Success of the Wolf.

If you've heard of Jordan Belfort, it's probably because of the new film by Martin Scorsese, The Wolf of Wall Street, which depicts his rise and fall in the stock market during the 90s - some of which was illegal, but all of which resonates with the ideas of indiviualism and success that are brought up with Habits of the Heart. The video above, which is one of the seminars Belfort now gives in order to make a living, is what he calls the "Straight Line Persuasion Webinar" - essentially if you go and see Belfort, he'll tell you how to get rich quick, and convince people to give you what you want. That's what The Wolf of Wall Street is about as well, however when I saw the movie, I left the theater feeling a little bit aimless: what did Belfort learn from his years at the top? Sure, he had everything and more: money, women, cars, yachts (which is incidentally crashed), and yet lost them all because he found himself being too greedy. To me, Belfort exemplifies the life that Brian talks about in the first chapter of Habits of the Heart: defining your success as the amount of money you make and how well you do professionally. Belfort had all that and more, and yet lost it without really learning what will truly bring him meaning, and now he seems to be passing along these messages to others who are hoping for the same thing.

In the video (which is long, and I admittedly did not watch all of), Belfort says that inside of us we all have the key to unlocking our own happiness and accomplishments, but what exactly those are, he's not very clear about. Judging by his topic, it's about business: persuading people to do what you want them to do. It's an inherently nihilistic view of humanity, and Wolf of Wall Street is a lot about that: conning people into giving you their money, essentially, and holding onto it as long as you can, even if it's illegal. He says that there's a force inside of us that we need to wake up - and the way to do that is convince yourself that "you're the shit," as he puts it. I suppose the one thing that can be said about Belfort is that there's no masking in his case: he's not tricking himself into thinking he's trying to do things for the good of society or his family - he's strictly doing it for himself. To me, he seems like the embodiment of the individualistic society in which we live: although a lot of us are horrified by what he has to say, it isn't too far off from what's in a lot of our heads anyway.