Dwain Northey (Gen X)

The Self-Made Man Was Never Self-Made

And here’s the other part of this generational shift that I find particularly interesting: Millennials and Gen Z don’t seem nearly as willing to swallow the mythology of the self-made billionaire.

And frankly, I think that’s a good thing.

Because we have spent decades being sold this fairy tale that Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates simply woke up one morning, believed in themselves, worked harder than everybody else and magically became billionaires.

And then there’s Donald Trump, who somehow became the patron saint of the self-made man despite being born into considerable wealth and receiving substantial help from his family.

But apparently the official American biography of a billionaire is:

“I believed in myself.”

Roll credits.

The problem is that believing in yourself doesn’t explain the private school, the inherited money, the family connections, the investors, the employees, the government infrastructure, the public education system, the courts, the roads, the internet, the universities, the scientists, the engineers, the customers, the workers or the millions of other people whose labor and participation made that success possible.

That’s not to say these people didn’t work hard.

They did.

That’s not to say they weren’t intelligent, ambitious or extraordinarily driven.

Some of them clearly were.

But working hard and doing it alone are two completely different things.

And I think that’s the veil Millennials and Gen Z are beginning to pull back.

They’re looking at the billionaire class and asking a very uncomfortable question:

“Self-made compared to what?”

Because if you’re handed a significant head start and then win the race, you can certainly say you ran the race.

But don’t stand at the finish line pretending you built the track, manufactured your shoes, invented gravity and personally carried everyone else across the finish line.

That’s mythology.

And mythology matters because it becomes policy.

If we convince ourselves that every billionaire is simply the result of extraordinary individual effort, then the logical conclusion becomes that everyone who isn’t wealthy simply didn’t try hard enough.

And that’s where the whole thing falls apart.

Because millions of people work their asses off every single day and will never accumulate even a microscopic fraction of the wealth possessed by these people.

The difference isn’t necessarily work ethic.

Sometimes it’s opportunity.

Sometimes it’s timing.

Sometimes it’s education.

Sometimes it’s family.

Sometimes it’s connections.

Sometimes it’s luck.

Sometimes it’s being born into exactly the right circumstances.

And almost always, it’s some combination of those things.

That’s what makes the younger generation’s growing emphasis on community so interesting.

They’re beginning to understand something that the rugged-individualism crowd desperately doesn’t want them to understand:

Nobody gets anywhere entirely by themselves.

Not the billionaire.

Not the politician.

Not the CEO.

Not the astronaut.

Not the soldier.

Not the artist.

Not even Rocky fucking Balboa.

Rocky had Mickey.

He had Apollo.

He had Adrian.

He had Paulie.

Apparently even Rocky needed a support system.

Yet somehow we built an entire political and economic mythology around the idea that needing other people means you’re weak.

And Millennials and Gen Z seem to be looking at that mythology and saying:

“Yeah… we’re not buying it anymore.”

They’re seeing the machinery behind the curtain.

They’re recognizing that society isn’t a collection of rugged individuals who occasionally bump into each other at Walmart.

It’s a web.

Your success affects me.

My success affects you.

The teacher educating your kid is part of your life.

The person stocking the grocery store is part of your life.

The truck driver bringing your food across the country is part of your life.

The nurse taking care of you when you’re sick is part of your life.

The engineer maintaining the infrastructure you depend upon is part of your life.

The person picking up your garbage is part of your life.

You don’t have to know their names for their work to be essential to your existence.

That’s community.

And maybe that’s the real generational rebellion happening right now.

It’s not simply, “We don’t want your capitalism.”

It’s more fundamental:

“We don’t believe your mythology.”

They aren’t necessarily impressed by somebody standing on a stage telling them they became wealthy because they were smarter, tougher and more determined than everyone else.

They’re asking what was underneath that success.

Who helped?

Who funded it?

Who built it?

Who worked for it?

Who paid for the infrastructure?

Who created the technology?

Who took the risks?

Who provided the education?

Who got lucky?

And perhaps most importantly:

Who didn’t get those opportunities?

That’s a much more complicated conversation than “work hard and you too can become a billionaire.”

But complicated doesn’t mean wrong.

It means we’re finally talking about reality instead of the bedtime story.

And as a Gen Xer, I have to admit there’s something humbling about watching younger generations question something that some people in my generation accepted as gospel.

We were raised on the idea that the individual was everything.

They seem increasingly interested in the idea that the individual exists within a community.

And maybe that’s the correction we needed.

Because believing you can accomplish something yourself is empowering.

Believing that you accomplished everything yourself is delusional.

There is a difference.

You can be proud of what you built without pretending nobody helped you build it.

You can celebrate ambition without worshipping wealth.

You can admire achievement without turning successful people into superheroes.

And you can believe in personal responsibility while acknowledging that nobody gets to choose the circumstances into which they’re born.

Maybe Millennials and Gen Z aren’t becoming weaker.

Maybe they’re becoming harder to bullshit.

And honestly?

After decades of being told that every billionaire is a rugged individual who personally pulled himself out of the primordial ooze by his bootstraps, I’m perfectly happy to see somebody finally ask:

“Wait a minute… who the hell gave him the boots?”