 Russell Conwell, who was the founder of Temple University, a Baptist preacher, gave a speech. He was a public speaker at the time and he gave the same speech, believe this, that there's no television or internet, so he had to give the same speech over and over, something like 9,000 times in the space of 20 years. And it was called Acres of Diamonds. And this I think is the paradigm example of the Christian idea of self-making. Acres of Diamonds was a speech where a Baptist preacher said, God says there is a duty to be rich. Why? Well, because only the rich man can do good works. If you're poor, how can you do charity? How can you do this altruistic service to your fellow man if you're not rich? So this is the purpose, right? Number one, you have to overcome your own base desires and your own materialistic interests. And number two, the Christian self-maker said, you have to do this for a limited purpose. The purpose is basically to deny yourself, right? To build up riches not for your own enjoyment or for the enjoyment of those that you value, your spouse, your children, et cetera, but for others. It's only morally good, they said, to make yourself, to make something of yourself, to go from rags to riches if you do so in the service of others. Now, the consequences of this are incredibly damaging. This is why, for example, people criticize Steve Jobs for not giving away enough of his money, or for not doing so in as public a way, say, as Bill Gates has done in his family. This is why people say you're only good if, once you rise to the top, you help out those that got you there, right, those who really built that, right? Whether you've been the one struggling, sweating, working hard, building the business, overcoming the obstacles, filling out the government bureaucrats' forms, all these other things. You're the one that did all that, but when you get to the top, they say, you've got to pay your pound of flesh, not only to the government now, but also to everyone beneath you. The Christian view of self-making in the 19th century context, this idea that you have a duty to be rich so that you can do Christian service is incredibly damaging because it takes the self out of self-making. The self-made man is no longer a self-made man. You're almost a vehicle, a vessel through which society can build up wealth and then transmit it to those who need it or who can claim it. Now, this is very, very damaging. Imagine motivating someone. Imagine yourself saying, well, I could start a business. I've got this great idea, an entrepreneurial idea. Someone on the internet hasn't figured out how to sell blank. I mean, if I knew an actual example, well, I wouldn't share it with you, first of all, because I'd be the one that wanted to do it. But if I knew an actual example, somebody probably would have already tried it. But there's a lot of things, arbitraging debt or selling different things or figuring out ways of using this technology to make money. You look at that and you say, I've got this great idea to make money. But then you realize if the context is, if the culture is, that's only good for you if you do so in the service of others. Well, when you're up against the wall, right? When you're staying up 18 hours a day doing the coding or the programming or making the business deals, what's going to motivate you? Clearly it's not yourself. And so it detaches the self from that process. And that's incredibly damaging because I think ultimately what that means is that it doesn't work. You can't motivate someone in that extrinsic way, in that external way because if you're telling them to improve themselves for someone else, they're not getting anything out of it. There's a disconnect between the idea of self-making. Why not be one of the recipients? Why not let other people be the vessel of spreading the nation's wealth? Well, of course, we know the problem is if you just, everyone turns around and says this, there is no wealth created and we might as well go back to when we all do what our parents did. There's no social mobility in the sense that you have to do it for others. Now the other major flaw, the other characteristic error that the 19th century produced in the idea of self-making, on the one hand was the Christian idea, what would be called something like the duty-based version of self-making. You have a duty to improve yourself. Even if you don't like it, even if it's not good, even if it isn't one of your values, you go do it. Andrew Carnegie even had this. In his so-called, he wrote a piece called The Gospel of Wealth. Andrew Carnegie said basically wealth has no value except in as much as you can give it to other people. Except that you can endow libraries and schools and do things. Now he had a slightly more pro-self idea. He said, you've got to help those who can help themselves. He was opposed to just blanket charity, giving people money. He said, you give them the tools with which they can make themselves. But he still morally justified it as giving to others. Now the other error is what I would call the kind of subjectivist, the me generation if you want to call it that, the idea of self-making that's all just about the subjective whim. You don't like the world as it is. You don't like conditions as they are. So you just figure out a way to feel better about it. This is the opposite pole. This is self-making as a psychological indulgence. And this literature also becomes popular. In the early part of the 20th century, probably the three most popular self-help books. Norman Vincent Peel's Think and Grow, or no. He wrote this down, so I wouldn't forget. Yeah, the power of positive thinking. Norman Vincent Peel. And then Napoleon Hill wrote Think and Grow Rich. And then everybody's favorite, probably the most famous, Dale Carnegie's, How to Win Friends and Influence People. And what do these individuals, this is the post-Freudian world. This is the post-Deweyian world. So Sigmund Freud, the whole cycle analysis, that it's all a matter of how you think about yourself and repress all of your edible complexes, et cetera. And it's also doing in the sense that it's not really about the self. It's about how you reflect the self in society. And this is all really focused on the self. It doesn't make the same error that the Christian self-makers do of divorcing the self from the process of self-making. But it detaches self-making from any visible external goal. The idea of this self-making is entirely focused around some psychological characteristic. Now, of course, these self-help manuals still promise riches on the other end. Think and Grow Rich, Win Friends and Influence People, positive thinking. And they had an enormous number of testimonials about, oh, I read the power of positive thinking, and I beat Muhammad Ali. And there was a famous, famously, there was a boxer who claimed that reading this book was what allowed him to defeat Muhammad Ali. Now, I think probably his left hook or maybe a good jab was what allowed him to defeat. But it's all the psychological sense. Now, in some context, this psychological self-making can be a part of proper self-making. The problem is that it completely detaches itself from any real values in the world. Why should you make yourself? What should you make yourself into? Well, I don't know, whatever you want. If you want to make yourself into, you do some kind of self-indulgent, pop some drugs, sit on a hill, and figure out who you are, that's just as much self-making as, say, coming up with a great idea, succeeding in the world, and accomplishing something for yourself, pursuing real values, health, wealth, et cetera. So there's this divergence in the 19th century. By the 20th century, what this means is that the literature and the idea culturally of self-making has become very confused. We see some individuals, great athletes, for example, who pick themselves up from being cut from their basketball team, et cetera, Michael Jordan kind of story. You get cut from your basketball team. What do you do? You go out and you practice. You work even harder. You become more determined. You change yourself. You adapt to circumstances. You figure out what is necessary to your success, to your goal. And Michael Jordan's goal obviously was to be the best basketball player ever. And many would argue he probably achieved that, at least within his generation.