Why are lucky people so arrogant?

a reply to: BrianFlanders

Luck does not exist imo,

Only action and opportunity.

You cannot win a lottery unless you buy a ticket and you cannot but a ticket if there is no lottery.

Perhaps those who seem so lucky and arrogant are merely mocking the ignorance of not realising.....there is no spoon.

originally posted by: BrianFlanders

originally posted by: MykeNukem

originally posted by: BrianFlanders
LOL

Seriously!

Everyone is always searching for the secret to success and/or happiness. The truth is that it's all luck. The existence of this planet is just random chance. If you live long enough to watch the mighty fall, you will realize they never had any secret trick that made everything work for them. It just happened to them and they reaped the rewards. That's it. That's all it is. They didn't do anything special except exist. And if you aren't one of them, you didn't really do anything wrong except exist.

Why isn't this basic fact more widely recognized? One reason. The people who were not born with a lucky hand would probably just give up. That isn't profitable. Your suffering is probably the only thing of any real value that you possess. Perhaps there is a way to parlay that into success. If you're lucky enough to have the natural talent to do so.

But if it's just random chance, how can you parlay something into success?

Something is wrong with your theory...

Nope. You red it wong. You cannot parlay it into success unless you're lucky enough to be able to in the first place.

For example, you could spend your entire life doing everything someone else did and they succeeded but you didn't because your luck was just #.

Or because said person has a sh!t attitude, and because of that were unable to take advantage and hone those opportunities into successes. Which some unskilled, and/or lazy onlookers would just call luck. For example.

I read it right.

a reply to: BrianFlanders

I have to be honest, I've never really deeply considered it, but I suppose I'd have to admit that I've been lucky where certain aspects of my life are concerned. I've definitely acted arrogantly, too.

My thoughts on the subject are influenced by what I regard as a metanoia experience that has been taking place in my life for the past several years. I had "hell" contending with personal "demons"; in the ensuing years, the work of "saving myself" has made me think differently about luck (and fortune).

Now I can see many ways I used to hold myself back from achievement, and it's rewarding to see my life improve steadily as I improve myself. However, there are some ways in which I have been unsuccessful so far in life. I even admit that sometimes it emotionally "knocks me off my feet". It's a two-steps-forward, one-step-back sort of process. But slowly, I am starting to understand what people mean when they speak of "creating their own luck".

That leaves out a lot of the discussion, to be sure. Your sentiment isn't completely foreign to me, but more and more I question my judgements of what other people are and what they deserve. I have awareness only at this one point in time and space, but I lose it when I start to feel resentful towards what other people have.

Personally, it's irritating because it's one thing to reason that I want to have x or y (e.g.,) emotional coping skill, but in a "live-fire" situation with unpredictable and completely weird fellow humans, I still get emotionally drawn out when I don't want to.

But I keep improving, and even though it's slow and I feel impatient, focusing on ways I can improve my situation ultimately serves me better than feeling cheated, or taking the knocks too personally. Most of the time, I've deserved my hard knocks, and I guess the rest of them are there to help me adapt and sustain hardship, qualities I've come to admire.

a reply to: BrianFlanders
Life is a zero sum game.

I can unconditionally and without a single ion of a fraction of a doubt, say and guarantee you that at some point all of humanity and all of human civilization, this one, and like the many others that came before this iteration, at some point it, and we all, will all go extinct.

And yes it will happen by something you not only can not see, but likely cant even fathom.

It is and was generally how things work, its always the things you dont see but cant comprehend that get ya. Just like the dinosaurs. Now do you think they could have fathomed a giant space rock ending there whole way of life? Do you think they contemplated what all that stuff up there was even?

They were lucky to be alive and doing there thing, for as long as they were. Till there time was up.

So ya! one day, it will all be, Zip, zero, nada, poof, gone. Just like that.

