confessions of a progressive bootstrapper

yes, i'm going to tell you to pull them

You’re all going to get mad at me for this, but I’ll say it anyways. The thing about the “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” genre of advice is that it’s usually good advice.

Ideally, I don’t want to live in a society where people are treated unfairly and have to pull themselves up by their bootstraps to make it out, but I do live in that society. That’s the reality of the situation, and I don’t plan to lie to anyone.

We should call out the politicians and those in power, who expect people to silently comply to their dismissive excuses. They have the power to change it. I am not telling you to endorse a worldview that pretends like a person born into poverty is on the same playing field as a person born into wealth.

What I’m telling you is, as long as you believe that you don’t have to do it, you will stay where you are. I sympathize with you. I think it’s unfair, and I’ve spent my time feeling unfairly about the cards I’d been dealt. But you can only stay there feeling sorry for yourself for so long, and then you have to do it yourself. No one is coming to save you, as much as I wish that they were.

Complaining about people who are in the same bucket as you will not take you anywhere. You can whine about the other crabs in the bucket, that are slightly above you, all day, and it won’t change a thing.

Do not feel bad about yourself. It is hard. You are not unworthy of success. You can recognize that it’s an unfair system, and you have my sympathy, but you cannot resign yourself to that and give up.

You have to pull yourself up and then pull others up behind you. You do not deserve to make it to the top if you desire to knock the ladder down as soon as you are up. When you get to a place where you can, you help as many as you can. As you keep tugging on the bootstraps, trying, I hope that someone will eventually cut you a break, you’ll get lucky, or whatever it is comes along, and you’ll pull yourself up, and you should pass that break along to the next person, as many times as you can.

Once you’re up there, you should work to build a world where there are more steps up that ladder, where there are safety guards in case you slip a little, because it can happen to any of us, at any time.

tldr: I like “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” as life advice. I don’t like it as a policy guideline or a blanket dismissal of hardship.