Over the course of three previous essays, I sketched some of the origins of what I have called “the modern culture of achievement”.1 What has been missing up to this point in these explorations is a historical understanding of the context in which these origins emerged. The origins of modern success literature (and its corresponding culture) came about at a time when the quest to succeed existed in an almost exclusively–though not entirely–secular way. As Max Weber observed, the “spirit of capitalism” reached a point where it became self-sufficient, no longer requiring the religious impetus which had sparked it.2 It was in the rational and methodical reorganization of life, structured around the idea of a vocation or calling, which laid the groundwork for what I have described in the origin story.3 This is what I had in mind, when, speaking of success literature in Part I, I wrote, “the literature in question developed and emerged within a culture that already existed”. It is within the context of the larger whole of socioeconomic history that a deeper and broader understanding of the origins of achievement culture will emerge.4
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A Sketch of The Workaday World
We live in an age of work for work’s sake, of production, acquisition, and consumption, of income and expenses, GDP and unemployment percentages. Production, acquisition, and consumption have come to be the definitive organizing principles of our lives, conceived–or rather, lived out–as ends in themselves.1 This provides modern man with what the Greek’s called telos–an end or purpose–and thus structures our lives in a specific way. The tasks of income, wealth, and its management become our primary concerns, and within this Economic sphere, efficiency likewise becomes an end in itself. This situation is unprecedented in history.2
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