I am a big fan of John Scalzi’s science fiction stories – have been I guess since reading Old Man’s War after it got the nod for the Hugo.  But I am also a fan of what are essentially philosophical posts on his blog Whatever.  This recent post on how John succeeded in life illustrates the interconnected of almost everyone’s life (in fact a lack of connectedness is probably a sure sign of failure) and plainly without invective gives the lie to the ideology of behind those who claim they accomplished everything in their life on their own.  It doesn’t mean successful people owe everything to everyone else — what it means is we will always have a messy debate over how much successful people owe to society, but if we can have that with everyone understanding that society is necessary for anyone to even have the opportunity to be successful than I think we would all be better off.