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>I hate when someone says, "Oh, Schwarzenegger is the perfect example of a self-made man" because I'm not. I'm a creation of my parents. I'm a creation of my coaches, my teachers. I have been helped by my training partners, by my friends. Especially when I think about coming to America, it was Joe Wheeler that helped me to come over here, got me the airline ticket, helped me get the apartment and the car. The people of California voted for me to be governor of California. So I didn't become governor because I'm self-made; I became governor because people voted for me.

I love this humility and wish more people would have it. Even if you weren't supported by individuals, it is due to the society around you, its infrastructure, its structure, its technology, that you are able to be a "success". We are the product of things we had no control over initially. Yet people still say "self made" ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

11 comments

Both concepts can be true. A lot of people, especially in the developed world, have way more opportunities than they realize. Those that take on some (often very modest) risk to exercise those opportunities are self-made.

It would be ridiculous to say that Picasso didn't make a painting because someone else supplied the paint. He's the one that saw the paint and the canvas and put them together in a unique way.

Because what you are describing is literally what happens in all situations for everything, it shouldn't even factor into success. It's a given that to be successful, there are external entities involved (infrastructure, people).

I suppose if you get a PHD, you should be thanking the factory worker that was responsible for the paper in your diploma. Should you also thank Bill Gates for providing the operating system and software that allowed you to write your thesis?

Instead, it's being used as a tactic to cut down anyone that is successful (you didn't earn that success, it was the people around you).

If success were that easy, everyone would be successful..but this just isn't reality.

People hear what they want to, to be honest. Most of the time, in my experience, people aren't trying to "cut down" successful people, they are just trying to show that it wasn't all skill and good decisions. Its a response to the idea that people who are successful, and especially those with financial success, are somehow morally superior to those who are less successful. This idea is pervasive, at least in the USA, and that's the context people are usually coming from when they talk about the externalities that lead to success. And honestly, if successful people don't recognize the luck that also went into their success, they become delusional.

Financial success --> morally superior. Reminds me calvinism. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_work_ethic

There's definitely a subset of people who have achieved nothing in their life, and instead of changing simply resent others who've done something.

Invariably, these people spend more time in online communities like Reddit and come to dominate the conversation there. They also (surprise, surprise) congregate in low skilled jobs where you can phone it in a bit.

Depending on your circles, you might not come across them much, but they are absolutely everywhere.

Most of what you've said is nonsense that capitalists feed the middle and lower classes to keep them fighting eachother. The "low skill" jobs are generally the ones you can't phone it in as much, because there's actual work to be done at all times. I say that having worked in many different environments, from gas stations to a large cap tech company. The cashiers at the gas station were at least as busy and hardworking as any devs I ever worked with, and both are much, much harder working than basically anybody with an MBA, who are generally the people most likely to talk about how they are "self-made."

I agree and would add that in my esperience people in richer countries work less than those in poorer. In the Netherlands people work less than in Italy, in Italy people work less than in Morocco. This happens because in richer countries they are relatively more efficient.

Thank the factory worker for the paper and Bill Gates for the OS sounds like a lovely idea! Marie Kondo vibes.

I agree "success is not your own" can be weaponized, but also let's not throw the baby out with the bath water. The paper - and this humanity team we are on - did help!

I was once at a conference with multiple game developers. My background is that I learned myself programming at a young age. I was also good at school so I completed a Masters degree in CS.

Another guy in the group was also a game developer, but never studied further. Someone labeled this person as a "self-made man". Which I found weird at the time, because I also put in the "self-made" work to get my Masters degree.

It's basically a concept of whatever you want to make of it. If people enjoy labeling themselves or others as "self-made", I have no problem with that. For me it holds no value at all. And for Arnold, it feels offensive because he realizes he wouldn't have the success without the support he got from the people around him.

Every success is made up of a part that you did, and a part that others did. And the part that others did will always be way bigger than your part. Shoulders of giants and all that.

My father thanked the typist who prepared the final copy of his PhD thesis.

But Picasso was also lucky enough to be born in a place and time where he had access to enough economic surplus that he could spend time painting rather than having to spend all his time working the fields just to survive. He also had the extra good fortune of being in a situation where those around him had access to enough economic surplus that they could afford to buy his paintings at a pretty substantial markup over the actual cost of production. None of these things are givens.

I don’t even know why people bother argue such things?

To not feel bad others have accomplished more?

>To not feel bad others have accomplished more?

No; I think the self-made man is dangerous because it leads people to believe 2 things:

1.) You can and should go it alone

2.) Other people shouldn't need your help.

I don't think Arnold tells his story the way he does in order to diminish his own accomplishments. It's used to highlight all the people that helped him along the way to get him to where he is. It's important to ask for help, to ask for guidance and depend on others. There's no glory in going it alone and you can be propelled immensely by relying on others to support your efforts.

