Peter's Fourth Rule

I'm currently enjoying "Into The Void," an autobiography by Black Sabbath's bassist, Terence "Geezer" Butler. It's a book for fans of the band, and perhaps for those who are curious about the lifestyles and excesses of 1970s rock musicians (and yes, the excesses were substantial), and for a Sabbath fanboi such as myself, it's quite entertaining. As well as a bit saddening - the band was, as so many others of the era were, totally ripped off by its managers, to where, after eight albums, massive popularity, and countless performances, Geezer and the rest were "skint" and needed to tour more in order to feed themselves.

Some time back, I read "Iron Man," Sabbath guitarist Tony Iommi's autobiography, and I recall enough to compare and contrast the two first-person accounts of the band's history. One takeaway from Tony's book that was reinforced in Into The Void was that Iommi was the band's driving force, that he had a motivation and a work ethic that sustained it through rough patches and yielded, at the least, the latter four albums. Absent that, the band may very well have fallen apart much sooner.

Iommi credits that ethic to a very brief stint (just a few weeks) with Jethro Tull. The members of Black Sabbath were still finding their way, playing gigs as The Polka Tulk Blues Band, and Tony was offered a chance to join an established and contracted band (which the rest of the Sabbath guys encouraged him to do - they were indeed "mates"). Tull was on a schedule - 9 AM sharp every day in the studio - and that really left a mark on Tony.

Thomas Edison offered the aphorism "Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration," and just about every success story out there includes hard work, persistence, and perseverance.

This reality inspired me to draft my own aphorism, many years ago. Since I already had three "rules of life" penned, this became Peter's Fourth Rule:

Someone has to push.

I'll save the prior and subsequent rules for another time (and for the record, you only get Rules 1 and 2 when we become good RL friends).

This is the reality that many want to ignore and many others want to pretend away. Success comes with effort. Effort is no guarantee of success (you can devote endless energy to a fruitless pursuit, and reap no rewards), but it is an essential ingredient. Talent is another, but talent absent effort, in all but the rarest cases, yields disappointing results.

Today's culture teaches that the wealthy don't deserve their wealth and therefore it's OK to take it and give it to others. It teaches that lack of success is the result of someone holding you back, or that ‘systemic biases’ keep you down, or that your gender, skin color, and other identity markers determine your life's outcome. It rejects merit and credits success to outside agency. It excuses mediocrity and promotes laziness.

That siren song is enticing. Why not feast on another's kill rather than hunt your own? As a survival mechanism, minimizing effort while maximizing return is a winner. But, humanity is millennia past the baseline 'survival-subsistence' baseline. We have bent our environment to our wants and needs, and it is only because we have such massive wealth and ease that playing video games all day with Dorito-stained fingers is even an option.

If that's what you want to do, if that's the happiness you want to pursue, I'm not going to get in your way. Don't feel justified, however, in asserting a right to the fruit of another's labor in your pursuit, whether it be welfare, a Universal Basic Income, tax breaks, food stamps, or other “safety net” provisions merely because you don’t think it “fair” that someone else has more than you.

If you want success, whether it be financial, artistic, or otherwise, put your work in. And, if you find yourself in a collaborative effort, if your band or your project or your business or your career involves others, an impetus has to come from somewhere. The ship needs to be propelled as well as steered.