Logan Roy’s Wisdom: Take the F–king Money
I’ve been on a Succession tv series binge recently. Succession a satirical black comedy-drama as described on Wikipedia:
“The series centers on the Roy family, the owners of global media and entertainment conglomerate Waystar RoyCo, and their fight for control of the company amidst uncertainty about the health of the family's patriarch.”
I’ve never watched a show where literally every character is a completely horrific, absolutely terrible human being. Maybe that is the point. Probably also a morality tale. As the Defector wrote: “Succession is about a lot of things, and one of them is the ways in which the richest, most powerful, and most sociopathic people in America go about shaping the world that the rest of us have to live in. These people have the power that they do, in part, because they can describe and manifest the world to fit whatever vision most pleases them.” But anyways, it’s damn entertaining. Like watching a dramatic train wreck in slow motion. It sticks in your memory after a long time.
The Patriarch Logan Roy, modelled off Rupert Murdoch & Andrew Carnegie, is always good for a quote. "You're such f**kng dopes. You're not serious figures. I love you, but you are not serious people." His threats during corporate intrigues: "I’m gonna grind his f**king bones to make my bread." Or when he tells his eldest son, Kendall: “You’re not a killer. You have to be a killer. But now a days, maybe you don’t. I don’t know.”
He gives great life advice: “You make your own reality. And once you’ve done it, apparently, everyone’s of the opinion it was all so f—ing obvious.” Sometimes even prosaic insights: “The future is real. The past is all made up.”
But there was one quote that stood out to me: “America, I don’t know….When I arrived, there were these gentle giants smelling of gold and milk. They could do anything. Now look at them. Fat as F-ck. Scrawny or on meth, or yoga. They pissed it all away.” My God is this not true. Especially in 2025.
It’s the barbell effect in America. Extremistan. One side of the barbell, a small group of ultra fit, competitive and ruthless (and lucky) individuals who own all the assets and have crushed it. And on the other side of the barbell, unhealthy, uninterested, video game playing, Netflix watching, fast food eating, lumpen mass. The great divergence. It’s so strange and the difference is so extreme. It’s a volatile mix and history shows that inequality only leads to massive societal violence. Not sure how it gets better.
All I can honestly say is that things in America are only gonna get more competitive, meaner, rougher and tougher. As Logan Roy said: "Life’s not knights on horseback. It’s a number on a piece of paper. It’s a fight for a knife in the mud."