I Have Low Self-Esteem Thanks to Being a Middle Child So Here's Me Desperately Patting Myself on the Back for All to See My Brilliance du Jour

But most of all, I think the need to feel like an oppressed underdog who has succeeded against all odds is as American as apple pie...Nobody likes to admit out loud "part of my success is due to economic and social conditions cemented long before I was even born"; we must be made to believe that Successful Person X was left to die in a dumpster, then pulled himself up by his own bootstraps and became a real rags to riches story.  Nobody's happy simply to have been given the keys to the kingdom, they also hafta portray themselves as "victims."

And it's not just corporations or politicians, it's everyone.  Nobody can admit they had a somewhat pleasant experience in high school, everybody has to now claim to have been the nerds picked on by the bullying football team.  Being a loser in high school is now a cool thing to have been, but not REALLY.  Shitty bands that should be happy someone's inexplicably buying their crappy records by the ton, they also have to bray about all the record companies that rejected their demos.  Gilbert Arenas is an assclown who has gotten tens of millons of dollars to play about 6 more NBA games than me, and yet he can't go longer than three minutes without whining about being picked so late in the draft, and having to overcome being born with a freakish genetic gift that makes rich men bid for the right to have him come play a child's game for them in order to eke out a living.  And on, and on, and on.  Nobody inherited money or their company, everybody started out the same as everyone else, with nary an advantage, be it the color of their skin or the crotch they were torn out of. - XMASTIME

Via Sully THIS GUY HERE says the same about people's refusal to accept that their success might be a result of a long, long string of fortunate happenings/non-happenings:

Many of my critics pretend that they have been entirely self-made. They seem to feel responsible for their intellectual gifts, for their freedom from injury and disease, and for the fact that they were born at a specific moment in history. Many appear to have absolutely no awareness of how lucky one must be to succeed at anything in life, no matter how hard one works. One must be lucky to be able to work. One must be lucky to be intelligent, to not have cerebral palsy, or to not have been bankrupted in middle age by the mortal illness of a spouse.

Many of us have been extraordinarily lucky—and we did not earn it. Many good people have been extraordinarily unlucky—and they did not deserve it. And yet I get the distinct sense that if I asked some of my readers why they weren’t born with club feet, or orphaned before the age of five, they would not hesitate to take credit for these accomplishments. There is a stunning lack of insight into the unfolding of human events that passes for moral and economic wisdom in some circles.