"Think and Grow Rich" 1937

[Bugguy]

I just finished a long piece in Gizmodo by Matt Novak titled "The Untold Story of Napoleon Hill, the Greatest Self-Help Scammer of All Time". While holding my attention, I found the article frankly disturbing, in that it challenged the validity of some core values I've held my whole life by discrediting the individuals who promoted them.

I received Hill's book, "Think and Grow Rich" when I was in 6th or 7th grade (50's-60's) in Chicago. The director of our local branch of the Chicago Boys Club firmly believed that the Boys Club's mission was to develop our moral compass by reinforcing such arcane concepts as the Golden Rule, going the extra mile, and giving 110% effort. Who even talks about those anymore?

W. Clement Stone (Combined Ins.) was our clubs benefactor. We all received our copies of "Success Through a Positive Mental Attitude" (Hill & Stone) personally from Stone, as well as "The Success System that Never Fails". Add in N. Vincent Peale's "Power of Positive Thinking", and I was fully indoctrinated into the "New Thought" movement, a.k.a. the self-help movement. (Peale was also, I might add, Trump's pastor)

Now 50+ years later I still have the remnants of a moral compass and am proud to say that the arcane values are still alive and well. BUT, the sordid details of Hill's career and by extension Peale and Stone disappoints me. I don't want to remember them for their snake-oil, but for defining optimism as a virtue and espousing a positive attitude.

What saddens me are the values we're teaching and reinforcing now... "do unto others before they do unto you" and "do as little as possible to get by". Maybe this post really belongs in "Vintage Things That Have Disappeared in Your Lifetime".

A little FL therapy feels good!

(https://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/the-untold-story-of-napoleon-hill-the-greatest-self-he-1789385645)

 

[LizzieMaine]

There was quite a bit of that type self-help material in the 1930s -- Dorothea Brande's "Wake Up And Live" was another prominent best-seller along similar lines. What all of them had in common was just enough common sense such as "The Golden Rule" (which of course came from much loftier origins than a get-rich-quick manual) to get the reader's attention before the snake oil started to flow.

Napoleon Hill was a primary influence on another self-help guru after the war, former radio actor Earl (Sky King) Nightingale, who built a considerable fortune on the foundation of promoting Hill's ideas, and the basic gist of "Think and Grow Rich" resurfaced in more recent years as "The Law of Attraction."

Hill was a colorful huckster, but Peale was the more disturbing because of his religious mantle. Along with all the positive thinking, he was quite chummy with Coughlinites and quasi-Fascist types in the 1930s, connections which were exposed during the war by journalist George Seldes, and after the war the National Association Of Manufacturers found him useful in promoting its own particular brand of "corporate Christianity", one more designed to welcome the moneychangers back into the temple than to comfort the meek and heal the afflicted.

 

[vitanola]

Well, informed opinion of the era considered Hill a charlatan. History rightly discredits his work, but of course it was once undetstood that every successful lie must have some underlying truth.

I can understand that some reasonable people would disagree, but I prefer to know the company which my pet ideologies keep.

 

[Bugguy]

I can understand that some reasonable people would disagree, but I prefer to know the company which my pet ideologies keep.

What disturbs me was the fact that I was 10-12 years old and impressed by Stone and the premise for the movement. How easily they manipulated a group of young boys. Disturbing given historical precedents.

In this case I don't feel any malicious intent, but a line could have easily been crossed.

 

[Tiki Tom]

One hardly knows what to believe anymore. I, too, was raised to the sound of the dominant cultural tune of those distant days: work hard, study hard, be humble and polite, defer to authority, golden rule, confidence in the American way, and truth and justice will naturally prevail. Sounds more than a bit hokey and naive now. And, yes, it is disconcerting to learn that those we looked up to had some significant skeletons in their closets. But we are all products of our times, aren’t we? My challenge now is to carefully go through the big locker box of my life and discard those ideas that are junk and hang onto those that have value, and have the wisdom and experience to know the difference. The whole box does not need to be chucked out ...but certainly some sentimental attachments need to be closely examined.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Americans have always had a tendency to be trusting of those who "say the right things" -- one thing nearly all the great charlatans of our history have had in common is their tendency to thump the Bible and wave the flag when it suited their purpose. Even the Kansas Goat Gland Man himself, Dr. John Brinkley, was deeply deeply devoted, he said, to His Lord and Savior and to the Proud Traditions Of Our Republic, even as he was relieving his "radio family" of both its cash and its health.

