The truth behind the belief that the world — and opportunity — is fair

The role of chance and luck, beyond effort and ability, goes overlooked

"In a meritocratic society, life is like a secret lottery"

[Getty Images Bank]
[Getty Images Bank]

In 2015, a 13-year-old girl uploaded a song she had made with her older brother to the streaming platform SoundCloud. There was no grand ambition behind it — she simply wanted the easiest way to share the track with her dance teacher to use for choreography.

The song, titled "Ocean Eyes," began to generate an unexpected response. Play counts jumped from 100 to 1,000, then to tens of thousands almost overnight. A casually posted track spread across the world, and the girl became a global star in an instant. Her name was Billie Eilish. Whether her success was the product of luck, effort, or talent is a question worth asking.

"Nothing comes from nothing." "Hard work is the foundation of success." We hear these kinds of sayings throughout our lives. Self-help books and television programs overflow with stories of people who started from the bottom and made it on their own. Society relentlessly promotes "success" and repeatedly instills the idea that reaching it depends entirely on your own effort.

In an era when Arnold Schwarzenegger's autobiography — built on the premise that "only you can create the life you want" — easily becomes a bestseller, the slogan "work hard and you will succeed" has been internalized by many over a long period of time. The treadmill of daily life keeps turning on the belief that today's sweat will one day be rewarded.

German author Bernd Kramer takes sharp aim at this deeply rooted "cult of success" in his book "The Betrayal of Success," asking whether effort truly never fails us and whether the right kind of success always awaits at the end of one's best efforts. He calls this a myth of modern society, writing that "the belief is powerful and seductive, but unfortunately reality is not like that."

Kramer argues that success is not simply a destination one can reach by struggling hard enough. Success itself is difficult to define, and hidden within it are unmeasurable outcomes, chance and inequality. To make his case, he works through a range of examples from sociological, psychological and philosophical perspectives.

"The Betrayal of Success" by Bernd Kramer, translated by Lee Eun-mi / Chussubat
"The Betrayal of Success" by Bernd Kramer, translated by Lee Eun-mi / Chussubat

Kramer begins by exploring why we are so obsessed with success. In modern societies where class and privilege have ostensibly disappeared, the belief that success is open to everyone has taken firm hold. The shackles of social status that once blocked ambition are long gone. Today, many people strive to secure a better home, a higher title, a position above others.

"Democracy, with its banner of equality, spurs citizens to wage small battles for status," Kramer writes. "Competition of all against all breaks out, and human beings become rivals to one another."

Yet Kramer points out just how vague the concept of "achievement" — the supposed path to success — really is. It is impossible to weigh the respective contributions of effort and talent within any given result. The irony is that this very ambiguity drives people to lean harder on effort as the explanation. Because the shares of effort and talent cannot be separated, people easily justify the belief that "if you try hard enough, you can stand in the same place as those born with natural talent."

Success is not even purely a matter of effort and talent. Even when two people work equally hard and possess similar abilities, one may succeed while the other fails. Despite the obsession with success and the faith in hard work, reality makes it plain that effort does not guarantee results in proportion to the work put in.

Many remember Jean-Michel Basquiat as a brilliant painter who died young, but almost no one remembers Al Diaz — known as "SAMO" — who worked alongside him on graffiti. Some artists, like Billie Eilish, become stars when a casually uploaded song becomes an unexpected hit; far more artists never set foot on a stage despite years of grueling effort. To explain this gap, one cannot avoid invoking the role of luck and chance. Statistics showing that birth year and even a person's name influence the likelihood of entering a top university or turning professional lend further support to this point.

"Small turning points occur that send us off in random directions before we even realize it," Kramer writes. "At first it is an advantage so small it is hard to notice, but when the next decisive step comes, you are just a little ahead of everyone else — and in the end, that difference is enormous."

Another side effect of the cult of success and meritocracy is that responsibility falls entirely on the individual. Because opportunity is said to have been distributed "equally" to all, people believe that winners and losers alike have earned their outcomes — whatever they may be. The idea that the world is fair and that everyone gets what they deserve leads to contempt for the vulnerable — the assumption that "they must have brought it on themselves" — and ultimately entrenches inequality.

Kramer compares life, with its inescapable randomness and uncontrollable luck, to a lottery draw. His conclusion is that in a meritocratic society, life resembles a secret lottery. He does not, however, say that effort is unnecessary — he simply never stops questioning the proposition that effort guarantees success. In that sense, "The Betrayal of Success" reads like a quiet word of encouragement for those crushed under the weight of the word "effort," and for those who find themselves at a dead end in their pursuit of success.

"The Betrayal of Success" by Bernd Kramer, translated by Lee Eun-mi / Chussubat


balme@heraldcorp.com