Heavy is the crown (because society is sitting on it)

What’s the first thing you think of when you hear the word self-made? Specifically, when it applies to the people who now occupy positions of power? What do you actually think of the concept itself?

If it’s a nepo baby, you think about how easy they had it. They bought the title “self-made.” They didn’t earn a damn thing.

Why?

Because there’s an underlying assumption built directly into the concept of being self-made. In our minds, “self-made” is synonymous with sacrifice. It’s synonymous with struggle. This is the exact reason nepo babies are never truly recognized as self-made: their lifestyle and their narrative arc offers no indication that there was ever any sacrifice or struggle involved.

Think of it.

There’s no greater story in human history than the comeback.

The athlete who survived a catastrophic injury and came back stronger, better. The individual who comes from some random, impoverished village with a total lack of resources or education, and somehow makes it to impossible heights of power. The person who worked three jobs, came home, and grinded on their side business—and after putting in 10,000 hours of pure struggle, they finally made it.

We could go on with millions of stories just like these.

And it goes from the most heroic human stories like these, straight down to the absolute basics like someone posting a before-and-after picture of their gym progress.

The main question people always ask is: how long did it take?

Because any number that seems unrealistic based on a traditional “struggle timeline” is instantly unacceptable. It’s labeled as surgery.

Why?

Because society has accepted the rule that success should only come after struggle.

Success without struggle is cheating.

The moment a timeline doesn’t look grueling enough, people assume there’s an element of cheating, so they actively hunt for it. In those heroic stories, they dig for the dirt: did they already have money? Did they already have connections? Did they already have X, Y, and Z? And the moment they find it, the success is completely invalidated.

Because there was no struggle.

It’s the exact same thing at the gym. If you got from point A to point B by using peptides, GLP-1, or whatever else, your success is immediately disqualified. You didn’t do the miserable work of traditional diet and exercise.

Your success is fake because there was no struggle that led to it.

Society has a deep, obsessive love for the glorification of struggle. We have internalized this narrative so thoroughly that anything achieved without it is instantly invalidated. It’s not considered “true” success.

The minute someone becomes successful, we become ravenous for their origin story. We don’t just want to know it; we want to judge it. We want to determine whether that person is actually worthy of their position. And that worthiness is calculated by a very specific math: how much did you struggle to obtain it? How much did you sacrifice? How much did you lose on the way?

Unless we hear about the sleepless nights, the failure after failure, the moments they almost quit, or the absolute grinding of their soul to a pulp—we don’t buy it.

Success must be accompanied by struggle in order for society to deem it worthy.

And there are millions of reasons why. We can look at this from a dozen different angles, but the lens we need to focus on is the narrative we’ve inherited from our ancestors. It’s a worldview where success flat-out does not count unless it is preceded by struggle.

We need to look closely at this worldview, because the branches that grow from this glorification of struggle are incredibly dark.

First, it creates a toxic internal loop: people begin to believe their own achievements don’t matter if they weren’t accompanied by misery. Second, it empowers the masses to casually invalidate anyone else’s success the second they see an easier path taken.

This is the exact engine that drives hustle culture.

It’s why your feeds are flooded with videos of people screaming at you to grind 24/7. People buy into it, they grind until exhaustion, and they accept the suffering because they think it’s the law of the land. They believe these are the dues that must be paid on the path to success.

But hustle culture is a meat grinder. It forces people to burn themselves out, to consciously refuse more efficient paths, and to actively reject easier solutions. It’is a subconscious trap that screams: if it isn’t painful, it isn’t real.

The struggle isn’t just a bridge that allows the unsuccessful person to relate to the successful person. It is a bridge that recruits them into the same belief system.

Every single time an underdog wins and points back to their suffering as the “secret sauce,” it convinces the next person that their current misery is just a required down payment for future greatness. It feeds the hustle-culture lie that you need to be working 24/7, sacrificing your health, and drowning in stress just to earn your right to exist at the top.

But look at the grand scale of this. Take it from the Bible. Don’t we have to suffer, sacrifice, and struggle just to be able to make it into heaven?

It’s all the exact same narrative being fed to us. And it begs a massive question:

The glorification of struggle has become a psychological recruitment tool, convincing generation after generation that misery is the only legitimate currency to buy success. It tricks us because of that element of relatability. Someone who achieves success easily (through existing platforms, resources, nepo-baby connections) offers absolutely zero relatability to someone starting from zero. We reject them because we cannot afford their luxury.

Instead, we gravitate toward the story of struggle because it meets us where we are: in the mud.

The most interesting thing isn’t just the narrative of getting there. The real horror begins after you arrive.

Because it’s not like you win, you get the success and power, and you just ride off into the sunset to live happily ever after. The moment you obtain power and success, a whole new narrative begins.

