To think Brits dislike success?

[garlicmashpotatoes]

After many years of reading comments from posters on MumsNet and other forums, I get the impression that many Brits cannot stand to see people who have 'more than them' or achieve 'success' when they've worked hard to do so.

In America success is celebrated, and aspired to. Whereas in the UK it's often looked down upon.

Why?

The term work hard is triggering for people.

I prefer to look at the the fact that a person will have sacrificed x y z e.g. they sacrificed their weekend and evenings to do 3 jobs to realise their achievement

Some people spot opportunities and will take risks...most people don't but good for them for taking the risk fi it made them get somewhere to earn good money and be successful.

Somewhere along the line in all those decisions they will have been a certain level of sacrifice that alot of people wouldn't be willing to do.

They are not discussing the policies of fairness but taking cheap shots at people who have worked hard. Using any excuse to deride their achievements.

To differentiate themselves from someone who got their money through inheritance, or gifted to them usually. Not sure I’ve ever read it as justification, given that it’s not something that requires justifying.

I don’t know why people feel the need to respond with ‘I make nowhere near that amount! Are you saying I don’t work hard?’ on threads that have nothing to do with that, and where the OP has said nothing of the sort. Yet they do.

But is achieving one thing - financial success - through sacrifice of - time with family or friend or self enrichment or physical health - actually something worth celebrating ?

Or does it just show that person as shallow ?

Usually underneath the hard work story there is privilege though of sone kind or another - maybes it was a few months internship paid by mum and dad or private schooling or good genetics

Yes, if that’s what that person wanted and strived for. That someone else may have different priorities doesn’t make them ‘shallow’ (whatever that means, it’s a nebulous concept).

I guess it depends how you define success and hard work.

The fact they went to private school…..

If you have two stockbrokers and one has leads, contacts and a network from family, friends and school and is offered that position as a result of those contacts, that position has not required the same effort in attainment of the position who has had to develop those networks and contacts themselves.

Because in the UK having more has nothing to do with working hard.

I am proof that is a lie as are many other people.

…and once again, I didn’t say otherwise. What I said is ‘not working as hard as’ doesn’t mean that someone else hasn’t worked hard.

Is this your understanding of Americans and American culture?

This is such a daft, off the wall comment...

You're forgetting a whole load of people that no matter how willing they are, they are unable to.

Hard work is only "triggering" in the context of "I worked hard and did x,y,z so why can't you?". It completely dismisses people's circumstances and experiences and just assumes unwillingness. Just like you did.

That's the successful attitude that people won't celebrate and rightly so.

This is true. I don’t disagree with the OP’s central premise and it’s correct that in theory Americans are more comfortable with the idea of success.

But actually there is minimal social mobility in the US, less than there is here. The picture is grossly skewed by the fact that there are outliers like Bill Gates who didn’t finish college etc but in reality advancement in high paying careers in the US is prohibitively expensive due to the cost of education.

Americans are less concerned with the status markers of class than we are (where you went to school and how you speak etc). They are more willing to allow people a seat at the table without decades old credentials.

But that doesn’t mean their society is more mobile. Their class system is based entirely on money as opposed to intangible things which flummox outsiders so much about Britain. But you have to have a fuck ton of money there to be taken seriously.

Also I found the intolerance about poor people and status more overt there. When I lived out there I was married to someone in a blue collar job and people asked me repeatedly to my face how we made the marriage work given the “class difference”. It was quite rude by British standards.

Your take from all that is 'you were lucky'.

Saying someone who works hard at exams and gets good grades is lucky is just lazy.

There’s no luck involved. No one shuffled a bunch of certificates and said pick one. That person studied hard.

Winning money on the lottery is lucky. Gaining qualifications is admirable.

People saying achievement is down to luck are just making excuses for why they haven’t done it. Well, I’m not lucky.

I went to a “good” school (but not private school).

the ones that fannied around in class and made our lives a misery have, shock horror, amounted to fuck all.

All of them from pretty wealthy, privileged backgrounds, by the way. A very affluent catchment. We all had very similar starts. In their case, it was absolutely a choice.

I think it's a very British class thing to dislike/distrust anyone who is "wealthy", and very white British attitudes that hold back financial success.

Yes to this.

From my own observations of my DCs going through school in the US, it was refreshing that there was never any setting in elementary school, and kids basically self selected for subjects and levels in high school.

Just curious what data /survey do you use to support statement that “it’s usually built on inheritance or luck?”
My observations seem to prove otherwise. All the successful people I know built their own wealth, and luck or inheritance didn’t have much to do with it.

I shouldn’t need to go in to personal details to explain something that is quite clear.

Unless your objective was to demonstrate the OP's point, (which you did splendidly) you didn't need to go into that detail at all. Do you always bring up having a disabled child to center your hardship over someone else's achievement through hard work?

Many of the people i know who have the most money, and most career success, a huge part of it hasn't been off their own back. Lots of Daddy getting them lined up in the career, inheriting money, having family money to back a start up, opportunities coming via connections from boarding school etc.

I think we are a degree more skeptical in the UK and assume most success hasn't arisen due to meritocracy or hard work.

I mean is the world as simplistic as that, everything is black or white, up or down, I don’t think it is. I have had good luck come my way with opportunities and I can see that it was who I knew rather than my ‘hard work’. I do have a Master degree but I can see there are certain conditions in my life namely been born to educated, middle class parents that increased the chances of that happening.

But there is a degree of luck.

Like being able to study and take it all in, in the first place. Intellectually, we are not all the same.

Like not having disabilities or illnesses affecting your time at school,revision time etc.

Like not having anything traumatic happening in the run up to the exams.

Like not living in an environment that makes it nearly impossible to actually study.

This is all down to luck.

Absolutely. Lazy.