Tuesday - February 10, 2004 at 03:37 AM in

Wealth, Success, Youth, Beauty, Maturity, and Paris Hilton

What is it about Paris Hilton that holds such fascination? Is it that she's young, rich, and beautiful?

Almost: It's because she's young, rich, beautiful, and seemingly determined to make the least of it.

I've never met Paris Hilton, and I'm sure in person she's charming, funny, and not nearly as screwed-up as her public persona. She is also emblematic of a phenomenon I've observed a lot: the person who is dealt a great hand in life, and can't handle it maturely. Some other examples:

• An acquaintance from my Investment Banking days started raking in the dough, first as an investment banker, and later as an officer of a company which went public. Soon after he started making seven figures, he also started beating his girlfriend (who, by the way, was much too good for him), and nearly killed her.
• Dennis Kozlowski, former CEO of Tyco, who spent millions in company money for things like a $2 million birthday party for his wife, and absurdly expensive artwork. Busted when he tries to avoid paying sales tax (!) on a painting, which quickly leads to the discovery of all kinds of fraud and embezzlement at his company.
• Kirby Puckett, the hometown baseball hero, turns out to have a history of affairs and sexual assault. He was acquitted, but not before a lot of dirty laundry was aired.
• Multiple allegations of sexual assault, DUI, etc. at a charity event sponsored by the Minnesota Vikings a year ago. The alleged offenders were all players and team management.
• Let's not forget Kobe Bryant, Brittney Spears, the entire British royal family (excepting the Queen, of course, she's a sweetheart), the Bush twins, and many many others.

The common thread is that these are all people who, for whatever reason, seem to think that the rules do not apply to them, that whatever they want to do is OK, and that the effect their actions have on other people is not important. They have become, in a word, jerks.

What's going on here? Not everyone who is rich, successful, famous and/or beautiful is like this. I personally know a lot of counterexamples, so it is only certain people who succumb to jerkdom.

I believe that it takes a certain level of emotional maturity to be able to handle wealth and success. Being extremely successful creates some strange emotional messages:

• If you are extremely well-paid at work, you get the message that you are worth more (literally and figuratively) than nearly everyone else. I experienced this myself a few years in my investment banking days, when I was being paid twenty times what the department assistant was making. Personally, I found this message very disconcerting, since I knew I wasn't actually worth (in any sense) twenty of him.
• Being a celebrity means getting a lot of attention, both positive and negative, no matter what you do. This can (and often does) make someone think that he or she is somehow more important or better than the average person.
• Success often means being handled with "kid gloves" when it comes to minor infractions. Even beyond the famous athletes who (sometimes literally) get away with murder, a lot of people have had experience with the coworker who ignores the rules but is too important to fire. The net result is a very clear message that the rules are for other people.

The only way to counter these messages is through wisdom and perspective, which can come through age and adversity, through good upbringing, through friends and family who treat you like an ordinary person, or through a natural emotional grounding.

Lacking the proper emotional maturity, wealth and success risks making you believe your own PR. When that starts to happen, you may think that everyone likes you and wants to be you...but the truth is that you are rapidly burning through your goodwill. If things ever go wrong, well, schadenfreude here we come!

Unfortunately, in our success- and glamour-driven society, too few people recognize the risks of being too successful without the emotional readiness to handle it.

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