Ze Frank’s definition of success: He says, “I guess for me it would have to do a lot with feeling comfortable in the world, feeling I am free of fear to the extent it’s possible and certainly free of a lot of the basic concerns about having a roof over my head, having enough money to feed myself and things like that.”
HK: Do you consider yourself as a successful person?
ZF: I don’t know, maybe my definition changed. I don’t really think about success all that much. When you asked that question I started wondering whether I think of myself as successful or not. It seems more like there are certain areas that I would consider myself more successful than others. So I wonder whether I’m very good at describing the overall… you know, I was just having this conversation with a friend of mine a couple of months ago actually, and the basic idea was that I was wondering what I should do, what I should focus on in relation to the artwork that I’ve been doing and the communities that I’ve been developing… and this friend of mine, he’s a business guy, and he said, “Well, what’s your core metric?”
What he was asking was what’s a number derived by some sort of a formula that you could look at as your metric to see how you are doing. Is it going up or is it going down? What’s interesting for me is the idea of looking for a core metric that encapsulates almost everything of what you might consider success or positive good. I don’t know if it’s really possible to put that all into a formula or a number, but there is something interesting about saying, “okay what might my formula be?”, “what’s my core metric and how will I derive that?” Is it spiritual tranquillity times income minus anxieties? I spent a little bit of time on that and have applied that thinking a little bit more broadly not just to the entirety of my life but to the art side of what I do, and the business side of what I do as well.
HK: Do you think that metric to measure success is different for different people?
ZF: Yes, very, very, very different. I think that a big part of it is inescapable and it has to do with, depending on your viewpoint, your psychology or your spirituality because at some point perception becomes everything and especially material wealth doesn’t seem to correlate to enjoyment in a linear way. In some cases it seems to really bring a long whole additional set of potential pitfalls. I think that it really, really depends on, just say on the overall psychological and spiritual health of the individual.
HK: It’s quite a big question, but do you think all human beings can achieve success?
ZF: I feel like this is in danger of becoming an argument because it completely hinges on the definition of success. I wonder exactly what we’re talking about. It’s interesting because there are a couple of different things that pop into mind when you say that. I think about the distribution of wealth, in particular. It seems that distribution of wealth, distribution of power, distribution of access really fall into what’s called a power law distribution, it is also called the Rule of 820. So there’s a particular distribution of power, wealth, resources that happens again and again and again and it looks like a very natural property of the universe. It’s what happens when there’s some sort of network and there’s scarcity. If you were to define the notion of success as being rich in relation to other people then the answer is no. The answer is absolutely not. Not every single person can be successful. Necessarily some people can’t.
The next question would be, well okay so not everyone can be successful simultaneously but does everyone have the capability of potentially becoming successful and then it gets a little bit more complicated. Then of course you could say, yes everybody has the potential – but statistically the probability of that happening depends so much on where you are in the network. But overall, the answer to that would be that, depending on what your definition of success is, there will be certain types of success that no, the answer is no, not everyone can achieve them or will be able to achieve them.
I think maybe the third question is how to create a notion of success that simultaneously is challenging but is also possible.
HK: That’s a really interesting point. When we talk about you, Ze Frank, I think the technology is indispensible. I was wondering what does technology mean to you? Is it just merely a tool or is it a more important thing for you?
ZF: I think that technology for me ultimately is a tool, it’s just a tool, and it represents a certain type of tool. For me I have used technology in a particular way or had the opportunity to use technology in a particular way. Specifically what that means is that I was a sort of early adopter of a particular kind of technology: internet technology, in the realm of entertainment. What I was able to do was I had a relatively wide open play stage and I didn’t have too much competition early on in those days and so I was able to use technology as a way of expressing myself and gaining an audience and ultimately be exposed to a lot more opportunities. To that extent, yes absolutely technology has been very important. Moving forward now it’s becoming less and less important for me.
HK: Give me your advice to be successful in general sense?
ZF: The thing that I am fascinated with right now is success as measured by how comfortable I feel in the world. How much my emotional reaction to the world is grounded in what is really present at the moment rather than my projections, my fears, imaginations of my past. If I was to think about what success means to me right now it would have to do with struggling to get closer to a place where it’s fully present. I feel like I’m becoming more eastern philosophy in my outlook as time goes by… so that’s the main focus. The second answer to that question would be figure out a way to get rich as shit.
Haegwan Kim is a writer who was born in Osaka, Japan in 1989 and grew up near Tokyo where went to a Korean school for 12 years.
