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> I can't remember a single instance where I ever thought of pulling the ladder up behind me. It's really not that. The problem is that you believe personal success and failure are something that entirely depends on you. That is not the case. You, 'rebootthesystem', were probably not taken off the shelf by God, put inside a body on Earth and left to your own devices. No, you are the product of genetics, environment, upbringing, entourage, opportunities, and so on. Each person grows up to have certain motivations (or lack of motivation) without a choice of their own.
You couldn't have been another person than the one you are right now. The choices you make aren't really choices - if you rewind the tape you'd do everything all over again, given that quantum physics doesn't intrude too much. Your life is fairly deterministic, so you are just the sum of your past, thus it's unfair to say that your achievements are anything but the work of luck. The opportunities you were provided (like education, for example) differ significantly from what you would've had in a Bangladesh slum. Sure, we can use other people's achievements as motivators for ourselves, but that's biology more than anything else. There's no such thing as self-made man; every person is the result of past events. |