“ To many, self-making is a gospel of liberation. You can become whoever you want to be. No matter who or how you were born, your race or class or gender or family, you can wipe the slate clean, determine your own destiny, become self-made. It’s the narrative at the heart of the myth of The American—the promise, as Frederick Douglass ringingly put it, that anyone could “make the road on which they had travelled.”
This is wrong. So wrong. The self-made ethos is that people can maximize their potential… make a good life. It is not that false promise that an idiot can become a genius… it is that and idiot, with hard work, dedication and persistence can become less of an idiot and a productive member of society worthy of some status.
Those that mistake this ethos tend to be malcontents… or advocates of malcontents… people that are pissed that their lives have not returned them the status they feel they deserve.
But people are still risking their lives to come to this country illegally because of this ethos. Where they are from they would be stuck with no opportunity to rise from their low rank.
“ To many, self-making is a gospel of liberation. You can become whoever you want to be. No matter who or how you were born, your race or class or gender or family, you can wipe the slate clean, determine your own destiny, become self-made. It’s the narrative at the heart of the myth of The American—the promise, as Frederick Douglass ringingly put it, that anyone could “make the road on which they had travelled.”
This is wrong. So wrong. The self-made ethos is that people can maximize their potential… make a good life. It is not that false promise that an idiot can become a genius… it is that and idiot, with hard work, dedication and persistence can become less of an idiot and a productive member of society worthy of some status.
Those that mistake this ethos tend to be malcontents… or advocates of malcontents… people that are pissed that their lives have not returned them the status they feel they deserve.
But people are still risking their lives to come to this country illegally because of this ethos. Where they are from they would be stuck with no opportunity to rise from their low rank.
Except for me, I'm self made.