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This is an interesting historical article but the thread so far is too shallow (i.e. reacting only to one controversial phrase in the title), generic (i.e. disengaged from any of the interesting details in the article), and ideological. Generic ideological tangents make for lame and repetitive threads (https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...).
I've replaced the title with the subtitle in the hope that this may help.
Thank you!
In the debate between self made and team effort my opinion is “both.”
Nobody starts from zero. Everyone builds on the work of others with help from others.
At the same time, individuals can make unique contributions and are not just interchangeable parts. You see this over and over again in art, music, engineering, science, literature, etc., or really anything requiring skill. People aren’t interchangeable.
I think both positions, when argued exclusively, lead to a false devaluing of most human life. The “great man” theory leads to the idea that 99.999% of humans are mediocre at best and we all exist to serve a tiny number of greats. The “it takes a village” theory leads to the view that everything is a collective product and nobody is unique or special in any way. So you get the idea that 100% of humans are an undifferentiated mass of aggregate labor. That makes people just as disposable as if we are mere peons existing to serve the greats.
I think the reality is that we are an interdependent network of unique contributors.
It's just a restatement of 'nature vs nurture' isn't it? And as you say, both of those things are necessary. Broadly, greatness without circumstances likely leads to obscurity; circumstances without greatness likely leads to indolence. The latter being what often seems to happen in families with generational wealth - some family member makes the fortune, and some later generation, lacking the earlier drive, squanders it.
Yes, facts make it necessarily both.
But what does that mean? What is attribution? What is ownership? How does our legal framework work? How does the media speak about reality?
The reason for "great men" isn't that its true, it's that that's how our society is structured. These ideas come from how our property is structured.
If a person can own as much wealth as millions and the media is on their side; great men exist.
Like kings. Kings made sense at the time, and were great, not because they were strong, admirable, and morally good individuals, they were great because they owned all the land and could chop your head off or let you rot in jail for saying otherwise.
The reality of which you speak is not compatible with the implications of the world we live in. This truth about the world cannot exist practically, materially.
> Kings made sense at the time, and were great, not because they were strong, admirable, and morally good individuals, they were great because they owned all the land
That depends on the society. The king in Achaemenid Persia owned all the land. His successors the Seleucid Greek kings didn't. A medieval European king didn't even come close.
I read something to the effect that (in one very early Mesopotamian city) the king owned about 1/3 of the land, another ~1/3 was owned by large landholders who numbered maybe a couple dozen (this group included the queen), and the final ~1/3 was owned by a very large number of small landholders.
> If a person can own as much wealth as millions and the media is on their side; great men exist.
Consider the alternatives to this.
The first is that great works are being accomplished without anyone being in charge of them. People invent alternating current and land on the moon in a completely decentralized manner with no one leading the effort and no one making a larger contribution than anyone else. Not the thing where everyone gets to try but only one out of a million succeeds but rather some other thing where everyone is a fungible cog and you can't identify anyone as being the lynchpin or anyone else as not pulling their weight, and yet the great works still happen.
The second is that great works are not being accomplished.
The first one seems implausible. The second one seems bad.
Many kings were strong and admirable. Not sure why you are so down on individual kings even if monarchy is not a great system of governance and prone to tyranny.
Good kings provided protection from the very real threat of foreign barbarians, provided a common legal framework, and eased commerce, and thus human flourishing. Good kings deserve commendation even if monarchy has issues.
Ascribing only vices (chopping heads off) to monarchs is wrong.
To be clear, I am a staunch republican and believe king Charles and other European monarchs need to step down. However you are engaging in revisionism
Is that the traditional meaning of 'great' in "great men theory"?
If so, why not just say "strong men" or "powerful men" instead?
> Everyone builds on the work of others with help from others.
In game theory a coalition is a group where the group's utility is greater than the sum of each member's utility. In other words: "we're stronger together".
The problem with the self-made man myth is that it frames things as if it is shameful to have help. Having had help does not diminish your accomplishments. Having had help just means you're human.
The same goes for luck. Just because you got lucky doesn't mean you didn't work hard nor deserve the rewards. There's a saying I like
The harder I work, the luckier I get.
