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HOW AL CAPONE CRIMINALLY CAPTURED CHICAGO

Al Capone. The name signifies ultimate dominance in the Prohibition-era American underworld. Capone, aka “Scarface” (a nickname he loathed), grew to rule Chicago’s gangsters as well as overlording many police officers and public officials. And he did so while in his twenties, before hubris took him down through tax evasion—not murder, extortion, robbery, drug trafficking, racketeering, prostitution, gambling, and his running over a thousand illegal speakeasies. Being crime’s kingpin was a mighty accomplishment for a man so young, and there are two primary reasons for how Al Capone criminally captured Chicago.

Al Capone was a true anti-social mastermind. He was a sadistic savage who used brute force to achieve his ends, and he masterfully manipulated others to do his murderous bidding. “Big Al” (he stood 5’10” and weighed 260 lbs.) was also a master strategist who intrinsically knew the flaws in human nature—greed and fear—and how to take an entire city under his control.

Capone ran Chicago’s underworld from the mid-1920s to his removal through financial conviction in 1931. During that time, when Chicago’s population was slightly over three million, the city experienced nearly one thousand gangland murders. Many, including the infamous St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, were ordered by Al Capone.

Before analyzing Al Capone’s colossal success and spectacular failure as well as identifying two primary reasons for how he captured Chicago, let’s look at who Al Capone was and how he became America’s most notorious gangster.

Alphonse Gabriel Capone was born in Brooklyn, New York on January 17, 1899. His parents were immigrants from the Italian Province of Salerno—his father was a barber and his mother a seamstress. Al Capone had eight siblings; two brothers going into law enforcement and two other brothers eventually taking roles in his criminal enterprise.

Capone was expelled from school at age 14 after assaulting a female teacher. He’d punched her in the face when she tried to discipline him for aggressive behavior. He then worked at odd jobs in New York City such as a candy store clerk, a bowling pin boy, an ammunition plant laborer, and a bookbinding cutter. But he found his calling at eighteen when he was hired as a barroom and brothel bouncer.

Al Capone was a large kid—a tough kid with a quick temper and a deeply ingrained mean streak. On the surface, though, Capone was charming, witty, and unusually clever. This character combination aligned him with one of New York’s leading criminals, Johnny Torrio.

It was in one of Torrio’s bars that Al Capone earned his nickname “Scarface”. A punk hoodlum called Frank Galluccio slashed Capone across the left side of his face leaving two huge gashes. Capone had insulted Galluccio’s sister which set off the fight. Capone was scarred for life, and he thereafter consciously avoided having himself photographed from the left.

Capone rose in the New York criminal culture. It was partly through Torrio’s influence and partly due to Capone’s natural ability to thrive in the underworld. It led to a move to Chicago.

Johnny Torrio was invited to partner with “Big Jim” Colosimo who headed the Chicago Outfit that operated in the Cicero suburb of west-central Chicago. Colosimo’s territory was constantly threatened by the North Side Gang run by the powerful Dean O’Banion who was supported by the infamous henchmen Bugsy Moran, Hymie Weiss, and Vincent Drucci. It was the eventual and ongoing rivalry between the Chicago Outfit and the North End Gang that caused most of the gangland hits.

Colosimo needed Capone’s muscle, and he needed Torrio’s brains. They created a symbiotic relationship, but there was one main problem. Colosimo was an old-school man. He approved of robbery, extortion, gambling, prostitution, and, of course, murder. But he was a pro-prohibitioner who disapproved of alcohol.

Torrio and Capone saw Prohibition as a gold mine. They saw Chicago as an untapped opportunity to make enormous profits by cornering the illegal booze manufacturing and delivery market. Colosimo, the boss, didn’t see it that way and had no plans to expand his enterprise into the bootlegging business.

On May 11, 1920, Big Jim Colosimo was shot dead as he went to a restaurant meeting with Johnny Torrio. History suspects Al Capone ordered the hit with Johnny Torrio’s blessing, but history shows Capone was conveniently in New York at the time. Regardless, Colosimo’s death allowed Torrio to take control of the Chicago Outfit with Capone as his right-hand man.

That arrangement lasted long enough for the Chicago Outfit to gain its upper hand in the illegal liquor business. Torrio and Capone made strong ties with Canadian alcohol manufacturers as Canada had no Prohibition rules whereas the US Act prohibited the manufacturing, distribution, and sale of all “recreational” liquor products. It was not illegal to possess or consume alcoholic beverages in the States—only to make and move them.

Tensions grew between the Chicago Outfit and Dean O’Banion’s North End Gang. On November 10, 1924, the Torrio/Capone alliance murdered O’Banion. In retaliation, the North Enders ambushed Johnny Torrio and wounded him so badly that Torrio resigned as head of the Outfit and returned to New York. This left Al Capone solely in charge and the gang violence quickly escalated.

Capone implemented every fear and intimidation tactic he could to eliminate his underworld rivals and force purchasing compliance on his marketplace. Capone’s loyal goons’ favorite weapon was the Thompson .45 submachine gun with 50-round magazines—the Chicago Typewriter, it was called. Capone sent multiple squads of gunmen after his targets, often shooting hundreds of bullets into buildings and passing cars.

One by one, Capone eliminated criminals like Hymie Weiss and Vincent Drucci. But a certain high-value hit, Bugsy Moran, played hard to get. This is when Capone set up the Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre in 1929. Capone’s men, three dressed in police uniforms, raided a Chicago garage where the North End Gang was holding a clandestine meeting. The men under Capone lined seven North Enders up against a brick wall and mowed them down with machine gun fire.

By sheer coincidence, good or bad luck depending on how you see it, Bugsy Moran was late for the meet and survived. However, with his gang decimated and his power weakened, Moran gave up and left the Chicago mob scene. This left Capone as the kingpin, except for a side rivalry.

In 1925, as Capone was ascending in Chicago’s crime hierarchy, he meddled in the Unione Siciliana which was a Sicilian-American benevolent society—a convenient place for money laundering. Capone deposed Joe Aiello as head of the society and replaced him with a Capone hack called Antinio Lombardo. This infuriated Aiello, and he made it his personal mission to take Al Capone out.

