History

Success is Luck (With a big L)

/ michaelkilman / 1 Comment

It’s a great taboo to assert that success (defined here as recognition and financial success because there are many kinds of success) comes largely from luck. Of course, hard work plays a role in success, but luck, timing, and connections are so often an even more powerful force.

But wait, you say, I worked hard to achieve all the things I have!

Did you work harder than everyone else in your field who never achieved the recognition and success you found? 

What’s more, the difficulty of work is quite relative. Who works harder each day? The construction worker who uses their body to build things? The janitor who cleans toilets and prevents the spread of disease? The coder who, versed in a computer language, reshapes technology? The doctor who saves lives? The teacher who must train the young minds of the future? The manager, who must organize the rest of the labor at a restaurant? We compare the kinds of labor and justify how much people make based on entirely relative notions, that are steeped in luck. Not everyone is born in the right circumstances to take advantage of education and technology.

So, we tell ourselves so desperately that hard work = success because the reality is, we are too embarrassed to admit when we are successful that luck played an enormous role. A person can work twelve-hour days for the entirety of their life, rarely miss a sick day, and always be on time, and can still die destitute no matter how well they manage their money.

But wait you say again, I did work hard to get where I am at!

You did. No one is seriously denying that unless perhaps you won the lottery or something, which is just another kind of luck.

Again, did you work harder than everyone else in your field who never achieved the recognition and success you found? Did they want their success less than you? Perhaps they didn’t visualize the goal as hard as you?

To assert so, would be the worst kind of arrogance. We have created a system with far more losers than winners.

So what then are we rewarding with financial success and recognition? It is not hard work. It’s luck. And mythmaking about how Europe came to power, plays a role in the modern idea of hard work equates to success.

Perhaps an element of the modern Western notion of hard work equates to success is an example of how the myth of exceptionalism, born in a narrative of superiority during the rise and justifications of the horrors of colonialism, is nothing more than a defense of the fact that ultimately success is overwhelmingly about luck. The West isn’t exactly unique in this belief, but it’s certainly a core justification of the structure of our world at this stage of history.

The rise of Europe, like so much of history is about luck and timing. Europe was in the right place at the right time after the collapse of the Mongol empire. Then, hit by the black death, the traditional power structures crumbled at just the right moment for change to surge forth and give rise to a new merchant class. This increased trade and brought wealth to Europe, which alongside many other cultural and social processes, brought increased power to several kingdoms. Competing for dominance, these kingdoms began their colonial project.

I am oversimplifying these incredibly complex processes of course (a few sources for further reading are listed below if you are interested), but luck and timing also lead to the rise of every empire in history. Most of the tools and technology and knowledge that Europe used to launch the colonial project came from other places around the world. Very little of the technology required for the colonial project originated in Europe itself.

True, Europe improved upon many of these ideas, but that’s not unique. This is true of every empire. One of the things that make empires powerful is their ability to take a wide variety of ideas from diverse populations and cultures and turn them to their advantage. Empires are great at synthesis. If they aren’t they either never rise, or don’t last very long. But during the late 15th century, Europe had the right conditions and was in the right place at the right time. Europeans had the opportunity to synthesize much of the available knowledge and technology of the known world at a moment and, with several other factors at play, succeeded. The greater their reach grew, the greater access they had to technology, knowledge, and resources, thus deepening their power.

The powerful always imagine the past in a way that justifies how they seized said power. We always need a justification for our less-than-favorable qualities or actions, especially when we know we are doing things that are deeply problematic.

Shifting back to the individual level. The talent of exceptional individuals largely went unnoticed throughout history because people were marginalized through an accident of birth or circumstance. What if Mozart had been born a slave? Or Rumi a serf under a feudal lord. Both were extraordinary, and both were incredibly lucky to be born in the time and circumstances in which they lived. There is no doubt the world would be poorer had these individuals never had the opportunity to explore their unique genius. And yet, we have squandered so much human potential throughout history. How much genius has been lost to terrible systems of oppression?

