Since I never had the opportunity to study art, I had no feel at all for the idea that success could mean something else, perhaps something purely in the aesthetic sense.

I did have the occasion to study a lot of philosophy as an undergrad. And I did read a lot of Aristotle, Plato, Socrates and the others. Perhaps it was too long ago, but I don't remember the subject of success coming up in any meaningful way. Perhaps it was couched in terms of happiness, since that would likely capture the imagination of youth.

"Since success is a perfect and self-sufficient objective, it must include the whole of life and all the most important virtues," Aristotle said. "Success in life, the best possible good for man, is therefore living one's whole life in a rational way, under the guidance of the best virtues of the rational soul."

Maybe, but Aristotle's ethical definition seems abstract today. Compared to some of his critics, however, it is quite practical.

But not as practical as a mere dictionary definition, or even the wikipedia online encyclopedia definition.

Success may mean: a level of social status; achievement of an objective/goal; or obviously, the circular definition, the opposite of failure.

But in capitalistic, materialistic America, I don't think that is how most people look at success. I think they define it more like what you will find with a simple Google search for the term, where scam artists and inspirational authors galore will tell you what it takes to be a success.

Like this title that pops up as an ad in Google: I'm Rich. Why Aren't You? Wealth and success are a choice. Create unbelievable wealth at home!

Or this relative street philosopher: "There is only one success - to be able to spend your life in your own way."

That sounds easy. But it doesn't really wash, does it?

On one of his visits to America, someone asked the Dalai Lama. Here is what he said.

"We all have every right to successful life, happy life," he said, emphasizing that money shouldn't be part of the definition of success or happiness. "We should not forget our inner values. By inner value I mean ... human affection, or another word, human compassion."

OK, but what if you are a blogger and want to know how to judge success?

Is simply linking up with the highest number of other blogs and getting a lot of traffic and selling a bunch of blog ads enough to be a success? Or if your goal is political activism, shouldn't you be expected to produce some tangible result at some point, like maybe a change in public policy or swinging an election?

Since I consider blogs to be nothing more than computer software, which makes it easy to publish on the new printing press, the Web Press, it might be useful to consider the historical definition of success in the American news business.

Even in today's climate of declining newspaper readership, news organizations define success in almost an entirely capitalistic way: Circulation, ad sales and profit. If a newspaper is losing readers, ad pages and turns in a profit of less than 20 percent, chances are the publisher will be on his way out like a football coach who cannot win enough games to satisfy the fan base.

Case in point the Los Angeles Times recent turnover in management (and the Alabama Crimson Tide's firing of Mike Shula).

So certainly, one of the measures of a blogger's success is their ranking in Technorati, and the price of a blog ad at BlogAds.Com. But let me suggest another and perhaps more important measure, borrowed to some extent from one of the measures of success in the Pulitzer Prize committee's award in the public service category.

For a purely political, activist blogger to claim to be a success, should not his work have to result in some change in public policy as a result of an investigation of some kind, or perhaps swinging an election as a result of some revelation (like maybe outing yet another gay, religious, Republican hypocrite)?

It would also be interesting to discuss how the media and historians judge the success of politicians and their policies, such as whether George W. Bush will go down in history as the worst American president ever due to his failed war in Iraq. It might also be instructive to see how al Qaeda judges its success in the war against the infidels, or for that matter, how a religion judges success based on the numbers of souls saved - or the amount of money in the collection plate.

Or, one might ask an expert in the art community to define successful art, which might well include the going commercial value of the art, or simply the act of getting one's point across to some kind of an audience, however small.

Many artists are never financially successful in their own time, but go on to be considered greats in history. I don't know much about painting, but I believe many of the artists whose work is most sought after today at the greatest values died penniless (Renoir, Monet, Van Gogh, Picasso).

Certainly Henry David Thoreau was no great success as a writer in his own time, but many literary critics consider his work today to have far more lasing value than his wildly successful friend, Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Someone asked the Transcendentalist author the question about how to define success back in the 1800s. I kind of like what Emerson had to say about it.

"The definition of success: To laugh much; to win respect of intelligent persons and the affections of children; to earn the approbation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to give one's self; to leave the world a little better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to have played and laughed with enthusiasm, and sung with exultation; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived - this is to have succeeded."

By these definitions, it is impossible to know until your life is almost fully lived whether or not you are a success. If you do not think you are a success now, but you are not yet dead, then there is still a chance, isn't there?

And what if you reach some or most of your goals in life but still have much life left to live?

Surely financial independence alone cannot guarantee a person success and happiness. I've known too many miserable rich kids for this to be true. I suspect a person has to accomplish something in life, to have a feeling of accomplishment.

One of the few goals I had the audacity to dream in life many years ago I never expected to accomplish, due to the trajectory of my early career in the news business. I told myself, no one else, that just once, I would like to have my name on a byline story on the front page of the Sunday New York Times.

I accomplished that goal, and it was not just luck or a gift. I've heard luck defined recently as the intersection of where preparation and opportunity meet. I looked for that opportunity and acted and went for it when the time was right. But so what? It didn't get me hired as a full time correspondent for the New York Times, or win me a Pulitzer Prize. Those decisions were dependent on the action of others and well beyond my control.

But at least no one ever accused me of making up stories or plagiarism or filing stories from places I had never been.

During the course of my life and career I have taken part in affecting public policy on stories too numerous to mention, accept for the most relevant one to this Web site, which stopped a river from being dammed. But that is not enough to sustain one throughout the course of a lifetime. I would like to have a story like that about once a month.

In the absense of that, these days I define success as freedom. The freedom to write about what I want to write about on my very own printing press, to go canoeing in a mountain stream and take pictures of birds if I want to - and to generate some audience who are interested in that work.

It is not necessary to be the number one blogger according to Technorati or to make more money than anyone else.

As long as I can get by and not have to compromise my integrity by working for a corrupt, corporate publisher - and as long as I am free to play some golf, not in any federal prison – then every day is a successful day.

Now if I could just figure out how to hibernate through the winter like a grizzly bear…