Being able to recognize these things helps us do better and help more people do better. But if we pretend we just did it all on our own then we can't actually recognize how things came to be. Which means we're going to have a hard time replicating that success. By pretending that everything is all on us and nothing else then we'll fail while trying to repeat the successful strategy, we'll fail when offering advice to others, and we'll just be blind to the world around us. We'll never recognize that we have to make the iron hot! Even the best blacksmith in the world can't hammer frozen iron into shape.
Again, having had luck or help doesn't mean you didn't work hard or that you don't deserve what you have. Things aren't binary. There's not a single causal factor to any complex phenomena. The problem is seeing things in black and white. There's a million things that go into success and while most of that will be on you, you can't ignore things like the environment and those that helped you along the way. After all, we're all in this together.
> The problem with the self-made man myth
Is that it's a complete straw man. It's not about not having help - every great achiever has had a figurative (sometimes literal) army of supporters behind them. Including those in history.
What the "theory" actually posits seems trivially true - that the people who do super extraordinary things are extraordinary themselves. Whether it's talent, hard work, both, insanity, etc. The idea that these people are just normal and very lucky or whatever is absurd.
Blurb points to the author's other book
Pull: Networking and Success Since Benjamin Franklin
Suggesting that she indeed thinks of the self-made myth itself as a product of many cooks.
I'm more skeptical of her framing this mythmaking as an early but enduring model for populist strategy that was (initially) opposed by the elites of the time.
For context, a review of hers of antitax historiography asks:
How do the privileged rule a democracy without triggering a populist revolt? Scholars Steve Fraser, Gary Gerstle, and their colleagues in Ruling America (2005) see historical continuity in the exercise of the founts of riches and power at elites' disposal. The Power to Destroy astutely addresses this question without asking it directly. Even so, a longer historical perspective would have enriched Graetz's approach to analyzing a populist revolt and its destructiveness. The revolt he tracks was not triggered against the rich and powerful, but on their behalf against the progressive state. His analysis provides an invaluable and distressing new twist on the long-standing question of how the privileged rule in a democracy
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/955278
https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691225562/th...
My own derived question is whether there are historical examples of directed-myth-making (fully adopting your balanced perspective on "individual VS communal values") servicing political goals _orthogonal_ to the populism/elitism axis
> The “great man” theory leads to the idea that 99.999% of humans are mediocre at best and we all exist to serve a tiny number of greats
I feel this take says more about the person saying it then it does about the great men theorists.
Believing that revolutions often happen due to a few individuals does not mean that you believe most people are there to serve anyone. That's a non sequitur
I think you missed OP's point. "Leads to" is the key phrase, and they're talking about how both ("Great Man" and "Inevitable Forces") theories end up being used as propaganda to support political purposes. Both (as you point out) have some truth to them, and (as you do) can be addressed objectively, but both can be transmuted into ideology,
Excellent essay
Few myths in our society are as dangerous and as anti-social as the “self made man”. No one is self made and all achievements are the result of groups of people working together.
While that may be true, there are people that move the needle more than others.
Certainly. But I can't think of anyone using an idiom like "just another cog, so don't try to do anything".
"Self-made man", "maverick", and various myths about lone geniuses and innovators without collaboration and supporters are heavily supported by (at least) American politicians and pundits.
It's obviously true that nobody achieves things in a vacuum, since we all have some level of "privilege" given to us by our economic circumstances, the level of education available to us, our luckier heritable traits, etc. But for every successful person, there are countless others born to a similar level of privilege who squandered it. The claim that everyone owes their successes to the group ignores this.
The degree to which an individual is responsible for his own success, and the degree to which fortune enables it, is as old as time. In ancient Greek philosophy (and poetry), a person's life is divided into soul, body, and fortune: one exerts control over one's soul and body, but not over one's fortune, the sum total of things external to him, such as his family and friends and money. Virtues reside in the soul, and external blessings like wealth and the support of others outside the body, and the ancient Greeks were clear in this distinction, of which both halves are necessary but insufficient to achieve great benefits for one's people. Hence the idea that happiness is the exercise of vital powers along lines of virtue within a life affording them scope: the "lines of virtue" are internal elements of character, but "a life affording them scope" is the external support necessary. A virtuous hermit living in poverty alone on an island and a ruinously depraved criminal in the midst of civilization, the one virtuous but lacking fortune and the other fortunate but lacking virtue, are equally ill-suited to achieving great benefits for mankind.
