Probably the most deeply ingrained myth in the USA is the idea that anyone can gain anything, that if you work hard enough (& think positive), you can achieve any success. If you flip the same pieces around, the same belief system says that people get what they deserve.
I can’t imagine a more hostile piece of elitist malarkey. Sadly, even people who are not successful believe this, as it gives them hope that they can succeed far beyond what their circumstances would seem to allow.
The fact is that circumstances matter. Not everyone is given equal opportunity in our highly skewed educational system, where some public schools are much better funded (with correspondingly better outcomes) than others and where some schools have inaccurate “facts” or religious tenets in their course curriculum.
I heard a politician recently say, “there is no such thing as free money” which was shocking to hear from a billionaire. Of course there is free money, that’s exactly what wealth accumulation across the generations is. If you’re born to rich parents, you did nothing to earn it other than being born lucky, yet you will get all the benefits conferred by it. And if you’re born to impoverished parents (or single parent or orphaned), then you won’t have the same opportunities, through no fault of your own.
Even beyond wealth, natural characteristics matter. In this country, we systematically prefer and elevate a certain concept of “normal,” meaning the visibly “white,” heteronormative, middle-class (or wealthy) and physically appealing. We prefer men in positions of authority to “shrill” or “weak” women. And there are other, more subtle characteristics that can help people succeed, such as intellectual or artistic prowess, tenacity, patience, ambition (which can be cultivated to some degree, but are, I think, primarily inherent personality traits).
This is not to say that hard work or effort plays no part in success, but that the luck of your circumstances plays a very significant role, without which opportunities for success would be more limited. Those of us who succeed are undoubtedly lucky and no one is truly “self-made,” as family wealth, school, infrastructure, mentors, loans, friends, business opportunities, personality traits, etc., all play a part in enabling a person to succeeds.
Those who do not succeed do not “deserve” failure, condescension, apathy. We who are privileged with success must acknowledge that our success is at least partially derived from advantageous circumstances, then we can empathize with dissimilar people, who may have encountered more disadvantageous circumstances.
We who lack success must let go of the myth of “anything is possible” – that is a child’s dream. We cannot go from poverty to billionaire by dint of hard work alone. There are systems in place to further inequality, rewarding the privileged few and knocking down others. Don’t believe the lies of those inequality systems which seek to divide us into tiers of hierarchy.
No one is better; some are just lucky.
