The Paradox of Success

James Piereson suggests a new law of success:

Murphy's law says that if anything can go wrong it will go wrong; Parkinson's law tells us that work expands to fill up the time allocated to it. To these rules of perverse conduct we wish to add another which may be called the "Paradox of Success," to wit: the more successful a policy is in warding off some unwanted condition the less necessary it will be thought to maintain it. If a threat is successfully suppressed, people naturally wonder why we should any longer bother with it. This law might be named Mr. Magoo's law after the half-blind cartoon character who stepped through various unseen dangers (like open man-holes) while singing happily to himself. Alternatively, it might be called Sulzberger's law, the publisher of The New York Times, whose newspaper gives faithful expression to this paradox.

The Sulzberger-Magoo law is on frequent display in our personal conduct -- for example, in the woman who wonders why she should maintain a diet when her weight is at an acceptable level or in the golfer who wonders why he should maintain a practice regimen once he has reduced his handicap by five strokes or in the student who asks why he should continue studying so hard when he has succeeded in raising his grades from C to A or in the patient who wonders why he should keep taking his medicine when he has not had an attack in more than a year. These measures, difficult to maintain, have so far succeeded in their aim. Yet for this reason it seems unnecessary to maintain them.

Read the rest here.