Is "is success a choice?" a meaningful question?

From the post-modern department of Linguistic Philosophy and General Semantics, today's blog post is a commentary on a post from The Simple Dollar called "Is Success a Choice?".

In this post, Trent is writing to encourage his readers to go for their goals and to make no excuses. He is also writing in response to the criticism that he is not accounting for people in poverty or who otherwise cannot help themselves. This is his conclusion:

So, yes, I believe that for most people success is largely a choice - success can come to anyone at any time, but you steadily improve or worsen your chances with each choice you make. So go out there and start making choices to open the door a little wider - and have a little patience, too.

This softens the claim "success is a choice" to "for most people success is largely a choice." While this phrase feels better in my belly, and I find it inspirational, I have no way to evaluate this softened phrase for it's truth value because it still lacks specific content.

Who is choosing to do what instead of what else to achieve what outcome in what context?

“Success” is not a choice–it is a nominalization. So is “choice.” A nominalization is a part of speech where you take a verb like "relating" and change it to a noun like "relationship." It has the effect of making something sound pervasive and permanent that is in effect a collection of events in time.

One test of a noun to see whether it is a nominalization is to ask "can you put it in a wheelbarrow?" Test: democracy (no), bananas (yes), courage (no), success (no), choice (no), magazine (yes).

Another test is to put "an ongoing..." in front and see if it makes sense. If yes, it is a nominalization. Test: an ongoing relationship (yes), and ongoing banana (no), an ongoing choice (yes), and ongoing success (yes), an ongoing pencil (no).

The problem with nominalizations is they are not actionable. You can't do anything about "a choice," but you can choose to make a phone call. It's unclear how to get more "success," but it may be more clear how you might act if you were to successfully make a presentation at work, and what you might need to do to prepare for a successful presentation.

It's difficult to answer the question "is success a choice?" for all people in all contexts. Until we sort out the particular cases by answering the question "Who is choosing to do what instead of what else to achieve what outcome in what context?" and make generalizations based on aggregate data, we are merely spouting rhetoric.