Graffiti appeared across the streets of New York in 1978, each tagged at the end with the signature "SAMO" (Same Old Shit). The two young street artists behind this shared pseudonym were Jean-Michel Basquiat and Al Diaz. Yet their lives took entirely different paths. Basquiat became an artist representing the global art market, while Al Diaz remained largely unknown even by name. SAMO was a project the two created together, but as their attitudes toward media and commercialism diverged, one became a superstar and the other remained an anonymous artist.
Today, we accept the phrase "work hard and you will succeed" as if it were self-evident truth. But as the cases of Basquiat and Diaz show, success is a complex outcome that is difficult to explain by ability alone. The new book "The Betrayal of Success" demonstrates, through diverse cases and studies, that success cannot be explained by an individual's talent or effort alone.
Above all, chance plays no small role in success. Various studies—on the birth timing of professional athletes, the order of contestants in competitions, and the correlation between the first letter of one's name and admission rates to elite universities—show that seemingly trivial conditions can change the course of a life. Behind what we call ability lie environment, starting points, encounters, the currents of the times, and chance, all working together in complex ways.
Meritocracy also changes how we view inequality. The author points out that "in societies with severe wealth gaps, there is a strong tendency to believe that those who succeeded deserved to succeed, and that those who failed also had their reasons." Differences in starting points, privilege, and the role of chance are erased, and inequality is reduced to individual responsibility. Those who succeed accept their achievements as the result of their ability and grow arrogant, while those who fail blame their own shortcomings rather than structural problems, turning to self-reproach.
In a meritocratic society, even failure is consumed as "an asset for success." An economics professor at Princeton, an elite American university, drew great attention by publishing his own "CV of failures," and even the coinage "meta-failure"—meaning to view failure objectively from a step back—emerged. The slogan "let's fail better," meant to use failure as a foundation for success, ultimately presupposes the notion that success is the only final destination we should be heading toward.
That is not to say the book denies the value of effort. Diligence and challenge remain important values in life. It simply prompts us to reflect on a society that uses success as a measure to prove human ability or morality. We are not beings who fully control our own destiny, but rather people who have entered a vast lottery called life. Only when we neither excessively worship success nor attribute failure solely to individual responsibility can we finally break free from the shackles of meritocracy and begin a discussion toward a more just society. 19,000 won.
