"It would be unthinkably humiliating to fail now. At this point he is committed to fight to the death."

I'm going to have to disagree with the majority of fanboys here and say that I (still) disagree with Paul's premise that a good way to spend your life is to be miserable in anticipation of a tiny chance to be wealthy. I'd rather enjoy my job every day instead of live in the kind of environment where failure would be synonymous with my actual death. Many great things have come of "failure."