In the video you're about to watch, I mispronounce the name Vautrin as Vaturin. I have no idea why.
Vautrin is one of the protagonists in Le Père Goriot or Father Goriot or Old Goriot, depending on the translation, is having a dialogue with a younger protagonist, de Rastignac.
The book is one of a series known as La Comédie Humaine, and Balzac, the author, wrote these books, and in these books, the character of Vautrin appears several times. Vautrin is not his real name, actually. His real name is disclosed in another book, and he has two nicknames, one of them he received in prison.
I encourage you to read the series, it's fascinating, or at the very least, a fascinating documentation of a world long gone.
And now delve right into the video and whenever you hear Vaturin, remember it's Vautrin.
In my late teens and early twenties, I spent years with one of Israel's leading mobsters. Yes, you heard correctly, mobster, I toured the underworld like some kind of Greek mythical figure.
I must say, as an aside, that I have witnessed more wisdom and solidarity and empathy among the criminals than I have in academe or in business or in the healthy normal world out there.
So much for the distinctions between antisocial and pro-social.
But today's topic has to do with hard work and the success that he's supposed to follow.
I'm mentioning the mobster who had adopted me, kind of, and became my surrogate father. I'm mentioning him because once I asked him, tell me, what is the secret of success?
And he said, listen, Schmuel, there are only two ways to succeed in life. Either you exit the right hole or you enter the right hole.
Yes, I never said he was a refined scholar, but there's a lot of wisdom in what he told me.
Actually, he was preceded by a towering intellect whose name was Balzac. And Balzac wrote a book called Père Goriot in 1835.
And here is a segment. Here is an excerpt from Père Goriot.
There is a guy there. His name is Vautrin, and Vautrin explains to Rastignac what is the secret of success in life.
Listen well, you may learn something.
Vautrin explains to Rastignac that it is illusory to think that social success can be achieved through study, talent, and effort.
And here is what he tells him.
By the age of 30, you will be a judge, making 1,200 francs a year if you haven't yet tossed away your robes.
When you reach 40, you will marry a miller's daughter with an income of around 6,000 livres.
Thank you very much.
If you're lucky enough to find a patron, you will become a royal prosecutor at 30 with compensation of a thousand écus, an equivalent of 5,000 francs at the time. And you will marry the mayor's daughter. If you are willing to do a little potential dirty work, political dirty work, you will be a prosecutor general by the time you're 40.
It is my privilege to point out to you, however, that there are only 20 prosecutors general in all of France, while 20,000 of you aspire to the position, and among them are a few clowns who would sell their families to move up a rung.
If this profession disgusts you, consider another, says Vautrin. Would Baron de Rastignac like to be a lawyer?
Very well then. You will need to suffer ten years of misery. Spend a thousand francs a month. Acquire a library and an office. Frequent society. Kiss the hem of a clerk to get cases and lick the courthouse floor with your tongue.
If the profession led anywhere, I would advise you against it.
But can you name five lawyers in Paris who earn more than 50,000 francs a year at the age of 50?
Vaturain continues to advise Rastiniak to marry a rich, the daughter of a rich person, of a rich man. He says it's the only way to succeed in life. You marry into a rich family, automaticallyyou become rich. It's a shortcut. Forget hard work. Forget study. Forget talents. Vaturin mocks all these.
He explains to Rastiniak that this is a myth propagated by society in order to control people, but in reality, hard work leads nowhere.
Is Vaturain right? Is he overly cynical? Is it true what he says?
Well, according to Harvard Business School, it is true.
What you need to be successful are basically three things. You need to start with a small fortune. You need to come from a rich family. You need to have a lot of luck.
Luck, according to Harvard Business School, is the main determinant of life span success, of future success. Luck, not hard work, not studies, not talents, nothing. Luck and coming from a rich family. This is it. These are the ingredients of success.