From this point forward, despite the North End threat, Capone lived under constant fear of being assassinated. He beefed up security by having fortified residences, hoards of bodyguards, a bulletproof limousine, and unpredictable travel habits. Capone began spending more time away from Chicago, buying a mansion in Florida and laying low in Las Vegas.

Rumors were that Al Capone had hideouts in Canada despite Capone’s famous quote, “I don’t even know what street Canada is on.” Moose Jaw in Saskatchewan claims fame for the “Capone Tunnels” under its city. So do places like London, Ontario, and Windsor across the river from Detroit.

While Aiello went after Capone, so did the Revenuers. Until the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, Al Capone was nearly untouchable in Chicago. Although Capone instilled mortal fear into his rivals, he had immense popularity with Chicagoans. Not only did the drinking public love Al Capone, so did the cops, the courts, and the civic authorities.

Capone played to the common greed as well as the common fear—two ingrained human condition frailties. He had hundreds, if not thousands, of people across the spectrum on his protection payroll. This included police at the patrol level as well as in high administration positions. He had the mayor in his pocket, the DA at his side, and enough goods on judges which forced them to hold his line.

The Roaring Twenties in Chicago was a time when law enforcement and the judiciary were pretty much of a joke. Officers were severely underpaid. Many had second jobs to make ends meet so they were wide open to bribes. So were politicians who appointed the court staff.

Capone knew he could intimidate enemies with the fear of brutal terror, and he knew he could buy his way to having greedy officials look the other way. He also knew he could purchase the hearts and minds of the common people with donations to churches, food pantries for the poor, housing for the displaced, funding for orphanages, and pensions for widows.

To most of the overlooking public, Al Capone was not a gangster. He was a successful businessman—a guy you’d like to have drinks around the pool with—who supplied liquor to a majority who hated Prohibition and viewed the law as wrong. Leave Al alone was the thinking. All he was doing was supplying entertainment to the city. Getting witnesses to testify against him was nearly impossible.

February 14, 1929, was a turning point in Capone’s criminal career. The tide of public support turned from this outrage in violence. Walter A. Strong, publisher of the Chicago Daily, turned to his good friend, newly inaugurated President Herbert Hoover for help to smash Capone and the Chicago Outfit. As Hoover recorded in his memoirs:

“Walter Strong made an argument that Chicago was in the hands of the gangsters, that the police and magistrates were completely under their control… that the Federal government was the only force by which the city’s ability to govern itself could be restored. At once I directed that all the Federal agencies concentrate on Mr. Capone and his allies.”

A second movement went against Al Capone. On March 24, 1930, Capone’s face appeared on the cover of Time Magazine. The caption and story weren’t flattering. On April 23, The Chicago Crime Commission issued its first Public Enemies List. There were 28 names on it and Al Capone was in first place, He became Public Enemy #1.

1929 wasn’t kind to Al Capone. Neither was 1931. Here’s a summary of Capone’s downfall:

March 27, 1929 — Capone was arrested outside a Chicago courthouse for contempt of court.

May 16, 1929 — Capone was arrested in Philadelphia on weapons charges.

May 17, 1929 — Capone plead guilty to the weapons charges with a plea deal. He received a one-year sentence that was served in an open prison setting.

An intense investigation into Capone’s finances was conducted in 1930.

March 13, 1931 — Capone was charged with income tax evasion for the year 1924.

June 5, 1931 — Capone was indicted on 22 counts of federal tax evasion for the years 1925 through 1929.

June 16, 1931 — Capone’s lawyers and the prosecution worked a plea deal to one single count of tax evasion. The judge refused to allow it. All counts went to trial.

October 17, 1931 — A jury convicted Capone on 5 counts of tax evasion. He was sentenced to 11 years in prison, fined $50,000, assessed court costs of $7,692, and made subject to $215,000 in interest due on back charges.

The prosecution proved a case that Capone’s traceable income was $1,038,654 from 1924 to 1929. The real amount was likely much higher. Some investigators estimated it to be $100 million which in 2023 inflated value is $1.7 billion.

Al Capone went straight from trial to jail. First, he was incarcerated in the U.S. Penitentiary, Atlanta. In 1934, Capone was transferred to Alcatraz Island in San Francisco Bay. He stayed there until 1939 when he was paroled due to medical conditions.

Capone suffered from an untreated syphilis infection which ate away his brain. He was nearly non-functional when he returned to his Florida residence. He lingered on in an invalid state until he died of heart failure on January 25, 1947. Al Capone was buried just outside Chicago and in the Capone family plot.

This post opened by stating there were two primary reasons for how Al Capone criminally captured Chicago. They’ve been mentioned throughout the text, but there are many supporting characteristics to Al Capone’s character that allowed him to achieve his power. Here’s a few of them:

Charisma and Leadership — Capone possessed a commanding personality—highly energized, witty, yet serious. He inspired loyalty among his associates and maintained discipline throughout his organization.

Outstanding Presence — Al Capone was meticulous in appearance. Clean-shaven, short hair, impeccable suits, shirts, and ties, with perfectly polished shoes. He knew how important turnout was for respect, and he demanded the same professional look in his men.

Strategic Mindset — He was a shrewd businessman who saw opportunities, weighed risks, and focussed on reward. One of these was the immense opportunity offered him through the Act of Prohibition.

Adaptability — Capone was quick to change tactics when necessary. He understood the concepts of overall strategy supported by flexible tactics.

Exploiting the Civic Environment — Capone instinctively realized how malleable humans are. He knew most folks, public, private, and civil officials, naturally take an easy route out when offered a choice.

Corruption and Political Ties — He and his gang infiltrated the highest levels of Chicago’s political circles. He exploited them through bribery, blackmail, threats, and rewards that were impossible to refuse.

Community Support — At the street level, those who weren’t terrified of Al Capone worshipped him. He was instrumental in supplying the common person with the basic securities and necessities of life.

Absolute Ruthlessness — Those who opposed or crossed Capone ended up dead. And not dead by nice means. Capone had his enemies tortured, maimed, and exterminated in horrible ways… and the word got around.

