Evil Exists

It is the supreme American ethic that one succeed at all costs. And as is usually the case with such grand missions, all hangs upon the definition of a single word. In this case, it all comes down to how you define success.

In some spheres, success is gauged in terms of dollars. In others it's measured in geographical units, and in still others its by the number of Christmas cards received. Success, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder.

I've always thought of success as a fluid concept. If life was an Excel spreadsheet and the summation button was hit at any given moment, a person could be evaluated as a success or a failure at that moment. But hit that button a fraction of a second later and the result could change. And success is certainly contextual. Working oneself up from a barren basement bedroom and a high-school diploma to a two-bedroom condo near the lakefront in Chicago is certainly a greater success than coming from an affluent Chicago suburb to fifteen years in a middle management position.

But ultimately the most important term in such a maxim as "Success at any Cost" is how the term cost is defined, and how you answer the question, cost to whom?

Yesterday I had an interview with a recruiter who is so clueless and seems to offer so little value to her customers that I'd be tempted to say that she is stealing from them. She collects resumes, conducts a five minute interview, and then decides whether to pass the resume on to her client, without comment. Basically, she says little more than, "I actually met this person. He has a pulse. But I have no idea if he has any talents or skills that would be useful to you."

Yet, sitting there without a job and facing the month of December when virtually no hiring is done, I felt infinitely more successful than the people who are still working at my old company. I won't go into the details, because they're too tedious to type, but essentially the level of duplicity and arrogance, and self delusion is breathtaking. While I worked there, I had two bosses, and about four weeks ago the second of those bosses was let go. But they did it such a passive-aggressive manner, telling him that they'd use him as a consultant and that he could continue to use his office while he looked for a job. Then when he went looking for pay check, they told him that he'd actually been fired three weeks earlier. Because I know the people involved, I can guess how this all played out, and how the powers that be 1) convinced themselves that their actions were in the best interests of the company, and 2) laughed themselves silly at the confusion, blaming my boss instead of their own inability to effectively communicate.

In my life, on more than one occasion, I've been told I'm an arrogant prick who thinks he's better than everyone else. Those comments have stung, so I am particularly sensitive to situations where I am aware that I'm being judgemental. Still, it's hard not to feel a twinge of moral superiority to people who blatantly lie and go out of their way to hurt other people. Then, when their deeds are done, convince themselves that it was the "right" course of action, that the ends justify the means. But then again, we seem to live in an era that could best be summed up as "The Ends Justify the Means."

Still, in my little unemployed world, willfully inflicting pain, consistently lying. continually assessing the material value of each and every relationship, both personal and professional, is just reflective of the most insidious form of evil imaginable.