Furthermore, it's important to provide a lending hand to others. Great men are built with the help of others and you have a responsibility to help others excel when you can. I think telling these stories help break the hyper-individualistic ethos of the American self-made man. Once you break this myth that so-and-so is self-made, we can make steps into re-examining how we treat our families, friends and fellow Americans (and/or countrymen). Common adages such as "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" will become more and more asinine once we understand no one is fully self-made; and I think that change in social psyche will have societal benefits.

Okay; maybe, in some cases going alone is fine, in some cases not. That's a discussion worth having.

But even if that's the argument, that's not the way OP phrased his point.

His point entirely about how the greats where just a product of their environment and not their individual greatness.

Not a discussion that seems to in anyway advance to a better progress of group or individual; but more about pettiness tbh.

There are many examples in life where I have seen people and recognized that if this person were born in a slightly different household, slightly different time, slightly different economy, etc. - this person would have made it big!

I have actually seen this in many places.

One example on top my head- my neighbor was a talented video editor. Not legendary level, but okay. He eventually set up shop for editing wedding videos and such. He got contracts, he got praises and contracts in affluent families- all of this was not enough for sustaining a middle class life for an adult. He eventually set up a convenient store with the help of his father in law. He was quite old and had to move on to earn a middle class income. He did not have access to internet until early 2010s.

Now, his nephew, who is also my neighbor is also a video editor. But he got internet since he was born. He has all the resources. He has discord servers where people guide him and share resources. He is also an online gamer, and edited his own videos and posted them online. That led him to international contracts. Last month he earned US$120 working a single night.

That's HUGE for a 19 YO in small town India. Had his uncle (now in his early 40s) had all these, he would have made it big.

Circumstances do influence heavily how much a person succeeds.

I don't hold the line that equal opportunities lead to equal outcome- that doesn't happen.

But do think about the child that was born today in slavery in Libya, and a child born to a FAANG worker parent in Bay Area.

Do you think that they have equal chances of success?

And, I will also mention that Picasso had neighbors and peers. They didn't become as famed. Talent and individuality matters, too.

It makes me feel even better looking at accomplished peoples work. Seeing the whole thing come together, everyone's contributions that lead to works of art, science, engineering, etc. It would make me feel shitty that "accomplished people" were standalone in their works, where no one along their life was ever helpful or interested or supported or bought their works. It takes a village (or a planet/solar system/galaxy/universe worth of everything going right for a single accomplishment to have happened)

Probably worth arguing about, because so many people that think they are 'self-made' also want to take away opportunities from others.

So its good to keep these concepts in the general awareness.

Picasso shares those surpluses with hundreds of millions of other people. That didn’t make him special.

Picasso was the son of an accomplished painter and art professor, who tutored him from a young age. That's not the sort of opportunity that's all around average people.

In reference to what Arnold is talk aobut, he's more so referring to the people that shaped him into the person he is today, from his parents to everyone that he has met along the way. So in regards to Picasso, it wouldn't be the paint supplies, but everyone that supported/encouraged/discouraged/nay saysers, that guided him along the way to his success.

The Picasso analogy really doesn't work, it makes no sense.

Picasso was a communist. He would have insisted that he couldn’t have used his talent without the collective production of all of society.

This is sort of a crippling mindset though. If we tell ourselves others succeed because of what they were given, that's not really putting yourself in a position where you're likely to take control over your own life. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Whether you tell yourself you're destined for greatness or be a deadbeat and fighting against this destiny is pointless, and you're more than likely to be correct.

I don't think this is particularly informative. You gotta play the hand you're dealt and make the most of it. It's not fair in the sense everyone has the same opportunities, but there's still a spectrum of accomplishments that can be achieved by any given person.

This response, to me, misses the point. Yes, you gotta play the hand you're dealt. It's not crippling at all to acknowledge the cards in your hand. If you don't have any pairs or face cards or whatever, it is not crippling to acknowledge that. Acknowledging the help of other is not telling ourselves we're succeeding because of "what we were given", and acknowledging the role of chance isn't denigratory either. To me, acknowledging what others helped us with, the chance encounters that helped, etc can help us seek out more chance, more help, and then provide that to others as well. Then we can indeed make our own luck and create luck for others.

Acknowledging the help of others is just not at all the same as lessening our own contributions.

I guess it is true that some folks see it that way, that if you ever thank or acknowledge anyone else then you're weak, there is this pressure to pretend that everything is original and done alone, but... that's just lying.

Both points are valid, and I agree with both. It's ok, they're different points.

First, it is a problem that people don't recognize and acknowledge the external factors behind success. It leads to poor decisions, helplessness and other negative feelings, and reactivity ("why didn't you just save more of your minimum wage like I did with the interest from my trust fund?").

