Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Am I Now in the Wrong World?
I just saw an ad for an article in The Atlantic titled “The Myth of Pulling Yourself Up by Your Bootstraps,” with a subtext saying “It’s time to challenge our country’s dangerous obsession with self-reliance.” I don’t have a subscription, so I don’t know what the article actually says but is the ad a description of where we are?
I don’t think it was ever a myth during my working career but I have little doubt it can quickly be made one by the socialist-oriented government we now have. I don’t think it was a myth because I did exactly that. I started with nothing, had a marriage in which we reared three children, all are college graduates without debt to be repaid or forgiven, none of whom has succumbed to the use of illegal drugs or committed crimes, and all are living productive lives not dependent on government largesse. They are self-reliant individuals and family members who love and care for each other.
Now, that is not to say it works that way for all. I have seen numerous reports of individuals who inherit fortunes and proceed to lose it all and become dependent on other methods to make it through life. And I don’t even have the words to describe what it means to make one’s way in the manner of a Hunter Biden. There might even be some things there worth an article in The Atlantic. Of course, there are those between these extremes, many of whom lose the ability to be self-reliant through misfortune, frequently not of their own doing.
But none of this justifies calling the possible achievements of a self-made person a myth. And how does self-reliance get to be an obsession?
Sometimes I’m not sure what world I am living in.
Published in General
Success from nothing is taken as a rebuke by those who have had nothing in the way of success.
And it is rude to suggest that a person can have success without the government’s help – after all, You Didn’t Build That™.
It is true that many self-made men aren’t as self-made as they would like to think. The American system was designed to make it possible for people to win and win big. We’ve fixed a lot of that problem over time, but we still have tech billionaires whose money can be traced to good ideas.
But calling it a ‘myth’ is an attempt to debase the American dream and no good can come of it.
No one says you can win. But America says you can try.
I have a friend who has never met a woke cause she didn’t fall for. She’s been talking about this myth for five years. She is childless so will not pass it on.
You are living in a Commie propaganda world where Mr. & Mrs. Bezos run the Washington Post and Atlantic to spread their corrupt corporatist lies.
And what is the goal of this type of talk? To discourage people from working hard? Don’t bother trying because you will never succeed anyway? No a great message for the kids. But at least when they fail they will feel like helpless victims rather than failures.
I read somewhere that the Atlantic is mostly funded by Steve Jobs’ widow. Which is interesting, because Jobs and Wozniak just about defined the path called “self made”.
Mmm, but they also set new land speed records for erasing competition through government.
Not when they were building the original Apple. They didn’t have any lobbyists in those days.
So I click off Ricochet and the first thing I see is . . .
Could we say he pulled himself up, or is that not possible ?
Naw, it’s a myth.
I remember when Jeff Bezos started Amazon whose only product selling used books on the internet. He knows something about bootstraps, I think.
No surprise there. Individualism is a threat to everything the left is trying to force on us.
Unfortunately for the Atlantic, I don’t know of a single person who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps who will read the article and say “Oh! I guess I really did have nothing to do my success. I guess someone else got up at 5 am in the morning and went to work at an entry level job to earn money for my education. I guess someone else studied or worked in their garage 12-15 hours a day to get my business started and then continued to work 12-15 hours a day to build it. I always thought that it was other taxpayers like myself who funded the roads and libraries that I used precisely for the purposes that I used them. Oh, and also developed the technology that went into building them. Thank you Atlantic for opening my eyes. From now on, I will just sit in my chair, staring out the window at those roads and public libraries and schools and wait for them and whoever it was who was working and studying and practicing all those hours to deliver success to my doorstep.”
Perfectly said!
This is not a new phenomenon. Googling “pull yourself up by own bootstraps myth” returns quite a few results in quite a few fora, over the course of many years, all of them intended to show that any claim that an individual’s own efforts to better (obvious microaggression) his own life depend to any extent on his own efforts are false from the get go.
This over-literalizing is one hallmark of the Left who are, to a great extent (not universally, but largely) incapable of nuance. So the phrase “I pulled myself up by my own bootstraps” no longer means that “I got my schtuff together, looked around, found the help I needed and used whatever resources I could find that were available to me to improve my circumstances–like getting off drugs; finding God, sponsors, and mentors; sticking with school; getting a job; starting a family,” but suddenly means “I owe nothing to anyone and I did it all by myself.” (I don’t know anyone who claims to have “pulled himself up by his own bootstraps” who ever fails to acknowledge the spectrum of support he received once he decided to put his foot on the bottom rung of the ladder.)
As for Darrell Revis’s story, and those of millions of others which have stood as inspirational beacons to generations of disadvantaged youth of all races and both sexes? They are to be dismissed by labeling them with the new scarlet letter; the “A” of “anecdotal evidence,” by which what happens in our own lives, those of our families, our churches, our neighbors, our communities no longer matters, and concepts such as the “good example,” or “bettering oneself,” are threatening and/or meaningless to social justice warriors and race-baiters (but I repeat myself.)
Those whose mindsets conform to the correct narrative enjoy “lived experiences” to which we should all attend, and from which we can all learn. Those who disagree with such nonsense can present, in opposition, only inferior “anecdotal evidence” to be tossed, along with their persons, on the ash-heap of history.
We buy into the dystopian din that’s thrust in front of us on the Internet and Big Media every day at our peril. Real life, important life, actual life, is that which is described in the OP, and which happens every day in families, churches, neighborhoods and communities across this country. Real life is not shadows on the wall, a house of mirrors, or the latest social-media craze being pushed by mentally-disturbed people of all ages on the Internet.