So while luck is a horse to ride as any other, even luck shall pass. You may as well make the best of it while your here, regardless of your situation. The rest may just be not only a waste of time, but also of energy.

originally posted by: Serdgiam
Im genuinely curious about the mindset here, Brian. Im just not catching what point you are trying to get across.

You're probably trying too hard not to. Which is (obviously) what the thread was about in the first place. People who are lucky obviously often don't know it (or just are not mentally flexible enough to imagine what it might be like to not be).

So yeah. Without even actually trying to, I have proved my point that lucky people stubbornly refuse to admit they didn't do anything special that made them "win the lottery" (so to speak).

The point is that we were all born with the deck we have and that's that. What you were born with is all you'll ever have. It's all you have to work with. The people who were born with a better deck will not believe that fortune didn't have anything to do with them or anything they personally did. Despite the fact that everything they have ever done was after the fact. Anything you can possibly do is something you could not have done without all the right cards. If you don't have them, you can't play them. That's what I'm trying to get across.

You cannot tell someone to play a card they don't have in their deck. Well, I guess you CAN actually tell them that. This is the arrogance I speak of. Dismissing someone by telling them to do something that is impossible for them. You can tell them that every day of their life. What are they supposed to do about it?

Yeah. I know. You probably still don't get it. Guess what. I don't get why you don't get it. So we are both preaching to a different choir. Your audience is comprised of the only people who will ever get what you're saying and mine is comprised of the only people who will ever get what I'm saying. Most of the people who would agree with me probably don't have the luxury of sitting on the internet and doing what we're doing here. I understand that. I'm unbelievably fortunate to have the capability to do that. For the moment. I will say that without good luck I would not be sitting here right now. I would have probably died 20 years ago without the exact circumstances that brought me here. In almost no other scenario would I still be here (all other things being equal).

So. I do not come into a thread like this one from a state of blissful ignorance. If I am trying to argue with 10 people who refuse to admit they're lucky to even be here, this is certainly not the right forum for this thread. Or maybe it is exactly the right place for it and I'm just frustrated because I feel like I'm wasting my time pointing out the obvious to the oblivious.

I've lost more games than I've won (A lot more) but as I said, this isn't specifically about me because there are millions and millions of others who are not here to speak for themselves. Only because I won one game they didn't. Pure luck.

I dont really believe in luck, karma, or even randomness.

There's your problem. Karma isn't luck or randomness. Luck and randomness (for the purposes of this discussion) are essentially the same thing. I didn't say there was anything supernatural about good luck and therefore, it is pure random chance that one person gets good luck and another gets bad luck. It is also pure randomness when someone who has always had relatively good luck suddenly gets the worst luck ever. There's no rhyme nor reason to any of it. And again, that is the point. Lucky people did not earn their luck. It just happened. Just like everything does. It's not possible to earn what you were born with (whether it was good, bad or in-between). This is an indisputable fact.

I am (again) likely barking up the wrong tree trying to have this discussion on a forum where it's highly likely it is filled with religious people of various stripes. Obviously, religious people don't believe everything is random. I know that. I was hoping those people would stay out of this thread. But since when have they ever stayed out of anything?

I mean, some would and have considered me very, very "unlucky." I cant control many of those things, but in the things that are in my realm of influence, or seem to be.. Im generally going to take the course(s) that have a higher probability of yielding the outcomes Id prefer.

But you would not be able to do that if you didn't have the mental capacity to do that. If you were born with a higher mental capacity than a homeless schizophrenic, you didn't have to do anything special for that. You didn't earn it. It just is. OTOH, the homeless schizophrenic didn't deserve what they got. They were born that way. Pure good and bad luck.

You were born with everything you have and therefore, you are simply playing the cards you were born with. You can't screw it up unless you have them and deliberately choose not to play them. If you have them and you aren't aware of it, you're not actually doing anything wrong because it isn't intentional. You were not born with the gift of being aware of your strengths. Just that little random subtraction makes all the difference. This could be analogous to having a bunch of lucky cards but you were born blind.

