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America is a nation of self made people who are taught from a young age that we can become anything we want. We’re a “pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps” type of place. We fancy ourselves the masters of our own fate. For a long time I thought this was a good thing.

It would seem to encourage initiative and responsibility because people feel like they have the power to change their lives for the better. However, after watching this TED talk by Alain de Botton it dawned on me that this mentality is a bit of a double edged sword. On the one hand this is a good thing when you’re fabulously successful in life because you get to take all of the credit. No one is responsible for your success but you. It was your charm, your hard work, your intelligence that was the difference. Chance and outside circumstances played little to no role as far as your concerned. On the other hand if you’re not successful then you you just suck. No excuses. It was your lack of intelligence, charm, sophistication or whatever that landed you where you are. Randomness played little to no role in your lot in life.

This leads us to place successful people on massive pedestals. Almost like mini-gods. While lower rung folks get titles like “loser” because obviously they’ve gotten exactly what they deserve. Machiavelli thought that half of ones life was determined by circumstances outside our control. Maybe as a society we need to better recognize the role of chance in our lives. I’m not in favor of doing away with our sense of personal responsibility. However, I’d like to see the successful among us a bit more humble and the unsuccessful less despised.

I think that might be a world God would be more inclined to smile down on.

Photo Credit: Mariano Kamp