At the very core of our experience is luck. Ideologies around the world, both secular and religious, have tried for centuries to justify why some are born lucky, and some are not. The Hindu caste system, the divine right of kings, the concept of manifest destiny, or even hate groups that believe they are born superior to others, tout their superiority and supremacy to justify the suffering they inflict on others. The bootstraps myth of American life (the concept of which was originally a satire of what the elites said about the poor since you cannot physically lift yourself by your bootstraps), is yet another justification of oppression. The powerful justify their power through a narrative that makes them feel special, while othering the very people that they build their power from through exploitation.

Why do we fight so hard to discount luck? What is it that so many people around the world who are successful in one way or another, feel it’s almost taboo to say they were born lucky? Certainly, some of us who are unlucky, do not have such reservations. I don’t. Part of it may be our need to create meaning in a world that feels meaningless. Part of it may be the storytelling and mythmaking that are so deeply embedded in the human brain or the pattern-seeking systems in our neurology. Regardless of the why, creating political and economic systems that reward luck and discount the important contributions of everyone in a community, has disastrous consequences for a large majority of the human species both historically and presently.


Many of us are obsessed with the narrative of the great individual, the idea that some people just come along and reshape the world. This is only a partial truth. The remarkable individuals are often just great synergists. They, for all their luck, come along and take many ideas and concepts and frame them in a new way others had not considered before, adding only a little to the existent and much larger body of knowledge. The light bulb, for example, is often credited to Edison, but, not only did it take a huge existing body of research and knowledge for Edison to synthesize the idea, but he also wasn’t the only one at the time to have come up with it. There are several individuals credited (Nicola Tesla, Hiram Maxum, and Joseph Swan to name just a few) with its invention at the same time. But, because of luck, politics (in this case patent laws), and power, Edison is credited as the brilliant mind who brought the invention to light (pun intended).

Did Edison work hard to synthesize his idea? Sure. How many of us have grown up hearing about his incredible number of failures in his process, which from a scientific standpoint isn’t all that remarkable anyway. Plenty of researchers plug away at their subject for thousands and thousands of hours and run thousands of experiments before they find any kind of success. Some ultimately fail, which also advances science. No, there is nothing particularly special about Edison. So again, I ask, did Edison work harder than any of the others who succeeded as he did or the others who tried just as many times and failed? Consider the conditions of Edison’s life that he was able to simply sit around and fail hundreds or thousands of times. Edison was born to a middle-class family. What if he had been born into a family with few resources?

We are not rewarding hard work, we are rewarding luck.

As long as we hold this notion of hard work = success we will always be captives to abusive systems. Some people are just luckier than others. It’s that simple. We all know that some are born luckier. It’s not hard to see.  If you were to survey a huge number of people on the streets of any major city and asked, do you think some people are born luckier than others, the majority would certainly say yes.

And luck certainly is not a reflection of character. Some of the most vile people in the history of the planet have been incredibly lucky. Conversely, some of the greatest examples of compassion, have been incredibly unlikely. Do only the good die young? I’m not so sure that’s exactly true but, life is the roll of the dice.

This is why we must end these absurd systems that reward luck. Because many amazing people starve to death every single day. Recently, a dear friend of mine, who was one of the most loving and courageous people I know, died far too young after striving endlessly to just meet her basic needs in life. Life was always hard for her, and she worked hard every single day. Yet, she never saw the rewards of this hard work. And doubtless, if you look around honestly, you will see endless examples of this. No, not everything works out for everyone. That’s simply another platitude to ignore the bad luck of others and justify burying our heads in the sand.

The UN estimates that 25,000 people, including 10,000 children die every day from starvation. Most of these people were born into bad luck or something unlucky happened to them to make them far more vulnerable to an exploitive system that rewards luck and forgets the basic decency and dignity of taking care of other people. These exploitive systems make us less human and more selfish and apathetic. We need to learn to imagine another way of moving through the world, both economically and politically. Everyone deserves dignity. We can do something about this. A failure of imagination is not evidence that the present system we have is inevitable.

So say it with me. Because if we don’t, we will continue down the dark path of indifference. We must start creating systems that maximize human potential instead of squandering it.

Success is luck. 

Success is luck. 

Success

is

luck.

