To be of value, or, in reference to a person, to be a success.

"amount to anything" refers to the expectation that a person will never be successful as to stable career, adequate income to support a family, purchase either necessities or luxuries, or find a purpose in life. The person who does not "amount to anything" is someone who drifts aimlessly, without purpose or knowledge. Of course, in a strictly materialistic context, it is a limited value system which understands life in a narrow way. It can be considered that those who drift aimlessly are acquiring knowledge, even if they pursue folly or a wasted life to get that knowledge. I cannot recommend it. One of the most cited wisdoms in all of human experience is that a person should seek to be useful, to be industrious, and to choose goals and specific purposes in life. It can be seen occasionally, that in mass minded humanity, there are recommendations that all "rules" should be abandoned as unnecessary restrictions, and that people should drift without purpose, and be what is termed "free". This is called "Doing--Your---Own---Thing" That usually leads to wasted life. Social activist Saul Alinsky wrote about that diffulty, at least as it manifested in the United States. He wrote as follows: ----------------------------------------------------- "In a world where everything is so interrelated that one feels helpless to know where or how to grab hold and act, defeat sets in; for years there have been people who've found society too overwhelming and have withdrawn, concentrated on "doing their own thing." Generally we have put them into mental hospitals and diagnosed them as schizophrenics." ]-----Prologue, page xix, "RULES FOR RADICALS" by Saul Alinsky, 1971, Vintage books edition ------------------------------------------------- .