If Capone had put his intelligence, organizational skills, and drive toward legitimate purposes, there’s no telling what he might have achieved. But he didn’t. It was the nature of this beast to be a bullying antisocial reprobate. He thrived knowing humans primarily respond out of greed and out of fear. He played to those flaws, and that is how Al Capone criminally captured Chicago.

FAILING TO FAIL aka HOW TO SUCCEED

The Global Personal Development Market (Success Industry) is huge. It’s enormous and exponentially growing. Success Inc. has been around a long time, and it’s going to stick with us for a long while yet. From founders like Napoleon Hill (Think & Grow Rich) to furthering followers like Tony Robbins and new agers such as Elizabeth Gilbert, the wealth and happiness business has never been healthier. There really is something to the power of passion, persistence, and perseverance.

Thirty-five years ago, I bought into the Napoleon Hill philosophy of personal achievement. I’ve never regretted opening that book, and it’s the foundation of what I’ve become today. But does that mean what works for some must work for you? I’d say it certainly can—provided you adapt the operative mindset and open yourself to the principles of success. No matter your vocation.

In this Dyingwords post (Tagline: Provoking Thoughts in Life, Death, and Writing), we’ll examine the motivational movement. We’ll look at an example of profound success and how they achieved it through helping others. We’ll hear from another high achiever who calls BS on the Self-Help Industry. We’ll chat with an AI specialist about the number one reason behind successful human endeavors. And we’ll look behind the scenes at Dyingwords along with samples of my affirmations and quotes.

Hopefully the takeaways from this piece let you look at human motivation psychology in a positive light and your valuable time spent reading has a productive payback.

I didn’t invent any of this stuff. I’ve just learned to source what I need, absorb it, and discard the waste. My goal in lifelong education is becoming a better writer (and person) in the hope I can help others achieve their own version of success. It’s for that, I’ve spent the time and money buying into the self-improvement scene. Here’s a clip from Grand View Research about the state of the personal development market:

I have a hard time wrapping my head around 43.77 billion USD. Even a harder time with the projected 67.04 billion (based on a 5.5% CAGR) in 2030 which is less than seven years away. Maybe it’s time to get into the biz.

It’s not just self-help books that folks pay hard-earned and scarce money for. The personal development market includes audios, podcasts, online courses, AI generated programs, clubs, cliques, cults, (ever been to an Amway rally?) conventions, coaching, and personal training for passionate people. Here’s another clip of the Global Personal Development Market—a pie chart of the Big-Five focus areas:

Grand View’s report says the self-awareness segment is anticipated to grow the fastest. Their stats indicate a 6.9% CAGR from 2023 to 2030 and they attribute this expansion is because of the new executive generation needing to improve communication, marketing, productivity, engagement, and trust skills. Overall, this is about performance enhancement.

The personal development market’s key facilitators are these international players. Do any sound familiar?

  • Dale Carnegie & Associates
  • The Napoleon Hill Foundation
  • Franklin Covey
  • Landmark Worldwide Enterprises
  • Hay House Publishing
  • Nutrisystems
  • OpenSesame
  • SkillPath
  • Skillsoft
  • Toastmasters International

Yes, there are some big providers in profitable positions. But there’s nothing really new in the core message these personal motivation and skill developers put forth. Only the messenger has changed as well as the delivery method.

Transcendental Mediation and essential oils in the 60s. Jane Fonda aerobic tapes in the 70s. Fat-free everything in the 80s. Celestine Prophecy in the 90s. The Secret in the 2000s. Oprah in the 20-teens. And now, from Good Housekeeping, The 25 Best Self-Help Books in 2023 That Actually Work. Same flavor. Different wrapper.

So, who really got the principles of success right and developed a timeless formula which the average person can implement?

John Wooden.

If the name is not familiar, John Wooden was an American college basketball coach who took the UCLA Bruins to a 10-game championship winning streak in 12 years, 1962 to 1974. Coach Wooden built the Pyramid of Success that stands, today, as unbeatable in making individuals into team players.

Here’s the Pyramid of Success in more detail:

Industriousness — There is no substitute for work. Worthwhile results come from hard work and careful planning.

Loyalty — To yourself and to all those depending upon you. Keep your self-respect.

Alertness — Be observing constantly. Stay open-minded. Be eager to learn and improve.

Initiative — Cultivate the ability to make decisions and think alone. Do not be afraid of failure but learn from it.

Enthusiasm — Brushes off upon those with whom you come in contact. You must truly enjoy what you are doing.

Self-Control — Practice self-discipline and keep emotions under control. Good judgment and common sense are essential.

Friendship — Comes from mutual esteem, respect and devotion. Like marriage, it must not be taken for granted but requires joint effort.

Cooperation — With all levels of your co-workers. Listen if you want to be heard. Be interested in finding the best way, not in having your own way.

Intentness — Set a realistic goal. Concentrate on its achievement by resisting all temptations and being determined and persistent.

Confidence — Respect without fear. May come from being prepared and keeping all things in proper perspective.

Skill — A knowledge of and the ability to properly and quickly execute the fundamentals. Be prepared and cover every little detail.

Team-Spirit — A genuine consideration for others. An eagerness to sacrifice personal interests of glory for the welfare of all.

Poise — Just being yourself. Being at ease in any situation. Never fighting yourself.

Condition — Mental-Moral-Physical. Rest, exercise, and diet must be considered. Moderation must be practiced. Dissipation must be eliminated.

Competitive Greatness — Be at your best when your best is needed. Enjoyment of a difficult challenge.

Coach Wooden’s greatest accomplishments were not limited to basketball.

He brought an entire community together, inspired them with championships, and taught them how to master the fundamental skills that turn any dream into reality. The gyms he coached in became chapels, the court a pulpit where he preached a different kind of success approach. When Coach Wooden introduced the world to the Pyramid of Success, he offered us all a roadmap for individual and team excellence—the same roadmap he used to build a legacy unmatched in the game of basketball.

The life principles summarized in the Pyramid of Success had no explicit reference to basketball or athletics. The coach’s diagram was simply a roadmap to being a better person.

So far, we’ve been bubbly about the success industry and its positiveness. I’m about to bring in a guy I’ve invited who’ll prick that happy bubble.