References and Related Further Reading:
Europe and the People Without History

Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World

The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

Debt: The First 5,000 Years

The Meritocracy Trap

Nickeled and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America

How to Understand Poverty (Resources and Science Based Evidence Here)

/ michaelkilman / 1 Comment

We live in a divided country. A lot of people think that this division is about progressive vs conservatives. But the reality of the situation is that perception is a mask for the real and primary dividing factor, wealth vs poverty.

There are an awful lot of narratives about what poverty means and relative poverty in our society. A lot of people think that the poor just aren’t saving well or that the government already spends too much on social safety nets. The problem is, these arguments are political folk tales, not based on science or evidence. The reality is so much more complicated than these simplistic arguments that surround our notions of economic purity.

What do I mean by purity? Well, consider this video surrounding how much of the western world breaks down it’s notions of right or wrong, black and white. Anthropology Shorts: Mary Douglas Purity and Danger

We like easy, clear categories, to oversimplify elements of life and society and reinforce that with notions of morality that manifest in guilt, shamming, gossip and of course media. These notions of either/or logic (known in some social sciences as a false dichotomy) prevent us from understanding the actual situation on the ground. This leads to something called, perceived truth vs ground truth.

Perceived vs Ground Truth

Perceived truth is what we think is happening, or what ideally is going to happen when we institute new policy or laws or ideas in the real world. Ground truth is when that plan, or policy, or cultural norm actually impacts the lived experiences of human beings. For example, the idiom, “A rising tide lifts all boats”, is a perceived truth that comes out of the 1980s in economics. It’s the idea of trickle down economics and neoliberalism, that if you deregulate economics, empower companies and increase privatization, everyone will benefit. This is a perceived truth. With more than four decades of these polices, the truth on the ground shows us something different (Check out this article on Why Trickle Down Economics Doesn’t Work). The lived experience of working people is much different than the claim. They have not benefitted from these policies and in fact just the opposite. The ground truth is, these policies hurt most Americans while lining the pockets of those already in power. In fact, we now have the highest rate of inequality since records began.

Social Mobility, The American Dream, and Bootstraps.

What about social mobility and the notion that, given hard work, someone can pull themselves up by their own bootstraps? The Bootstraps idea is another example of perceived truth, something that the media often touts via anecdotal evidence, that highlights the exception and not the rule. This is a media system that is largely owned by private firms, have a vested interested in continuing the narratives of the people who own them and fund them. Many of these big companies own a large portion of the media system and thus you have limited narratives that are available for people to consider. One of the creepiest examples of this concentration of media is the script that Sinclair forced about 200 of their local news broadcasts to read.

Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman highlighted the relationship between these narratives in the media and the control of what the media can say through five major filters in their famous book, Manufacturing Consent. The book examines the structure of large scale media. As it turns out, Media narratives actually make the situation of working people worse by casting perceived truth as a form of ultimate truth. Scholar Peter Drier highlights the problems of media systems and perceptions of poverty in his article, How Media Compounds Urban Problems and notes that the media often makes poverty worse by highlighting the exceptions and not the normal experiences of people on the ground. Narratives about welfare queens and troubled youth lead the news, while communities working together to solve issues or what it looks like to be poor are largely ignored. The job of the media is to hold those in power accountable, not to trumpet their narratives and further the suffering of the average citizen.

The thing about bootstraps is, not only is social mobility extraordinarily difficult, but it’s not even uniquely American. It turns out, that data doesn’t support that social mobility is as common in the United States as we think. Yes, there is an American Dream, but not only is it rare, but many of the other developed nations have much higher rates of social mobility, and much lower rates of inequality. Countries like Canada, have near double our social mobility. If your a podcast listener, Radiolab did a great job of breaking down the numbers on social mobility as well as debunking some of the myths surrounding poverty as well. Check it out here.

It’s expensive to be poor…

So often I hear, well if the poor were better at saving, then they wouldn’t be poor. The problem is, it’s expensive to be poor. You may have seen this meme going around social media at some point.

