No one is self-made
from Aarva Hosted by Christine Abigail L Tan
If a favorable wind carries you to the top, did you really make the climb? Every culture has a version of the self-made myth: the person who pulls themselves up by sheer effort and earns a place at the top. This 22 June 2026 essay from Aeon pauses to ask why society so desperately needs to believe this story. Looking back to a debate between ancient Chinese philosophers, the piece examines how moral worth became a convenient tool to justify economic inequality. It asks what happens to the concept of success when people finally admit that no one actually authors their life from scratch. A philosophical critique of meritocracy that traces the moral justification for inequality back to ancient Confucianism. The essay contrasts the Confucian belief in individual cultivation with the Daoist thinker Zhuangzi, who argued that human agency is always shaped by outside conditions. Through this historical debate, it challenges the concept of the self-made person and questions the modern habit of treating wealth and power as rewards for virtue. Read at source: Aeon For more features and details, visit aarva.app
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