Second, it is a problem to see success as only determined by external factors, then you lose agency and are less likely to do as well as your opportunities allow. You are permanently "bad at math", you can only get somewhere if the Man stops pushing you down. It's the opposite of a growth mindset.

I worked with high school kids and college kids for a while. I saw this exact mindset far too much.

Students were obsessed with picking apart people's success stories and attributing all of the success to some external factor. I can't tell you how many times I heard someone bring up Bezos just so they could tell me about the $300K loan he got, or Musk so they could talk about the emerald mine story. We tried to discourage using celebrities like Bezos or Musk as role models anyway, but people were drawn back to them because they enjoyed picking them apart.

There's something satisfying about this mindset that can explain away every success story as the result of factors out of their control. It's comforting to tell yourself that the only reason you didn't become a billionaire is because your parents didn't give you a $300K business loan or own an emerald mine or whatever other justification they could come up with.

It was a lot of work to try to defeat this mindset and get students focused on what they could incrementally accomplish within what they were working with. Honestly, getting them to let go of the celebrities like Musk and Bezos and others was half of the battle, but they also couldn't care less when we tried to introduce local successful business operators who ran companies they had never heard of.

It's tough. Social media makes it harder, and honestly the people who read Reddit seem prone to the worst of it.

That kind of mindset is arguably the norm for the rest of the world. Tall Poppy Syndrome in the UK and Australia, or worse, the extreme bullying in Japan and Korea. It's perhaps what made the USA so unique in having a culture that was opposed to that and willing to take risks. So it's pretty sad to see the USA drop it's own individualism in favour of collectivism.

I would argue that true maturity is when someone can take care of themselves, recognize their inputs with gratitude, and ask for help when needed with humility, not expecting that someone else would take care of them AND being grateful even if they don't get it.

The polarization of our arguments leads us to pretty shallow poles.

I agree that self-efficacy is a predictor of success and taking initiative. While it's not mutually exclusive with the recognition of social support, I think that rationalization espoused by Arnold is used by some as an instrument for self-defeat/self-pity and a defense mechanism against taking action. Example beliefs: "I probably couldn't become a world champion bodybuilder, because I don't have the support network Arnold had, so I won't bother"; "people who create successful startups all come from rich parents and stable households, I shouldn't even try"; "I'll never lose weight without a super-pill".

So I agree with you and somewhat with those who are responding to you.

If you find it crippling, you haven't at all understand what he meant.

It's just gratitude.

Nothing "crippling" about that.

It depends on the perspective. If you look at yourself and see you got where you are because of the help you got, that's great.

If you look at someone else, and see they got where they are because of help available to them but not you, that's crippling.

I disagree. Equal opportunity is a lie. Our options ebb and flow with the fickle sensibilities of our communities. Having the 'wrong' hair color can disqualify you from opportunity.

My argument does not assume equal opportunity. Regardless of which opportunities are available to you, you can squander them of make the best of them.

It's a mindset more based on reality than the opposite mindset. It keeps you grounded, which is a good thing, imo.

Contrast to Vinod Khosla who couldn’t have been anywhere near as successful anywhere other than California. As a thank you he tries to restrict public access to California beaches.

Maybe it’s the language and phrasing that implies 1 of the 2 extremes.

1. Self made, implying it was solely the efforts of a said persons OR

2. Product of timing, luck, circumstance, implying there was nothing special about what the said person did.

Reality is it’s probably often a mix of both. The person had help, the right environment etc but also talent and put in hard work. Maybe there is a better phrase than “self made”. “Through effort and circumstance”, but catchier.

I'm quite sure that was Joe Weider.

I think you're right.

This seems like a pretty plain blunder.

He's a (successful) politician. I wouldn't expect him to say that of course he's self-made and his listeners (whose votes he may or may not need) are a bunch of not-self-made losers. That sentence doesn't give me a lot of information about what he actually thinks.

Will you stay consistent and blame failures on society as well? Many are quick to take away one's successes as earned but then make some BS up about all bad things being deserved.

The just world fallacy is one of the most harmful.

We aren't strictly the product of environmental determinism. That has an influence, but we don't all make the same choices. There's a social expectation among public facing individuals to downplay their efforts and investments and chalk everything up to privilege, luck or divine blessing, and they're punished for deviating from that.

There are ample examples of people who are supported similar, if even better (privilege) by society and do not reach that level of success. So I guess if there were a regression model, you would find his own hard work elevated him above the others.

It reminds me of Mr. Rogers' wonderful lifetime achievement award acceptance speech:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Upm9LnuCBUM#t=1m24s

In practice, there’s no conflict between feeling gratitude for the positive things in one’s life and having an internal locus of control. In theory, those feelings are hard to express in a single narrative