Is this perceived truth or ground truth? In this case we know it’s ground truth. That on the ground, it’s more expensive to be poor then middle class. This was very effectively demonstrated in the book Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America. The fact of the matter is, simple little things like not having a washer and dryer in your house mean that you have to spend more time and money to accomplish simple tasks. If it was just one of these things, it wouldn’t amount to much extra labor or expense, but as Barbara Ehrenreich demonstrates in her book, every Nickel and Dime adds up and adds to the weight of extra time and money that poor people have to spend. Living paycheck to paycheck isn’t just about saving, often it is impossible to actually put away money. In fact, nearly 40% of Americans are one emergency away from disaster and homelessness.

As a father, and even with a graduate degree, I’ve experienced events like this first hand. I have skipped meals to be sure my children eat. I’ve gone long periods of time without seeing a dentist or a doctor because I can’t afford it, which could cost me a lot more later (i.e. the meme above). I have to prioritize everything I do to figure out how to pay bills and keep food on the table. Many poor families are far more disciplined about money than I and working with communities and doing first hand research, I’ve notice that the idea the poor are lazy or unable to manage their money is not only false, it’s actively harmful. For example, when I was in graduate school, I was forced to dumpster dive for three months when I only had $1 a day for food after bills. The reality is, sometimes there is no way to save and even when you do, surprises happen and you suddenly find your savings drained because your car breaks down (because most poor people cannot afford a car that is newer and less likely to break down) or perhaps you get sick and can’t afford the copays because the insurance industry is all part of systemic poverty. Which leads to the next point…

Poverty as a System and Structural Violence

Poverty is a system, a structure in society that is not created on accident. It has little to do with a lack of work ethic or training and so much more to do with how the game is rigged.

Anthropologists introduced a concept called Structural Violence way back in the 1960s. It is the idea that systems of power do everything they can to maintain that power. Anthropologist Paul Farmer wrote a 2004 article titled An Anthropology of Structural Violence. In it, he details how altering history or hiding large portions of it, allow for the continuance of a system that significantly oppresses the people of Haiti. He shows that the large problems they have in arenas like health care are a direct result of wide systemic problems.

The reality of the situation is that the people of Haiti were purposely disenfranchised by the dominant European and American powers because their independence in 1804, came as a result of the a massive slave revolt. Wanting to make sure that their own slaves didn’t get any ideas, France, England, and the newly formed United States spent the next few decades (the United States still intervenes and did so for much of the cold war) intervening in the politics, economics and government of Haiti to ensure that it did not become a successful nation. Much of modern poverty is like this, it was created by those in power and is maintained by those in power. As I discussed in my YouTube video on the origin of the concept of Race, even the very notion that we have different races was created in the 17th century as a means to divide and conquer a diverse group of poor in the American colonies after Bacon’s Rebellion to prevent further uprising.

The original idea of the board game Monopoly was to teach people how these structures work. The linked article highlights the history of the game but also gives people a glimpse at what happens with deregulated greed. One player ultimately ends up controlling the board while everyone else struggles and eventually loses. Poverty is no accident, it’s a rigged game. Two books highlight real world poverty and why such insane levels of inequality are a terrible idea. The first Why We Can’t Afford the Rich draws on a mountain of academic research to demonstrate how these systems function and why philosophies like neoliberalism and libertarianism are actually dangerous for society and lead to economic collapse. The second book Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism further explores these problematic assumptions about perceived truth vs ground truth and how this manifests around the world. If you are interested specifically in what happened when water became privatized you can read this article by Michael Goldman.

White Privilege Test (The Anti-Racist Educator Edition)

Poverty is no accident, it’s a structure. And while personal accountability is important the structure of a society can make change incredibly difficult for some, and much less for others. You may have seen this meme on the right traveling around the internet as well.

This meme is a simple and quick way to understand exactly how these systems work. Yes, hard work is a good thing. Yes, personal responsibility is a vital thing. But if the hardest working, most dedicated people in America were paid based on their work, it would be the janitors, the farmers, the construction workers, the teachers, and others like them who put all of their time and energy into the work who would do the best in society. We don’t really value a hard day of work, we value a false ideal of what work should look like and who is doing it. We are stuck in the perceived truth, the almost spiritual platonic forms of perception about work and wealth, and not what’s actually happening on the ground for the lived experience of many Americans. As long as we value perceived truth over real world evidence (and not anecdotes based on the extremes) we will face significant division and conflict. We must study and understand the structures of our society or risk further economic collapse and the suffering of many.

