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A new myth appeared during the presidential campaign of Andrew Jackson
- rimbo789 11mo agoExcellent 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.
- mannyv 11mo agoWhile that may be true, there are people that move the needle more than others.
- IAmBroom 11mo agoCertainly. 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.
- hacker_yacker 11mo agoAnyone 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
- ramesh31 11mo agoGo 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.
- rayiner 11mo agoNative 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?
- rimbo789 11mo agoGiven all the raping, enslaving, pillaging, and general genociding europeans did upon arrival to North America I don’t think we can say it was the First Nations that were “primitive”
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- mc32 11mo agoThe local tribes were mostly one of two types, the nomadic (ex. Comanche) and the agricultural (Apache). The former would often raid the latter, killing many of the men and taking the women and children --often, but not always, they'd end up being their slaves. So the behavior of the Europeans you describe of the time was not out of the ordinary for the locals.
- pdonis 11mo agoIf you think those things didn't happen before the Europeans arrived, you need to think again.
- J0n3s1n 11mo ago[dead]
- watwut 11mo agoThey had own civilization. They lost war and were genocided out. And for the record, they had wars against themselves too, just like Europeans had wars against other Europeans. Both slavery and territorial expansion by force were wealth builders. Both took quite a lot of time too. Both were quite barbaric from our point of view, but cruelty and violence can be wealth builder. After all, Putin is super wealthy too. Stalin ended up wealthy too. Hitler same deal. There is not much difference in there.
- roarcher 11mo agoIt'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.
- jagged-chisel 11mo ago> 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?
- roarcher 11mo agoBy "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.
- danparsonson 11mo agoOwing your success to something is not the same as saying that having the something guarantees success. I owe my love of Korean food to my time spent living in South Korea; others may live there and come away hating it.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- jagged-chisel 11mo agoI see - some attribute of themselves has set them apart from the ones who had similar circumstances but squandered the opportunity. I guess it depends on how fine you track those circumstances. Did they all have that super-supportive friend named Trey that always knew then correct supportive thing to say? Personally, I can point to many times in my life where a teacher, grandparent, pastor made overt attempts to derail me. Maybe I wasn't completely derailed, but it slowed my progress and may have taken me along a less successful track for awhile. Looking back, I'm surprised I've done what I have. But I do wonder what kind of success I might have had if those naysayers had actually provided support.
- api 11mo agoIn 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.
- Atlas667 11mo agoYes, 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.
- paulryanrogers 11mo agoIs that the traditional meaning of 'great' in "great men theory"? If so, why not just say "strong men" or "powerful men" instead?
- Atlas667 11mo ago
- Atlas667 11mo ago"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.
- anon291 11mo agoOne 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.
- rimbo789 11mo agoRead 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.
- astrange 11mo agoUnfortunately one thing being homeless can do to you (or being a drug addict can do to you) is give you permanent brain injuries, at which point you are stuck that way. So there's circularity.
- Atlas667 11mo agoIDK, 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.
- dang 11mo agoThis 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&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=generic%20ideolog%20by:dang 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.
- b800h 11mo agoThank you!
- user3939382 11mo agoAs 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.
- alex1138 11mo ago"Andrew Jackson is the US's best president and it's not even close" - MZ
- alex1138 11mo agoTo the downvoter: that's a direct quote from SWW's book
- chasil 11mo agohttps://archive.ph/qcQMO https://archive.ph/qcQMO
- agency 11mo ago> 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
- duped 11mo agoMaybe awkwardly worded but that's implied by the phrasing "since"