The thirties were especially fertile ground for this sort of thing -- here's a generation of people suddenly confronted with the blistering fact that the old platitudes weren't cutting it anymore: that even those who did everything they were "supposed to" stood a good chance of ending up destitute due to forces entirely beyond their control. It's understandable that many of them would nevertheless find ways to blame themselves for this, given what they'd been taught all their lives, and find comfort in teachings that told them "there's nothing at all wrong with the system that needs to be corrected, *you* just need to work/pray harder."

A lot of this has its roots in the hard-fisted ice-cold Puritanism of the early colonists, who considered earthly wealth and success a sign of God's blessing and poverty a sign of sin and personal moral failing -- a view owing more to Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar than to Jesus Christ. That view has been pushed so hard for so long by so many that it's become a part of the American subconscious, ripe for exploitation by the corrupt and the cynical.

 

[vitanola]

There was quite a bit of that type self-help material in the 1930s -- Dorothea Brande's "Wake Up And Live" was another prominent best-seller along similar lines. What all of them had in common was just enough common sense such as "The Golden Rule" (which of course came from much loftier origins than a get-rich-quick manual) to get the reader's attention before the snake oil started to flow.

Napoleon Hill was a primary influence on another self-help guru after the war, former radio actor Earl (Sky King) Nightingale, who built a considerable fortune on the foundation of promoting Hill's ideas, and the basic gist of "Think and Grow Rich" resurfaced in more recent years as "The Law of Attraction."

Hill was a colorful huckster, but Peale was the more disturbing because of his religious mantle. Along with all the positive thinking, he was quite chummy with Coughlinites and quasi-Fascist types in the 1930s, connections which were exposed during the war by journalist George Seldes, and after the war the National Association Of Manufacturers found him useful in promoting its own particular brand of "corporate Christianity", one more designed to welcome the moneychangers back into the temple than to comfort the meek and heal the afflicted.

"Wake Up and Live!"??

How clearly I see it! An Edythe Wright vocal played on a cheap portable alongside the Shinnecock Canal in August of 1975...

 

[LizzieMaine]

The movie was really good, too. Ben Bernie, Walter Winchell, Alice Faye, and Jack Haley. With Ned Sparks and Patsy Kelly in support. Too bad they weren't all in the book.

Dorothea Brande was another of these authors who walked on the far-right side of the line -- she was married to Seward Collins, a magazine publisher closely associated with American fascist groups, and seems to have traveled in many of the same intellectual circles as Mr. Hill, eventually sharing his taste for oddball mysticism.

 

[Stanley Doble]

My favorite comment on Clement Stone " the combination of pencil mustache and bow tie spells flim flam 9 times out of 10"

Did anyone ever collect on one of his 'little giant' insurance policies? As late as the 1980s his agents were selling protection against getting crippled in a street car or steam boat accident.

 

[nick123]

Funny. In high school my step dad offered me $100 to read The Law of Success, an offer I never took up! Perhaps with less regret now!

 

[tonyb]

Great thread, guys and gal. Every observation (with the possible exception of this one) actually contributes something of value to the conversation. And an enlightening conversation it is.

 

[vitanola]

I can fix that!

"Think and Grow Rich"

Reminds me of a Dillingham review of a century past.

 

[Fading Fast]

My limited knowledge of history is heavily oriented toward Western Civ, so I have no idea if the West is more susceptible to hucksterism than other cultures (but I know I've read about both historical and present-day financial scams in, for example, the Orient and MiddleEast) as I also have no idea if America is particularly susceptible, but have great respect for Lizzie and others who imply it is.

That said, flim-flams, Ponzi schemes (which started well before its eponymous practicer in the '20s - heck, most/many financial scams are some version of Ponzi's model), graft, etc., have been with man at least back to the Egyptians and, I'll bet, there was a Charles Ponzi in Ancient Sumeria and there would have been one in the Garden of Eden, but there weren't enough people around to crank one up to speed.

Some people cheat - that ain't going to change; and some people are very good at it - that ain't going to change; and some people are susceptible to it - that, also, ain't going to change.

I was raised with a "puritan work ethic and honesty" morality sans any religious base (my father was pretty hostile to religion), but the message was not that you will succeed if you do these things; the message was that not doing them was wrong (why wrong - no explanation, it was an implied A=A answer, i.e., wrong is wrong, i.e., "shut up, he explained") and the only shot (not guarantee) at succeeding was to do these "right" things.