Now I have spent more time on this than I needed to. But I didn't really have anything better to do. I'll leave it at that. It's a rhetorical post. I don't need you to come back at me. I'm done with this thread. People can make of it what they will.

a reply to: BrianFlanders

Well, we dont necessarily disagree, but you seem fascinatingly determined to do so.

I think telling kids that they can be anything they want to be, or the most recent "if you can see her, you can be her," are probably setting things up for disappointment more than actually encouraging anyone to do something they wouldnt have otherwise. At its core, its an outright lie.

Perhaps the greatest disagreement is whether randomness exists or not. Plenty will disagree, but Im convinced "random" only refers to patterns we are not vapable of understanding, currently or ever. I think there is the very real possibility that the human mind is not capable of understanding everything in existence. Which is pretty much the antithesis of one of the main themes in our Cultural Story.

I am aware that karma is not necessarily the same thing as luck, which is why I specified between them. However, the cards we are dealt in life are objectively not "pure" randomness, though there are certainly aspects that derive from patterns beyond our understanding. Genetics alone, which are shaped over time by observable, predictable factors, will result in observable, predictable trends. It seems to me that if these things were truly random, science and medicine pertaining to them would be entirely futile. There would also be events like humans giving birth to giraffes, icebergs, and supernovae. It sounds silly, and perhaps even dismissive, but those are the results pure randomness would yield. We would see things like a normal human pregnancy resulting in tiny little trees that grow into a forest outside the womb. On top of that, these possibilities are limited by the human imagination, so the actual results would literally be more bizarre than we can imagine.

It may even seem pedantic, but that is the nature of actual randomness. We wouldn't be able to predict, with any certainty whatsoever, that humans produce human offspring at all. And, the moment we start to move into the idea there might be some "obviousness," we immediately move away from the random abstract.

Other than that, perhaps a better word choice would have been "ignorant" rather than "arrogant." Arrogance implies some sort of awareness, and a subsequent inflation of importance, in a topic where the premise is that they/we dont know any different. And, there are certainly plenty of folks that are completely ignorant of this, but Ive also met those that were not only aware of their "luck," they saw it as a responsibility and they worked themselves to the bone to play their hand in a way that would benefit the most people possible, over as many generations as possible.

It seems that a better target of your ire might be the Cultural Story itself, rather than the characters that are merely playing out their roles. Its not unchangeable or monolithic, even if changes tend to require generations to really take shape. We can build structures and systems that negate many, if not most of these things.

Are you stating that we have no control over the direction our lives take, or the quality thereof?

originally posted by: InwardDiver
Are you stating that we have no control over the direction our lives take, or the quality thereof?

Yes. It's all circumstantial. You can steer your way out of an impending accident if you see it coming but you can't see an impending accident coming if you were born blind. Not to mention the fact that you wouldn't even be driving if you were born blind. In addition to that, you wouldn't even exist at all if it wasn't "in the cards". You didn't cause yourself to exist. You cannot choose your general health, your IQ, your general mental state, basic personality or anything else. Control is an illusion. You're mistaking believing you are in control for actually being in control. Obviously if you can make a choice that impacts your future, you feel like you're in control. But you had to be able to know that choice was available in order to be able to make it. So you had to be lucky enough to be aware of all your options in order to make a good guess on the right one. And you still had to be lucky in that even if it was apparently the right one, something that is totally out of your control wouldn't go wrong and make it the wrong one. For this, consider you make "the perfect" choice for your life. Pleased with yourself, you go to bed and your house burns down and you die in the fire.

a reply to: BrianFlanders

And most people know exactly what I'm talking about.

Yes,


not talking about but indicating to readers such as myself or those that will interpret what you say in a similar way.

You are a materialistic person.

Nothing you have said on the 1st 2 pages points to you not but almost everything you have said points to you being a materialist.

You make a good point about randomness but the rest..... is either too vague or could be argued the other way.