So this raises the question of what is the overall picture? Who is right? Vaturain and Harvard Business School or the ethos, the Protestant work ethic, which tells you that if you study a lot and if you work hard you're going to make it, that social mobility, upward mobility is guaranteed, that it all depends on you and if you mess up you fail you should own your failures, you should take responsibility for your defeats because you could have done differently. It's only up to you whether you succeed or fail.
That is the American dream. That is the Protestant work ethic. That is the narrative and the story that we are all brought up on and that we have all assimilated, having been indoctrinated by it.
But is it true? Is it real?
Not according to the most meticulous recent studies.
And I'm referring you to the masterpieces, the twin masterpieces, by Thomas Piketty, Capital in the 21st century and his other book, which is even more impressive, Capital and Ideology.
These two books demonstrate conclusively that to succeed in life, at least financially, monetarily, economically, you need to be born to the right family. You need to be born to a rich family. No amount of hard work and talent and studies are going to escalate your position and make you a member of the elite.
Of course there are exceptions. Immediately I can see the comments in the comments section. I came to the United States as an immigrant with $400 and now I have $400,000.
Yes, of course there are exceptions. These exceptions are used to defraud the rest of the population who never make it.
According to Piketty and other economists, 99% of the time, you heard me right, 99% of the time, you are unlikely to make it.
The 1% they control 50 to 60 to 70 to 80 to 90 depending on the period of history. They control 90 between 50 and 90% of the economy.
And these 1%, within this 1%, most of the capital is inherited. It's a result of inheritance.
I'm not telling you to not work, because if you don't work, it would be extremely difficult for you to buy groceries. And if you don't buy groceries on a constant basis, you're very likely to die, which is not recommended.
So you do need to work. Of course you need to work. And you might need to buy the latest iPhone or you will die, obviously.
So yes, consumerism is the intoxication of the mind, the religion that coerces you to study, to take on student debt, to invest, to work hard, to climb the corporate ladder, and so on and so forth.
However, the statistics don't lie. In 99% of the time, you will fail. You will not make it. As simple as that.
Now, I've had a period in my life of two years where I've been a professional gambler, not a pathological gambler, a professional gambler, which is the opposite of pathological gambler.
And as a professional gambler, I can tell you, the odds in any casino, however stacked against you, are much better, infinitely better, than the odds against you in the game of life.
The game of life, you're bound to lose. Period. End of story. You're being lied to. You're being deceived. You're being deceived by the very 1%, by the very elite, who want you to believe, who want you to be subservient, who want you to collaborate, who want you to contribute and donate your time, your skills, your talents, your intellect, your efforts, your hard labor, they benefit.
Not you, of course. Oh sure, they pay your salary, they compensate you somehow.
But it reflects a tiny amount of what you produce.
There is a fallacious theory in economy, it's known as a theory of marginal productivity.
It's as if your salary reflects your contribution.
It doesn't. It doesn't even reflect a fraction of your contribution.
The people who belong to the 1% are rapacious.
Okay, that's a general introduction.
And now that I've introduced you to the thinking, to the conceptual framework, let's transition to my favorite topic, narcissists.
Some narcissists are slackers, they're indolent, they're layabouts. They are pathologically and constitutionally lazy. They refuse to study. They refuse to work hard. They refuse to invest. They refuse to pay attention to details. They refuse to be committed to any career or any vocation or a vocation. They just lounge about, enjoying life, and sailing through it, as if nothing is the matter.
These are the slacker narcissists.
But there's another group of narcissists. These narcissists are driven. They're ambitious, they're obsessed with work, they constantly toil and study and invest, and they have no leisure time, they have no relationships, they're workaholics.
Two groups of narcissists.
The vast majority of narcissists are actually slackers. They're indolent. They hate the idea of work. Because they're entitled. We'll come to it in a minute.
There's a small group of narcissists and they're known as pro-social or communal narcissists who elevate the very idea of work to a kind of religious significance.