Real life is what counts. I’m pretty sure the author of the OP knows this. I hope the rest of us do, too.
I can’t read the whole Atlantic article either. But I see the author references Alissa Quart who has–apparently–written the book on the bootstrap myth. So I looked her up. She has a current article in magzter.com, the whole of which I can’t read either, but here’s the first paragraph (emphasis added):
If ever there were a bastardization of, or myth regarding, what it means to “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps,” there it is. (I like how she squeezes the word “government” in there, between “family” and “community.”
Why rely on yourself when daddy government will support you or people will give you some “mythical” reparations.
Thanks for this @she. I probably would not have bothered to write this post if what popped up on my iPhone had not included the subtext about an obsession with self-reliance. One thing I should add here. I never found the effort I put forth particularly hard or disconcerting in any way, I’m just not deep into hard-nosed diligence, in my opinion, like many really productive people. Plenty of people have had to put forth more than I in the face of many more obstacles to build a successful life from very little to start.
I was shocked to see someone had attacked self-reliance.
You are correct. I had my billionaires’ former wives mixed up.
If the author Alissa Quart is correct that “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” comes from using the flaps on the sides (cowboy boots sometimes have finger openings near the tops for the same purpose) to put on your boots (by the way, not at all limited to work boots), she seems to be missing the most obvious reading – if you used such things it meant you didn’t have a valet to help you put on your boots. You had to put on your own boots. You weren’t born rich. Rich people had staff (a valet) to help them get dressed. The opposite of “He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth.” Has the author never seen a period movie set in an English country house?
Anecdotal evidence don’cha know? 😜
My experience is that those who are most emblematic of “pulled myself up by my own bootstraps” (or “self-made” I suppose might be similar) are the quickest to acknowledge how much they owe to family, to friends, to mentors, to encouragers, and others.
True. I’m fairly certain I under-performed because I’m not always as submissive to suggestion and offered help as I could be. Notice though, I didn’t say “should be”. I sometimes think the use of the word “should” is what sends me off in another direction.
Mine too, both for those I know personally and in the public sphere. Clarence Thomas comes to mind as a stellar and very well-known example. The claims to the contrary, made by people like Alissa Quart, are arrant nonsense. I looked up her Wikipedia entry. The Early Life and Education section begins, “Born to two college professors….”
LOL. No need to proceed any further. I suppose she just can’t help herself.
It is amazing how a simple statement of fact can provide true amusement.
Adam Carolla has been ranting against this for at least a decade. He made the observation that when he was growing up, a father and son would be walking down the street and a well-to-do member of the community would drive by in his expensive car. The father would tell the son, one day, if you work hard and apply yourself, that too can be yours. Now, in the same situation, the father will disparage the rich man and complain how it’s unfair that he has that car and that they don’t.
Maybe I’m misinterpreting the premise of this discussion, but I see “self-made” (which is what I hear when I hear “pulled myself up by my bootstraps”) and “self-reliant” as different.
To me “self-reliant” means “having the ability to do useful things himself (herself, i.e., @she ).” I am horribly not self-reliant. I will not last long in the zombie apocalypse. Fortunately as long as there’s a money-based economy I have skills for which the economy paid me well, so I can afford to hire people. But at a group dinner earlier this week I sat next to a man who awed me in his ability to do practical things. He literally built a house he had lived in earlier.
My experience is the “self-reliant” are often also the most generous with helping the rest of us using the skills and knowledge that makes them “self-reliant.” When they learn of someone with a need, they’re on the spot to help. We need the “self-reliant” to keep the rest of us alive and comfortable.
An “obsession” or at least admiration of “self-reliance” seems very important to ensuring that society has people who can do things not only for themselves, but also have the skills and knowledge to help the rest of us.
Just so you know, you did not write that post. Public funding for the internet infrastructure and government permission for all the companies who built and sold the components in your computer and its software, all public funding for your education… Your illusions about cognitive autonomy are why we had a J6 insurrection, and have no guaranteed health care, income disparity, racism, and climate change. And Liz Warren, me, and all the rest of America will also be the real owners of your mandated apology after the coming arrests…
Gosh, that language sounds so familiar!
I wonder if he really did this independently or had the usual Dept of Defense etc connections that help propel all boy geniuses to the forefront of our economy.
If AntiTrust Laws were ever enforced, we might find out.
I did admire the way that Amazon worked. That if you bought a book, it had an algorithm reminding you of the books you bought. So you didn’t have to stop to think “Whatever was the name of that murder mystery writer I liked a year ago?” (And of course the individual can look through their 3 bookcases of books, but how clever of Bezos, right?)
Anyway in Spring 2007, after having his army of lobbyists hit the Congress critters, Bezos bought the US Postal Service.
So if you ever wonder why it is that the USPS now delivers mail on Sundays, as long as it is an Amazon delivery, that is why.
Small business owners immediately were charged a lot more to send things USPS, to help cover the cost of Amazon’s 24/7 “free” deliveries..
I also have wondered – let’s say you have a patented item you sell on Amazon. It seems great at first that you can sell it world wide, through Amazon if you have a listing.
But if it is very popular but cheap to make, what is to stop Amazon from producing the item themselves?
####
Okay Okay!
Let me have it on the record that I am already apologizing!
Just to illustrate and clarify I went from being a 21 year old bachelor with empty pockets taking an entry level minimum wage bank teller trainee job in 1959 to retiring from the Treasury Department in 1994 at an ES-4 level drawing what was then the maximum pay allowed for a federal bureaucrat. I guess that small amount of networking I did when working with the EFTS Commission was important.