Mark Manson is a self-help guru. His sales of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*uck and other books prove it. Here’s what Mark says are Five Problems with the Self-Help Industry:

“The self-help industry is a multi-billion-dollar industry. It fills bookstores and conference rooms. It’s made media celebrities out of people and capitalized wildly off the growing self-consciousness of recent generations. And although it’s changed the lives of millions of people — mostly for the better, I assume — it still lacks a certain credibility with most. Many regard it as simple snake oil. Others laugh at the bizarre superstitions that get passed off as legitimate life advice. Many try self-help out but are left feeling disgruntled.

Clinical psychology doesn’t exactly have a stellar track record of personal change either, but at least when you lay down on the sofa, you know you’re dealing with a qualified expert who is telling you what to do based on 100+ years of empirical research.

With self-help, God only knows where half of these people come from. It’s a market-driven, rather than a peer-reviewed industry. The onus is on the reader to sift through the material and decide what’s credible and what’s not. And that’s not always easy to do.

The following are five major problems with the self-help industry today, and they’re unlikely to go away.

1. Self-help reinforces perceptions of inferiority and shame.

Two types of people get hooked on self-help material: those who feel something is fundamentally wrong with them and they are willing to try anything to make it better, and those people who think they’re already generally a good person, but they have some problems and blind spots and want to become great people.

Call these the “Bad-to-OK” people and the “OK-to-Great” people. Bad-to-OK people are in it because they believe that they’re fundamentally flawed and want to fix themselves. OK-to-Great people are in it because they think they are OK, but they want to become great.

Generally speaking, the OK-to-Great people do just that — they go from having an average and “OK” life and turn it into something really unique and great over the course of years.

The Bad-to-OK people improve little, if at all, even after years of “effort”. In some cases, they may even get worse.

OK, why?

Bad-to-OK people consistently fail because they possess a fundamental worldview that interprets everything they do, including self-help, to support their inferiority or lack of worthiness.

For example, an OK-to-Great person may read a book on becoming happy and think, “Oh, cool, there are a bunch of things in here that I’m not doing. I should try them out.”

A Bad-to-OK person will read the same book and say, “Wow, look at all of this stuff I’m not doing. I’m an even bigger loser than I initially thought.”

The fundamental difference is that Bad-to-OK lack self-acceptance that most people have. An OK-to-Great person will look at the string of bad choices and mistakes throughout their life and decide that they should make better choices and learn how to be a better person. A Bad-to-OK person will assume every choice they make is bad because they are a fundamentally flawed person and that the only way they can make good choices is by doing exactly what someone else says, word-for-word.

The irony here is that the pre-requisite for self-help to be effective is the one crucial thing that self-help cannot actually help: accept yourself as a good person who makes mistakes.

Sure, sit with your Chi, be still in the “now,” say your affirmations and journal until you’re blue in the face, but Bad-to-OK people will continue to perceive themselves as “Bad” and never reach the “OK” they’re desperately looking for. Because this inadequacy is their worldview, everything they do will only reinforce it further. At best, all they can hope for is to cover it up or suppress it.

2. Self-help is often yet another form of avoidance.

People consciously perceive their problems in all sorts of unique and creative ways: I don’t know when to kiss her; my family and I always fight; I feel tired and lazy all the time; I can’t stop eating sweets; my dog hates me; my ex-girlfriend burnt my house down; and on and on.

These all feel like “real” problems. But in almost every situation, the root of the problem is actually some deep form of anxiety/neuroticism or an unconscious feeling of shame or unworthiness.

We already saw how self-help usually proves ineffectual in dealing with the shame. Unfortunately, it often fails in handling the anxiety/neuroticism as well.

When someone with an inordinate amount of anxiety comes to self-help material, two things usually happen, and neither of them fix the problem.

They simply replace one neuroticism with another, slightly healthier neuroticism — think someone who goes from being an alcoholic and unable to hold a job, to meditating and doing yoga five hours a day and still unable to hold a job.

Or they use the self-help material as another form of avoidance. Dating advice is a classic example here — I don’t know how to ask out the person I like on a date, so I’ll read four books about it and feel like I did something. Suddenly reading the books feels far more important than actually asking the person out.

(This is also commonly known as analysis paralysis.)

3. Self-help marketing creates unrealistic expectations.

Although theoretically, I have no issue with the profit motive in the self-help industry, in practice it causes problems.

With the profit motive, the incentive is not on creating real change but creating the perception of real change.

This can be done with placebos, teaching clients to suppress certain negative feelings or to pump their temporary emotional states. It can be done by placating anxious people with more information and neurotics with more relaxation techniques. These all create short-term sensations of accomplishment and improvement, but almost always dissipate within a few days or weeks.

I’m sorry, but you’re not going to get over a lifetime of feeling inadequate or shame in a single weekend. You just aren’t. What will happen is you’ll feel better about that inadequacy and shame for a weekend and then it will come back again.

4. Self-help is (usually) not scientifically validated.

Here are the self-help practices which have been shown in scientific studies to have some validity: meditation or mindfulness, keeping a journal, stating what you’re grateful for each day, being charitable and giving to others.

Here’s where the science is hit and miss (it usually depends on how or why it is used): Neuro-Linguistic Programming, affirmations, hypnotherapy, getting in touch with your inner child.

Here’s what is complete bullshit: Feng shui, manifestations, tarot cards, telekinesis, psychics, crystals, power animals, tapping, the law of attraction, anything supernatural or woo woo.

The fact is that the majority of self-help information out there is either a placebo at best or complete bunk at worst.

Fortunately, in the past decade, many academics such as Brene Brown and Dan Gilbert are getting into the mix by writing self-help books based on scientific studies, rather than the usual trope of “I was cleaning out my closet when God spoke to me and I suddenly became enlightened and here’s my completely arbitrary and half-baked book on what you should and should not do with your life.”

5. Self-help is a contradiction.

The contradiction of self-help is that the first and most fundamental step to growth is to admit that you’re okay as you are and that you don’t necessarily need anyone else’s help. It’s the prime belief, and by its very definition, it’s something that can’t be given to you by someone else, it must be reached on your own.

The irony is that once you do accept that you don’t need someone else’s help or advice to become a good person, it’s only then that their advice truly becomes useful to you.

