Some people believe "If I can achieve success, anyone can," and if someone doesn't achieve success it's their own damn fault for not working hard enough or being virtuous enough.
Other people view their own success as a matter of good luck, and feel that things could have turned out very differently due to circumstances completely beyond their control.
I fall into the latter group, and this is because I know and know of a number of people who have the same or better credentials, virtue, and willingness to work hard as I do, but are less successful. (This statement holds for every measure of success I can think of, although the same people don't always count as more successful or less successful by each and every measure.) This is also because I have been in situations where I was unable to achieve a certain success due to circumstances entirely beyond my control; I have also been in situations where I was nearly unable to achieve a certain success due to cercumstances entirely beyond my control, but did end up achieving it by making use of some resource to which not everyone has access (and I had access to said resource because of good luck or a random fluke or other circumstances beyond my control.)
So I'd like to see a poll of the people who think that if you don't achieve success it's entirely your fault. Do they know anyone who has the same or better credentials, virtue, and willingness to work hard, but is less successful? Have they ever not achieved success due to circumstances entirely beyond their control? Have they ever achieved success purely because of good luck? Basically I'm wondering if they have the same range of experiences as me but are interpreting them differently, or if they came from a completely different set of experiences.
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