Did "Think and Grow Rich" Predict the Future?

  by Roland Hulme

 
Napoleon Hill Proves It's Deja Vu All Over Again

The best self-improvement book ever written

One of the most remarkable books of the 20th century – and required reading for anybody who wants to make something of their lives – is Napoleon Hill's seminal work Think and Grow Rich.

Published in 1937, at the tail end of the great depression, it was the result of 25 years research – interviewing hundreds of millionaires to determine which specific, practical steps led to their wealth and prosperity.

The truly astonishing thing about reading this book in 2011 is just how applicable almost everything within the pages remains.

I always consider the line "those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it" to be a tired old trope – but in this case, it proves the line's validity.

If Napoleon Hill were alive today, he might be bemused by our smartphones, our GPS and our Twitter – but just about everything else in our society he would recognize as an unflattering profile from his own time; and he'd be unimpressed at our lack of progress.

Take Chapter 7, in which Hill debates the meaning of leadership. He writes, from the filter of his 1937 perspective, that "your attention is called to a few of the fertile fields in which there has been a decline of leadership, and in which the new type of leader may find an abundance of opportunity." He expected that void of leadership to be filled. It hasn't been.

"In the field of politics there is a most insistent demand for new leaders; a demand which indicates nothing less than an emergency. The majority of politicians have, seemingly, become high-grade, legalized racketeers. They have increased taxes and debauched the machinery of industry and business until the people can no longer stand the burden."

Good LORD. Is that not equally applicable to our crisis today? One which has spurred movements like the Tea Party, and our national dissatisfaction with the partisan politics and pork barrel farming of Washington?

"The banking business is undergoing a reform. The leaders in this field have almost entirely lost the confidence of the public. Already the bankers have sensed the need of reform, and they have begun it."

Hill wrote those words in 1937 – yet they are as applicable today as they have ever been. Occupy Wall Street is today picketing in the streets because of a lack of leadership Hill recognized seven decades ago.

"New leaders will be required in the field of Journalism. Newspapers of the future, to be conducted successfully, must be divorced from “special privilege” and cease to be organs of propaganda for the interests which patronize their advertising columns. The type of newspaper which publishes scandal and lewd pictures will eventually go the way of all forces which debauch the human mind."

Although Hill's puritanical streak reveals itself in his statement, what he identifies remains a problem today – as the phone hacking scandal in the British press reveals.

The silver lining of comparing Napoleon Hill's opinions of then with our situation now is that is suggests the areas of leadership and opportunity of which he spoke remain open; waiting for the right people to fill them. Perhaps those of us who are trying to "think and grow rich" would be wise to consider how best they could take advantage of those opportunities…

Occupy Wall Street Finally Has A Face - and he's a douchebag

   by Roland Hulme

Will "the face" of Occupy Wall Street be the end of it?

The media is poised to make this thug the "face" of OWS

"Since the Occupy Wall Street movement began," writes Dylan Stableford of The Cutline, "protesters, armed with their intentionally vague demands, have lacked a defining moment or iconic image to help propel media coverage. This week, they got both."

He's referring the iconic photograph of 20-year-old protestor Brandon Watt,s with his face bloodied from a clash with the police.

"Protester Brandon Watts, who was first to pitch a tent at Zuccotti Park, is now the bloody face of 'Day of Action" writes The Daily News. "Brandon has long carried the reputation of being a fighter — but got a major lesson in love, too."

While I'm happy that the press and supporters feel they've finally found OWS' Che Guevara, an objective examination of this young man's past isn't exactly flattering for him, or for the Occupy Wall Street movement as a whole.

"Brandon has been arrested four times since Sept. 24 for resisting arrest, loitering in disguise, escaping from a prisoner van and stealing orange mesh fencing," report The Daily News. "Soon after protesters started pitching tents, a gal pal of Watts’ told the New York Times Magazine he also lost his virginity at the encampment."

Similarly unimpressive are the circumstances surrounding how Brandon came to be bruised and bloodied in that famous photograph. Unlike other iconic figures from recent protests across the world - in Iran, Egypt, Libya and beyond - it's fair to argue that the kid brought his injuries upon himself.

"On Thursday, Watts stood atop a wall inside Zuccotti Park and tossed objects at cops standing outside the barricade along Liberty Street,"writes The Daily News. "Suddenly, he charged the officers and snatched a hat off the head of a deputy inspector. Cops caught him, but he began to fight back, busting his head on the concrete, causing a gash to gush blood down his face."

