Napoleon Hill
If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way.
Napoleon Hill
Great achievement is usually born of great sacrifice, and is never the result of selfishness.
Napoleon Hill
See? See? Now this is what I'm talking about. Or have been blathering on and on and on about for most of my life. What I'm blathering about is the pseudo-positivity that attracts so many people to absolute negativity. Bad stuff. Evil.
I'm not saying I'm normal but when I read the thing about that poor guy who sold his 10% ownership in Apple for 800 bucks I think that is a good deal of money and he's better off ridding himself of any association with the evil empire Apple is. But that's just me... Then I look at that impossible to understand number at the bottom. If 10% of Apple is now worth that much, you multiply that number by 10 and that's what Apple is worth now. That's right, folks, over half a trillion bucks. And as we all know, these big businesses don't disclose the ACTUAL numbers. Apple makes more than we know and probably has trillions in Swiss or Cayman Island accounts not benefitting the country and people who have made the company rich.
Napoleon Hill was a well known how-to-get-rich life coach long before Tony Robbins was born. His book, "Think and Grow Rich," was published in 1937 and is s bestseller still quoted as motivation by corporate scumbags the way the Bible is a bestseller quoted by suicide cult leaders and killers. Cherry-pickers, all of them. Unfortunately for Hill, the reason his book is abused so widely today is because people are applying the very philosophies outlined in it, TO it. It's a self-defeating publication. Let me splain. No, is too much, let me sum up:
Hill preached repitition of thought, a kind of self-hypnosis, believe and achieve so that people would block out the doubt and through mental self-battery create a sort of placebo effect on themselves. The mind is very powerful and it is perhaps most effective on itself. As you can see from the quote about selfishness above, Hill was not all about corporate capitalism and greed. Yet so many "successful" gozillionaires out there have followed his teachings and give credit to them for their success. How can this be? Well let's delve deeper, shall we?
The original idea for his book was suggested by Andrew Carnegie, who was very impressed with the young Napoleon Hill. Carnegie suggested that hill interview a wide variety of "successful" people and try to distill the secrets of their success in a concise, easy to understand book that could be used by others to help them succeed. I put quotes around success because this seems to have been the disconnect between Hill and Carnegie and probably a lot of the Hill followers since. Again I must splain.
We need to know a little about Andrew Carnegie before we can understand what HE meant by success. Andrew Carnegie was a filthy rich steel magnate in the 19th century. He had hundreds of millions when people were still impressed by millionaires. Incredibly rich! And nobody will say he didn't earn his money. He went from rags to riches. The epitome of the American Dream. What did he do with that money? Maybe more to the point, why was he earning that money? What was his motivation? Was it the simple douchebaggery and greed that is the motivation for so many modern businessmen? Nope. Carnegie called it, "The Gospel of Wealth." He used his money, (350 million bucks, about 90% of his fortune), to improve society. That may not sound like a lot to us now in the trillion generation, but in our money that is estimated to be about 4.76 billion. That's a buttload of philanthropy! And that was his goal all along. People mattered to Carnegie. Other people. He was not selfish. He was not just interested in capital, he was interested in society and his community. You see what I did there? Eh? Eh?
Henry Ford believed that mass production, getting richer and richer, and consumerism were the keys to world peace. He also believed that the Jews, (who he called "financiers"), caused both world wars so that they could profit from both sides of them. For this he despised the Jews, yet the Ford Motor Company was instrumental in aircraft production in the U.S. as well as vehicle production in its German factories during WWII. It is said that slave labour was used in the German plants. Adolf Hitler called Ford his "inspiration" and had a life-sized portrait of him next to his desk in Munich. Ford supported Hitler's theories and did his best to spread them throughout America. Ford was awarded the highest military medal a non-German could achieve: the Grand Cross of the German Eagle.
Thomas Edison as we all know was a prolific inventor with over 1000 patents to his name. What we don't know is how many of those he bought or just stole from other people. He is famous for saying 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration lead to his inventions, but there was a certain percentage of prevarication in there as the far greater inventor, (in my humble estimation), Nikola Tesla could tell you. Edison reportedly offered Tesla 50,000 dollars to improve on his direct current. When Tesla came up with alternating current, which is a definite improvement, and asked for payment, Edison said he was joking and that Tesla just didn't understand American humour. That's about a million dollars today and anyone who knew Edison could tell you he never joked about sums of money like that. In fact he never joked at all. Edison stole Tesla's x-ray invention and spent a lot of time and money misinforming people that alternating current was dangerous.
Harvey S. Firestone, along with Edison and Ford, was a member of the threesome they called "The Millionaires Club." The three would often meet, work, and vacation together. This is a spectacular movie of the three of them pretty much outlining the gist of Napoleon Hill's book. Firestone, as you can tell from the vid., was loaded with energy and a tireless worker. His integrity and fire rubbed off on his co-workers and this kind of modeling was his strategy for success. He once said, "I believe fundamental honesty is the keystone to business." He also believed that keeping his workers well taken care of and happy was instrumental to his and the company's success.
John D. Rockefeller was a man after Carnegie's heart. Though he was an oil man, (Standard Oil), he was renowned for his philanthropy. When he died in 1937 his fortune was worth the equivalent of 336 billion dollars, which was mainly used to fund medical research, education and science.
There are obvious similarities between all these rich, "successful" men, but there are some dissimilarities that are more important. All of their lives were contributing studies to Napoleon Hill's book, but two of the five, it seems to me, are the examples of how modern corporate capitalism has interpreted Hill's writings. The other three, which seem to have been what Hill was trying to write about, are relics from the past. I'm sure there are rich people with integrity but they are the exception to the rule.
If the true meaning of success includes, as it should, personal happiness, which of these men were truly successful. I challenge you to find a picture of Edison in which he doesn't look like the grumpy, old codger that he was. Henry Ford was a man full of hate and if you watch the video closely, which of the three would you guess to be the happier? If you read Napoleon Hill's book carefully, which of the three would you choose as the best example of his success philosophies?
I would suggest to you that no man has ever become happy or successful by getting, only by giving. This is far from an original concept. You will find it said by Buddha, the Dalai Lama, Jesus, probably even Napoleon Hill. It's just ignored. Or is it just something that people have trained themselves to ignore? Like self-hypnotized themselves, a la Napoleon Hill, to ignore? In his book he trains people to use their minds against their minds for good. But bad people use their minds against their minds to block out the good. That's why I believe it is a self-defeating publication. Greed has replaced charity and philanthropy. Greed is selfishness, the stated opponent to great achievement in Hill's book. "NO, don't look at that line. I will believe in my mind that that line doesn't exist. It was never written. It is disappearing now... poof, it's gone."
When are we going to legislate a limit to greed? This was my original thought when looking at Apple's value. How much more money can they make while people are flat broke? Should any company be allowed to hoard half a trillion dollars of worth while the majority of people on the earth are poor or working their asses off just to get by? It seems to me the obvious answer is no. Now let's follow Napoleon Hills advice and batter our minds into believing this and achieving some sort of solution! Like maybe a ceiling on corporate profit at which point they enter the 100% tax bracket. And a complete, and equitable restructuring of taxation and government use of tax money so the massive influx of corporate tax won't just be re-routed straight back to them.
It's a huge mountain to climb, but if we just conceive and believe, we can achieve it. Napoleon Hill says so.
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