There it is. Can’t be clearer than that. It’s not as if she landed on her ass and wondered, What can I do now? What’s next? What do I do? She KNEW what she was, had always known, and she knew what she had to do. All writers know that (usually around age eight): “…the only work that mattered to me.”

Bad luck, youth, and poverty held her back for a while. Then she had the good luck to live at a time of the dole, as one perceptive poster noted, and didn’t starve or jeopradize her and her daughter’s health while working in the park or at the kitchen table on the only work that mattered; and was somehow able to shed the psychological encumberances that kept her from pursuing her true work.

I don’t know if the lady is today a falling-down drunk or a self-satisfied, selfish billionaire; but I’ll bet she she is nowhere near as happy or fulfilled as when, deep into that first novel, she felt it all coming together, felt her power and control, and knew the excitement that comes from having a purpose.

Her goal was NOT to be a millionaire, that’s obvious; her goal was not to be a socially-defined success; her goal, was to be a goddamn writer and to write that goddamned book! Forget the money, try to ignore the envy and the ironies, the gossip, and the bullshit; what matters is the instructive testimony of an artist who found a way to get the work done.

I don’t even like the books. I read the first twenty pages of one and maybe ten of another. Magic bores me. So do most children. The books aren’t literary enough for my piss-elegant tastes. They’re just silly stories for kids or strange sword and sorcery fans. But I am interested in how she prevailed over poverty and bad luck, and went to Harvard to tell the children of privilege that they can never, ever, be as successful.

Basically, her schpiel is, “I failed, but I worked hard and found huge (MEGA) success”. That’s all well and good, but is she suggesting that the millions out there who don’t actually have the lottery-odds combo of talent and lucky breaks should, um, just keep trying?

I suppose giving a commencement speech to Harvard saying “Most, if not all, of you won’t really amount to much in the world, and will simply live fairly ordinary lives until you die” is probably not the kind of inspiring message the uni elders prefer if they want their (soon to be modestly) wealthy alumni to send donation checks to them in the future.

Market economics is not a carrot and stick system. It’s an information communications system regarding the coordination of supply and demand. That’s all.

That’s true in an ideal system. But you cannot tell me for one second that colleges and universities inherently promise rewards based on how much education one gets when we all know that really is not how the world works.

Perhaps college students would benefit from understanding that they are being marketed to when they are given “choices” in where to study and what to study. Not to mention that since the late-1980s, college students have been treated as credit cattle by the credit card industry.

This is all a tangent, but there’s a whole generation of people out there who have (1) been protected from making real decisions in their lives (2) have been promised the world based on what classes they study; ignoring market demands and (3) given credit cards and are told “Live your dream!”

Seems that more people in their late 20s are now dealing with the “dream” of debt, no clear career path, and the realization that the market doesn’t always want to reward you based on what you like to do.

I don’t like reading books, but harry potter was an exception, I read all the 7 books. For people like me who prefer watching movies and playing video games, a book really has to be interesting for me to read it from beginning to end.

Sure there are other interesting books, but the Potter books were already interesting before I even opened the first book.

Is it because of JK Rowling? the media? the fact that kids can read it? because millions around the world read it?

Of course her experience is “anecdotal”. It’s HER experience. The sentiment is a solid one, that to fail, to be at the bottom of the wheel, to not live up to all those inflated hope and dreams, is extremely liberating.

Zuzu, what exactly is your economic position, von Mises? I’m just curious.

As a foundation, yes. (i.e. positive economic analysis) I agree very much with Mises and Hayek, but Rothbard not as much. (Typically the Austrians idolize Rothbard and aren’t so hot on Hayek.) I also like Ronald Coase (transaction costs), Herbert Simon (bounded rationality / incomplete contracting), and Daniel Kahneman (behavioral finance). I’m also generally interested in the principal-agent problem and organizational theory generally.

Akin to Hayek’s spontaneous order (i.e. emergence), I believe that economic action is principally epistemological in nature, and suspect could be better modeled with the language of information / communication theory. (c.f. economic signals)

Mises’s praxeology (i.e. human action), I suspect, will someday reconcile with neuroscience and the aforementioned behavioral finance. But for all intents and purposes, I’m willing to accept individuals generally as a “black box” of preferences, which are then expressed to others through economic action. (Akin to Wittgenstein‘s philosophy of language.)

I was actually quite surprised by James Surowiecki‘s Wisdom of Crowds as in many ways, particularly for a popular non-fiction, he “wrote the book I’ve been meaning to write”. (I don’t mean for that to come across sounding like hubris; the point is I recommend reading his book.) I’m also a fan of Thomas Malone (The Future of Work).

