Perhaps there are other factors that I'm missing, but I have attempted to summarise the key factors that enable people to become successful, as follows:
- Money
- Status
- Power
- Contacts
- Good looks
- Skill
- Intelligence
- Hard work
The first five are circumstances of birth - being born to parents that have money, status, power or contacts, or being born with good looks. The next two are partially nature, partially nurture. I suspect there's both nature and nurture elements to being a hard worker, but it starts to get into free will debates if you think too hard on this one.
Status vs contacts
I have considered whether status and contacts could be conflated, however is possible, particularly historically, to have status without a particularly useful set of contacts. For example, being born with a hereditary title provides status without necessarily providing contacts.
It perhaps could be argued that status is the formal recognition of a person's place in society (through title or position), whereas contacts are an informal recognition of place in society.
Top trumps
It would be interesting to have a top trumps game with successful people rated by which of the above listed factors contributed to their success.
Status vs contacts
I have considered whether status and contacts could be conflated, however is possible, particularly historically, to have status without a particularly useful set of contacts. For example, being born with a hereditary title provides status without necessarily providing contacts.
It perhaps could be argued that status is the formal recognition of a person's place in society (through title or position), whereas contacts are an informal recognition of place in society.
Top trumps
It would be interesting to have a top trumps game with successful people rated by which of the above listed factors contributed to their success.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment