What percentage of the success you’ve achieved in life would you attribute to the circumstances of your birth?

I attribute about a third to birth, a third to innate aptitude, and a third to diligent work.

There is no such thing as a self-made man.
The very concept is a ludicrous fantasy.
You were sired, because two people had sex.
You were most likely born in a hospital, attended to by doctors.
You were fed, clothed and protected from certain death, not only by your parents, but by society in general, while you were completely useless and defenseless.
You lived in a house built by someone else.
You were protected from diseases because of vaccines developed by scientists.
Diseases you did have, were cured by doctors.
You were taught reading, writing, maths and science in school.
When you start a business, for example a landscaping company, you will probably get a loan from a bank.
You buy tools and machines, that were manufactured by someone else.
You probably have a van or truck, built by someone else.
The lawnmower you use, uses petrol, which has an entire industry behind it to produce.
If it uses electricity, same thing. Not to mention all the scientists and engineers that discovered it, and did all the work to be able to harness it.
To drive to your customers on public roads, built with the tax money of millions of other people.
The place you live in has electricity, heating, plumbing. Someone has to supply you with it, and it is not you.

The adage “we stand on the shoulders of giants”, is not just limited to science. It applies to every aspect of civilisation.
Almost every little thing, every necessity or luxury you enjoy, exists only because countless other people made it.
No matter how successful you may be, you are not a self-made man. You are where you are, because civilisation enabled you to be there.

Drop a naked toddler in the wilderness, and see how it goes.

Nada.

Almost all of it. I was born into a privileged white family with access to the best of nutrition, medical care, education and opportunity. The only handicaps I experienced are minor, being female and having dodgy health. I am very much aware that I am a product of all that.

Bullshit, @kritiper, you are a white man, that starts you off with considerable advantage.

@canidmajor But I did it all by myself. What my family may have been had no influence on what I did to become who I am. And I’ve been doing it since I left home at age 16.

The question and the description are each two different unanswerable questions.

What percentage? Compared to what? If I were born in Somalia? My ideas about “success” would probably be <s> 93.2% (LOL) </s> different, and so mostly would not have happened. If I were born to a financially struggling and/or racially stigmatized family in the USA? Different “numbers”, but percentage? Again both my notions of success and what I would have done with myself would be very different, let alone my prospects for doing what I have done. It’s undefinable.

The second question is similarly undefined. What unit should we give for “how valid”? Which particular myth, exactly? What philosophical perspective on the question? In one sense, I am almost entirely responsible for my outcomes. I could have got myself killed, or killed myself, quite early in life, for example. Other philosophers would question whether I have any free will at all.

Overall, I was extremely fortunate for my parents’ natures, my genes, where my ethnicity lands at the top of American racial and sexual descrimination, the city I was born in, the neighborhood and house I grew up in, the family my family befriended when I was 2 years old, the affluence and generosity of my grandparents, the private school they paid for me to attend, and the lack of the familiar patterns of abuse and toxic shaming that are so common in the USA.

Perhaps above all, my parents let me define my own “success”, or even not care about that term at all, so that aspect of my birth gives me a pretty much 100% chance unless I choose to regard myself a “failure”.

@kritiper were you raised by wolves?

I don’t know. Some. I was born to well-off parents in a nice area with great schools. That’s definitely part of it. But I think what has happened since birth has had played a greater role and I’ve had plenty going against me as well (and I’ve also chosen some unconventional paths). I don’t think it’s something I can quantify.

@kritiper ”the circumstances of your birth” include your race and gender, whether you had a roof and food and enough schooling to be literate. Unless you were Tarzan, as described by Burroughs in the books, you did not do it all yourself. And even he had benefit of the care of his ape family, who fed him and protected him.

Just the fact that I was not stillborn

100%.

Every moment of everyone’s life is happenstance.

100%

I’m a not-ugly, white dude with a decent personality and the ability to tell good stories. Born to a middle-class family in a decent neighborhood with pretty good public schools. Certainly a leg up compared to many folks.

Throw in a bunch of hard work and a lot of dumb luck. I can’t really put a percentage on it, but it’s a combination of those three things.

I attribute any success I may ever have accomplished, to my wife. Behind every successful man stands a pushy woman. Lol just kidding.

Compared to what? Being born in the US vs a different country? Being born to educated parents? Having decent public schools? I’m not sure I can put a number on it. The circumstances definitely matter a lot. I’d say over 50%.

Some of the most successful people didn’t have it easy in childhood and that drove them. They still had to have certain opportunities available for their success though. I had it fairly easy, but I was never a very driven personality. Still, I did what was necessary to get through school, I worked from a very young age, and I was responsible and open to opportunities.

I think being born female has contributed to my boobage outcome 100%.

So far that’s the only success I’m sure of.

Lol @JLoon

I would like to answer this question by critique some of @ragingloli‘s answers:

You were most likely born in a hospital, attended to by doctors.
Not everyone throughout history had the luxury to be born in a hospital under a doctor’s care. History most often saw people being born at home, with the help of a midwife, who most likely had nothing to prove they were qualified except for their experience. Not to mention they only learned about basic hygiene in the 19th century. That’s much more recent than we want to believe.

You were fed, clothed and protected from certain death, not only by your parents, but by society in general, while you were completely useless and defenseless.
Actor Alain Delon didn’t have a stable childhood. His parents divorced and he was tossed around his biological parents and his adopted ones. I read somewhere that one of his parents was a janitor and he spent most of his childhood in the prison.
Alice Miller(psychologist) lived during WWII. She worked hard to help her mother and sister escaped, but her father died in the process. She went on to be a famous psychologist.
Frederick the Great was relentlessly abused by his father for being “effeminate”. He was abused frequently, and publicly. His father shamed him in front of important people and even the soldiers under him. His father even executed a servant who helped him get out of his castle and forced him to watch the entire thing. And most of society at that time agreed that it was the right thing.

You were protected from diseases because of vaccines developed by scientists.
I’m pretty sure George Washington was vaccinated as a child…

Diseases you did have, were cured by doctors.
One reason why Hellen Keller became disabled was because her doctor failed to diagnose and cure her properly. After she became debt, blind and mute, her parents tried to find doctors who could at least help her regain one of the senses, and they failed every time.

“You were taught reading, writing, maths and science in school.”
Thomas Edison’s education mostly came from his mother and self-study. He only came to school for a few moths. Abraham Lincoln did went to school, but most of the time he had to attend his work at home and he went to school just as frequently as Edison. He also self-studied a lot.

“When you start a business, for example a landscaping company, you will probably get a loan from a bank.”
I hardly call that an good circumstance. You most often need some money to open a business, one way or another. And there are a lot of people who go into debt when their business goes bankrupt. Banks aren’t giving out money out of charity.

You buy tools and machines, that were manufactured by someone else.
You probably have a van or truck, built by someone else.
The lawnmower you use, uses petrol, which has an entire industry behind it to produce.
If it uses electricity, same thing. Not to mention all the scientists and engineers that discovered it, and did all the work to be able to harness it.
To drive to your customers on public roads, built with the tax money of millions of other people.
The place you live in has electricity, heating, plumbing. Someone has to supply you with it, and it is not you.
How about the people who managed to survive and ensure our existence back in the Stone Age? At that time most of the things they had, they had to go get it themselves. They did share things with each other, sure, but not in the scale of our civilization today. And they survived.

I agreed that our circumstances determine a lot of our success, but unless you belong to the 1% lucky people, there is always a point when all they luck you have stop providing and you will have to go make your own success. I have an example from my own life too: I often attribute a lot of my growth on Fluther, but it wasn’t always like that in the past. Before I met my two late jelly friends, Fluther was just a curious Q&A site that I signed up out of curiosity and desperation for a replacement for Y!A. And people back then didn’t care for me as much as they do now, because I was so new and no one knew who I was. I even took a 3-month break from Fluther when I got better things to chase around. I didn’t exactly have a great experience with Fluther, until people started to know me better. Discovering Fluther was a turning point of my life, but what if I hadn’t seen it that way and my 3-month break had been permanent? I wouldn’t have met my two good friends that encouraged me to give up my toxic relationship and grow into a better person. I would have never learned critical thinking. I would be just as gullible as I used to be and believe in every conspiracy I came across, and I would still hook up with horrible people who didn’t give a damn about me.

Another example is my thesis. It was only a reality because I got to know my subject of research through a random Youtube video and the help of my great teacher who believed in me and supported me in every way. Sounds like I had it all right? No! When I first came up with my research topic, I met with a wave of disapproval. I was researching language of an autistic person, which by the rule was not allowed because of the major I was in. All teachers I asked to be my supervisor turned me down, either because they already had enough students or because my topic was just ridiculous. Someone even suggested me to change my topic and use his own topics instead. But I persisted. I did as many changes as possible to conform with the rules. I did anything to get people to accept my topic. And when all the teachers had turned me down, my great teacher was there, and I didn’t believe she would accept my topic so quickly. There was an element of luck right here, but would that luck have come to me if I had given up when there was too much objection?