The fact is, if you assault an officer of the law - pelting him with objects, then snatching at his hat - you might actually deserve whatever punishment you receive as a result. The whole point of alleged "police brutality" is that it's undeserved. Personally, I think Brandon bought and paid for every bruise they gave him.

But more telling than the circumstances around Brandon's bloodied arrest are the circumstances surrounding him in general; and what his passion infers about the Occupy Wall Street movement as a whole.

OWS has been quick to distance themselves from the characters who've brought controversy to their movement - the rapists, the murders and the guy who took potshots at the President. But they can't shed an association with Brandon Watts so easily.

“He’s been here since week one,” a protestor told The Daily News. “He was one of the guys who started the whole tent thing.”

Brandon Watts is Occupy Wall Street - and he's no Che Guevara. He's actually just a feckless, 20-year old with a history of violence and disrespect for authority. He came to Wall Street from Philly not to protest America's indenture to corporations, but to brawl with the police and have sex in squalid tents.

He's the reason the authorities are cracking down on Occupy camps across America. He's the reason the American public are increasingly losing patience with the protestors. He's the reason OWS lacks the credibility the Tea Party has generated (and believe me, I'm the last person who ever thought they're use the words "Tea Party" and "credibility" in the same sentence.)

And if the media does adopt this unsavory troublemaker as the "face" of the Occupy Wall Street movement, it will spell an end to the protest's already crumbling credibility.

Occupy Wall Street needs to get its house in order

   by Roland Hulme

Rape. Suicide. Assault. Occupy Wall Street has proven this ain't no Tea Party.

Occupy Wall Street has become a shanty town

When the Occupy Wall Street protest began, I was in support of it - and quick to point out the apparent parallels between this movement and the right–wing's so-called Tea Party.

As the protests continued, however, I found myself less and less comfortable with those comparisons.

Don't get me wrong – I'm no fan of the Tea Party. I hated the illiterate placards and the glowering gun freaks with 9mms strapped to their thighs. Yet through it all, the Tea Party has remained resolutely, disturbingly civilized in their "civil disobedience."

Not so the so-called "99%".

Despite them having very legitimate complaints about the "1%" – such as the way corporations now enjoy civil liberties homosexuals don't, and how in the height of a recession the rich have got richer while working Americans go hungry – the way in which these formerly peaceful protests have devolved is revolting.

• In Zuccotti Park, in New York, protester Tonye Iketubosin was arrested for raping one female protestor, and sexually assaulting another. 
• In Texas, a 14-year-old protestor was raped by a convicted sex offender at Occupy Dallas. 
• Two men have been shot to death at Occupy protests (one self inflicted, the other as part of a gunfight.) 
• In Washington D.C., a mentally ill man who'd camped out with the Occupy D.C. protestors took potshots at the White House with an assault rifle, and is still considered "at large" by D.C. police.

You can say what you want about the Tea Party protests – and I myself compared the protestors to brownshirts, so I'm certainly as guilty as anybody in maligning them – but you'll notice there was nothing comparable going on at any of those events.

Nobody died at a Tea Party protest. Nobody got raped. The police didn't need to wade in with tear gas and steel batons (although given how many of the Tea Party were packin' heat, maybe that was a wise decision.)

There's uncomfortable irony in the fact that the Tea Party carried more firearms than an African militia, but it took a member of the Occupy crowd to start shooting at the President.

Despite all the accusations of racism, of misogyny and of "creating a climate of fear", the Tea Party look positively progressive in comparison to the chaos the Occupy movement has spread throughout city centers across America.

The fact is, the Occupy Wall Street movement need to get their house in order. Quick.

Because the more these organized "occupations" devolve into messy shanty towns, and the more these peaceful protests turn into violent riots, the more the original point the movement was trying to make will get drowned out.

At the beginning of the protest, people were genuinely interested in what the Occupy Wall Street movement had to say (even if it was occasionally idiotic.) America actually listened, and the concept of the 99% resonated with a broad audience.

But now, people are more interested in reading about the chaos, misery, violence and crime that the Occupy Wall Street movement seems to have embraced; rather than what it is they supposedly stand for.

That makes their protests futile - and has turned Occupy into the enemy, leaving the "real" bad guys - the so-called 1% - free to continue abusing the system as they have been doing for decades.