The author of Moneyball was asked to give a commencement speech at Princeton recently and he made this very obvious yet surprising remark to the so called IVY league graduates. To paraphrase - Success in most cases is a series of fortunate events that can be chalked up to dumb luck. I do think that once someone gets lucky it requires intellect to recognize it as such and put your whole effort behind it to maitain momentum and indeed savor the flavor of success.
The author Michael Lewis is himself a graduate of Princeton and has since had different careers including a bond salesman and now an author of popular books some that have become a movie.
He went on to emphasize that those lucky ones then somehow owe it to themselves and to society to return the favor in the form of helping others achieve what they seek, in most cases success itself. Although an intangible idea the message was to pay it forward.
He calls it the graduating generations' responsibilty to take the effort to help others.
He wrote a new book called Boomerang with ideas that I get and quoted here -
In Greece the banks didn't sink the country. The country sank the banks;
Fishermen are a lot like American investment bankers - like bankers, fishers' "overconfidence leads them to impoverish not just themselves but also their fishing grounds";
Countries borrow not only the best practices, but the worst;
Nothing lasts forever, even real estate.
I attempted to read this book by author Chuck Klosterman backward to forward but it started hurting my brain so I decided to stop and do it like any other publication in the English language. Start from page 1 and move to the right. Witty, caustic and thought provoking this is a book you want to read if you believe that the status quo might, just might be wrong. At times bordering on being contrarian about most things around us it tries to zero in on the notion of what makes anything believable and certain in our minds. The fact that there is a fact itself is ironic. Something analogous to the idea that you can never predict the future because there is no future. Many books and movies have tried to play on this concept - best that I recollect (I think I am) was 'The Truman Show'. This book by Klosterman attempts to provoke the reader to at least contemplate that what they think they know may be wrong. He uses examples like concept of gravity, and how it ...
Although as I have noted somewhere before 'Success' itself is a very vague idea. After all its in the mind of the beholder. Just because a lot of people believe something does not make it gospel. A perfect heist is also considered a Successful Job in the mind of the one pulling said heist. As is the destruction caused by fundamentalists. One parent in Afghanistan may be overheard to say - Aziz went on to be a successful terrorist.
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