The Role of Luck in Life
We all have, at least on some occasions, understood the meaning of the phrase “if it wasn’t for bad luck I wouldn’t have any luck at all”. There are not too many situations in our lives where luck is not in the mix somewhere. Our particular genetics was a matter of luck, which sperm combined with what egg was luck—unless of course one really believes that God is up in Heaven putting together strands of DNA to make billions upon billions of unique creatures and plants.
Who our parents are was luck, in what nation and locality we were born was luck. And we could go on here ad infinitum. Yet we all know those who pound their chest and essentially insist “I achieved my success, the old fashioned way—I earned it”. It would be more truthful to suggest some people have a lot of luck because they helped position themselves to receive good luck. If we don’t play the lottery we can’t win the lottery by luck. If we cheat to win that means we forced someone else to have bad luck. Thus, sometimes ethics is involved.
Luck is deeply ingrained in the evolutionary process, only we use the term chance for this process. However, the end achievements of the evolutionary process are not luck at all, and while it takes evolutionary Time to sort what is best for the period in question, evolution has always been progressive, albeit with some long correction periods scattered throughout the process.
If someone thinks they have the perfect marriage, then what an amazing amount of luck since right now on the planet there are about 7.5 billion people. I guess I don’t have any perfect marriage because I didn’t get any luck. Yes, we can play games here with the word luck but this at least establishes just how common luck is—good or bad.
While luck, good or bad, is everywhere we turn around, our species is best adapted to offset bad luck and to spread good luck around more so that the maximum number of people can achieve some contentment. When the most people practice the Golden Rule, then the fewest people suffer from bad luck and personal contentment is maximized. Unfortunately far more people rely on God (however defined) as the source for good luck and to punish others with bad luck: “Dear God, I pray that I get this job I applied for” “Dear God, I pray the I will not die from this cancer” Dear God I pray for the poor” (but I am not going to share my wealth with them), “Dear God, I pray for our men in uniform” (but I hope our guys/gals will kill as many of the other bastard’s as possible), Dear God, “I pray that my children can go to the best schools” (this will give them the best chance for the best jobs), “I pray that I pass this exam tomorrow” (and if others are praying the same thing, what kind of legitimate exam is this? and on and on it goes) “Dear God, if you let my team win the championship game and me be the star I will sing your praises in the microphones afterwards.” It isn’t always about us personally, we pray that God help others too, all kinds of others for all kinds of situations. The trouble is, in most of these cases, if we all collectively helped these others, then most of their problems could be solved. But that, unfortunately, will deprive us of some of our time or money—both of which are rather precious to us, often as some sort of enough is never enough. There are 75 million refugees living in other countries as refugees, mostly in tents needing food and homes, and material comforts. There are 7.5 billion people on our planet today, quite a bit more than there currently are enough natural resources for everyone to live as affluent as us. This means if each living person gave up $100 we would have 7.5 billion dollars to help them out to resettle them with a new home and a job with a livable wage. And if we did it based on our own wealth percentage wise, then most people would be paying a mere pittance.
Then maybe we should do this math again and have another $7.5 billion dollars to track down and hang those leaders who organized the attacks on these innocent people which caused them to lose their homes and everything else and flee their homeland. This would be neat because if it were domestic government leaders which were creating genocide in their own countries we could get them, and if it were invading forces we could target those leaders, or if it were independent nefarious groups of some sort, we could target their leaders. I kind of like this idea. That way when I decide to rid the country or world of anyone not defending or speaking badly of the Louvin Brothers, Terrell Owens, Barack Obama, Abraham Lincoln, etc. then I would have to consider how far $7.5 billion dollars would go to eliminate my ass from this earth. Maybe we just need to put a little bounty on the heads of those who feel a need to bother others diverse from their own mirror images. For practical reasons, I think I would rather be protected from attack by a bounty of this sort before I would choose to have millions of people pray to God to manage my demise on behalf of those petitioning God to do so. This might spare me the embarrassment of having God (however you define Him/her) from responding, “Who is Reid James?”
At any rate, we can’t always create our own good luck, but collectively, we can create a lot more good luck for the maximum number of people, and thereby maximize the number of contented people on this earth. Sounds like a plan to me. Having everyone praying to God for help with their land mines in life doesn’t seem to be working too well lately. Maybe the terrorists have the most effective way to bring human overpopulation under control. If each of us takes out 20 people at random—poof—just like that we have reduced human population by 325 million people, about the number of people living in the United States today. It seems like the fairest way to get an immediate reduction, but a little birdie explained to me that I better do my shooting first, then seek shelter for a while till the smoke clears. A sort of global lottery—“On your mark, load your Uzi, get set—“GO”. There are draw backs to this plan—for example if we wanted to reduce the population growth just for the amount it has increased in my life time we would have to eliminate about 3.75 billion people. That means we have to go through this “fair” massacre 4 or 5 times I guess. And suppose some wise-acre suggests we start with those over 65? That’s 524 million people. I know, the young people don’t vote that much, but they might unanimously buy into that suggestion. That’s why I don’t buy an expensive carry out $150 dollar meal in a Trump restaurant and eat it at McDonald’s. It seems to annoy the poor. I remember when young and had an especially tasty morsel in hand in front of a neighborhood friend, I would saturate the conversation with loud “Um, Um, Um! this is really, really good, best I have ever had, UM! Um! Um! as I licked my lips.” I don’t trust a McDonnel’s crowd to just sit there and drool. Some sort of ‘meal rage’ might set in. The less fortunate are getting a tad testy all over the globe.
At any rate it seems luck is not something that operates in a vacuum, and can only be increased by divine intervention. We have finally met the real enemy these days and it is us. Time for me to take a nap, but first I need to eat something sumptuous, turn the air conditioner up, and thank God for His/Her many blessings which unfortunately do not include my being the most attractive, best personality, smartest, most skilled at the most things, most powerful, most admired, wealthiest (scratch that), first to live for eternity, member of the human species. What kind of God is that anyway? It doesn’t hurt to let one person be an exception to God’s laws which govern the evolutionary process. But maybe I speak too soon. God might be mulling all this over. Nah, wouldn’t work anyway—then everyone right in front of me would say “Whatever happened to Reid, the guy with so many imperfections?”.
Well, if it can’t be me than at least it will be none of you. That would really piss me off.
