Carl Rogers introduced the concept of "Unconditional Positive Regard" when working with other people. It's part of Humanistic psychology, a doctrine that "emphasizes the individual's inherent drive toward self-actualization, the process of realizing and expressing one's own capabilities and creativity."

Humanistic psychology developed as a response to the more pessimistic views of psychology: instead of identifying flaws to be fixed, humanism focuses on strengths to be encouraged. It's the umbrella term containing self-help, motivation, and life hacking.

Which brings me to Elliot's post saying that success is 99% collaboration. The article got my hackles up a little, and deserves a response.

I understand that no one creates in a vacuum, that we all rely on the fruits of others.

What I *don’t* understand is why anyone would take the trouble to bring that up. Just because it's true isn't an actual cause for mentioning it - lots of things are true, but this doesn't compel us to point them out.

Many people suffer lack of motivation for finishing projects, and one reason could be that others keep undercutting the resultant satisfaction. Your brain is a correlation engine, and “Nice project, but others are responsible for the bulk of the work” sounds like a recipe for associating completion with cutting critique. Keep getting accomplishments dismissed and your brain will learn to correlate accomplishment with disappointment.

Overbearing pride, arrogance, superiority, or false accomplishments are bad obviously, but this does not mean that all pride is bad. Some quick googling on religious opinion bears this out. A little bit of pride in accomplishment is healthy. It probably triggers the dopamine hit that encourages you to have more accomplishments.

A different way to look at this is to note that the societal structures used are *also* available to you – except that they completed a project and you did not. Saying they only stand on the shoulders of giants is indistinguishable from envy. Newton said it about himself, which is quite different from someone saying it about others.

Suppose your teenage son shows you a completed project. Do you say "that's nice, but you couldn't have done it if I hadn't given you money for materials"?

We should also consider the social media context. Admonishing a child might bring a tiny bit of disappointment to one person, but social media greatly amplifies that effect. With 4 million visitors each day, how much total disappointment resulted from Elliot's article?

I can think of no positive reason for taking Elliot's position. It's potentially an interesting idea to point out once in a philosophical discussion, but on a website that encourages creativity saying literally "success is 99% collaboration" to a wide audience seems counterproductive.