Yes, you proved you earned it through your initial struggle. But now that you have it, you must continually sacrifice yourself to prove to others that you’re still worthy of holding it. There has to be a continuous sacrifice where society perceives that you’re experiencing a loss, and therefore, you’re still allowed to carry the crown. You have to repeatedly slice off pieces of yourself just to appease the masses. You have to prove, time after time, that you still deserve it.

The rent is never paid.

Think of it like an apartment lease. The initial struggle? That was just the credit check, the background check, and the mountains of documentation you needed just to get permission to move into the building. The apartment itself is the success. But you do not get to live in that apartment rent-free. The rent must be paid continuously, for as long as you’re occupying that success.

Society doesn’t just demand a down payment of struggle to get success; it demands a continuous subscription fee of sacrifice to keep it.

If a successful person stops sacrificing and starts looking a little too comfortable in their power, society immediately begins to resent them. We start questioning their worthiness. And god forbid you start flexing that power, flaunting your wealth, or showing off the assets that came with your success without a visible trail of recent suffering to justify it. The moment you look happy without being miserable, the collective turns on you.

To appease this resentment, the successful person has to engage in a ritual of continuous loss. And I don’t mean losing material objects. I mean sacrificing things of intrinsic value to the self. They have to publicly hemorrhage their peace and their sanity just to prove they haven’t been “spoiled” by their success.

You see this exact theater play out with influencers and media figures every single day.

They post a video enjoying their success (traveling, eating well, living the dream) but they immediately follow it up with a calculated reality check. They have to make content proving just how hard they’re working behind the scenes. They flash their lack of sleep, their toxic schedules, and the crushing stress they’re under.

It’s a public plea for permission to stay successful. It’s them looking at the audience and saying, “See? I have access to luxury, but look at how much I’m torturing myself behind the scenes to pay for it. I’m still worthy of this seat.”

It always circles back to the exact same trap. By broadcasting their ongoing struggle, they’re begging society to validate them. They’re trapped in a loop of believing (and convincing you) that they only deserve to hold their success if they continue to suffer for it.

The moment you step into power, you no longer belong to yourself. You belong to the masses.

Society has inherited a permanent right to constantly scrutinize and judge your every move. Because you belong to the world, the world gets to decide if you are still worthy of the space you occupy. This constant surveillance is the hidden tax of success. The individual is systematically sacrificed to the collective through a firing squad of public scrutiny.

There’s no “happily ever after.” This performance must continue to the bitter end, culminating, of course, well, with your death.

And speaking of death, this takes the narrative to a much darker, almost mythological level. Because while all sacrifices are expected, society values one specific type above all others.

Sure, sacrificing your time, your sleep, and your mental health is relatable. People respect it. But the ultimate, highest form of currency in this system is when the individual completely obliterates themselves for the group.

The core narrative of our civilization is this: the individual must be sacrificed for the collective.

Look at the trolley problem. We’re taught this ethical dilemma as if it’s a wide-open question, but it’s a trap. The train is barreling down the tracks toward five people. You stand next to a lever. If you pull it, you divert the train, saving the five but killing one lone person on the other track.

If you read between the lines, that experiment always came conditioned with only one acceptable answer.

Pull the lever.

Save the many.

Kill the one.

The trolley experiment is psychological training. It reinforces the rule that power cannot truly belong to the individual; it must belong to the many. Even when you’re handed the ultimate power to choose who lives or dies, it comes with a strict condition: you must choose the collective over the individual.

There’s no more “worthy” sacrifice in human history than the individual erasing themselves for the greater good. This is why the people who manage to climb to the top are subjected to endless scrutiny. By demanding they constantly sacrifice their time, their peace, and their humanity, the crowd is forcing them to signal: “my power doesn’t belong to me. It belongs to you.”

Constant sacrifice for the collective is what keeps you in power. It’s what keeps the crowd satisfied, and it’s what keeps the crowd wanting more from you. Because not only do you continue to struggle (and therefore prove you’re worthy of your success) you’re proving through your sacrifices that you believe your power belongs to the collective, not to the self.

But we know the truth about the crowd. It can never be satisfied. No amount of sacrifice will ever be enough.

Death is the ultimate sacrifice, because in death, the individual truly dies. They can never possess power again. The power goes back to belonging to the masses, not to one single person, country, or entity.

And so, only death is the ultimate sacrifice.

For even Jesus was only worthy of all that power because he died; not because he lived.

Almost every invisible script we live out (our relationship with success, struggle, obligations, and how these things pressure us to erase ourselves) was originally learned within the first institution we ever belonged to: the family.

If you’re ready to look at your reality honestly, grab a copy of Family Inc.

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