The School of Life has just published a fascinating video on the history of failure. It’s really interesting, though I think gets lost a bit at the end when focusing just on capitalism today as the primary reason why failure is not considered “noble” any longer (and I speak as no big fan of capitalism).

Here is a short summary of it:

Greeks – failure good

Roman – failure bad

early Christianity and Buddhist- failure good

Napoleon and meritocracy – failure bad and deserved

19th and 20 century art — genius at first rejected and then become successful

Occupy Movement pushes that financial success for a few is failure for everyone else, and argues for new definition of success.

Failure is noble has disappeared today because of capitalism run amok

I’m adding it to The Best Posts, Articles & Videos About Learning From Mistakes & Failures.