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Success Teaches Very Little, Failure Teaches Almost Everything

June 19, 2017
 Outside Source

Contributor

The latest from the safe spaces of American schools is the abandonment of the valedictorian. Why? Competition is bad --- or so they say.

One of Glenn's favorite movies lines comes from Dan Aykroyd in the original Ghostbusters: "You don't know what it's like out in the private sector: They expect results."

RELATED: High Schools Abandon Valedictorian Because Competition Is Bad

"This whole idea that I don't have any responsibility to be my best self, that I don't have any responsibility to compete in life . . . how do you think we got the lightbulb? That was a literal competition between people in France, people in the United States, Edison, Tesla. I mean, people were competing to be the first one to bring a lightbulb. What do you think Tesla is all about? Being the first to go to Mars. What do you think Apple is all about?"

If you want something bad enough --- like being the valedictorian or getting first place in the science project --- what does it take? What if you fail and don't succeed? Will that make you better? Will competition make you try harder to succeed?

"I've learned much more from my failings than I ever have from my successes. Because my successes don't make me question anything," Glenn said Monday on radio. "I don't know what actually caused my success here or there. I can speculate, but I haven't had to go like, 'Oh crap, honey, I don't know why we're successful. How did we succeed? Where did we go right?' I haven't done any of that. Every time I have a failure, I am going, 'Where did we go wrong?'

Success teaches very little.

"Failure teaches almost everything important --- if you choose to view it that way," Glenn said.

Listen to this segment from The Glenn Beck Program:

GLENN: Hello, America. According to the National Association of Secondary School Principals, nearly half of all high schools in the United States no longer report any class rank.

PAT: Wow.

GLENN: This is according to the Associated Press. The graduation tradition of naming a senior class valedictorian is slowly fading into history. In areas where the tradition continues, more students are being named at the head of the class. Helena, Montana.

PAT: Wait. Twenty-five. Twenty-five valedictorians.

GLENN: How many people are in the Helena, Montana --

PAT: Well, in the graduating class -- in my class, there was 460 or something. So it's probably fairly sizeable.

GLENN: So here's -- listen to this: The reason is because administrators are recently concerned about, quote, unhealthy competition.

PAT: This is so ridiculous.

GLENN: And students feeling pressure to perform better than their peers.

I know. Because in real life, that never happens.

PAT: Never happens. You don't have to compete with anybody for anything.

GLENN: No. Uh-uh. Everything is just handed -- you know one of my favorite lines from Ghostbusters, the original Ghostbusters -- do you know what -- Jeffy.

JEFFY: Yeah, the Bill Murray line, where he talks about they make you work out there, right?

PAT: Yeah.

GLENN: No, it's Dan Aykroyd. Dan Aykroyd looks at him and says, "You don't know what this means. Yeah, you don't know what it's like out in the private sector: They expect results."

(laughter)

JEFFY: They expect results. Yeah.

PAT: Did you see this -- the Tennessee school, a magnate school in Tennessee awarded 48 valedictorians this year, 25 percent of the graduating class. (laughter)

GLENN: High school in Columbia, Maryland, ranked the students but kept the results private to each student. Of course, the students couldn't keep quiet where they landed. Two seniors from Hammond High School said that's what everybody talked about.

PAT: Man.

GLENN: It makes everything ten times more competitive. Some parents -- some parents don't like the competition, saying students place too much emphasis on rankings and it can lead to negative perceptions of themselves.

PAT: Oh, no. Oh, my gosh.

GLENN: Can I tell you something, you know what leads to negative perceptions of yourself? Living under a bridge. That one -- that, you will be like, I'm a homeless person.

No, no, no. You're not. No, you're not.

You are a person who has connected with the outdoors. Oh, I feel so much better now.

I'm a homeless person. Yes, because mommy and daddy never taught you about competition. Competition is good. Competition -- you know, this is why I really like cross country training, is competition is be the --

JEFFY: Wait.

