American culture is probably the most ruggedly individualistic culture the world has known where it is widely believed that each person is fully responsible for their outcome in life. The role of luck, however, is indisputable — few who would deny that a person born into the privilege of a wealthy, well-functioning family has a considerable advantage over someone from a deprived background. But in most people’s understanding, such differences at the outset do not necessarily result in inevitable outcomes.
Our cultural myth is that it is really all up to individual choice. As evidence for this belief people will point to outliers — seemingly “self-made men” – people who overcame the challenges of poverty, and even racism by “pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps” to become wealthy entrepreneurs. Alternatively they may point to an opposite example — people who, despite being born into wealth, sank into drug addiction and poverty.
Even though such extreme outliers do exist they represent just a small fraction of the population. Believers in rugged individualism maintain that the outliers prove the rule that when someone decides to succeed, they can.
Celebrants of personal responsibility regard the fact that the majority of disadvantaged people do not become wealthy to be evidence of their lack of motivation. Similarly, they attribute the success of those who are advantaged to good decision making.
Through the lens of rugged individualism we all wind up where we deserve to be, based how we have chosen to act — a reassuring justification to anyone questioning whether such a highly stratified society is fair.
If what really accounts for considerably disparate life outcomes is luck of the draw and not individual choice, perhaps successful people may not be as entitled to the preferential access to resources they enjoy as is generally assumed. And people consigned to lives of deprivation and hardship may also not be deserving of their plight.