So in a way, self-help is most useful for people who don’t actually need self-help. It’s for the OK-to-Great people, not the Bad-to-OK people, although those are most of the people who get caught in its net and spend their money on it.

Self-improvement is quite literal in its meaning — it’s used to enhance oneself, not to replace it. If you’re looking to replace who you are with something else, then you will never succeed, and you’re more likely to get sucked up into the nonsense and pseudo-science and suppress your feelings of inadequacy rather than deal with them head-on.

In other cases, self-help allows people to transfer and project their feelings of inadequacy onto others, or live vicariously through a “guru” or someone else’s success. Again, it’s the perception of progress and not progress itself.

So what’s the point of all of this?

It’s this: figure it out yourself. That may sound like an obvious cop-out, but seriously, why would anyone else have the answers to your life but you?

You can take their experiences and ideas into consideration, but ultimately it’s their application to your life that matters.

None of this was supposed to be easy. Anyone who tells you otherwise is probably marketing something.

Be skeptical. Be selfish. And be ruthless. This is your life we’re talking about. Nobody else can be happy for you. If you find yourself having that expectation, well, then there’s your problem. And no one can help you except yourself.”

*   *   *

Thanks, Mark. Now, I’ll invite that AI expert to give their lowdown with my question, “What is the number one reason behind successful human ventures?”

ChatGPT: The number one reason behind successful human ventures can vary depending on the context, but one of the most common factors is “determination” or “persistence.” In many cases, success is achieved through a combination of factors, including hard work, dedication, adaptability, and resilience. Here are a few key factors that often contribute to the success of human ventures:

  1. Determination and Persistence: Many successful individuals and ventures face obstacles, setbacks, and failures along the way. What sets them apart is their determination to keep going despite challenges.
  2. Hard Work and Effort: Success often requires a significant amount of hard work and effort. Consistent and focused work toward a goal is a crucial factor in achieving success.
  3. Vision and Planning: Having a clear vision of what you want to achieve and creating a well-thought-out plan to reach your goals is essential for success.
  4. Adaptability: The ability to adapt to changing circumstances and learn from experiences is key. Successful ventures often evolve and adjust their strategies as needed.
  5. Skill and Expertise: Developing the necessary skills and expertise related to the venture is crucial. Continuous learning and improvement are common traits of successful individuals and organizations.
  6. Risk-taking and Innovation: Success often involves taking calculated risks and embracing innovation. Trying new things and thinking outside the box can lead to breakthroughs.
  7. Resilience: Resilience is the ability to bounce back from failures and setbacks. It’s a critical trait for overcoming challenges and continuing to pursue your goals.
  8. Networking and Collaboration: Building a strong network of supportive individuals and collaborating with others can open up opportunities and resources that contribute to success.
  9. Time Management and Discipline: Effective time management and discipline help in staying organized, meeting deadlines, and making the most of available resources.
  10. Passion and Motivation: Having a deep passion and strong motivation for what you’re doing can be a driving force that sustains your efforts even in difficult times.

It’s important to note that success can take many forms, and what works in one context may not work in another. Additionally, the relative importance of these factors may vary depending on the specific venture or goal. Different individuals and organizations may prioritize these factors differently based on their unique circumstances and objectives.

What are the common themes put forward in self-help programs?

ChatGPT: Self-help programs typically focus on personal development and empowerment, aiming to help individuals improve their lives, overcome obstacles, and achieve their goals. While the specific themes and advice offered can vary widely, there are several common themes and principles that are often put forward in self-help programs. Here are some of the most prevalent themes:

Positive Thinking and Mindset: Many self-help programs emphasize the power of positive thinking and maintaining a growth mindset. They encourage individuals to reframe negative thoughts and beliefs and cultivate a more optimistic outlook on life.

Goal Setting and Planning: Setting clear, achievable goals and creating a plan to reach them is a fundamental theme in self-help. This includes breaking down goals into smaller, actionable steps.

Self-Confidence and Self-Esteem: Building self-confidence and improving self-esteem are common self-help objectives. Programs often provide strategies to boost self-assurance and foster a healthy self-image.

Motivation and Inspiration: Self-help materials frequently offer motivation and inspiration to keep individuals committed to their personal development journey. This can include success stories, quotes, and strategies to stay motivated.

Time Management and Productivity: Effective time management and productivity techniques are often discussed to help people better organize their lives and accomplish more in less time.

Stress Management and Resilience: Coping with stress and building resilience to face life’s challenges is a prevalent theme. Self-help programs provide tools and strategies to manage stress and bounce back from setbacks.

Communication and Interpersonal Skills: Improving communication skills, building better relationships, and enhancing interpersonal interactions are often addressed in self-help materials.

Health and Wellness: Many self-help programs recognize the importance of physical and mental well-being. Topics can include exercise, nutrition, relaxation techniques, and mental health support.

Financial Success and Wealth Building: Some self-help programs focus on financial literacy, budgeting, investing, and strategies for building wealth.

Self-Discovery and Identity: Exploring one’s values, passions, and life purpose is a recurring theme. Self-help encourages individuals to better understand themselves and align their actions with their authentic selves.

Overcoming Obstacles and Adversity: Self-help often provides guidance on overcoming obstacles, including fear, procrastination, self-doubt, and setbacks. Strategies for resilience and problem-solving are emphasized.

Gratitude and Mindfulness: Practicing gratitude and mindfulness is promoted as a way to improve well-being and focus on the present moment.

Personal Responsibility and Accountability: Self-help programs stress the importance of taking responsibility for one’s actions and choices. They emphasize that individuals have the power to shape their own lives.

Continuous Learning and Self-Improvement: Lifelong learning and self-improvement are encouraged. Self-help materials often advocate for seeking knowledge and skills to grow and evolve.

Visualization and Affirmations: Techniques like visualization and positive affirmations are often promoted as tools to manifest goals and build a more positive self-image.

Happiness and Fulfillment: The pursuit of happiness and a fulfilling life is a central theme in self-help. This may involve reevaluating priorities, seeking purpose, and nurturing a sense of contentment.

