Roger Abramson: Napoleon Hill Stripped and Uncensored (Part II)

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Last week I started to talk about desire and business ethics.

The flip side of belief is a deeply stubborn conviction which shuts out the desires of lesser mortals and their contagious attitude of poverty consciousness.

“Whatever Warren wants, Warren gets.” – Susie Buffett

Let’s now briefly pause to consider how many billions of dollars Mark has to pay for all the of free publicity that comes with having almost thirty billion dollars and 1.3 billion Facebook friends.

As we all know, a billion dollars is a THOUSAND million dollars. I’ll pause a moment while you picture a thousand briefcases full of money, and how big your vault needs to be to hold them all.

Now on paper, Mr. Zuckerberg has already accumulated nearly thirty big vaults full of those kind of fun tickets. How rich is he?

People actually get mad when he ONLY gives away $100 million dollars to charity.

Hill’s trophy wife (to use another euphemism), who helped him write Think and Grow Rich, eventually took Napoleon for his fortune, according to his biographer.

By the way, did you know Hill’s business partners kicked him out of his own magazine? In response, he supposedly reported one of them to the FBI as a German agent. Seriously. Just check out the New York Times article.

I’m sure the FBI then respected all his Constitutionally-guaranteed rights. Yeah, sure. Just before throwing a bunch of innocent Japanese American civilians into internment camps.

After that, enough people wanted Hill dead that he had to hide out for about a year.

To really break this point down for you:

If the New York Times is right, then either Hill knowingly worked with a traitorous spy in a time of war, or he knowingly subjected a completely innocent man to the kind of mistreatment that blew up in his face, and inspired Hill to enroll himself in the Napoleon Hill protection program.

At a moment of weakness and clarity, Hill reportedly compares himself to a charlatan, in his own unpublished autobiography and for precisely the kind reasons you’d guess. And then he simply goes on doing what works.

When you strip away Hill’s euphemisms, his philosophy of wealth attraction essentially involves being an incredibly selfish, narcissistic dick, conspiring with others, and insulating yourself from any piddling little ethical concerns.

See that? I totally came back around to ethics.

As for the rich? Well, phenomenal success takes all of your time, focus, study, and concentration… just to get what you want. You simply don’t have time to worry about the pointless concerns of anyone but your buyers.

What if they catch on? Seventy-seven years and tens of millions of copies later, only the tiniest minority of Think And Grow Rich readers have ever expressed any doubts about Hill’s incredible version of events.

From this story, two kinds of lessons can be extracted, whether or not Hill himself ever met with a single multi-millionaire in his life.

The first kind of lesson:

As I’ve just illustrated above, the highly effective copywriter Napoleon Hill ultimately spent his lifetime doing what DOESN’T work, and therefore suffered a lifetime of awful consequences, no matter how much money he had and lost. How could the master of success attract so much difficulty and drama in

Because your personal philosophy attracts far more into your life than just buyers. In his later years, Napoleon Hill revealed a wiser, more balanced, better-informed philosophy in his book Grow Rich With Peace of Mind.

The second kind of lesson:

As a practical matter, it seems reputation may be manufactured out of thin air. Character can’t be. It’s only conjured from behaviors born of your thoughts and choices.

From the first verse of the Dhammapada, thought to have been written by Siddhārtha Gautama about 2,500 years ago, “If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought, pain follows him, as the wheel follows the foot of the ox that draws the carriage.”

To my mind, it’s actually far more inspiring and motivating to see a complete basket-case find some level of wealth and success than to simply watch the rich get richer.