Suggested Films:

Inequality for All

Capital in the 21st Century (Netflix Original)

Inside Job

17 Things I have learned teaching Cultural Diversity and Anthropology

/ michaelkilman / Leave a comment

Want more on Anthropology? Consider checking out our book Build Better Worlds: An Introduction to Anthropology for Game Designers, Fiction Writers, and Filmmakers at Amazon.

This is a bit of a “Rules to live by” post I guess. I have spent the last six years of my life teaching both undergraduate and graduate students anthropology, culture, and diversity. In my classroom I try to make things as practical as possible. We can fill our students heads with theory all day long, but what I try to do is try to give a baseline understanding of how different cultures view the world so that when they encounter other people in work or out traveling the world, they can find a way to understand another person and prevent some of the conflicts and communication traps that we run into.

I find myself repeating a lot of the following over and over and so I thought maybe it would be useful to some of you out there. Of course, you can completely disagree with me (that’s kind of the point here) but these are things that if you apply them, you might be able to understand those difficult people in your life in a new way.

1. There is no glorious past when things were better. That’s a figment of the cultural imagination and based on the ideals we want in the present. There is no period in history, no culture in history that was ever perfection and/or paradise. Fantasies of the past are fun, but they are just projections on the wall in the great cave of our times.

2. Every culture, every religion, every language, is weird. We are all weird, our entire species is weird as hell. The only reason you don’t think your ideas/thoughts/beliefs are weird is because you are used to them.

3. If one group is disenfranchised, that means someone is benefiting. I.E. if Women are payed less, that means Men are paid more and reap the benefits. If people are treated poorly because they have darker skin, that means if you have light skin you benefit (even if it isn’t obvious). That’s what privilege is. It is not an attack on your character, people cannot help what system they were born into, but they can change it.

4. Everything has a cost, everything. Nothing is cost free. Every major world empire was built on, and is maintained by a river of blood. The very fact you live in this country at this time in history means you benefited from war, colonialism, genocide, ethnic cleansing and all other manner of terrible things. But so has every other great empire. The Romans, the Islamic Empire, the Mongolian Empire, the Chinese Dynasties, they all did the exact same thing. So why teach them? Why talk about our mistakes and terror? Because I believe we can choose to be different. The first step is acknowledging that our culture did some fucked up things to other cultures.

5. Communication is really freaking hard. Words are really powerful. Everyone has words and images that they are sensitive to and trigger them (obviously survivors of trauma like many of my friends and myself have to spend a lot of time working through this) Figure out what yours are and watch your reactions. Sometimes just watching and understanding which words hit you hard can be a powerful tool for healing. But do remember, the only thing you can control is you. Life and most the world doesn’t care if you are triggered.

6. People are allowed to change. Something someone did 10 years ago does not necessarily reflect who they are now. Social media has created a distortion of static identity. Digging up ancient photos and tweets is only really useful if people are still exhibiting the same terrible behaviors now as they were then. Most of us go through a long hard process of testing ideas. This is normal and healthy, until you let your ideas take over and make you rigid.

7. Ignorance is not the problem in this world. Everyone is ignorant of something fundamental. Ignorance simply means to not know something. The problem is willful ignorance. When someone presents you with a new idea or a challenge to what you think about the world, take a breath. Let the emotional outrage simmer down and then try to approach it with calm and detachment and weigh all the evidence. Sometimes you might still be correct, and sometimes not. This is an uncomfortable but powerful process.

8. Being socially active, being mindful, being able to give back, boycotting products or getting an advanced education are all a privilege. Not everyone has access to these things. Remember again, that the only thing you can control is you. But also remember that you are powerful and that individuals are capable of making great (and terrible) changes to the world. You cannot force responsibility on other people and you should always remember that people face different barriers in life.