It’s important to approach self-help programs critically and discerningly, as the effectiveness and applicability of the advice can vary widely. Different individuals may resonate with different themes and strategies, so it’s essential to choose resources and practices that align with your personal goals and values. Additionally, seeking professional guidance or therapy may be necessary for addressing specific mental health issues or complex life challenges.

Please define the principles of success in one paragraph.

ChatGPT: The principles of success can be summarized as the conscious and persistent pursuit of meaningful goals with a positive mindset, guided by clear vision and planning. Success is achieved through hard work, continuous learning, adaptability, and resilience in the face of obstacles, setbacks, and failures. It involves effective time management, self-discipline, and a focus on personal growth and self-improvement. Building strong relationships, both personal and professional, and maintaining a sense of purpose, passion, and motivation are also integral components of success, ultimately leading to a sense of fulfillment, achievement, and well-being in various aspects of life.

Please define the principles of success in one sentence.

ChatGPT: The principles of success involve unwavering dedication to meaningful goals, a positive and adaptable mindset, continuous learning, effective time management, resilience in the face of challenges, and the nurturing of purpose and relationships, ultimately leading to personal fulfillment and achievement.

Please define the principles of success in one word.

ChatGPT: Persistence.

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Right. Persistence. Plus, passion and perseverance. Perseverance is kinda like persistence, but not really. Persist is to go after something. Persevere is stamina to keep it up. A cheetah and gazelle thing.

Which brings me to me. Dyingwords and my writing world. I started this venture in 2011, so I’ve been at it 12 years. My tagline is Provoking Thoughts in Life, Death, and Writing. I’ve never veered from it, and I won’t. Sometimes I post about high-profile deaths. Sometimes I post about life issues. Sometimes I post about writing craft. I try to find subjects I’m interested in, research them, and hope you get good from them, too.

In the past dozen years, I’ve outputted 21 for-sale book publications, hundreds of blog posts, over a thousand paid commercial web content pieces, nearly three million words checked on Grammarly, and now I’m involved in producing content for the film industry. I’ve had 130K e-book downloads on five retail platforms in 106 different countries, been #1 in my Amazon categories a bunch of times, have around 250K yearly visits to my website, as well as 2,200 regular mailing list followers (who I dearly appreciate) and north of 10K on Twitter or whatever Musk calls X today.

I’m happy with this success. The numbers success. Moreso the feedback and the peer recognition success. I attribute it to motivating myself through positive reader support as well as psychological affirmations and quotations. Here are a few of the cut & pastes stuck around my studio workstation:

“Contempt for failure.”

“Did I show up dressed today?”

“Memento Mori” ~Marcus Aurelius

“Ya gotta wanna.” ~Jimmy Pattison

“To understand is to know what to do.”

“Focus. Cut the noise. Double the results.”

“Invest the Time. Do the work. Tell the truth.”

“This, too, shall pass away.” ~Abraham Lincoln

“Overcome resistance. Trust the muse.” ~Stephen King

“Three common traits of winners. Desire. Determination. Confidence.”

“You don’t really understand something until you can build it.” ~Richard Feynman

“If you do what everyone else is doing, you shouldn’t be surprised to get the same results. Different outcomes come from doing things differently.”

“The long game wins come from repeatedly doing hard things today that make tomorrow easier.”

“Let us prepare our minds as if we’d come to the very end of life…the one who puts the finishing touches on their life each day is never short of time.” ~Seneca

“Compound interest is the most powerful force in the universe. It’s the dogged, incremental, constant progress over a very long time.” ~Albert Einstein

“Failure seems to be nature’s plan for preparing us for great responsibilities. If everything we attempted in life were achieved with a minimum of effort and came out exactly as planned, how little we would learn—and how boring life would be! And how arrogant we would become if we succeeded at everything we attempted. Failure allows us to develop the essential quality of humility. It is not easy—when you are the person experiencing failure—to accept it philosophically, serene in the knowledge that this is one of life’s great learning experiences. But it is. Nature’s ways are not always easily understood, but they are repetitive and therefore predictable. You can be absolutely certain that when you feel you are being most unfairly tested, you are being prepared for great achievement.”” ~Napoleon Hill

“One of the biggest keys to success at anything is believing you can figure it out as you go along. A lot of people won’t start until they figure it out. And because most hard things can’t be figured out in advance, they never start.” ~Richard Feynman

“There are those who watch things happen, those who wonder what happened, and those who make things happen. Strive to be one of those who make things happen. If you show others what you can do, they will respect you far more than if you had simply told them what you’d done. Anyone can quarrel with words, but actions speak for themselves.” ~Tommy Lasorda

Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in a world they’ve been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It’s a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.” ~Muhammad Ali

“I believe that life operates at two levels. The higher level if the muse level—the level of your calling. The lower level is our material plane. On that plane is the force I call Resistance with a capital R. That’s there to stop us from reaching the higher level. The purpose of discipline is that discipline is what takes you to that higher level. That’s why you have to have it—discipline. You can’t wish your way to it. You can’t chant your way there. You can’t—that book The Secret—vibe or manifest your way there. The law of attraction is bullshit. It’s not going to get you there. The only way you get there is through hard and disciplined work. You got to punch your ticket and pay the price.” ~Steven Pressfield

“Doing your best isn’t about the result. You know you did your best before you show up. Over the long term, the long game, the average person who constantly puts themselves in a good position beats the genius who puts themselves in a poor position. And the best way to put yourself in a good position is with good preparation.”

“Any dominating idea, plan, or purpose held in the conscious mind through constant repetitive thought and emotionalized by the subconscious and acted upon by whatever natural and logical means may be available.” ~Napoleon Hill

“Ninety percent of success can be boiled down to consistently doing the obvious thing for an uncommonly long period of time without convincing yourself that you’re smarter than you are.”

“The Formula: The courage to start. The discipline to focus. The confidence to figure it out. The patience to know progress is not always visible. The persistence to keep going, even on the bad days.”

“Success is that place in the road where preparation and opportunity meet, but too few people recognize it because too often it comes disguised as hard work.”

“If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.” ~Jordan Peterson

“Anyone can make the simple complicated. Creativity is making the complicated simple.”

“Pro golfers have learned to miss their shots by narrower margins than amateurs.”

