The Myth of the "Self-Made Man". The United States today is dominated by arrogant fools who think that the wealth and power they enjoy is due to their own virtue and personal effort, as tho they have it by Divine Right, a gift from God Himself, and therefore owe nothing to others, not here, not in the world at large. Such a feeling, or ideology, is delusional. No one is "self-made". No one.
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We did not create ourselves, any of us, but were almost all the accidental result of biological forces we did not invent nor control in any measure. So we can't claim credit for having made ourselves in a literal sense. Our parents made us, but couldn't have done that had conditions not permitted. They had to live to a certain age to conceive us, and couldn't have done that absent various social conditions, including peace, an adequate supply of food, sanitary drinking water, and the availability of healthcare. They did not create any of those conditions, the absence of even one of which could have killed either or both of them long before they could have produced us.
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Many of us could not ever have come into existence were it not for the establishment of the United States, because our parents' families came from different parts of the world and would never have met had there not been a United States to migrate to. No one from these foreign countries created the United States.
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They could not have gotten here if there were no ships or planes. They didn't create ships or planes.
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Neither ships nor planes could have brought them here unless someone had created navigation systems and instruments to set a course for a specific spot on the globe. Our parents didn't invent navigation systems nor the instruments they require.
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Many of our parents met in school or college. They didn't create the school or college. They didn't educate the teachers nor build the buildings nor invent the buses that took them to school. They didn't refine the gas that powered the bus, nor build the refinery nor invent the technology to make gasoline from crude oil. They didn't create the pipeline or tanker that took the crude from one place and delivered it to a refinery in another place. They didn't drill the hole that penetrated the oil reservoir. They didn't finance the drilling.
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Perhaps their relationship depended on a first date arranged by telephone. They didn't invent the telephone, nor make the particular instruments they spoke into, nor install them, nor erect the telephone poles that carried the wires into their houses. The telephone runs on electricity. They didn't create the electricity, nor invent the technology, nor build the power stations, nor deliver the fuel to the generating stations, nor dig that fuel out of the ground, nor even finance the many, many interdependent projects and pay the millions of individual workers who did the actual work on which everything we do depends.
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You can't run a business or drive a car or take a business class or pick up a phone or speak a language or type a letter or negotiate a contract or do anything else of any sort without making use of the energies and talents of millions of people before you and around you, each of them contributing in his or her way to "your" success. How would you get to work without the highways or train lines that somebody else built? You can't even pay for the things you need, nor calculate how much you're worth, without using somebody else's money. No one of us invented the U.S. dollar (or any other currency), and without a society to back it, all money is worthless. Even gold and diamonds are worthless unless a society gives them value. They're just dead metal and shiny rocks unless somebody says they have value. And the value of any currency depends on the strength of the economy, a state of peace or war, the presence of absence of famine and pestilence, and many other forces not one of us controls.
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Nothing any of the rich and powerful has achieved in life would be even remotely possible without all the "little people", the ones who do the actual drilling and ditch-digging and laying of brick on brick or steel beam upon steel column; who run the buses and trains; who stitch the clothes and make the cloth; who grow the food we eat and fibers we cover our bodies with; who keep the bad guys at bay thru police work, or keep our homes and businesses from burning to the ground; who man the assembly lines that make our cars and computers, here or in dozens of countries around the planet; who process the mail or pick up your FedEx package; who dry clean your suit or cut your hair so you can be presentable at those business meetings you're so proud of; who made the conference table you make your deals around, and the swivel chairs you sit on; who do all the uncountable little jobs without which NOTHING WOULD WORK.
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So give me no bull about "self-made men". If it weren't for society, each of us would have to grow his own food, make his own clothes, build his or her own house, and fite everyone around just to survive. There would be no civilization, no money, no wealth, no safety, no security, no religion, no language! How would you even communicate without language? Compute costs and profits without math — which you would never have learned without school?
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At end, then, how can we justify extreme differences in income, if the wealth at the top of a social pyramid depends on the labors of huge numbers of people lower down? Absent the base, there is no top. And you can't arrange a second row unless there is a complete base row. Every step up the pyramid requires a solid base below. Remove the base, or even seriously weaken it, and the apex collapses.
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It is convenient for the privileged to credit themselves for their success. That is delusion. All of civilization not only stands on the shoulders of giants, but also rests on the strong backs of uncountable millions of "little people".
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 1,723.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 1:55 PM