Imagine you teach a class. The class consists mainly of normal kids except for two bullies, who are obsessed with their desires, and are a little manipulative, aggressive, and dominating. The two also have a sense of entitlement, and a strong sense of conviction. You also have an autistic student who normally keeps to himself and is obsessed with computers. Now suppose students get a pizza day once every week, but you have your suspicions that some students remain hungry after the pizzas are over. This is why you decide to observe the students from the outside to see what happens. For argument’s sake, let us assume all students in the class like pizza, but the two bullies are obsessed with it. When you leave the room, the bullies grab two full pizzas of a popular type. While they start devouring a couple of slices from the popular pizzas, they start to go around and negotiate with people that they would exchange one slice of their pizza for two slices of theirs. They continue trading like this until the content of their boxes are empty. Although at this point they realize, that even according to their set standards, they have reached the end of their meal, they do not follow their own rules of the game, because they still want more. So they change their own rule. They then just brazenly grab a couple of slices from the boxes of others without standing around for a probable discussion; they take and walk away. The aspie also likes pizza a lot, but he likes computers more. So, he is content with what he gets as long as he gets to play with his laptop.

Following your observations, you promise yourself to keep the desires, bullying, and cheating capacities of the two bullies in check. From then on, you make sure every student gets the same number of slices and of the same variety as everyone else. This is the point when the bullies shift entirely to their manipulation capacity, because you would penalize them if you found out they took other people’s share by force. Force never seizes to be a manipulation tool though. It just changes format. For example, they use force and threaten students outside the class and coerce them to give them their share voluntarily. The two bullies work in coordination and force students to agree to share their pizza in class and threaten them that they would give them a real lesson if they tell on them. Obviously, they also make use of other manipulative tool such as promises, or use various kinds of coercions. The coalition of the two bullies is at its weakest when the rest of the students form a union and work as a group. Only then, the two bullies resort to compromise, and see no option but to postpone their desires. However, every minute, of every day, of every month, of every year, they look for opportunities to weaken the solidarity between the students.

Now fast forward to 30 years later. All student have found their passions and have pursued their interest in the form of a hobby or a career. The aspie already had an obsession with computers, so he launched a software company that makes operating systems for computers. He is a billionaire now. The bullies have also found their obsessions. One became obsessed with power, as he was then, and the other with money. One became a politician and the other a businessman. The two still work together in most cases. They still work as a team to secure more and more of what they desire, using the same old techniques. However, there are two main differences; one positive and one negative. The positive is that the teacher is no longer watching over them. In fact, the politician sits in the position of the teacher with the responsibility of implementing justice. The negative aspect is that, even in the absence of an outside supervisor, it is not easy to blatantly take what they desire; they need to manufacture popular consent. To do this, a set of agreements is necessary. The good news is that, unlike the days where the teacher was supervising them, there is no need to give back all of the pizzas taken, even if they are caught. If and when the business man takes more than his share, what he needs to do, is to give “part” of the “extra” back. There are also many caveats here. The business man gets a relief if he exchanges his pizzas for other products. He also gets a cut if he invest his pizza in new adventures, such as expanding his markets to the moon, although he is the only person on earth who thinks that is necessary. If there is still some surplus after he runs out of ideas, the politician prepares the foundation for the businessman to register his pizzas through a shell company that is registered in a region with zero corporate tax. This is only possible if the politician succeeds in convincing the public that those who earn more, pay more tax; and only then the businessman will be legitimized to continue pursuing his obsession with no real obstacle. But this is all right up the politician's alley; he has a lot of practice switching between force and manipulation to get what he has wanted. What's in it for him, you ask? Although the real obsession of the politician is power, he also gets to satisfy his passion for money through his business-minded friend, who funds his campaigns and sends him gifts of various kinds.

