Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

To folks who believe that poverty and misfortune, or health and prosperity, have nothing to do with luck and everything to do with "choices": your belief that one's station or situation is entirely one's own choice is, frankly, superstitious.

(This was originally written as a response to someone else -- as public comments on a public entry. I'm not going to link to that even though it's easy to find, because the point of posting this in my own space is NOT to send a bunch of supporters to go argue on my behalf, but to present something I should be saying to a wider audience ... in a different space. And yes, I'm aware that I'm saying things that other people have said better elsewhere. I think it needs saying several more times.)

You want to believe that you're in control. Our choices do have some effect, yes ... but people lucky enough to have more resources (money, health, privilege, location, talent, whatever) will find that they have more choices, and their choices have more impact on outcomes than the choices that people with fewer resources make. You want to believe that you're safe because you're in control and making all the "right" choices to keep catastrophe away. You're whistling in the dark. You're making up "If I just do this then everything will be okay" superstitions. It's magical thinking, and all too often it leads to cutting away the very safety net that's supposed to catch you if/when the bad luck happens to you anyhow.

It's also pretty insulting. When you say that "it's not luck, just bad choices," you're implying that I chose to have a chronic illness that prevents me from doing things that I want to do and hurts a hell of a lot all the time. ...

(Oh, I know, you're going to say you didn't mean me, of course, but dammit, that is what you're saying when you say that poverty is all about choices, not luck. Turning around and saying, "Oh, but I didn't mean you," is saying "Everyone like you is [bad-thing], but I don't mean you of course, just everyone else like you." It's just like saying, "Women shouldn't vote, they're too irrational," then turning to your girlfriend and saying, "Present company excepted, of course, I didn't mean you, you're the exception." It's like saying, "Black people are so lazy," then turning to your African-American colleague and saying, "But not you, of course, I know you work hard." It's like saying, "Christians are violent, privileged whiners who think that other religions should be stamped out but complain that they're the ones being oppressed," then turning to your best friend and saying, "Except for you; you're not like the rest of them." Great, I'm the exception because you're my friend but you hold this terrible opinion of people like me. Just wonderful. Here's the thing: most of the time people who say things like that will keep saying them no matter how many Exceptions they meet. No data are ever "oh maybe I was wrong", all data contrary to what they've already decided reality has to be, are "just exceptions, not meaningful".)

... I really liked my job, I liked the work and I liked my employer; I liked earning my own money and feeling free to spend it how I wanted, including spending some of it on things I wanted just for fun, instead of feeling like I have to justify needing things badly enough to ask someone to buy them for me (or to not be "wasting" somebody's assistance on frivolities), and I liked the pride and feeling like I was "one of the people doing it right" that I got from working a regular job like our society expects and values. I also liked having the energy to go out most evenings and weekends if I wanted to, after working my job, and I liked not being in so much pain all the time (though I didn't realize what kind of blessing that was until I lost it). "Your situation or station in life is not one of luck, but one of choice," huh? What fucking choice did I make to get sick, and why would I have chosen to throw away all those things I liked so much? Saying there's no such thing as luck in front of someone who has experienced random misfortune is personally offensive. It's offensive, and it's incorrect. It's also pretty damned mean-spirited. Yes, someone who is healthy, and wealthy, and born to a supportive family with the resources to be supportive, and grew up in a place with decent schools, and is intelligent enough to make use of all those advantages ... has the option of screwing it all up. Someone without some or all of those advantages doesn't have anywhere near as many options for making things work out. And someone who loses one of those advantages (say health, for example) loses a lot of options.

I'm not "an exception", I'm an example of the problem of the universe not-being-fair.

The universe is not fair. You may want it to be -- you want to be in complete control, to believe that the Scary Things That Happen To Other People can't happen to you because you're one of the good people and don't deserve bad-stuff, but that's naïve and -- as I said above -- downright superstitious. The universe is not fair, it's random. Fairness is a human concept, so it is up to humans to be fair. And that includes taking steps to compensate for the random unfairness of the universe, not just failing to do unfair things oneself. By pretending that the universe is fair, you excuse yourself from being fair ... or even helpful. Which means You Are Not Helping ... and ultimately you are part of the problem.

(I do believe that God is fair and good, but He apparently takes a mostly-hands-off approach to day-to-day stuff and lets us choose whether to act as His tools to make fairness and compassion happen, or as Satan's tools to allow -- or cause -- suffering to increase. Frankly, I think it's Satan's work to pretend that bad things never happen to 'good' people (right-choices people) and therefore no compassion is needed, no safety net.)

Do choices matter at all? Yes, some choices do affect outcomes, and some affect the odds of an outcome. Smoking increases the likelihood of getting lung cancer, but some people who never made that choice get lung cancer too. Eating too much meat increases the risk of colon cancer, but some people who don't make that choice get colon cancer anyhow. Becoming a firefighter increases the risk of a fatal or disabling on-the-job injury, but people who try to play it safe get crippled sometimes as well. Going to school and studying hard makes it more likely that you'll get a good job later, but when there just aren't enough jobs to go around, some people who deserve them won't get them. Being a loyal, hard-working employee is supposed to get you a nice retirement nest-egg, but when your employer gets bought by a corporate raider and the pension fund gets plundered, that careful planning goes out the window. Choice is sometimes a factor, but Luck is always a factor, even when it's not the only factor. Bad things do happen to good people, to people who tried to do all the 'right' things. It's up to us, the humans, to try to make the outcomes a little less unfair, to try to help, to set up systems so that when a 'good person' falls -- whether it's you, or a friend, or someone whose lifestyle you disapprove of, or even someone you really can't see a way to classify as one of the 'good people' at all! -- there is still hope, help, maybe even second chances. As a society, we can afford to do this, to cushion the blows of outrageous fortune. And if we also cushion the fall for people who did make bad choices, I don't think that's such a bad thing that it's worth screwing over all the unlucky people just to avoid possibly also helping somebody who (*gasp*) doesn't "deserve" it.

There are a lot of 'exceptions'. So many, that they really aren't exceptional. Even if you happen to have met some folks who fit your stereotype, unless you are in the business of counseling those people or a researcher studying them, your sample is probably too damned small. (Also, how many folks who receive assistance never mention that to random strangers or even most acquaintences? Odds are, you're overlooking most of your sample that doesn't confirm your biases because you never imagine they could be in that group.) There are people who do actually study this. They have more meaningful numbers than your (or my own) haphazard impressions.

And for crying out loud, I'm not your pet exception; I'm a counterexample to your assumptions.