Geography at birth

For a while now, I have been blogging about the (mis)fortunes that come our way just because of our parents.  Who we are born to makes a huge difference in life.  Every time I blog along those lines, the frequent (and now the only) commenter, and others have disagreed with me.  (Check this out, or this, for instance.)

I have also blogged in plenty about luck. Dumb luck.

Thus, I have never really cared much for people bragging about how they made it all by themselves.  Not that he brags, but consider Bill Gates.  It is not as if he created his fortunes after growing up in the projects.  I was not born a Dalit and my father was not a manual scavenger.  The truly rags to riches, rising from the utterly disadvantaged, is a rare exception.  Most of us have only built upon the accident of birth.

To quite some extent, the cosmic dice rolled in our favor, which is why you and I are interacting here.

I started thinking as a social scientist on the role of circumstance and luck in how lives turn out. It's a sobering experience to realize just how many variables are out of our control

Yep.  That's what I have been saying for a long, long time.

What about intelligence and hard work? Surely they matter as much as luck. Yes, but decades of data from behavior genetics tell us that at least half of intelligence is heritable, as is having a personality high in openness to experience, conscientiousness and the need for achievement—all factors that help to shape success. The nongenetic components of aptitude, scrupulousness and ambition matter, too, of course, but most of those environmental and cultural variables were provided by others or circumstances not of your making.

Choosing your parents well has given you one hell of an advantage, dear reader!

Michael Shermer wraps up his column--his 200th for the Scientific American--with this:

There should be consolation in the fact that studies show that what is important in the long run is not success so much as living a meaningful life. And that is the result of having family and friends, setting long-range goals, meeting challenges with courage and conviction, and being true to yourself.

Ahem, I have been saying this, too, for the longest time.  Damn, I am good!