You may think there is nothing wrong with people pursuing their passion and making money along the way. Well, that is not quite true. First of all, it is essential to distinguish between “passion” and “obsession”. When you are passionate about something, you pursue it; you pursue it automatically and with a healthy attitude; but you survive if your pursuit is interrupted. You also naturally stop, if your passion clashes with other people’s welfare or wellbeing. But obsession is not like that. That who is obsessed, cannot stop under any circumstances. For example, they know their relationship is at stake, but they stay in office and work; they know their family needs attention, but they continue to provide them with money instead; they know their employees are suffering under pressure, but they continue to press for more profit. The reason we do not see this as a problem, is to do with a plague we all have been infected with, a plague which convinces us “no pain, no gain”. We have been led to believe nothing big comes out of feeling cosy; that to achieve big things we need big sacrifices. The attitude has become a virtue to propel human discoveries, knowledge and wealth. The question is where did this idea come from? Was it always with us? Is it even true?

The idea was first advocated by liberalist thinkers, who believed humans must be free to realize their full potential, and for this to happen, they should be protected from external interference, coercion, suppression, etc. This is all good, so long as the state has some level of supervision on the behaviour of agents. This means that individuals are free to realize their potential, but they need to share their earnings with others in the society. To propagate growth and development throughout the society,it is also essential for the state to also have some influence over prioritizing investments and controling and directing wealth in ways that is most beneficial to the entire community. However, all this changed with the advent of Neo-liberalism, which strongly advocated near complete absence of state from the market. This essentially meant that markets would have carte blanche to determine where to invest, how to invest and how to distribute the generated wealth. This was also accompanied with lower tax and inflation rates, both of which were supposed to encourage more investment. So, unlike liberalism, which allowed individuals to reach their full potential as long as they propelled the entire community forward, the Neo-liberalism allows them to be entitled to the outcome with little to no liability to the community. In fact, markets started to gain transnational sovereignty, because with the advancements in technology and banking, capital started to migrate to cyber space, and became completely fluidized. So, in search of more profit and competitive advantage, agents in the market started to look for opportunities all across the world. They transferred their capital to places with more gain and created employment in countries with much lower labour costs and much worse working conditions; they then transferred their profits to a remote country where corporate tax is non-existant. This is why the have become impossible to hold liable to the local state for their taxes, investment decisions etc.

It is one thing to know where the the focus on individal potential, individual gain and naturalness of competition came from; and another to know why they have become so ingrained in our belief systems. The answer is in our story of the bullies. Establishment after establishment in advanced countries, especially in the US, have been advocating, promoting and investing on the ideology. Just as in our little classroom, politicians’ campaigns have been heavily funded by businesses, who in turn have been enjoying access to promotion of certain legislations and structural changes. The most convenient coincidence has also been the clash between capitalism and communism, which has been giving US politicians an excuse to implement demands of business in the name of anti-communist mottos. This is the main reason most of us do not dare question the underlying assumptions of competitions, market economies, individual potential and gains. Because as soon as we question any of these concepts, we can be accused of being a lazy bum Communist who want to be paid out of the sweat of those with ambitions, aspirations, and motivation. This is why we thought the first half of our story, where the teacher supervises students' access to pizza, made perfect sense; but questioned the second half, when the students were grown adults pursuing their goals. This is why in the context of a classroom, it is acceptable for a teacher to implement equity, but in society, individual differences must not be curtailed, because that is in contrast to liberalist ideas on which our whole civilization have grown to rest. But note; all these ideas have been promulgated by the bullies who have succeeded to get their hands on the object of their obsession, or those who are making progress to that end. They do not want to loose their positions, or the promise of having such positions. This is why they justify their parasitic behaviour by resorting to concepts such as “competition being natural” or “liberalism”. The idea that competition is natural is quite insulting too. Competition actually is anything but natural. No species of animals entirely rely on competition. The alphas among them may have a fight to establish their reign. However, after that row is settled, the entire community work in harmony to promote welfare in the community, and to protect every member of that community. What makes the idea of competition being natural dangerous, is that the resources are finite in the world. In other words, there are only a limited number of pizzas. If we do not control the uncontrollable craving of some people, there will inevitably be less or none available to others. It is noteworthy that one of the main tennets of both liberalist and neo-liberalist ideologies, is the aspiration to create a level-playing field for everyone to be able to realize their potential. But for reasons mentioned earlier, this tennet is under serious threat now. In fact, the same ideologies are working to actively crush the very values they were born to protect.

