Brief Formula
Another person’s success proves the universal correctness of their goal and way of acting.
Type: mimetic and social frame.
Typical Manifestations
- “You have to do what successful people do.”
- “If it worked for them, this path works.”
- “Everyone who has made it has already achieved a particular result by this age.”
- “I, too, must arrive at that kind of life.”
Implicit Assumptions
- another person’s visible result is also success for the subject;
- identical actions lead different people to identical results;
- context, initial resources, chance, and hidden costs are insignificant;
- social recognition confirms the value of a goal;
- someone else’s trajectory can be reproduced in full.
Two Levels of the Frame
Two independent transitions may be combined here:
- Borrowing a goal: a socially recognized outcome is adopted as one’s own desire.
- Universalizing a method: a method that worked for another person is deemed applicable to the subject without examining contextual differences.
Even if the subject genuinely chooses the goal, that does not make another person’s method of achieving it universal. Conversely, finding another person’s method useful does not mean one must adopt their goal.
What Becomes Invisible
- one’s own values and criteria of sufficiency;
- differences in starting conditions;
- the role of luck and the selection of successful examples only;
- the invisible costs of another person’s trajectory;
- alternative ways to achieve the same goal;
- the possibility of not choosing the socially recognized goal at all.
Scope of Reasonable Application
Other people’s experience can be a source of hypotheses, methods, and warnings. The frame emerges when an example becomes a prescription and observing a successful result becomes proof of the universality of the path.
Questions for a Metaposition
- Am I truly choosing this goal, or merely recognizing a socially approved image in it?
- What conditions made the other person’s trajectory possible?
- Which costs of that trajectory remain invisible?
- What from someone else’s experience can I test locally without copying their entire life?
- What would my criterion of success be if I could not compare myself with others?