GLENN: I know. That's why I'm so thin. Competition is about being better yourself. Can you better what you just did? Better your time?

That's -- that's -- I mean, yes, is there going to be a winner? Yes. But are you better?

Can you beat your own personal time? Can you be better? Yes.

This -- this whole idea that I don't have any responsibility to be my best self, that I don't have any responsibility to compete in life -- how do you think we got the lightbulb?

That was -- that was a literal competition between people in France, people in the United States, Edison, Tesla. I mean, people were competing to be the first one to bring a lightbulb. What do you think Tesla is all about? Being the first to go to Mars.

What do you think -- you know, what do you think Apple is all about?

PAT: Competing against Google and Microsoft and everybody else. Plus, the competition within the company itself, there's going to be a ton of competition.

GLENN: No, there's not.

PAT: Oh, they'll all get participation trophies. Right.

GLENN: Yes. Everybody lives in a very big house. Nobody drives -- in this particular case, it's true. Everybody drives a Prius. But everybody has exactly the same stuff. It's all equal outcomes. Steve Jobs, he didn't have more money than everybody else --

PAT: No. Yeah, I think you're going to find that's not the case.

GLENN: No, there was no competition there. No, no competition.

PAT: Not the case.

Even as liberal as Bill Gates is, he's got a 52,000-square-foot home. That's a little bit bigger than most of his employees.

STU: Really?

PAT: Yeah.

GLENN: No, I don't think so. No.

STU: Are you for sure?

GLENN: No, here's the truth. Stop listening to him.

Here's the truth: He takes Leonardo da Vinci's Codex, and everybody gets it over their fireplace for a month. If you work at Microsoft, everyone gets to hang Leonardo da Vinci's Codex over their fireplace for a month.

STU: Oh!

JEFFY: Nice!

PAT: Whether you're the janitor, or?

JEFFY: It doesn't matter.

GLENN: And there's no competition for it. It's just alphabetically assigned --

PAT: Okay. Every employee is just guaranteed to receive it?

GLENN: Yes. Guaranteed to receive it.

You hang it over your -- no matter what the deal is. You can be the employee on your way out. It doesn't matter.

PAT: Huh. Wow.

GLENN: You could be the employee that's stealing from the company. It doesn't matter. You get it.

Now, again, it's alphabetically assigned, but just because that's showing preference, they shuffle the alphabet.

PAT: Oh, that's good.

GLENN: So...

STU: And it always lands on Gates or Jobs or whatever.

GLENN: It would be Gates. It would be Gates. Why the lies?

STU: Well, it's interesting because you are the one that was propagating this idea that stealing is something that's possible, indicating that you believe in ownership, private ownership of the material. There's no such thing.

GLENN: Yeah, that was -- I'm sorry. That was the old Glenn coming out.

STU: Thank you. I'm glad finally you say that -- it's funny. They don't see competition as helpful. I mean, how do you not? I mean, look at all the benefits that have come out of it.

GLENN: Well, here's what I think the average person doesn't look and see as helpful.

The competition the way we have it -- we used to believe in this country, that it is your personal responsibility to be your best. To make your own way. To not be a burden on others.

And that you had a -- you had a blessing of getting an education. Now, it's not that. Now, it is -- especially you go to places like New York, they -- the parents will shiv you for a spot in a pre-nursery school.

PAT: Uh-huh.

GLENN: Because that pre-nursery school will lead you to the right kindergarten, which will lead you to the first -- the primary school and the secondary school. And you'll be able to get into Harvard. But if you -- if you drool too much in the pre-nursery school, they will tell you, "This is a sign that they're not going to make it to Harvard, and they really need to stop drooling so much." They're five months old.

(chuckling)

GLENN: I mean, that's -- that's the unhealthy competition.