“Avoiding stupidity is easier than seeking brilliance.” ~Charlie Munger

“Being successful is easy. Staying successful is hard.”

“An ounce of action is worth a ton of theory.”

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Failing to Fail aka How to Succeed. It’s the mindset towards a goal. A want. A need or a must. To succeed and acquire, not fail, you require the power of passion, persistence, and perseverance.

THE SUDDEN (SUSPICIOUS?) DEATH OF U.S. PRESIDENT WARREN G. HARDING

One hundred years ago, on August 2nd, 1923, Warren G. Harding, the 29th President of the United States, suddenly died in a San Francisco hotel room. He was 57 years old. Immediately—due to no autopsy insisted upon by the ironclad demand from his wife, Florence Harding, and the fact that his body was embalmed one hour after death—suspicious rumors of foul play circulated. Conspirators came in many forms. Corrupt politicians, scandal cover-ups, quack physicians, and foreign operatives. But the most sinister accusation of all was Harding being intentionally poisoned by his wife.

The official cause of death released in press statements by the attending doctors was a “probable cerebral apoplexy”. In other words, President Harding had a stroke, a fatal brain event. There was no mention of any toxicity through poison nor any suggestion of a chronic cardiac condition, a heart attack.

Harding’s body was returned by train to Washington, DC, lay in state for two days, then was transported again by train to his hometown of Marion, Ohio where he was entombed in a marble crypt. His wife, Florence, died the following year of kidney failure and came to rest beside him. As the years passed, the truth of the Harding Administration emerged. It became known as America’s most scandalous presidency.

Extramarital lovers, illegitimate children, political corruption, cronies, bribes, payoffs, and even suicides emerged that painted a black mark on Harding’s history. The persistent suspicion of cover-up in his death failed to go away. Today, there’s a consensus as to what really happened in Harding’s death. We’ll get to that conclusion but, first, let’s look at who Warren Harding was, how he got to the White House, and how he came to die in that San Francisco hotel room.

Warren Gamaliel Harding was born on November 3rd, 1865—the year the Civil War ended—on his grandfather’s farm near Blooming Grove, Ohio. His father was a small-town physician with a small practice that earned little money. His mother was a devoutly religious homemaker with eight children to care for, including Warren who was the oldest. Harding was an average student but a very strong boy with even stronger work ethic.

Following grade school, Harding attended Ohio Central College graduating in 1882 with a B.S. degree (which grounded him as a later politician). Here he  gained experience editing and publishing the college paper. After college, Harding worked at various jobs such as a barn painter, a railroad laborer, and a horse team driver. It was in Marion, Ohio where Warren Harding got his first business break.

Harding had saved enough money to purchase a failing newspaper in Marion. He parlayed it into a profitable venture in which he wore all hats—reporter, editor, and publisher. These roles allowed Harding to get well connected and form the “Marion Gang” whom he nepotistically took with him through his political career, including placing some of these friends and allies in high-ranking service jobs in the United States federal government. That was to come back and haunt him.

In the late 1880s, Warren Harding met Florence Kling at a community dance. He became smitten with Florence who was the daughter of a banker and Marion’s richest man. Amos Kling did not approve of Warren Harding and warned Florence that Harding “would never amount to anything”. He refused to speak to Harding.

Florence Harding went to work in their newspaper business. She also got active in his political ambitions. “The only things I know are publishing and politics,” Florence was quoted as saying. She was especially good at politics.

History—now one hundred years after Harding’s death—records Harding to be an excellent speaker, very personable with a great memory for people, a driven man, but not too bright. Florence was smart, and she used her intelligence to make connections and pave roads for Harding to travel as he moved up the Ohio political ladder.

Warren Harding served as an Ohio State Senator from 1900 to 1904. From then to 1906 he was the Lieutenant Governor of Ohio, and in 1910 he ran as Ohio’s Governor but was defeated. Harding went back to the paper industry but in 1915 he entered federal politics and won a seat as a Senator for the State of Ohio. This opened doors in Washington.

The Republican national convention was deadlocked in the 1920 presidential selection race. Ultimately, the delegates chose Warren Harding as a compromise candidate. He went on to represent the Republicans as a moderate in the November 1920 presidential election. Together with running mate Calvin Coolidge, they won a landslide victory over the Democrats.

Warren G. Harding was inaugurated as the 29th United States President on March 4th, 1921. He ran on the slogan “Return to Normalcy” which fit his leadership style. America was only two years past the end of WWI and the public longed for a return to pre-war normal. The country was in a financial recession with what many Americans thought was unnecessary ties still with foreign countries.

Harding focused on a protectionist America by lowering taxes, increasing foreign tariffs, and getting the country out of the League of Nations process that dynamited Woodrow Wilson’s presidency. In one year after taking off, the country rebounded and began prosperity never seen before. It was the Roaring Twenties.

Warren Harding was a hands-off president. He appointed people he thought he could trust into high office and let them loose to do their jobs. His error was not holding them accountable and, given human nature, even his closest friends began to abuse their positions for personal gain.

Harding’s other error—his vice and weakness—was womanizing, drinking, and gambling. Rumors put him having secret tunnels under the White House where he would smuggle his girls in and ply them with illegal alcohol. (Remember, this era was the start of Prohibition.) Harding’s poker games were legendary as well as a well-known fact that he supported mistresses and had at least one illegitimate daughter. Warren and Florence were childless.

Among the brewing political and criminal crises was what’s known as the Teapot Dome Scandal. This involved an oil-producing region in Wyoming that held reserves set apart for the U.S. Navy. Harding had appointed his close Marion Gang friend, Albert B. Fall, as Secretary of the Interior who oversaw the federal lands at Teapot Dome and had the power to award oil production contracts. Fall pocketed hundreds of thousands of payoff money for preferential treatment. This scandal (among others), which Harding knew about, had the potential to have President Harding impeached.

It was under this stressful black cloud that Warren Harding departed Washington on his “Voyage of Understanding” cross-country train and ship tour in June of 1923. Members of Harding’s staff observed his health rapidly deteriorating. A once vibrant man with the world’s best handshake was notably nervous and privately conferring with advisors about how to diffuse the runaway in the Marion Gang.

