Everyone is the maker of their own fortune
We begin with a proverb that is often used in everyday language, but probably most of the time without much reflection: “Everyone is the maker of their own fortune.” It is a saying that actually contains a contradiction, almost a paradox.
Luck, chance and probability are closely related, but they are by no means synonyms. Luck — or, more precisely, gambling — was what prompted Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) in the seventeenth century to search for mathematical descriptions and explanations that later developed into probability theory and statistics. He was interested in questions such as: “What stake should one make when the gain is uncertain?”
With that question we are back at our opening proverb, because ultimately it contains an answer to the analogous question of life: what stake — money, work or effort — should one make when the gain is uncertain? “Everyone is the maker of their own fortune” suggests that success does not depend on chance or on the laws of probability, but that one can “forge” it: one merely has to work energetically and hard enough towards a goal, and then the result can supposedly be produced almost predictably.
This is also the source of “wisdom” spread by career trainers — or perhaps one should say happiness trainers — in seminars and courses: “The future belongs to those who know a great deal!”, “If we develop talents, we will prepare the way”, or “The secret of success is unwavering determination.” Ultimately, these statements mean that every person has their life in their own hands and is personally responsible for success or failure. Yet at the same time — and here lies the contradiction — the language of “fortune” is an admission that a person's success in life also depends on luck.
The idea that every individual can forge their own fortune did not originate in modern times or with liberalism. The proverb itself can be traced back as far as the fourth century BCE. The Romans already believed that they could forge their own fortune, and their history seems to support them. In his Epistulae ad Caesarem senem, the Roman historian Sallust wrote in the first century BCE: “Sed res docuit id verum esse, quod in carminibus Appius ait, fabrum esse suae quemque fortunae.” — roughly: “But experience teaches us that what Appius said in his verses is true: everyone is the craftsman of his own fortune.”
The Appius quoted in this letter, born more than 250 years before Sallust, had indeed “taken his fortune into his own hands” and had become not merely the architect of his own life. He was responsible for the famous Via Appia and for Rome's first aqueduct, the Aqua Appia.
To be the maker of one's own fortune therefore also means: “Anyone can achieve anything if only they really want it.” Unfortunately, experience — to use Sallust's res — also teaches us that this cannot be true without qualification. What about all those who discover that active effort cannot meaningfully change their fate? What about people caught in unemployment through no fault of their own and living at the margins of society — something that becomes even more literal when one looks at poverty in poorer regions of the world? Do they show that people often, perhaps even most of the time, cannot simply be the architects of their own fortune?
Such people are not playthings of the gods, as in Greek tragedy, but may become resources no longer required by economic structures. For them, happiness may lie only in catharsis or in the stoic acceptance of a fate they cannot easily escape.
Yet this does not completely refute the saying, because it also contains an almost opposite interpretation. We only have to shift the emphasis to another meaning of “happiness”. Happiness can also mean a pleasant or joyful state of mind in which people find themselves from time to time — some more often than others. In this sense, forging one's own happiness means learning to be content with what one has, rather like Diogenes of Sinope being content with his barrel.
The proverb is therefore both reassurance and encouragement. It is a piece of life wisdom that fits particularly well with those to whom Fortuna serves from a full ladle. It can be used against envy: why envy something that one supposedly failed to achieve only because of one's own lack of ability — because one was not a sufficiently skilled “blacksmith”? At the same time, the idea can become an excuse for doing nothing to help people in difficult circumstances: if they really want to, the argument goes, they can simply help themselves.
The idea is especially important to the successful as well, because it allows them to be proud of what they have achieved. They can regard their success as something actively created through effort, intelligence and perseverance. They can believe that it was not merely chance, that they were not simply in the right place at the right time and happened to seize opportunities created by favourable circumstances.
If, however, not everyone can achieve everything from the outset because people do not all possess the necessary abilities, another question arises: have those who “made it” necessarily deserved their position? Is it guaranteed that the best person is selected from the pool of candidates? In other words, does a person's career level really correlate with personal achievement and competence? Is the best person always found at each level of a hierarchy? Can we assume that some kind of Darwinian process reliably ensures this?
Broadly speaking, there is certainly some relationship between competence and position. But the system also contains distortions. For simplicity, imagine a linear scale from 0 to 10 representing hierarchical levels — although in reality the structure is of course a complex graph. A distortion would be a situation in which a person with the competence appropriate to level n (say 5) remains for a long time or permanently at level m (say 2).
The so-called Peter Principle, associated with Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull's The Peter Principle (1969), considers the opposite distortion: people are promoted to levels that exceed their competence. In the notation above, n < m. Its famous formulation is:
“In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.”
If this principle operated in pure form, however, it would imply that the actual work of a company — or, on a larger scale, of society — is performed by those who have not yet reached their level of incompetence. Apart from illness and retirement, after enough time all positions would eventually be occupied by people unable to fulfil their tasks.
Within that framework, a so-called maturity quotient (RQ) can be defined: the total number of employees in a state of incompetence (GIB), multiplied by 100 and divided by the total number of employees (GB):
RQ = GIB × 100 / GB
Can we finally answer whether everyone is the maker of their own fortune? To a small extent, yes. But beyond that, a person's path is also shaped by luck in the sense of chance and by social factors that lie outside the individual's sphere of influence.