Viva la Failure!

The greatest state a human being can achieve is one of perpetual revolt* and failure.

This is mostly a rehash of one of Sartre’s ideas, tweaked slightly to suit me. According to the documentary Sartre: The Road to Freedom Sartre consistently returned to the idea of failure—constant failure. He believed that France lost its freedom after it was released from the German’s hold in WWII, because while under German occupation every action of the French was an active declaration of their freedom. A quote from the documentary describes this well: “…Success means the end of freedom… Once a revolution establishes itself…it becomes institutionalized and calls anyone who dares to question it a traitor of the revolution.” After France was released it started controlling itself and in doing so lost its true freedom.

After contemplating this idea for a time, I found that failure was applicable to areas beyond freedom. Most eras of mass honesty and morality and most great acts are born out of revolution and, at least on some level, die with success.

One of the greatest examples of this is America: America was founded on strong principles; I wasn’t there in its early days but I think its principles at least partially reflected those of its people at that time. But in time it became the superpower of the world, and 60 years of senseless wars and economic imperialism followed.

Then there is South Africa: apartheid and the aftermath of reconciliation produced such incredible people as Nelson Mandela and Bishop Desmond Tutu, and placed its citizens in a position to listen to them. South Africa still has one of the best governments in Africa, but since the revolution no new Mandelas or Tutus have arisen and corruption is rampant. There are other examples. Would anyone have listened to Ghandi if the British were not controlling India?

Failure follows success in art as well. Both Truman Capote and Hunter S. Thompson (for various reasons) found producing new works difficult after their greatest commercial success, and Bob Dylan loathed his publicity.

The theme of failure is even present in the bible; Gods chosen people, the Jews, were perpetual underdogs throughout the bible: first enslaved, then squeezed between powerful empires, and shortly conquered by Babylon.

So, if greatness is born out of revolution and dies with success, then clearly we should always fail and revolt forever. But I say this with tongue in cheek. The idea of failing constantly to achieve greatness is not something I expect anyone to apply literally, but people should be aware of it to keep a revolutionary mindset after a revolution is over. If powerful countries and powerful people did this successfully, then power would not corrupt them. It is also comforting to know that time spent struggling to bring your plans to fruition is the time when greatness is born.

*In this post I use the term revolution to mean any period of change.