“I can take care of my enemies all right. But my damn friends… they’re the ones that keep me walking the floor at night,” Harding said to one aide. To another, “If you knew of a great scandal in our administration, would you for the good of the country and the party expose it publicly, or would you bury it?”

President Harding’s tour took him across the west and up to Alaska. He spoke before hundreds of thousands of common folks in places like St. Louis, Kansas City, Denver, Salt Lake City, Helena, and Spokane. He went to a small Alaskan village called Metlakatla, then did a by-stop in Vancouver, Canada before heading straight for San Francisco and checking into the Palace Hotel with an extensive entourage including the future president Herbert Hoover who was his Secretary of Commerce.

Harding’s health had been going downhill since leaving Washington. The stress of his job and unfolding issues gave him a malady then diagnosed as neurasthenia which is an overly nervous condition where the sufferer is unable to relax. Compounding this condition, including non-recognizing many presenting symptoms of bad physical health, was the president’s personal doctor.

Charles E. Sawyer was part of the Ohio Gang. Sawyer wasn’t a trained physician. He was an odd, self-taught homeopath who prescribed plants and birds and rocks and things (not sure about sand and hills and rings) as substitutes for accepted medical practices. But Sawyer was a likable, down-homey Oh-Hi-Yo officially forehead-stamp-approved by Mrs. Harding who saw Sawyer as a 1920s genuine guru teaching them a better way.

Harding also traveled with a real doctor—Joel T. Boone. Dr. Boone knew Harding was critically ill and telegrammed ahead from Alaska to San Francisco, having two of the country’s leading cardiology specialists standing by. These were Dr. Ray Lyman Wilbur, the president of the American Medical Society, and Dr. Charles Cooper, the leading cardiac surgeon in the USA.

Dr. Boone knew what was happening.  President Harding was presenting these symptoms:

  • Severe abdominal and thoracic pains as in a crushing weight on the chest
  • Pain radiating down both arms
  • Shortness of breath
  • Dyspnoea at night
  • Nausea
  • Severe bouts of indigestion
  • Off and on fever—chills & sweats
  • Exhaustion after little energetic effort
  • Foul acetonic breath

Dr. Boone knew President Harding was suffering congestive heart failure and likely experienced a series of myocardial infarctions where his enlarged heart muscles were quickly failing. Boone knew Harding’s heart was likely to stop, and that he would suddenly die.

That happened at 7:20 pm on August 2nd, 1923. President Harding was in his hotel suite with his wife and two nurse care aids. Florence was reading a favorable column in the Saturday Evening Post. Harding remarked, “That is good. Go on.”

Florence continued when, with only a shudder and not a sound, the President of the United States stiffened, laid back on the bed, and instantly died.

President Harding’s staff came into the room. That included Herbert Hoover and Doctors Sawyer, Boone, Wilbur, Cooper, and another cardiac expert, Hubert Work. These medical practitioners debated the primary cause of death.

They knew the American public would immediately want to know what happened to their Commander-in-Chief and be assured nothing illegal, conspirator, or dark was behind the president’s sudden and unexpected death—especially when the official reports released to the following press during the Voyage of Understanding assured that Warren Harding was a man fit to competently hold office and guide the nation.

The doctors knew, under the circumstances, that no conclusive cause of death could be established without a complete and thorough autopsy. To this, Florence Harding was fiercely opposed. As Doctor Wilbur put it in his notes written the next day, “We shall never know exactly the immediate cause of President Harding’s death since every effort that was made to secure an autopsy was met with complete and final refusal by Mrs. Harding.”

Knowing that the public must be notified of the president’s death as soon as possible and that they would demand to know what happened—what the true cause of death was—the team of five physicians signed this statement:

Realizing their rush to judgment without medical evidence (and strongly suspecting a myocardial infarction or a heart attack), they released this second statement twenty minutes later:

Stroke of Cerebral Apoplexy. Myocardial Infarction. Let’s look at what these medical terms mean.

So how did the 1923 American public and folks over the last one hundred years go from accepting that President Warren G. Harding died of natural causes to a conspirator suspicion that he was murdered—possibly by his wife?

I think a few reasons. One is the president’s staff poorly handled the president’s health information. One day the president was strong as an ox. The next day he died.

There was no autopsy. His body was embalmed an hour after death. And this was through an ironclad order from the wife, Florence Harding, who knew full well of her husband’s infidelity and unwinding scandals.

Note: I cannot find anything in historical notes to determine if there was a San Francisco coroner having jurisdiction and the authority to hold the body while an independent autopsy was done. Or if any other authorities like the SF police were notified.

The other factor was the collective doctors’ stick handling of the “probable cause of death.” They were aware of the public backlash for knowing how serious the president’s medical condition and the perception of them not being seen to do something about it and prevent his death, but they first wrote it off as an unpredictable and unpreventable stroke, not a preventable heart attack. From Dr. Wilbur’s notes:

“In the aftermath, we were belabored and attacked by the newspapers antagonistic to Harding, and by the cranks, quacks, antivisectionalists, nature healers, the Dr. Albert Abrams electronic-diagnostic group, and many others. We were accused of starving the president, overfeeding him to death, of assisting in slowly poisoning him, and plying him to death with pills and purgatives. We were accused of being abysmally ignorant, stupid and incompetent, and even of malpractice. We were said to have forced our way to Harding’s bedside “through political pull and for political reasons.”

But the craziest theory of them all came from a book written by Gaston B. Means in 1930 titled The Strange Death of President Harding. Means claimed that Florence Harding murdered her presidential husband with poison. Without a shred of evidence, Means suggested two motives. One was because of her husband’s cheating. The other was to save him the embarrassment of the scandals. Gaston Means, by the way, went to jail over a con job in scamming the Charles Lindberg baby homicide case.

One hundred years have passed since United States President Warren G. Harding passed. There’s no doubt Harding had a fatal heart attack. That’s life, but the fallout from living the presidential life sucks. Here are lines from Herbert Hoover while dedicating a memorial to President Harding:

We saw him gradually weaken not only from physical exhaustion but from mental anxiety. Warren Harding had a dim realization that he had been betrayed by a few of the men whom he trusted, by men whom he believed were his devoted friends. That was the tragedy of the life of Warren Harding.