Are you one of the lucky few?

Love this speech by Michael Lewis at Princeton's graduation. Luck as an explanatory factor for success is hard to reconcile within yourself. To paraphrase Lewis, you feel you deserve success because of x, y or z. "But you'll be happier, and the world will be better off, if you at least pretend that you don't."

"People really don’t like to hear success explained away as luck — especially successful people. As they age, and succeed, people feel their success was somehow inevitable. They don't want to acknowledge the role played by accident in their lives. There is a reason for this: the world does not want to acknowledge it either."...

"If you use better data, you can find better values; there are always market inefficiencies to exploit, and so on. But it has a broader and less practical message: don't be deceived by life's outcomes. Life's outcomes, while not entirely random, have a huge amount of luck baked into them. Above all, recognize that if you have had success, you have also had luck — and with luck comes obligation. You owe a debt, and not just to your Gods. You owe a debt to the unlucky. 

I make this point because — along with this speech — it is something that will be easy for you to forget."...

"But you must sense its arbitrary aspect: you are the lucky few. Lucky in your parents, lucky in your country, lucky that a place like Princeton exists that can take in lucky people, introduce them to other lucky people, and increase their chances of becoming even luckier. Lucky that you live in the richest society the world has ever seen, in a time when no one actually expects you to sacrifice your interests to anything."

Arbitrary rules

You think through the solution a little, enjoying it for its own sake and you realize that even if you were to solve this problem, the solution wouldn't be accepted because of power or money reasons. If enough people gain money or power from the wrong - ethically wrong - method, their livelihood stops them from reversing course. Can you really blame them? They made the decision or rather they didn't even know they were making a decision to be on the wrong side a long time ago. They went with the societal flow - it was right then - not thinking twice whether slavery or the tax system or criminal's rights were unfair. It is what it is they said and moved on. Play within the rules they said. Why fix something that it isn't broken they said.

And they continued simple-mindedly, with singular focus towards being better at a game they didn't create just to earn more, have more power, get ahead. Now, 5, 10, 20 years later, they've made it a habit to think in this one way and their income, their family depends on them thinking this way. They simply can't change it now, because why would you want to when you've almost won the game you didn't create? Why bother to understand where the rules came from now? Why create another game that makes you lose, even if it's just a little?

What if you said it would be more fair? They wouldn't agree because it wouldn't be fair to them. Why didn't someone do this when they were starting out? That would've been more fair. Why should they lose something now when the rules could have arbitrarily been changed when they were young and fighting and deserved fairness like everyone else. How is it fair that they lose now?

And that's why your solution doesn't make it through right away. The people who said it is what it is and are shown a different way have a hard time realizing that what is arbitrarily changing on them now could have arbitrarily changed by their direction much earlier if they hadn't accepted what is. It's social. It's man-made. It's arbitrary.

Things do change. But they change ever so slowly, with momentum and sacrifices and incredibly hard work. The easy life is very attractive though. It's more convenient than ever before to know change is necessary and still avoid it. If you're smart enough to come up with the solution, you're smart enough to live without putting it into effect. Does that make you any different though from those that don't accept the arbitrariness of life? What are you left with if you do and still don't change it?

These aren't satirical, rhetorical questions, but ones every person who shirks society's arbitrary rules struggles with eventually. Being a martyr or change agent seem more like barriers to entry than requirements for changing the world. Being an example, choosing a less traveled, more reasoned path because you see things another way may be enough. "Think different" may be the catch phrase of the decade, but it does slowly become the norm. From civil rights and women's rights to freelancing for a career and being green-friendly, ideas that were once anathema are now commonplace.

If you have a solution in mind, share it. Discernment and personal judgment remain the strongest driving forces we have in our tool belt. Even with all the doubts about society's willingness to accept your solution, there are quiet mouths with listening ears waiting for someone to say what they can't.