Great. So I and many others got some luck on our sides. OK, I admit it. What should I do, buy an hour of primetime and repeat "I am lucky, I am lucky, ...."?
But let me ask you a question: Is there anybody who has NO luck at all?
No, because they wouldn't be here at all.
I wasn't born with birth defects; that was lucky. I haven't been killed in a drive-by shooting; to a certain extent that was luck. I haven't been hit by lightning.
OTOH, I wasn't born with an IQ of 180; that was unlucky. I have a fairly poor memory for non-technical things, particularly people; unlucky. I don't have a personality that is irresistible; unlucky. I've got a gene that makes my liver make too little HDL and as a result I've had two heart attacks; d**med unlucky.
Everybody's life is a mix of good and bad and there is nothing we can do about it. Except provide an open economic and political system, and that we have done reasonably well.
By the way, was Newton a Liberal or a Conservative? Doesn't really matter, does it?
The significance of that comment, as I'm sure you're aware, was that Newton and many others made MAJOR contributions to our species and didn't do it by performing hard physical labor. You seemed to be implying that only labor of the physical kind counted. |
