The Captivating Deceit of Motivational Stories

Someone once said that if you want to capture an audience's attention, you need to offend them. And what better way to offend people than to tell them that they are poor because they are lazy and are conformists to mediocre social standards?

"I started from the bottom, I had nothing." To start off, I remember coming across a story on Instagram that at age 17, Elon Musk used to live on less than $1 per day and ate hotdogs for almost every meal. If you ask me, it seems quite odd that such a destitute person went for hotdogs of all meals. Nevertheless, they all had it extremely difficult, but stayed strong and here they are now with their legacies. But wait a minute, didn't Elon Musk's father own an emerald mine during apartheid South Africa? Musk did deny claims that that helped kick-start his journey, but..... Didn't Jeff Bezos get about $300 000 in capital from his parents? My mom doesn't spend even a mere $300 on a month's groceries. Isn't Warren Buffet the son of a powerful congressman who owned an investment company? There are numerous other established people born into rich families. Now, there are no excuses for failure; you are still subject to it even if your parents are wealthy. I personally know several poor people born into wealthy families, simply because what you do with your parent's wealth is in your hands. But, are we just going to overlook the head start that being born into a rich family gives you? It does bring you connections that help kick-start your journey. A study in America found that it's better to be born rich than smart and hard-working, although its focus was solely on academic success and job security, not necessarily on starting a company. Not to undermine the dedication that people like Musk put into revolutionising our society, but the problem isn't always that we don't dream big or work hard enough.

"You can do it wherever you are, using whatever you have." They always utter these! But the one thing that no one wants to talk about is that no amount of hard work will ever fix the dysfunctional social, economic and political institutions within a society. How else would you explain the numerous Africans migrating to the Western world to make it big there? Sometimes, achieving your dreams will at best be extremely difficult and at worst impossible because the environment is just incapable. Ideas create tasks that need to be completed, but political instability can hamper their success. Empirical studies have shown that there is an inverse relationship between political instability and economic progress, and entrepreneurs play a major role in that progress. While corruption is a very broad term, at its most excessive levels, it robs of opportunity, and some countries have much worse ratings than others. Parts of Botswana's growth are ascribed to very low levels of corruption; it is in fact the 2nd least corrupt country in Africa as studies find. Illegal immigration in South Africa is a huge problem; it is for this reason that we have movements like Operation Dudula seeking to preserve the dignity of South Africa. People are just looking for better economic conditions so they can flourish. Some environments already have the right social, economic and political settings in place, ready for the ambitious minds to configure them. Having the tools, and the strength, to dig out gold is useless when that environment has no gold.

Do moral practices work? I remember a tweet that went, "I love how you guys think you will become billionaires through hard work and moral principles." Insinuating that billionaires are evil would be very bold of me, but there is more than meets the eye. Because, when they motivate us to work hard, are they not talking about moral practices? In 2020, the Wall Street Journal released a comprehensive report on Amazon's unethical business practices titled "How Amazon Wins: By Streamrolling Rivals and Partners". One of the things cited was, "One of the tactics apparently used by the company is to replicate ethical brands using unethical substitutes, thus turning a profit." And then there is the matter of how the company treats its workers. An article by Peter J. Henning on The New York Times in 2017 cited that recent incidences make it clear that all too often, companies have a hard time acting ethically when it gets in the way of making more money. There are all sorts of stories of the immoral practices of certain rich people. Overall, studies show that greed makes one more willing to bend the rules of acceptable behaviour.

The narrative of motivational stories is always: dream big, work hard, never take a day off, believe in yourself, and you can do it wherever you are. But the true reality is: dream big, work hard, believe in yourself, but even more important, be open to the power of your environment, and relocate if need be, or if possible. And, moral practices can afford you luxury, but as for getting you to the top 1%, that's a completely different story.