To fully believe in the self-made man is naive, but to think everything happening in your life is a product of your circumstances is jaded and pessimistic. Both extreme viewpoints don’t accurately reflect reality. Like everything in life, there is a balance.

I often talk about this allegory whenever the topic of fate comes up: imagine life gives everyone a bucket to fill up with water. The problem is that each bucket is different, some are bigger than others. Now imagine you are given a bucket that can only contain 1 litre of water. You see people around you with buckets that can contain 2 litres, or even 3 litres. It’s really unfair, but you can’t do anything about it. The only thing you can do is to do with what you have and try to fill up your bucket. Now here’s the catch: if you work your hardest to find water, at the end of the day, at best, you will have 1 litre of water. That may not be enough for you, but there is a chance you have more water than someone who has a 3-litre bucket but plays around all day and only have half a litre of water. You can’t change your circumstances, but you can do your best to make the best of your circumstances.

Once we are given all the advantages listed by @ragingloli we have the power to either succeed or royaly muck it all up.
A successful freind of mine had a 33 year old son who recently died from a fentanyl overdose. He was given all the advantages listed, and more, but chose a different path than his sister.

To answer the question: I’ll go with 75% circumstances of my birth and upbringing and 25% my own choices. At many points along the way I made choices that steered me to the position I am in now. Had I chose differently decades ago it is possible that today, I, like my friend’s son, would be below the grass rather than worrying about reseeding it.

@LuckyGuy a very well-known example of someone who had it all but chose to throw his luck away is Elliot Rodger. He was born into a rich family, didn’t have to worry about money most of his life, and was blessed with a good writing skill. But he failed to see all the luck around him and instead chose to agonize over the fact that he couldn’t get a girlfriend. He thought that he couldn’t get any girl because he didn’t have enough money which is totally false btw. The irony is that he had all the resources in the world to boost his chance of getting a girlfriend. He could ask for how to get girls, he could find place to hang out and talk to them, he could ask someone to help with his social skills, he could find a way to make more money with all of his resources. But he didn’t do any of that. He chose to obsess over winning the lottery as an easy way to get money. And when it failed, he got so mad that he went on a killing spee.

The most hilarious and saddest thing is that in his infamous manifesto, he wrote that he wanted to be a famous fantasy writer, but he dropped the idea because it would take too much work. Had he actually taken up the work, he could have made it as a writer, seeing how much money and connection his family had.

100%. However my dad was raised dirt poor, son of a Texas sheriff in aa dirt poor town…Sunray, Texas. He went into to Navy. On the GI bill he graduated with his EE degree, steadily climbed the ladder at Boeing and then retired to an island in Florida.
A lot of what my parents taught me was hard work, good grammar (Dad fought to lose his Texas accent and slang) manners and professionalism.

Most of my “successes” were either provided by luck, my parents, other family members, some teachers, (ex-) girlfriends, colleague, strangers, and people no longer alive/dead for ages.
And I won a photography competition.

@JLoon What about your sense of humor? That has to be at least as successful as your “boobage outcome.”

@gorillapaws – You sir are a gentleman.

But sometimes I only get tiny little laughs…

@JLoon Sometimes I think your real identity is Nikki Glaser.

Sure possible. Never can tell with those Monte Cristo / Scarlet Pimpernel types.

@gorillapaws & @Nomore_lockout – Nikki and I are sisters. But I was born after mom stopped faking orgasms.

I think it shows.

I think the first thing that needs to happen is we need to define what a “self-made man” is. Is it someone that started from a poor family? Is it someone that started as a slave? Is it someone that started with a family of modest income? Or could it be someone that started from a rich family? And when do we decide they are “self-made”...what is the end point? World renowned? Extremely wealthy? And what are we attributing to them and what are we attributing to others? Brad Pitt was gifted with good looks, but nothing in his heritage shouted acting as a likely success path. So do we say he was self-made for following a path that wasn’t pre-ordained for him or do we say he was given his success because of his physical genetics?

Most of the people I consider self-made men (or women) are viewed as such because of the actions they have taken on their own to become famous or influential. George Washington Carver did a number of great things which changed the world as we know it and for which he is still remembered. He was born during the Civil War and was black. Can’t come from much more of a challenge than that. Even someone like Mark Zuckerberg could be viewed as self-made. He came from well-to-do parents who encouraged his obvious interest in computers (which was a budding industry at the time). But it was his interest and drive that ultimately led him to create Facebook and become a gazillionaire.