Owing your success to the group does not imply that the success itself is a guarantee. Just that without the group, the odds are many many times worse.
I would argue that the degree to which you owe something credit for your success is the degree to which it guarantees that success. If my society/group/family guarantees my success, no matter my actions, I owe it everything. If it makes no difference at all, I owe it nothing.
If it merely improves my odds, then I owe it something, but there must have been at least one other factor at play, and that factor is also owed credit. I presume you would call that factor something like "luck". No doubt that that plays a role, but credit for luck belongs neither to the society nor the individual. All that is left, then, is individual choice, and so the rest of the credit belongs to the individual.
I have seen quite a few Americans saying "nobody ever gave me anything" while they were literally from upper class and their parents/families gave them a lot. And actually most people who are born rich stay rich. Some do squander it, but it takes a lot more effort to squander stuff for them then for someone who starts poor.
The "failing upwards" is an actual thing and who is around you massively influences whether you are failing upwards or downwards.
I only argued that legitimate cases of individual achievement exist. The fact that trust fund babies also exist does not contradict that.
If you were to truly do a science of people would you not take into account all of the circumstances that person was in, in order to understand them?
You say: "One achieved it, but the other person in similar circumstances didn't achieve it"
Well how do their circumstances differ? Don't you think it's important how they differ? Actually, couldn't how they differ be the key?
Why, then, do you draw the line at an incomplete analysis? Maybe because it is convenient? Maybe because we'd rather not destroy our illusions of ourselves? Maybe its convenient not to understand others?
What is real in regards to ones self and others? There shouldn't be a loss of pride with understanding.
What level of analysis would you consider "complete"? Certainly if we accounted for every neuron in their brain we could reduce their achievements to whatever configuration of gray matter produced the thoughts and actions that led to their success, and whatever external events produced that configuration. But then we would be at a level of analysis that regards us all as automatons, where nobody, including the group, is accountable for anything at all. This may or may not be technically correct, but I would argue that it is not useful. The question of who gets "credit" for an achievement would be entirely moot, as would the achievement itself and everything else any human has ever done.
I would think the correct level of analysis for this conversation is the lowest one that still allows people to be accountable for their own actions. Lower than that, and the central question of this thread is irrelevant.
A big hurdle to proper analysis is that people are unreliable narrators.
Let's take a person who made it rich betting big on bitcoin early on. Were they a savvy investor who made their own fortune, did they merely think it sounded cool and thought why not while bitcoin prices were so low that snatching them up was super cheap, did they rely on a tip or tips from friends/family, or was it some other reason?
If you come back and ask them years later after they've become worth 10^7 or better, how likely is the person who merely got lucky to admit it was dumb luck in an environment that lionizes the wealthy as self-made superhumans?
I agree, but many will say that the ones who didn't squander it were simply lucky.
Disputing the notion of "self-made" is generally an attempt to deliberately misunderstand the point in order to derail the discussion, thus making discourse impossible.
No one who uses the term "self-made" literally believes that Howard Schultz never hired any employees at Starbucks, they mean to say that for someone who was born in the projects, he did very well for himself. Pointing out he hired employees adds no value to the discussion, so it's not why people point it out.
> for every successful person, there are countless others born to a similar level of privilege who squandered it.
Indeed.
> The claim that everyone owes their successes to the group ignores this.
This doesn't follow. Can you elaborate?
By "owe" I mean that the credit for their success belongs to the group and not the individual, because the individual was merely a product of good circumstances provided by the group. I believe this is the sentiment intended by the "no such thing as a self made man" crowd--no individual is special, and anyone else would achieve similar things under similar circumstances. This ignores the fact that many others DO enjoy similar circumstances but achieve nothing.
As if the enemies of any person wouldn’t have a less charitable account. He may have gone too far but it’s not new at all.