They believe that work is what holds society together, is the glue that allows communities to flourish and so forth and the individual to climb the social ladder and succeed according to them labor is an article of faith.
But this is the minority. This is who knows, two, three percent of narcissists. 90-97% of narcissists hate to work.
The pro-social narcissist is a team builder. He's goal-oriented.
All other types of narcissists are absolutely indolent and averse to the idea of labor. They mislabel laziness or slacking as individual freedom. They have an ideology of not working. It's a form of antisocial defiance and contumaciousness, rejection of authority.
They don't say I'm lazy. They say I'm not working as a matter of principle.
I don't work because to work, to be a worker, is to be a slave. I cherish my freedom. I reject society and its mores and laws and regulations. I'm my own men. I'm a rule and a law unto myself. I'm going to do whatever I like to do, whenever I like to do it.
And so I lays about, not because I'm lazy or indolent or no good, but I lays about as a kind of virtue signaling, the kind of protest.
I am above society's injunctions and edicts. I am unshackled. I am the opposite of a slave.
And there's of course an element of grandiose entitlement.
The narcissist's inner monologue is, I'm entitled. I'm entitled to everything. I'm entitled to special treatment by special people. I'm entitled to sex. I'm entitled to have money and be rich. I'm entitled to be respected and recognized and so on.
But I'm entitled to all these by virtue of merely existing. I'm God's gift to humanity. People should recognize this. My life has a cosmic significance. Only idiots would not realize it.
So I don't have to work hard. I don't have to study. I don't have to invest. I'm a natural phenomenon. I'm a force of nature. I am intelligence and intellect reified. I am the essence of success.
And so I deserve all these perks and all these favors and all this income and all this respect and all this recognition. I deserve everything because I exist.
I don't need to work. Work is for my inferiors. I am superior. I'm above all that.
If I were forced to work, if I were to enter the grind and tread the mill and so on, that would prove that I'm not special.
The narcissist says my indolence is proof of my uniqueness that I have chosen to not work, that I have renounced work, is a sign of my specialness, because very few people can do that.
And in the narcissist's mind, nothing is beyond the narcissist's ken and orbit and capacity. The narcissist can accomplish anything, can do anything.
It's a form of magical thinking.
The narcissist tells himself or herself, you don't have to work hard, you just have to wish hard. Just wish. Just think about it. Just focus. And it will happen.
The narcissist confuses cognitive processes, such as wishing, with external circumstances, because the narcissist cannot tell the difference between external and internal.
Whatever happens in the narcissist's mind is as real to the narcissist as whatever happens outside his body or her body.
So there's a lot of magical thinking here.
I don't need to work. I just need to wish it. I want to be rich. I don't need to study. I don't need to invest infinite hours in the workplace. I don't need to certify myself. I don't need to advance. I don't need to negotiate coalitions and create teams. I don't need to collaborate. I don't need all this. Hustle. I don't need all this. Tedium. I don't need all this.
All I need to do is sit back in my armchair with my beer and close my eyes and think to myself, I'm going to be rich because I want to be rich.
Whatever it is that I want, whatever it is that I wish is bound to come true because I am who I am a godlike perfect entity whose mere thinking has an impact on the world the universe arranges itself to cater to my wishes.
And I don't have to play the game. I don't have to pretend the role. I don't have to be who I'm not. I don't have to succumb to workplace regulations and rules. I don't have to go to work every morning. I don't have to go through this pedestrian humdrum experiences.
They're not for me. I'm above all that. I am divine.
And so these are the ideological and emotional foundations of the narcissist's indolence, laziness, and slacker mentality.
It's not even the Big Lebowski. The Big Lebowski simply had a philosophy of life, which regarded ambition and drive as essentially anti-social qualities.
So the Big Lebowski chose what appears to us to have been indolence and laziness and so on, not because he was indolent and lazy, but because he thought that the alternative is corrupting and dangerous, actually.