PAT: I think a lot of these parents though can't see beyond just their feelings right now, of feeling like, "Oh, gosh, I'm not -- I'm not number one in the class. So I'm worthless." Well, they're going to have deal with that. They're going to have to deal with that in life. And I don't know if they're looking forward -- they're so short-sighted.

GLENN: But it is, again, the parents. What happened when the school said, keep this to yourself? All the kids, they know they're competing.

PAT: Uh-huh.

STU: Right.

GLENN: It's natural. Who is better at this than -- you can't play sports unless it's always a tie. And even then, you're going to know, "When this guy gets up, he is going to slam this thing out of the park." We all have different skills.

STU: And sports, along with, you know, valedictorian races, it's a good, meaningless thing to teach that lesson on, right? Like, losing a sporting event in the grand scheme of your life is not that big of a deal, but it's a great way to learn the lesson of how to react after you lose. It's a great way to learn a lesson of how to work harder in the future.

PAT: Yes. And it's about the -- it's about the parents spinning that the right way for the child to help them understand and deal with that. Isn't that good parenting?

GLENN: And it's also important to understand this. And I think this is a great stat. Just read this one a couple weeks ago.

Valedictorians are not, generally speaking, the movers and the shakers of the next generation. They generally -- they'll get good jobs. But they're generally not the ones who are the big entrepreneurs. They're not the big moneymakers, et cetera, et cetera. Because of this: They are taught exactly what to think. They -- they -- they live in this box that is structured by college and high school.

And, really, honestly, what are you learning in high school? You're memorizing dates. You're taught to learn skills that you will never ever use again. Not the information.

The test-taking skills. The memorization of dates and names and places. When does that come in handy?

STU: So it makes -- I mean, it's not without value, right? Like these -- a lot of these people are making $100,000 a year at a good job.

GLENN: Discipline. Hard work and discipline.

STU: And they work well within the system, and there's a lot there.

GLENN: Yes.

STU: But I was listening to an interview with a guy who started Five Guys, you know, the burger place.

GLENN: Yeah. Yeah.

STU: It was a financial services guy. Goes in -- he decides he wants to start a burger place in New Jersey. I think it was New Jersey.

And he -- or, no, Virginia. Virginia. And he starts it. And he lets his kids pick out all the ingredients. You pick the best-tasting mayonnaise. Won't tell them anything about food costs. Won't tell them which one is more expensive because he wants them to just pick the best one. They pick the best one. This is a ridiculous way to run a business. They go to name the business. He has four kids. He's like, I don't know. Let's just call it Five Guys. We'll change it later.

Now there's 1500 locations. Because he decided he wanted to go -- he believed in the quality of the product. He decided to work hard and do it in a different way. He wasn't --

GLENN: So here's -- here's an interesting phrase that I'd like to share, that kind of goes into that.

Everybody says think out of the box. You got to think out of the box. You got to think out of the box.

Yes. If that box is flawed and doesn't provide you anything, but the same rubber stamp. But you don't want to think out of the box -- if you're creating a business. You want to create a new box. You have to -- you have to have framework -- like, I can't go into Five Guys. I know what it looks like. And say, you know what we're going to do, we're going to put up some fake grapes on the side here. We'll attract those people who usually go to an Italian restaurant. And we're going to put some of those really cheesy Chinese lamps hanging from the ceiling too because we'll attract those.

No, they have a box. They have a box. We're Five Guys. It looks like this. This is what we serve. The secret is, forget the box. Design your own box. And stay within your own box. But nobody is teaching that.

Everybody teaches, "Get out of the box," which says, there are no rules. There are rules. But in today's date, you have to find the rules that are eternal, like theft shouldn't be part of our business model.

STU: Yes, no, it's true. It's true.

And every one of the interviews with one of these crazy CEOs that does something different, there are 500 stories of people who try these things and failed. But that's the difference. That part of it is important. Many of those failures came from the same people who wound up succeeding later.

GLENN: Yes. They learned from that.

