Chapter 5: You Are What You ve Done

Overview

There is perhaps not a more dangerous Error than to believe we are bound to reverence men for the Offices they sustain without any Regard to their . . . useful Actions.
” William Livingstone, People of Paradox

Americans often speak of inventing or reinventing themselves . As noted elsewhere, the social, financial, and professional limits of the European feudal/class system gradually lost their hold over the common man and woman in the New World. Accordingly, early Americans were born without any particular destiny and were in theory free to become whomever and whatever they wanted ” or at least free to try. They were, as the famous phrase put it, self-made, with nothing but hard work standing between themselves and their dreams. That sentiment has always been something of an exaggeration, of course, true in general but not always true in particular ” and certainly more true for some Americans than for others. But all in all, the possibility of being self-made was probably more real for people in the New World than in the world they left behind.

People who are not born with any particular identity, into a certain social class, for example, or a certain trade or profession ” people who are not defined from without, as it were ” are left to define themselves. And so it was that in the New World a person s achievements, what he or she did, became a person s identity: who he or she was. Americans came to define themselves by the sum of their achievements, and these quickly became the measure of an individual s worth, the criteria by which people came to judge themselves and others.

The Drive to Achieve

And it remains so to this day. To most Americans, a successful person is first and foremost someone who has accomplished a great deal, the socalled high achievers, people who have something to show for their efforts (and they also speak of under- and over- achievers ). Americans admire, look up to, and want to be like such people; likewise, they admire the qualities it takes to become a high achiever, which reads like a list of the top American values: ambition , aggressiveness, never being satisfied or taking no for an answer, being driven and competitive, never giving up. They like people who, as the saying goes, get the job done, make things happen, and get results.

Above all, America is a culture of doing. If you have done well, it is a source of pride and satisfaction; if you could have done better, it gnaws at you. Not surprisingly, the regular reviews bosses are expected to give employees are called performance evaluations, making it quite clear that it s performance ” not personality, loyalty, intellect, attitude, dedication, commitment, etc. ” that really counts.

Ambition

The achievement ethic is what makes ambition such a core value in American culture ” and laziness one of the worst sins. Ambition is the driver behind achievement, what pushes people to succeed, or at least to try, and anyone who is ambitious gets respect. Being ambitious ” wanting to succeed ” is almost as good as actually succeeding. Americans can understand and forgive someone who tries , someone who wants to succeed but somehow doesn t quite manage. What they can t under- stand or forgive is someone who is lazy, who doesn t even care about succeeding.

The emphasis on ambition explains in part why Americans look up to people who don t seem to have much else to recommend them, people who aren t especially pleasant, for example, or intelligent , someone you might want to meet or have over to dinner. What matters is that these people made it to the top, and it s what it takes to get there ” the drive, the passion, the ambition ” that Americans admire. And it is those who apparently have the greatest drive, symbolized by beating out everyone else and getting to the top, who are the most admired. Nice guys finish last, Americans say, meaning that it s more important to be successful than to be a pleasant or likable person (or at least that the two don t usually go together).

Americans don t automatically admire people at the top, by the way; it all depends on how you got there. Success and the respect that goes with it have to be earned, through hard work. If you were born at the top, into a wealthy family or to famous parents, you have to prove yourself by not trading on your connections, for example, or by refusing to take money from your family and going off to make it on your own. The achievement ethic, in short, demands achievements, and having the good fortune to be born into wealth and privilege is not an accomplishment. It doesn t say anything about you, meaning it doesn t indicate one way or another if you ve got what it takes ” i.e., our old friend ambition.

The true heroes in American culture, then, are not those who start at the top but those who have to work their way up there, preferably against all odds. And the greater the odds ” the harder the person has to work ” the more he or she is admired. The quintessential American story, after all, is rags to riches, not riches to more riches.

Competition

Competition is another central piece of the achievement ethic. In a society of self-made individuals, where people derive self-respect and the respect of others in large part from their accomplishments, there is an inevitable, inherent pressure to be the person or the company or the division with the most accomplishments ” hence the habit of judging one s own worth by the standard of what others have achieved, and then trying to exceed it. This is why winning, and not merely doing well or doing one s best, is so important to Americans; if you win, then you set the standard. Even when there is no one to compete with, Americans will still compete with themselves, in the sense that they are never satisfied with what they have achieved. How is it possible, after all, to have too much self-esteem?

Americans go out of their way not to behave like this, incidentally, to not judge people solely by their achievements or how much money they make, as if suspecting that somehow this is wrong (or at least that it looks bad). So they bend over backwards to point out that so-and-so is a nice person, a good mother, tries hard, or has a positive attitude. But don t waste your time looking for people like this at the top. Indeed, as soon as you hear board members saying the CEO tries hard and has a positive attitude, you can be sure they re already interviewing his or her replacement. Americans may know better than to judge people by what they ve done or how much money they make, but in the end they can t help themselves.