You may ask, how about innovations? Surely, the ground is more furtile for new ideas to take root and blosom into full-fledged businesses, which in turn create growth for the entire community. But if we look at the creation of ideas, they are mainly generated where capital has already been accumulated. In other words, those who have access to capital, have a significant upper hand in generating ideas and wealth. It is extremely difficult to compete with R&D of big corporations, and come up with a new idea. This is much more the case now, because there is no restrictions on corporations, who invest in different areas of research ranging from artificial meat to driverless car production. The problem is that these companies are often the same companies who have a shell company off-shore, and refrain from contributing to the growth of the community. The ambience is also such that newcomers catch the same disease, and register a shell company off-shore as soon as they become meaningfully profitable, so they can remain comppetitive. Competitive advnatge is key here. In a world that allows cheating to be directly translated into wealth, not cheating directly translate into loosing the competition. This is why the promise of neo-liberalism, that a bigger pizza means bigger slices for eveyone, is a false one. Maybe this is true for a very limited period of time, but certainly not for very long. First of all, the assumption that the tax system is just and supervised is wrong. So the generated wealth will be disproportionately distributed among a few. How about creating employment? As soon as a company innovates in a highly competitive world, other companies will follow in their foot steps. In no time, the innovation finds competition; maybe not using exactly the same technology due to property rights, but the outcome is often very similar. Look at smart phone companies. Soon after one comes up with a technology, they all follow suit with minor tweaks in working of the technology, but with very similar results. This process continues until there will be enough rivals in the market and the competition will come down to traditional concepts such as cost, price and services. And that is the point where capital migrates to remote locations in the world where tax does not exist, where labour is cheap, and where unions are not formed so they can juice employees for higher efficiency. This is why I call such people obsessed rather than passionate. You have to be extremely insensitive to continue pursuing your goal, knowing the other side to a kid buoyant with happiness for having your product, is a kid working long hours every day to survive.

The last objection you may have, is that the access of big corporations to capital, and hence their potential for research and development, can and will have spill-over effect when they find a solution to a social problem. This is yet another myth, promulgated by the cooperation between politicians and corporations. First of all, it is profit-making potential of problems that determines allocation of resources, and in most cases, the resources allocated to absolutely unnecessary solutions, such as making a thinner phone, by far outweigh the amount spent on solving human problems. In fact, in the absence of all corporations producing smarter phones and smaller cameras, which are in major part used to undo most of feministic efforts to date, human societies can perfectly continue their peaceful existence. All that said, it is true that some innovations are helping humans, like medications and medical research. But they are so comparatively small that they can be taken up with local governments, or be funded by a small portion of tax payers’ revenue. In fact this is currently happening in many cases, including the solutions that major corporations companies claim to own. For example, invention of the Internet was mainly by DARPA, which was an agency inside the Department of Defense, invention of GPS came out of funcing by the American Navy, invention of touchscreen display came from the funding by the CIA, etc. So, although these facts are absent in ipublic debate, most of what corporations claim they have invented, and are surely profiting from, have been publicly financed. So, in most cases they do not even spend a part of their revenue on research. Useful research is often done by states, or through government funded projects. This is why all the money in corporations' systems are used for creating products, creating demand and giving bonuses to their managers.

To go back to the topic of this article and talk about “How to be successful”, which seems to be a money maker for many motivational speakers, I would start by arguing that success has nothing to do with talent or hard work. However, before sharing the instructions I am going to disclaim that my focus here is only on financial success. The reason for this is that, financial resources are the only target of success that is of limited supply. It does not matter how many obsessed physicists already exist, there is always room for more physicists, because the target of obsession is not in limited supply. Money is different, because one person's success inevitably leads to others' failure. With that in mind, let me tackle the question.