STU: You have to be able to embrace that failure.

PAT: Did that hurt their self-esteem for a while?

STU: Maybe.

PAT: It might have. It might have.

GLENN: It should.

STU: It should.

PAT: But they overcame it.

STU: They overcame it. Did things different the next time.

PAT: Wow. You mean that's possible?

GLENN: There is -- I have learned much more --

PAT: It's ridiculous.

GLENN: I've learned much more from my failings than I ever have from my successes. Because my successes don't make me question anything. My successes go, dig me. Look at this. Huh? How great is that?

I don't know what actually caused my success here or there. I can speculate, but I haven't had to put like, oh, crap. Honey, I don't know why we're successful. How did we succeed? Where did we go right?

I haven't done any of that. Every time I have a failure, I am going, "Where did we go wrong?" Success teaches you very little. Failure teaches you almost everything important, if you choose to view it that way.

Critical race theory: The revolution of constant whining

Flickr/GaryStevens

Most self-proclaimed Marxists know very little about Marxism. Some of them have all the buzzwords memorized. They talk about the exploits of labor. They talk about the slavery of capitalist society and the alienation caused by capital. They talk about the evils of power and domination.

But they don't actually believe what they say. Or else they wouldn't be such violent hypocrites. And we're not being dramatic when we say "violent."

For them, Marxism is a political tool that they use to degrade and annoy their political enemies.

They don't actually care about the working class.

Another important thing to remember about Marxists is that they talk about how they want to defend the working class, but they don't actually understand the working class. They definitely don't realize that the working class is composed mostly of so many of the people they hate. Because, here's the thing, they don't actually care about the working class. Or the middle class. They wouldn't have the slightest clue how to actually work, not the way we do. For them, work involves ranting about how work and labor are evil.

Ironically, if their communist utopia actually arrived, they would be the first ones against the wall. Because they have nothing to offer except dissent. They have no practical use and no real connection to reality.

Again ironically, they are the ultimate proof of the success of capitalism. The fact that they can freely call for its demise, in tweets that they send from their capitalistic iPhones, is proof that capitalism affords them tremendous luxuries.

Their specialty is complaining. They are fanatics of a religion that is endlessly cynical.

They sneer at Christianity for promising Heaven in exchange for good deeds on earth — which is a terrible description of Christianity, but it's what they actually believe — and at the same time they criticize Christianity for promising a utopia, they give their unconditional devotion to a religion that promises a utopia.

They are fanatics of a religion that is endlessly cynical.

They think capitalism has turned us into machines. Which is a bad interpretation of Marx's concept of the General Intellect, the idea that humans are the ones who create machines, so humans, not God, are the creators.

They think that the only way to achieve the perfect society is by radically changing and even destroying the current society. It's what they mean when they say things about the "status quo" and "hegemony" and the "established order." They believe that the system is broken and the way to fix it is to destroy, destroy, destroy.

Critical race theory actually takes it a step farther. It tells us that the racist system can never be changed. That racism is the original sin that white people can never overcome. Of course, critical race theorists suggest "alternative institutions," but these "alternative institutions" are basically the same as the ones we have now, only less effective and actually racist.

Marx's violent revolution never happened. Or at least it never succeeded. Marx's followers have had to take a different approach. And now, we are living through the Revolution of Constant Whining.

This post is part of a series on critical race theory. Read the full series here.

Will we EVER see justice in the FBI, Trump, Russia investigation?

Americans are losing faith in our justice system and the idea that legal consequences are applied equally — even to powerful elites in office.

Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) joined Glenn Beck on the radio program to detail what he believes will come next with the Durham investigation, which hopefully will provide answers to the Obama FBI's alleged attempts to sabotage former President Donald Trump and his campaign years ago.

Rep. Nunes and Glenn assert that we know Trump did NOT collude with Russia, and that several members of the FBI possibly committed huge abuses of power. So, when will we see justice?