The alternative of being ambitious and driven to the point of callousness and disempathy and ruthlessness and cruelty.
The narcissist is not a big Lebowski, he is not a great lover of humanity.
The narcissist simply believes that his mere existence, his mere being, are sufficient qualifications and enough of an investment, and that he should just sit back and wait, just wait, and everything will come his way.
And this leads us full circle to my mobster friend.
My mobster friend's advice was a narcissistic advice.
If you're not born to the right mother, if you don't exit the right hole, then find a hole you can enter. Find a rich wife.
That's exactly the advice that Vattourin gives to Rastignac. He tells him, forget studies, forget hard work, forget having a career, to get you nowhere. With a single stroke of seducing the daughter of a rich man, you can make it happen. All your dreams and all your fantasies, realized and materialized on the spot.
This advice, regrettably, according to scholars, eminent scholars, I mentioned Picqée, there are others, this advice, unfortunately, is still very, very true.
And of course, this state of mind leads to the belief that shortcuts are legitimate. To go from point A to point B, one does not have to traverse the entire distance. One can fake it till one makes it or one can defraud other people, leverage their assets and talents and erudition and skills and access and so and so forth.
Scamming, in other words, is legitimized. Swindling is the way to go.
And so I want to end by reading to you a comment I've received from someone online, The Glorification of Scaming.
That person wrote to me, I wanted to see if you could one day do a video on the recent rise of grifter culture in the United States and how scam artistry has become legitimized and now is seen as an acceptable career path. In the US today, multi-level marketing companies, pyramid schemes, have become so psychopathic that they even have begun to run rehab facilities to attract compromised people in the most vulnerable state. I live in the United States and the rise in legitimization in predatory behavior has reached unprecedented levels.
Exactly. If you don't believe in studies, in studying, if you don't believe in hard work, if you have no ethics connected to investment and commitment and perseverance and resilience, if you believe that you are owed everything, you're entitled, and you don't have to accomplish anything, and you don't have to demonstrate anything, and you don't have to be tested and examined. If you believe that by virtue of your existence, everything should come to you, riches, recognition, fame, then you would be solely tempted to adopt shortcuts.
The shortcut mentality, the shortcut economy, now have become predominant because there is this ethos that education is a waste of time, that hard work is for suckers, that there are definite ways to become rich quick, it's not a myth and it's not a deception, it's true.
And of course, the society that is founded on consumerism, encourages you to think this way.
There is a magic bullet. There is a button to push. There's a single decision that separates you from the dreams and fantasies of your life.
And this single decision, of course, has a price tag, but this is consumerism for you.
And so people attempted to find ways to avoid the long haul, to somehow condense and compress life into a few years, rather than 50, maybe five, rather than five, maybe two, rather than six months.
The shorter, the better.
And there is this emphasis on hacking, hack your life, hack the situation.
There is the assumption that there are definite ways to achieve things which require much less energy, investment, no talent, no skilling, no education, nothing, basically.
And so what I'm describing is a society of swindlers and con artists and charlatans.
This is very evident online, even in the space that I monitor closely, narcissistic abuse space. It's 99% charlatans and con artists with and without academic degrees.
And they just woke up one morning and realized there's a lot of money in narcissistic abuse and the next day they declared themselves experts on narcissistic abuse. It's the kind of thing I'm talking about.
You don't have to be a criminal to do this. You just have to be a charlatan and you have to have a very compromised conscience or sense of propriety. You have to be a bit psychopathic in other words.
This gives rise to narcissism and psychopathy on a societal level.
Narcissism and psychopathy are becoming the organizing principles of society and of human interpersonal interactions.
Because narcissism and psychopathy comprise the two elements, the two elements that cater to fantasy and magical thinking.
In narcissism, it's entitlement, in psychopathy, its defiance, and overarching is the fantasy, the belief that if you can just imagine it, if you can just dream it, you're likely to live it, to experience it as well.