Pepe Villatoro was a recent graduate in physical engineering with a perfect business plan. According to his plans, in two years he would be controlling the companies from his yacht. He would become “something like the Latin American Mark Zuckerberg”, he thought. But at 32 he was completely broke. Carlos Zimbrón tried to be a soccer player until he discovered that it was the dream of 26% of the children of a country, Mexico, with 126 million inhabitants. Leticia Gasca created a company to lift indigenous women out of poverty by selling handicrafts, and ended up plunging herself into poverty. And Luis López de Nava was an architect who, when he went to sign the contract for his life, arrived at the building, called the portal, and discovered that although the street and number were correct, he had made the wrong city.
Success for Pepe, Carlos, Leticia or Luis did not consist of writing a book, but they have just published in Penguin Random House Read in case of failure: What does not kill you makes you stronger. It’s about the manifesto, the essay, or the instruction manual of FuckUp Nights, a movement that they created one fine day in 2012, when they began to count their failures while drinking beers, and that now brings together drinking beers and telling failures to strangers from 250 cities in 90 countries. Our meeting takes place on March 16 at the Aticco Bogatell coworking in Barcelona. And on the 21st at the Coworking Aticco María de Molina in Madrid.
It turns out that talk of failure was successful, and its promoters also failed to predict it. “We never imagined that there would be people who would change their lives by listening to stories of failure, having a beer and meeting people in an environment of vulnerability,” says Villatoro. And it is also very funny, as Carol Burnet already defined: “Tragedy plus time equals comedy.”
History, they review in the book, is a dialectical process: we screw up, we learn from our screw ups, we screw up a little less, and so on constantly. But we don’t always learn, as they say. In fact, sometimes we never learn, and nothing happens. “Fail early, learn fast,” say Silicon Valley. Less understanding is the Japanese culture, which says “Deru kui wa utareru” (The nail that sticks out will receive the hammer). And even less the Mexican culture, where this movement of failures is born, because they believe they are biologically condemned to it: “It sends us to the fable of crabs, which after being caught by a fisherman are deposited in a bucket with no lid: there is no chance of their escaping because if one tries to get out, the others will pull it down”.
Perhaps part of the blame lies in the fact that in Latin America, “sometimes, achieving a convenient status in a ‘creative’ way is valued or, in other words, being cool, cheeky, a scammer, cheating.”
“In an alternative universe, God created the human being and at the same time failure because he already knew what was going to happen,” these failure experts say. Although we spend our lives avoiding it, and it is at odds with the consumerist system, and with the meaning of our own existence, so linked to success. Although first you would have to know what success is. “There is a clear idea of ??what success looks like, how you dress success and what car you drive: the cult of the excessive desire for success touches all aspects of our lives. For example, an architect has a life full of sophisticated objects, for what a person of good taste is, knows how to eat well and frequents good places”, they point out in the book, but which Villatoro now redefines: “Success is being well losing everything”.
Hollywood, Silicon Valley, magazines, the American dream and others, they recall in this essay, “they overwhelm us with the message of ‘Don’t complain, anything is possible if you put a little more effort into it’. On the other hand, if what was planned It doesn’t work out, everything becomes crueler because we have absolute responsibility. Failure becomes the terrible judgment that we apply to ourselves (…) Accepting failure in a world where the system forces you to show what you have, because that’s the only thing that counts, it becomes very difficult, almost impossible. Failing means not having, and that doesn’t work for capitalism. The popular phrase to err is human completely loses its meaning and humanity disappears.”
The spectacle that surrounds us is dramatic because “most people are running around trying to live the life that someone designed. Working more than ten hours a day to earn the money that allows them the time to live life.” that exists outside of your job Believing what you’re told on TV and Facebook groups, buying your iPhone on interest-free monthly installments, and comparing yourself to what your neighbors have Living life not on your own terms, but by set goals by social conventions that seek to create predictable consumers. In other words, most people live mortgaging their lives instead of living it.”
Social networks have become a reflection of that idea of ??success: “The constant search for acceptance by others, mainly strangers.” In addition we do “any maneuver to achieve it”, which they diagnose as “the origin of the anxiety of an entire generation”. And it leads us to the ultimate question: “If you couldn’t tell anyone what you do, would you still do it?”
Villatoro, in his twenties, discovered that it was not true that anyone could become the new Mark Zuckerberg simply if they had a good idea and really wanted it. One more thing was needed: “You have to be a man, white, heterosexual, native English speaker, American, from a wealthy family, who entered Harvard and met strategic investors. If not, then thanks for participating. Come home to watch inspirational videos on YouTube so you can get more excited.”
Although there is something that can work, these experts conclude after years of hearing stories of failure, and the Joker said it in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight: “What doesn’t kill you makes you more… weird.” In other words, “if you want to be amply rewarded for what you do, you have to be irreplaceable. Otherwise, you’re just going to be replaced. If you want to be irreplaceable, you have to be unique. And if you want to be unique, you have to be authentic.” Embrace and celebrate what makes you weird.”
And if it doesn’t work? How do I get out of this loop? Well, it doesn’t really come out. “There is no other choice but to play the illogical game of capitalism,” concludes Villatoro. The most we can hope for is “hacking the system,” trying to “live life on your own terms while making and using the money.” In short, “to try to be more free.” And grandmothers are experts in this, who inadvertently put you in your place, especially if you start to explain what you do and how well things are going for you. “No matter what you say to him, he’s bound to interrupt you mid-speech and say, ‘That’s great. I’m so glad you’re happy.'” In other words, ‘I don’t give a shit what you’re doing and your dreams of greatness’, the important thing is that you’re happy.”
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