Fortunately, I did pick up some nuance as my father - a professional gambler and bookmaker - was scrupulously honest in a, to be direct, not-legal business. Hence, early on, I saw some grey in the world, but being honest, having integrity - honoring your word, working hard - was not grey, it was the all in my home - you were honest, you worked hard and you shut up.

Overall, the first two have served me well; the "shut up" didn't as you will get taken advantage of (as I was) if you don't, intelligently, speak up and defend yourself when necessary. But reading the above posts, the thing that maybe - unknown to me - really helped is that I was never told, nor was it implied, that doing the right thing led to success - it was just the only path for a decent person to choose.

My dad didn't go to college (claimed but not proven that he graduated high school and was not well read - just being honest - but he was as street smart as they came), so there was no philosophical discussions going on in my house, just short, unexplained, rights and wrongs. Implied and even said less eloquently than Hobbes, the message in my house was life has every likelihood of being "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." If yours isn't, you're lucky, but don't expect it to be and, if it is good, don't expect it to last. Hence, you did the right thing because A=A, you expect nothing and just keep pushing the rock up the hill.

This didn't create a cheery childhood, but it has served me well as an adult (that's my view, my girlfriend thinks I was an emotional abused child). Hence, I had no expectations, so all good has be cherished and the bad (most of the time) not unexpected.

 

[LizzieMaine]

The Myth of Sisyphus underlies a lot of the way Americans approach life, I think -- not that Joe Blow spends a lot of time poring over Bullfinch's, but just the idea that if you find yoursef in a grueling, unrewarding, hopeless situation there's some sort of virtue in continuing to push the rock up the hill. Or as Mr. Hammerstein put it, "bend yo' knees and bow yo' head, and pull dat rope until yo' dead."

But people forget, in embracing that idea, that Sisyphus was never going to achieve anything by what he was doing, and that he would never receive any benefit whatsoever from his work. He wasn't a noble hero, he was a chump. He wasn't currying favor with the gods, he was *cursed* by them to spend eternity in a hopeless exercise in futility, and he could never stop, look up, and say "Why the f. am I doing this? What system insists that I must?" Unless we willingly accept the curse of Sisyphus upon ourselves, we do have that option.

 

[Fading Fast]

The Myth of Sisyphus underlies a lot of the way Americans approach life, I think -- not that Joe Blow spends a lot of time poring over Bullfinch's, but just the idea that if you find yoursef in a grueling, unrewarding, hopeless situation there's some sort of virtue in continuing to push the rock up the hill. Or as Mr. Hammerstein put it, "bend yo' knees and bow yo' head, and pull dat rope until yo' dead."

But people forget, in embracing that idea, that Sisyphus was never going to achieve anything by what he was doing, and that he would never receive any benefit whatsoever from his work. He wasn't a noble hero, he was a chump. He wasn't currying favor with the gods, he was *cursed* by them to spend eternity in a hopeless exercise in futility, and he could never stop, look up, and say "Why the f. am I doing this? What system insists that I must?" Unless we willingly accept the curse of Sisyphus upon ourselves, we do have that option.

Or the "system" is bigger than anything man can create as it is just man's plight on earth to be Sisyphus some of the time. For sure, as I sit in my "quite comfortable by almost anyone's standards up to the 20th Century" apartment, well fed, with better medicine than Kings of 100 years ago, communicating with all of you over the internet (and I am hardly rich in America) - we are clearly not all condemned to being Sisyphus, but we will be him some of the time.

 

[Stanley Doble]

That got dark in a hurry.

 

[belfastboy]

Funny. In high school my step dad offered me $100 to read The Law of Success, an offer I never took up! Perhaps with less regret now!

Just think if you had accepted and invested that $100.

 

[Stanley Doble]

My limited knowledge of history is heavily oriented toward Western Civ, so I have no idea if the West is more susceptible to hucksterism than other cultures (but I know I've read about both historical and present-day financial scams in, for example, the Orient and MiddleEast) as I also have no idea if America is particularly susceptible, but have great respect for Lizzie and others who imply it is.

Mark Twain had some interesting insight on this score as on so many things. He said that when he lived in the gold and silver camps of the west he met men of every nation in the world, European, American, Mexican, Chinese and all -ALL- were susceptible to the same gold fever, speculative impulse or drive to get rich. He said if Americans have a reputation for being 'out for the money' it is because the opportunity is there. Put the same opportunities before Europe or Asia and it would wake them up like a house on fire.

Events have proven him a true prophet if you look at the economic history of Europe after WW2, Japan likewise, Macao, Hong Kong, Singapore, the former Soviet Union and now China.