The Bottom Line

One of the easiest ways to measure achievement, of course, is in terms of money, and it should come as no surprise that Americans are somewhat obsessed with money. Americans talk endlessly about what they call the bottom line, otherwise known as profit, and in the private sector at least, profit is both literally and figuratively the bottom line ” the ultimate standard for measuring results and performance. Whatever else they may say, the only results Americans really care about are those that increase revenue, and the only performance that really matters is that of the stock price.

In the private sector, every major decision is based to a large extent on the impact on what is known as the profit picture. Careers rise and fall based on profit; executive salaries are pegged to stock price, market share, or return on investment (ROI): the fortunes of entire divisions and whole companies can be changed by one or two quarterly earnings reports . It may devastate the local economy in Missoula or Islip, but if sending a thousand jobs to Mexico improves profit margins, the decision is almost a no-brainer. While corporations in many countries acknowledge social obligations to the communities they are located in, American companies worry chiefly about stockholders .

Materialism

The achievement ethos and the importance of making money also help explain that great American preoccupation with things, the materialist mentality . In the view of many non-Americans, Americans are notorious for being materialistic, for deriving deep and lasting satisfaction and even self-respect from the acquisition of possessions. The favorite American pastime is apparently shopping, which in turn makes sales one of the most important events in contemporary American life (right after overeating).

In point of fact, Americans care very little for things per se; indeed, they are constantly replacing, upgrading, or simply throwing away most of what they own. What they actually care about ” why they feel so compelled to acquire things ” is what the ability to have things says about a person. Having things, especially nice things and expensive things, means you can afford them, and if you can afford them, that must mean you are successful. And it is the success, of which things are merely the visible manifestation, that really matters.

The Meaning of Work

The high value Americans place on achievement explains to a large extent their attitude toward work. Americans are famous for being workaholics, and while the charge is something of an oversimplification, it does stand up well to scrutiny. On average, Americans in the manufacturing sector work 320 more hours a year ” a total of two months ” than their counterparts in Germany and France. The average vacation allowance in most European countries is a minimum of four weeks, versus the American average of two. In 1990, Americans reported that their free time had decreased 40 percent since 1973.

People work for a lot of reasons, and not all workaholics fit the same profile. But it should not be surprising that people work long hours in a culture where their identity and sense of self-worth are to a large extent a product of what they have achieved. After all, if achievement is such a good thing, then work ” which is the means to achievement ” is also a good thing. And more work, of course, nights and on weekends, is an even better thing. Endowed with such a lofty purpose, work in and of itself becomes satisfying , even fulfilling.

Whether or not they actually admire workaholics, most Americans understand the underlying impulse. Extolling work as they do, they are culturally disposed to look favorably on people who work hard and to look askance at those who do not, wondering whether the latter have enough ambition, whether they care sufficiently about getting ahead or bettering themselves, whether or not they are, in a word, lazy. For reasons that should by now be obvious, to be accused of being lazy is one of the worst things that can be said about an American.

It is in part the fear of just such an accusation and the negative consequences it can lead to that drives many Americans to work even harder than they otherwise might. Next to a workaholic, after all, someone who merely works very hard can easily come across as a slacker. In her book The Overworked American, Juliet Schorr describes the phenomenon :

[H]owever strong this cultural predisposition to hard work, workaholism is to some extent a creation of the system, rather than its cause. As long as there are even a few workaholics, competition will force others to keep up. Employers will prefer the hard workers, and these will win out over their colleagues who, either out of personal preference or because they have family responsibilities, do not put in the hours. One engineer noted, I don t like to put in 80- hour weeks, but a lot of people do. And those are the people who get the projects and the promotions. This suggests that the workaholic can set the standard to which others are compelled to adhere . (1993, 70)

Leisure

The high premium they place on work makes Americans naturally wary of anything that smacks of not work, such as idleness and leisure time, which is part of why Americans go to such great lengths to stay busy. If work is good, then leisure is problematic , especially too much leisure. Americans do often complain about the meager two weeks of vacation time they get annually, but at the same time leisure in excess leaves a person wide open to the charge of being lazy or simply not ambitious. Schorr talks elsewhere in her book about the American cultural imperative . . . that says that men with leisure are lazy (159). She goes on to describe the

historical precedent for the idea that Americans are obsessed with work; as early as 1648, Massachusetts legislated idleness a punishable crime. There is no denying what the historian Daniel Rodgers described as the nation s tendency to the elevation of work over leisure . . . an ethos that permeated life and manners. (70)
It s worth noting in this context the phrase Americans most often use to describe those who do not work: the idle rich. Clearly it is their idleness, not their riches, that condemns them.

In another book, Working At Play, a history of vacations in the United States, Cindy Aron notes that Americans have struggled for at least 150 years with the persistent dilemma of

[h]ow to enjoy leisure without jeopardizing the commitment to work. What is compelling about the history of vacations is the constancy with which Americans have struggled with the notion of taking off time from work . . . Americans engaged in a love/hate battle with their vacations ” both wanting to take them and fearing the consequences. Relaxing did not come easily to American men and women who continued to use their leisure in the performance of various sorts of work ” religious work, intellectual work, therapeutic work. Leisure and labor remained complicated and troubling categories. (Yardley 1999, 2)