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Is earning money the only way to become successful?
Results so far:
| Yes | 21% | 18 votes | Total: 85 votes | |
| No | 79% | 67 votes |
Yes
by Mouhcine Azizoun
Created on: March 09, 2010
When we try to answer this question, we must not talk about how things should be, but how they really are. Yes, earning money is the only way to become successful nowadays. This is not how it should be, but that’s how it is unfortunately. In Cambridge dictionary, successful is defined as: “having achieved a lot, become popular and made a lot of money”.
It is unquestionable that there have been many popular people that did not have enough money. They have achieved a lot but they have no fortune. Are these people successful? According to the definition, they are not successful. Being successful is about achieving a lot, becoming popular and having a lot of money.
How much do we know about people who have achieved a lot yet they do not have any money? How much do we know about people who have a lot of money and yet they have not achieved as much as those popular-but-poor people? Our knowledge of both categories is incomparable.
Media seems to give a lot of attention to the well-off not to the badly-off. If one wants to be successful in the eyes of people, then earning money is paramount here. The meaning of being successful has changed. It is no longer like in days gone by. Nowadays, celebrities are the most successful people. But what do they really do to deserve that? Endorsed products that they have never tried?
Celebrities in my opinion do nothing for the colossal amount of money they get. They are not really successful if we want to tackle the real meaning of success here. Yet the media shows them as being the most successful people on earth. The only reason is that celebrities earn huge amounts of money.
If one goes around saying that success does not go hand in hand with money, people would think that s/he lacks in the brain department. Life has become very difficult and people no longer have that kind of mind set. Wage-earners are struggling everyday. You need to earn more to stay alive in this dog-eat-dog world.
Why do teenagers want to be models? And why young boys want to be soccer players? It is because such people earn a lot of money while doing nothing. If modeling and soccer were not breeding grounds for huge amounts of money, no one would care about them.
Success goes hand in hand with money. This is the sad truth. For the media and people in general, celebrities are very successful even though they do not achieve important things. Poor people will not be successful in the eyes of the media and people even if they achieve a lot. The only difference between them is money. It is what success is about these days.
Learn more about this author, Mouhcine Azizoun.
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No
by Nikolas Nies
Created on: September 09, 2010 Last Updated: September 11, 2010
In the capitalist society that has developed in the world today, sadly, money is the measure of success. However, earning money can only be considered a success if that is the goal a person is attempting to achieve. True, money can make reaching goals a lot easier, but reaching the goal is the real measure of being successful.
To say that a person is successful because he or she makes a lot of money is open ended. When we attempt to quantify our success or the success of others, we need to know what goals were attempted. It is not enough to just say that a person is successful because they earned a lot of money. What did they do with that money? Was that person happy? We can be successful and fail at the same time.
A person can live a prosperous life, being a very successful business man, but if their goal in life was to be an athlete or a doctor, can you really say that they were successful? A person who doesn’t make a lot of money, but fulfills their dreams and goals, can you say that they have failed in life? It is possible for a person to be successful as society defines success with money earned, and be a failure at everything else. A person that works to gain monetary goals may neglect his wife and children. Failed marriages and dysfunction can follow a man driven to gain wealth and fame. Did this person really contribute to society? Accolades may be presented, and at the same time the people in that person’s life may have nothing good to say about them.
Notoriety is given to the rich, while saints go unheralded. Society hypes up actors, athletes and millionaires, while the best teachers, paramedics, firefighters and police officer are ignored. The personal qualities that drive our goals are worth noting. What drives a person to acquire wealth and fame? What drives a person into a career that helps others? If a person who has become successful monetarily loses their money, it does not change the qualities of the person. Wealth does not define who we are.
When society uses wealth as the metric of success, that society becomes a vehicle for all of the evil that achieving wealth generates. People without the means to achieve this success, may try to take shortcuts to get there. Some live miserably thinking that they have failed because they do not make a lot of money. And when society brainwashes our children in this toxic thinking, we create another generation of dreamers driven to succeed financially. Society should reward those who give, not those who take.
Proverbs 22:1 tells us: “A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, and loving favor rather than silver and gold”. When your name rolls off of someone’s tongue, what is the response of the audience? The mark we leave on this world is the ultimate measure of success. Unfortunately, we are not around at that time to receive our final grade.
Learn more about this author, Nikolas Nies.
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