Watch the video clip below:


Want more from Glenn Beck?

To enjoy more of Glenn's masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution and live the American dream.

Glenn Beck: Rand Paul was RIGHT to say Dr. Fauci LIED about gain-of-function

The corporate media is doing everything it can to protect Dr. Anthony Fauci after Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) roasted him for allegedly lying to Congress about funding gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China.

During an extremely heated exchange at a Senate hearing on Tuesday, Sen. Paul challenged Dr. Fauci — who, as the director of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, oversees research programs at the National Institute of Health — on whether the NIH funded dangerous gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Dr. Fauci denied the claims, but as Sen. Paul knows, there are documents that prove Dr. Fauci's NIH was funding gain-of-function research in the Wuhan biolab before COVID-19 broke out in China.

On "The Glenn Beck Program," Glenn and Producer Stu Burguiere presented the proof, because Dr. Fauci's shifting defenses don't change the truth.

Watch the video clip below:

Want more from Glenn Beck?

To enjoy more of Glenn's masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

Critical race theory: A special brand of evil

wal_172619/Pixabay

Part of what makes it hard for us to challenge the left is that their beliefs are complicated. We don't mean complicated in a positive way. They aren't complicated the way love is complicated. They're complicated because there's no good explanation for them, no basis in reality.

The left cannot pull their heads out of the clouds. They are stuck on romantic ideas, abstract ideas, universal ideas. They talk in theories. They see the world through ideologies. They cannot divorce themselves from their own academic fixations. And — contrary to what they believe and how they act — it's not because leftists are smarter than the rest of us. And studies have repeatedly shown that leftists are the least happy people in the country. Marx was no different. The Communist Manifesto talks about how the rise of cities "rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life."

Studies have repeatedly shown that leftists are the least happy people in the country.

Instead of admitting that they're pathological hypocrites, they tell us that we're dumb and tell us to educate ourselves. Okay, so we educate ourselves; we return with a coherent argument. Then they say, "Well, you can't actually understand what you just said unless you understand the work of this other obscure Marxist writer. So educate yourselves more."

It's basically the "No True Scotsman" fallacy, the idea that when you point out a flaw in someone's argument, they say, "Well, that's a bad example."

After a while, it becomes obvious that there is no final destination for their bread-crumb trail. Everything they say is based on something that somebody else said, which is based on something somebody else said.

Take critical race theory. We're sure you've noticed by now that it is not evidence-based — at all. It is not, as academics say, a quantitative method. It doesn't use objective facts and data to arrive at conclusions. Probably because most of those conclusions don't have any basis in reality.

Critical race theory is based on feelings. These feelings are based on theories that are also based on feelings.

We wanted to trace the history of critical race theory back to the point where its special brand of evil began. What allowed it to become the toxic, racist monster that it is today?

Later, we'll tell you about some of the snobs who created critical theory, which laid the groundwork for CRT. But if you follow the bread-crumb trail from their ideas, you wind up with Marxism.

For years, the staff has devoted a lot of time to researching Marxism. We have read a lot of Marx and Marxist writing. It's part of our promise to you to be as informed as possible, so that you know where to go for answers; so that you know what to say when your back is up against the wall. What happens when we take the bread-crumb trail back farther, past Marxism? What is it based on?

This is the point where Marxism became Marxism and not just extra-angry socialism.

It's actually based on the work of one of the most important philosophers in human history, a 19th-century German philosopher named Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.

This is the point where Marxism became Marxism and not just extra-angry socialism. And, as you'll see in just a bit, if we look at Hegel's actual ideas, it's obvious that Marx completely misrepresented them in order to confirm his own fantasies.

So, in a way, that's where the bread-crumb trail ends: With Marx's misrepresentation of an incredibly important, incredibly useful philosophy, a philosophy that's actually pretty conservative.

This post is part of a series on critical race theory. Read the full series here.