9. Read lots and from a wide variety of perspectives. Try and consider that you might be wrong about everything once in a while. It’s terrifying but sobering. Consider how little knowledge is contained in the entire human experience compared to the vastness of the rest of the universe.

10. Make sure you learn the difference between something that is opinion or cultural options (i.e. Monogamy or Polygamy are the best kinds of marriage) vs something that is objectively and verifiably true (I.e. The Earth is round). While your at it, learn about the scientific method and what good evidence is. Most things on the internet are easy to debunk with a little effort and awareness of your own bias.

11. Take a moment before you blame someone else for your problems or the problems of your culture. Yes, sometimes things are out of your control, structural violence absolutely exists, sometimes crazy random shit happens, and some people are unlucky, but if you keep seeing the same pattern over and over again, you might be a part of the equation. On a cultural level, if we are scapegoating people, who benefits? Blaming other populations for our issues, historically always turns out to be shortsighted.

12. Apathy and greed are deadly and destructive. A society that bases it’s institutions on these things will always have very serious problems. Empathy and generosity go a long way.

13. Listen to people’s stories. Share your own. If you don’t represent yourself, someone else will. Stories are how we save the world.

14. Diversity and difference is one of the most powerful tools in the human experience. Why? Because different people and cultures think about things in different ways. That means that there are many ways to approach complex problems. Sometimes we can’t see how to solve something because we are too close to it (personally or culturally).

15. There is no such thing as a homogeneous culture. People are people everywhere you go. Just because someone has the same language/religion/gender/nationality/income doesn’t mean they have the same inclinations or hopes or dreams. Each one of my children have different hopes and dreams about the future. Why would a group living on the other side of the world be any different? Don’t put people in boxes or make grand assumptions.

16. The is no one size fits all solution to anything. There is no single solution to solve any of the worlds major issues. All of history demonstrates this.

17. You are the bad guy, the evil empire, the oppressor, the asshole in someone’s story. No one in history is perfect. The people we claim as saints were either assholes earlier in life and grew from that or we are missing information. Plenty of people think I am an asshole. Plenty of cultures think Americans are terrible. No one ever thinks they are the asshole and every culture thinks they are they greatest ever.

I could probably think of more, but those are a lot of the things I find myself repeating most often. You, of course, are free to disagree, and of course comment and discuss.

Standing Rock, Native American History and Why It Is Important (resources here)

/ michaelkilman / Leave a comment

standing-rock-denver

Photo Taken from Facebook Event Standing in Solidarity with Standing Rock 

I am taking a moment out of my creative activity to talk about something that is important right now. Standing Rock is our future. What happens in the next few days or weeks there could change everything about our country, for the better or for the worse. It was a rough weekend up at Standing Rock. Check out this news piece from the New York Times for a brief summary on last weekends events. New York Times Story on Last Weekends Events

I am a lecturer at two universities in the Departments of Anthropology and so in addition to my creative writing, I have worked a lot with Native Americans in my career thus far. If we want to understand what is happening at Standing Rock, then it is important to understand the history. Below are a list of resources for anyone interested in educating themselves.

First the Standing Rock Syllabus. This is an overview of the history of Standing Rock and other important historical events for Native Americans.
https://nycstandswithstandingrock.wordpress.com/standingrocksyllabus/

We have to understand the history of these systems in order to be truly effective in fighting the good fight. As such, this week I have decided to pause all lessons and have a discussion about Native American History and Standing Rock. We already do this a little in my courses, but I decided to expand it as I cannot sit by and ignore what is going on.
Here are some videos for those of you who want a quick introduction to some of the issues: 
We Shall Remain: American Experience. This is a six part history of Native Americans in the United States written and directed by Native Americans. You can find several these episodes for free on YouTube and many at local libraries. If you are a student most colleges allow streaming of this program from the library website. We Shall Remain: American Experience
Urban Rez
You may also be interested in the following books:
.
Some important Supreme Court Cases and Acts to look up (if you really want to understand the history)
There are a lot of resources that are out there for understanding this situation. If you have any resources you feel I am missing and are vital please share in the comments. I will leave them open for people to add their own resources. Let’s educate people, because knowledge is powerful.