But even within the realm of human possibility, not every person can be anything that any human might become. A person born with dwarfism is not going to become an NBA basketball player. A person born with severe Down syndrome is not going to become a top theoretical physicist. And if they imagine they might, it is not “positive thinking” to encourage that belief, but more like playing a cruel prank on them. The realist answer to the “self-creationists’” ideological slogan might be put, “Accept who you are, and be the best version of that person possible.”
But, as with the communists, the acolytes of the ideology of the self-created individual want, not to accept reality, but to replace reality with their dreamworld. They reject the simple fact that we, as created beings (whether created by God or nature), cannot be whoever we want to be, but must deal with the hand we have been dealt by our creator as best we can. While any decent person wants those born with disabilities, such as blindness or non-functioning limbs, to have the opportunity for the most fulfilling life possible, the ideologues of the self-created individual try to deny that naturally occurring disabilities even exist: “The only disability I have is your attitude” is a slogan I have seen on posters in university hallways. It as though the only reason a blind person has trouble driving in rush-hour traffic is bad attitudes on the part of other drivers, or the difficulty a paraplegic has in climbing a mountain is due to insufficiently enlightened rocks. Thus, the ideologues of the self-created individual are like Marx in this respect also: they admit there are limits on individual self-creation, but only because “haters” create those limits.