"Society does not consist of individuals but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand."
- Karl Marx
My last few comments on this site have been precisely about these ideas. These ideas, in my view, are inherent flaws of philosophical liberalism, of which modern liberalism and conservatism stem. This ideology places itself at the forefront of morality, but can't even seriously analyze the conditions of the individual.
A rich heir is self made, but a poor man is morally and spiritually bankrupt. This is how far this modern ideology goes. Totally unscientific and is also the birthplace of modern racism.
This is how far the equality goes, that is, not very far at all. The liberal revolutions of the last ~400 years must be called the aristocratic revolutions. One where the organized aristocracy came into power, and so did their morals.
One thing I noticed about marxists is that they themselves have a hierarchy surrounding the rich and poor which they imagine exists in everyone else.
In reality, hardly anyone thinks a poor man is 'spiritually bankrupt'. The main religion of the Western world says the poor man is in fact inherently better.
IDK, man, I hear Christians talk about people being misguided (spiritually) all the time. In fact I think they're the ones who say it the most.
But I actually meant it as a sort of drive (spirit), not wholly about belief (spiritual).
But also, you must take into consideration all the ill effects of poverty. Such as crime, lack of education, lack of opportunities, the emotional faults of poverty, unchecked mental health problems, anger, frustration, ills with socialization, etc. All of the effects derived from poverty. All of these get bunched up into a single shallow view of the poor: "they're just like that" - kinda tone.
While the rich get the material wealth and the status-privilege of their families, the rich are assumed to be valuable.
This is literally what the article is talking about, albeit within a more aristocratic context.
Read any thread in HN about the unhoused and it is very clear many many people think the poor deserve their condition and are lesser for being so.
> Andrew Jackson, the first president from the western territories and the only general to be elected president since George Washington
Do they mean up to that point? Eisenhower was elected twice
Maybe awkwardly worded but that's implied by the phrasing "since"
"Andrew Jackson is the US's best president and it's not even close" - MZ
To the downvoter: that's a direct quote from SWW's book
Go back a few generations for just about every wealthy family in the US, and it's nothing but slave (or highly exploitative) labor building on land and resources stolen from the indians. It's the uncomfortable answer behind the question of "Why do WASPs own everything?". The whole "self-made" myth is nothing but a byproduct of white guilt all the way down.
> It's the uncomfortable answer behind the question of "Why do WASPs own everything?"
The correct answer to that question is "they don't".
>The correct answer to that question is "they don't
Read the list and try to find a single non-WASP family: https://www.forbes.com/families/list/
Not all land was stolen. Much of it was bartered and sold. Tribes also vied for the pelt trade and would drive competing tribes out. The land we took from Mexico was only Spanish and Mexican on paper. Either one had as much control over the Apache/Comanche territory as Russia had over Alaska. Also the Apaches were driven out and nearly exterminated by the Comanche who remembered that they were nearly exterminated by the Apache when they got some stray horses and learned to ride them a century or so prior. The Mexican govt, wanting a buffer against Comanches, invited colonists from eastern states to colonize Texas in order prevent the raiding the Comanches were doing.
That is most of the territory was not under any tribe’s permanent control, nor was land in the west under control of Spain or Mexico before the Americans colonized it. Also lots of tribes were sworn enemies with each other and more than happy to collaborate with Europeans to drive out their enemy tribes with fewer losses to themselves.
Native Americans were here for tens of thousands of years. If it was so easy to use Indians’ resources to build a civilization, why didn’t the Indians do it?
Your attitude is illogical cope. How could “WASPs” have gotten rich from stealing from a group of people they vastly outnumbered and who were primitive in comparison?
They did build a civilization. Which was then ravaged by diseases brought from Europe by the early explorers. By the time Europeans started settling what became the United States the native population was living in what was essentially a post-apocalyptic wasteland.
Wait, I thought it was the Jews that owned everything?
Or was it the Freemasons?
I can’t even keep track anymore.
I can’t think of a single WASP billionaire though - maybe that’s the mind control at work?
Anyone who claims to be self made is dishonest to themselves. "No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main" -John Donne