If you want to be exceptionally successful, you need to have an obsession. If you have one, you will know it; so there is no need to search and discover it. If you do not have an obsession, all is not lost. The first thing you need to do is to see if you have a passion. If you find your passion, you need to make sure it is readily monetizable. If it is, great, if it is not, you need to tweak it a little so it gets as close as possible to something that is already monetizable. If your passion is not monetizable at all, or you do not find your passion, you just need to move on without wasting any time trying to find your passion or making it monetizable. This is because you will have one or two major opportunities to do those later, provided that you take the next step wisely. The next step is to find a good school. By a good school I mean an institution like Eton. Although the success stories of many politicians and businessmen have become public knowledge, only a bunch of institutions have correctly identified the main driving factors. That said, you should find a school that has its main emphasis on what is important; things such as attitudes, behaviour, negotionations, thinking, problem solving, and most importantly, on how to talk and compete. These institutions are famous because they have discovered the secret to success. They surely teach you algebra, but they focus mainly on what you will need, which makes sense. Every one of us need to talk to a decision committee in order to get a job, but only some of us, and on rare ocassions, willl be asked to solve an algebra problem; and even if that is the case, most interviewers care about how you communicate your thoughts rather than the thoughts themselves. Another skill that exceptional schools focus on, is to create competitive spirit among their students. This is essentially to mimic the behaviour of an obsessed person. To this end, such schools constantly and consistently push their students to the limits, and keep them there for extended periods of time. The hope is that, by the end of their education, students internalize the habits of an obsessed person, so they can compete with the few obsessed people out there. As I said before, you should not get your hopes high because it is a zero-sum game. If there are already some obsessed people out there, it automatically means your chances of success are far lower. However, although it is impossible to compete with a natural, being able to take up the role on demand and having developed a high threshold for pain of being pushed to the limit can get you significantly ahead not against the obsessed, but against everyone else in the society.

Finally, to be exceptionally successful, or sometimes to be only successful, it is not enough to be obsessed, passionate, or having graduated from a famous institution. You will also need certain personality traits, because at some point in your journey, you will inevitably notice how your success has an indirect relationship with others's success. So, one trait that you will need is to be insensitive to other people's state, be good at keeping thoughts at bay, or be skilled in adding dimensions to each story in order to justify the ends. For example, you will need to have very low moral and ethical standards, or have a dimmer switch on them so you can dim them when you transfer your profit to an off-shore location. One of these dimmer switches is that everyone does it, and I will also need to do it in order to be able to compete and survive.

This does not always happen with malice though. Sometimes it is due to absence of awareness, in face of cognitive dissonance. Cognitice dissonance is the perception of contradictory information to an existing state, which can include one's action, beliefs, ideas, values, etc. Generally, cognitive dissonance is often accompanied by a feeling of discomfort, becuase it shakes up the cognitive equilibrium by the new contradictory piece of information. When this happens, the person experiencing the dissonance, either looks for further evidence to invalidate the contradictory information, or changes his/her belief system in accordance with the new updates in order to assimilate and accommodate the new outlook in an updated edition of the belief in question. The problem is that the choice of strategy is highly dependant on a variety of external factors. One of these factors is how strongly is the existing belief supported and celebrated by the society. If we live in a society that applauds getting rich by being cunningly smart, contradictory moral standards are often neglected, and are left for low budget movies showcasing the failed attempts of an isolated activist. Another factor is how much investment has been made for construction of the belief system or the value under attack. The higher the investment, which is often the case with obsessed people, the stronger is the resistance to accommodate contradictory information. So, this makes obsessed people less vigilant or aware of information which casts doubt on their existing beiefs.

This is why self-awareness can expose you to turmoil by shaking up your foundation; and also why you need to be able to have some form of tunnel vision in order to continue. You will need to have an exceptionally strong sense of conviction, because many of the decision you will make are going to be wrong, and many people will be impacted by them. The only way you can continue screwing others with your decisions, is to be able to defend your decisions all the way through, which requires a high dose of conviction and compartmentalization. You will also need to feel entitled, but this will automatically happen. Research suggests that, even in presence of obvious advantages from the start, those who succeed in competitions in experimental settings attribute their success solely to their own aptitude. So, chances are high that you will attribute your success entirely to your own skills without having to try.

One thing that helps tremendously in acquiring the able-mentioned traits, is to start mingling with like-minded people. For instance, many schools, especially very good schools, have various clubs you can join. The bad news is that the ones that guarantee you will get many of these traits, are very popular and hence very hard to get in. They often require you to pass humiliating stages before they accept you as one of them. However, it is all worth it. If you get in, you are guaranteed to feel less compassionate, more entitled and little arrogant in no time, and from there you will fly like a young eagle.