Seems that more people in their late 20s are now dealing with the “dream” of debt,

If I could make my own tangent for a moment, and perhaps redress your “realpolitik” later… Over the past decade I’ve grown to deeply suspect that Americans (i.e. people living in the United States) tacitly are making the “right” decisions given the “wrong” information a distorted market is feeding them. (Garbage-In, Garbage-Out) Namely, that the monetary policy has created an inflation and speculation dominant market, rather than an investment and knowledge economy. We’re financially encouraged to spend money before we make it, because of this monetary policy, to get ahead of the rate of inflation. (e.g. Better to buy something for $50 now and pay the inflation adjusted price of $45 later.) Savers are penalized, and speculators disproportionally rewarded (and/or subsidized). It’s easy to blame the problem on “youth culture” or ignorance. But the source of the problem lay with the Gosplan-like power exercised by the “Fourth Branch of government”.

no clear career path, and the realization that the market doesn’t always want to reward you based on what you like to do.

As for this, I think there’s a strong case to be made for “free agents” as Daniel Pink would say, as long as you have a solid grip on not “living beyond your means” as addressed above. It’s a somewhat radically different, and often less material means of making a living, than perhaps baby boomer white-collar “organization man” employees living in the suburbs have grown to expect. It does require both more personal discipline and self-reliance than “helicopter parents” have afforded their children. There’s no half-assing it. Either you’re going to work and spend like you work for Dow Chemical, or you’re going to work and spend like you’re a freelance programmer. There’s no spending like you’re working for Dow and earning like a freelancer — at least not in your 20s, unless you’re a certified genius.

zuzu, thanks for the kids books recommendations! I’m sure my 7 year old will love The Social Construction of Reality!

Ha! Fair enough. But there are so many fictions that can challenge and cultivate a child’s mind in the same way that, say, Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone did on television. How about some Ursula K. Le Guin or Heinlein’s juveniles?

The unspoken part here is actually “the odds of this same level of success (or anywhere near it) befalling you are nearly zero”, which makes it anecdotal in the sense that there is a faulty logic leading to a conclusion.

Of course poverty is liberating – what other choice does one have in that situation? I’m just hoping the entire middle class of the U.S. doesn’t feel quite so “liberated” in the coming years.

Cut the women some slack.

I may deplore Rowling’s recent combativeness about defending her copyrights. I suspect she’s getting some dubious legal advice. On the other hand, she gets pirated like no one else on the planet. For instance, not only has she been extensively pirated in China, but they’ve added non-canonical titles written by other authors. There’s a Russian hijacked version of the series in which all the standard props in the series are slightly changed and renamed. And that’s only scratching the surface. (See links: one, two, three.)

Zuzu, I have a lot of respect for you, and it’s only by chance that I’m going to wind up arguing with you twice in a row. Nevertheless, I have to say that you couldn’t be more wrong.

If kids wanted to start by reading Le Guin and Heinlein, they could do it. After they’ve had fun reading Harry Potter, they may go on to read those other titles. But it does no good to tell them they shouldn’t read what they like. Your likeliest outcome is that they’ll privately vow to never read Heinlein or Le Guin. If you really work at it, you may get them to stop reading. But read a book because someone says it’s good for them? Because it’s supposedly “worthier” than the books they love? That doesn’t work with anyone.

If a person reads and enjoys one book, they’ll probably read another. Part of becoming a lifelong reader is developing taste — and on that score, no two readers are the same.

Come on. You didn’t cut your teeth on The Critique of Pure Reason. You read what you liked. Allow others to do the same.

As for the Harry Potter series being “drivel” — no, it isn’t. Yes, I’m making the argument from authority. Rowling’s success wasn’t a matter of timing or promotion. She’s got some serious technical chops. To mention only two, she’s remarkably good at writing a paragraph that makes you want to read the next paragraph; and she never explains stuff before you need to know it.

People don’t read a seven-book series by accident.

Artbot @14:

Okay, I listened to the speech a couple times, and it’s a decent one. All the requsite “don’t simply chase after money, do good public service, etc” was there. But isn’t her experience one that’s ridiculously anecdotal?

Whose experience isn’t? Her experience is interesting. If they’d wanted to hear from a statistically significant sample, they could have commissioned a report from Gallup or Roper or Quinnipiac.

Basically, her schpiel is, “I failed, but I worked hard and found huge (MEGA) success”. That’s all well and good, but is she suggesting that the millions out there who don’t actually have the lottery-odds combo of talent and lucky breaks should, um, just keep trying?

Yes. The odds are stacked against anyone else becoming a mega-bestselling upper-YA fantasy author. The advice is applicable in many other contexts.

I suppose giving a commencement speech to Harvard saying “Most, if not all, of you won’t really amount to much in the world, and will simply live fairly ordinary lives until you die” is probably not the kind of inspiring message the uni elders prefer if they want their (soon to be modestly) wealthy alumni to send donation checks to them in the future.

Not only would that not be appropriate, it wouldn’t be accurate. Look up the stats on Harvard graduates.

