>There seems to be this overwhelming effort these days to attribute the success of successful people as either entirely due to luck and/or to inheritance. >The

>There seems to be this overwhelming effort these days to attribute the success of successful people as either entirely due to luck and/or to inheritance. >The allure of this belief is, of course, the self-gratification that comes with not having to blame your own lack of success on yourself. You've gotten this exactly backwards. Until recently the overwhelming story (at least in the US) is that success is purely a result of your own personal effort, the self-made man who builds himself ex nihilo by the sweat of his brow and his genius. What's been happening recently is the recognition that this is, of course, ridiculous, and that many factors go into success or failure. It's not that your success or failure are entirely out of your control and your own efforts (or personality, as you seem to indicate) mean nothing, it's just that there's more to it. For example, what you describe in your post sounds like a classic case of survivorship bias in action. The allure of this belief is, of course, the self-gratification that comes with believing you are simply superior to others and that's why you're successful. There's also much comfort in believing that bad things only happen to people who deserve it and so can't happen to me, since I'm smart and hardworking. The discomfort with acknowledging outside factors is having to admit that your success is not entirely your own doing, which is scary and hurts one's ego.