etymological origins in the Middle Ages) and a quite similar internalized and globalized negative meaning. Indeed, the New Testament warns in Revelations 21:21 that the Lamb’s Book of Life records clearly who is to be denied entry to eternity through the Pearly Gates on their physical death, and part of one’s worthiness relates to how well or otherwise one has used one’s God-given “talents” in life (Matthew 25:14–30). This latter parable has been variously, and usually erroneously, interpreted as fulfilling one’s human potential and investing one’s capital wisely. Consider too Matthew 5:48 – “Be therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in Heaven is perfect” – and its moral and psychological impact on anxiously flawed humans. Either way, many of us may at least unconsciously fear that we may appear negatively in the heavenly ledger or indeed in the Big Red Book of Dun and Bradstreet credit reports, not to mention failing job interviews constructed around psychological profile tests.
Pause here to consider the case of Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher strongly influenced by Socrates’ writings, who experienced considerable ridicule, rejection, criticism and anguish in his own time, yet came to be credited as a major thinker who challenged the Hegelian tradition of depersonalized philosophy and theology. Kierkegaard promoted responsibility for the self, for accepting the despair inherent in this life, and for choosing one’s beliefs and behaviour as an individual. This entailed for him a single life and an isolated anti-Church stance. He died at forty-two. Standing at his grave in Copenhagen, I pondered his words, translated for me, which included the hopes that strife would now be completely gone and he would spend all his time talking to Jesus. I felt overcome by sadness for this poor man and wondered if it was fair of me 156 years later, in an ethos of atheism and psychoanalysis, to regard him as having suffered from some unfortunate psychopathology and having been deluded in his views. I feel certain that he did not pass through any pearly gates or hold any talks with Jesus, and am pretty sure that this “father of existentialism” had a somewhat failed life that he compensated for with clever but deeply flawed writing. And I know that I lay myself open to charges of certain forms of arrogance and intellectual error in doing so. But how can we know whose insights and philosophies to trust?
Are there ways in which we can clearly categorize people as failures and begin to locate the sources of our judgements? As we saw in Chapter 2, there are probably key moments for failure to emerge. Significantly poor performances in school can, and often do, lead to compound failure: the student is perceived as failing across time, across subjects and perhaps as showing no signs of being capable of any real success. Some schools and teachers may bend over backwards to avoid such stigmatizing, or they may seek out at least some small areas for praise and improvement, but many individuals still leave school feeling like f
ailures. My own father, who attended an English school in the 1920s, certainly carried around with him for a lifetime the belief that he was an “idiot” because he could not grasp what was required of him and could not perform well in exams. Even when he became an established master plasterer and worked on prestigious projects at Buckingham Palace and elsewhere, this feeling never left him. It remains true today that the manually skilful are often considered inferior to the academically and professionally successful, regardless of their true contribution to society.
Although we now like to point punitively to “failing schools”, schools do not really carry any stigma across their lives. A small proportion of teachers are dismissed for incompetence. But it’s likely that large numbers of young people leaving school every year have learnt they are failures or relative failures. The sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s intensive study of the French socially neglected underclass (or “subproletariat”) makes this point bitingly:
The feeling of being tied to a degrading (“rotten”) place by lack of money and transportation and doomed to a degradation (and to degradations) that weighs on them like a curse, or, more simply, a stigmata that blocks access to work, to leisure activities, and to consumer goods, etc.; and, more profoundly, the inexorably repeated experience of failure, first in school, then in the labor market, which prevents or discourages any reasonable hope for the future.
(1999: 185)
Failure (The Art of Living) Page 11