Barnaby @28: Rowling is drawing on a pool of shared material. She’s been accused of ripping off Neil Gaiman, Diana Wynne Jones, Jane Yolen, and dozens of other authors, not to mention all those British school stories.

If you’re familiar with Gaiman’s Books of Magic, you’ll surely have noticed that he borrowed a vast amount of material from other sources, and made something new out of it. So has Rowling. So did all those other authors. If you think she only borrowed from one source, all that shows is that you’re unfamiliar with all her other sources.

This lady inspired millions of kids (young & old) to read 7 books in a row, average page count in the 500s. Many of them have not stopped reading since either.

Seven 500-page books of drivel.

Reading for its own sake, without purpose, is as foolish as circulating money around, without purpose, to “stimulate the economy”.

Ever see that episode of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos where he’s in a virtual Library of Alexandrea explaining how if you read most of your waking hours every day, you could only get through several bookshelves worth in your lifetime? Reading is an investment. I believe readers should expect a reasonable rate of return. Read George Orwell’s 1984, for example. Or, The Social Construction of Reality by Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann. But not this Crazy Lady’s pablum.

Haters must be jealous. I know I am. And I’m with PhilipB–anyone one who has such a positive influnce on kids (and a negative one on looney bible thumpers) is a hero in my book.

I don’t care that she’s a gazillionaire or that she’s gone freakishly protective of her work.

The speech, especially that section quoted here, is quite true. The resounding part for me is that once you’ve failed catastrophically, there is no more fear of failure to hold you back from accomplishing great things.

Unfortunately I have had to fail just this badly to experience the same release of fear. I would hope that some of the more wise members of our society would be able to live greatly with that same sense of abandon.

As for me, I am inspired to start building on this bottom rock on which I’ve landed.

Jealous??? I’m not even a writer (as if you can’t tell) and have no ambitions to be one. I don’t envy her success (or fear her failures) any more than anyone else’s on the planet. What’s the point in that?

I guess knee-jerk fan-boy defenses of celebrities they never knew or met have no boundaries. It’s especially shocking to see this kind of non-critical hero worship outside of an Apple thread.

On the outset, I think what she was trying to say is that success in life is not measured by being a gazillionaress or a celebrity but by directly touching other people’s lives in a positive way, not necessarily thousands or more.

In her speech she wished the graduates good lives, not necessarily conforming to society’s definition of the extraordinary or having the kind of success she achieved but lives spent doing work that one loves, that which enlivens the spirit and brings happiness and contentment to the heart, and growing and keeping genuinely good loving relationships which value more than material riches and fulfilling achievements. I think she suggests to focus on what can be done for the less privileged, by the people she was mainly addressing in particular, and not on reaching the level of worldly success she has achieved for of course not everyone gets the talent, the will, and luck required: not everyone’s meant for such spot in society due to the different opportunities made available to us by our uniqueness. It’s just like not everyone can be accomplished actresses/actors, lawyers, painters, engineers, and so on. It’s not a “one size fits all” system that works.

What is lacking in our world today is acceptance that all of us are different, so different that what has been possible for others may not be possible for us. Other things the world is short of are respect with regards to the mentioned adversity and the will to imagine Rowling speaks of. We do not try to understand something because we don’t like it.

*sigh* I’m quite at a loss for words at this point. I myself am not into Harry Potter but I don’t think and moreover tell other people that it’s silly and the writer is crazy. I admire her creativity and my respect for adults who are into Harry Potter is not decreased by their choice of read than those into philosophical books or any other kind of reading materials because reading and the different kinds of literature is for everyone.

I think Rowling is simply saying we should not let failures keep us down because there may be possibilities for greatness, more probably goodness and something better, waiting for us to give it another try. Also, I think it is good that she gave another “successful person talk about her failures” because people forget and the current generation is lazy when it comes to reading, through which old talks of the kind can be accessed.

Lastly, I think what she refers to as liberating is not poverty itself but the experience of being in the condition that one fears to be in in life.

Well, that’s about it now. I hope my thoughts contribute something to the pursuit of understanding the issues here. =’)

Go Rowling for letting many people who didn’t like reading discover its joys!

http://www.comicsreporter.com/index.php/go_look_three_from_richard_thompson/

Anyway, I love JK Rowling, but I like to think people who are impressed by commencement speeches one day realise four hours of listening to superficial advice and clichés are four hours of summer you never get back.

Sorry. I went to a friend’s graduation a few weeks ago and thought it one of the most useless evens i’ve ever seen or heard of.

Looking back on my own experience, I agree with you 100%. Born in the UK post WW 2, playing it safe seemed the only option.

RE “What I think she’s trying to do is limit the fear of failure”

I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. Thanks for your observation. It comes through not just in the text but even more so watching and listening to her.