re: Nature and Nurture-- How much of your success is your own?

Depends

quote:

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Can we claim responsibility for our own success?

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What total and utter bullsh!t.

The manner in which you approach the subject is one that manufactures "outs", excuses, ways to blame or to be a victim, and everything but acknowledge that real success is not anything you get by inheriting circumstances. What you propose won't account for real success, only different levels of receiving what is available. A man with the desire to survive, take responsibility for his own life, and do whatever it takes to provide for his family cannot be defined by the way you are looking at this.

You are leaving out way too many variables and actually none you mention will begin to encompass the many routes to success which all share one common beginning.

Here's a true story. My Dad was born on a plantation near Wilson, La., his mother was a "maid" there. The plantation was bankrupt and shut down during the depression in 1929. My father was 4 years old, he and his mother were driven to Baton Rouge in the morning and let out in what was downtown at the time. She walked the streets that day, asking everyone she passed for work. They lived as a poor but hard working mother and son (my grandmother who passed away in 1974 never learned to drive). My dad built great stamina from the cliché...running literally everywhere he went, school, after school jobs, ran track in high school, eventually lettered at LSU and Tulane. In 1948, he and four other young men w/similar social/economic backgrounds began what grew into one of Baton Rouge's larger locally owned corporations. It's still here but bought by a large national conglomerate in the late 80's. I witnessed enough myself to know success came from a man's character that was built from the oldest, most basic of human instincts... the will to survive and the desire to achieve security and stability for his family.

You can say whatever you want to show why it may have been "easier" for him than others less fortunate but a successful individual will succeed anywhere...from wilderness to city. Success lives in a man's heart or whatever you want to call his constitution. All that other stuff is spectator, non-participant, opportunist, bullshite.