Go West, Young Man, Go West

American success is a funny thing. I don’t think they have a word like this, with the same connotations, in other countries. It goes hand-in-hand with the American dream. In either case, the goal is to make a pile of money, and if we profess to have finer sentiments about such things, then success can be said to be the culmination of one’s career – another funny word – in prestige, influence, and the like. In reality, a career can only be described after the fact, since it evolves over time. We cannot know where it will lead. In America, we think of a career as self-determined. And it is thought of as of the essence of the self.

A well-traveled friend said that, upon acquaintance, Easterners ask you about your family, and Westerners ask you about what you do for a living. And if you think of Western European democrats in the nineteenth century likening absolute monarchy to “Eastern despotism,” then this gives us a different perspective on the meaning of the word success. We speak of a monarch succeeding his predecessor to the throne, which means coming of age, or assuming his father’s place. The language of knowing your place is considered to be disrespectful in the West, where the dogma is one of social mobility, that anyone can do anything. Hence the question of what one does for a living, rather than what one is, one’s essence being self-determined, rather than determined by one’s ancestry.