You cannot (for example) choose to be Einstein.

Yes you can.

anyone can change their name, its a choice, if they wish to be called Einstein they can change their name.

if you mean on an intellectual level, then that is a yes again, others have been on an intellectual level as Einstein, some in other fields of study and some on the same field Einstein played on.


Now to certain things said in your OP,

If you live long enough to watch the mighty fall, you will realize they never had any secret trick that made everything work for them.

Name one person that has had everything work for them?

No one is that lucky and no one is that skilled at life in general to have never made a mistake or to have had an instance of misfortune.

It just happened to them and they reaped the rewards. That's it. That's all it is. They didn't do anything special except exist. And if you aren't one of them, you didn't really do anything wrong except exist.

Why isn't this basic fact more widely recognized?

Because its a fact that it cannot be widely associated with many people, especially the first thing you said about making everything work for them, you cannot attribute that to any person, as all humans have faults and misfortune throughout their lives at least once in a while if not often.

One reason. The people who were not born with a lucky hand would probably just give up.

So its a conspiracy of the elite lucky people of the world.

Some people live with severe depression and still get out of bed everyday, Your reason is nonsense to those that could be considered suicidal but choose to see if tomorrow will be brighter day.

Your suffering is probably the only thing of any real value that you possess.

have you ever heard of the concept of duality?

There is a reason we all suffer, even the lucky.

For example, you could spend your entire life doing everything someone else did and they succeeded but you didn't because your luck was just #.

that is too vague of an example,

It could be very right or very wrong, depending on who is doing and who is copying and what they are doing.

An observation about the way things are that applies to everyone.

How do you see everyone?

or is everyone just in your sphere of observation which in a big world is extremely small?

I guess we have things to show us how things are else where like media and internet but this is a manipulated view and not a real observation but limited one that more often than not is done to make you think you know how Abdul from Morocco lives and thinks or Jack from Australia or anyone from anywhere that is outside of your sphere of observation that as humans is quite small on a global scale.

However, generally, my observation is that lucky people act like they did something to earn good luck. Which they didn't.

I think you have someone or maybe a few people in mind yet you are trying to pass this off as an observation of everyone.

Luck (chance) is everything. Without it, you don't exist.

Probability.

Yes the odds of us existing the way we do and in the numbers we do and where we do are mindbogglingly phenomenal.

Success is more than just money.

very much so,


money has no value other than what we place on it or accept the value that others place on it.

For example, you can get lucky and win the lottery but still be unlucky enough to have the wrong type of mind to take advantage of it in a way that will work out well in the long run.

Huh?

This means you need the right mindset to keep the wealth you were lucky to win?

I saw an article somewhere about some redneck who won a bunch of money and ended up broke again in short order because that was just the kind of brain he had.

So you are saying he was unsuccessful?

I could say he was very successful and doing what is meant to be done with money won or earned and that is to be spent.

as I said above, your vague examples are just as easy argued the other way.

The title of this thread is what? "Why are lucky people so arrogant?" In it, we have a bunch of people who apparently got offended by the question.

NO,

confused because I think you have a specific person or persons in mind.

People disagreed, no one got offended, that is very strange way of interpreting people responses.

Is that a bit of projecting and that you are offended because just about most disagree?

I did not actually expect to encounter a bunch of arrogant "winners" (or delusional losers).

Yep you got offended because others see things differently.

But fair enough. The overwhelming response to my question has been things like "You make your own luck" and "If you get diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor, you won't die if you refuse to accept it".

WOW

and this upsets you?

Seriously? What did they spike your kool aid with?

Reading these responses, I'm starting to understand why the world is in the pathetic state that it is in.

Ahhh I guess my intuition was correct

you think you can see how the world is.

You are a fool, unlucky or just downright ignorant not to notice how you see the world is influenced by how you think you can see it, a biased view given to you from sources so you think a certain way.

Or can you claim to have experienced all types of life and lived everywhere?

The world is just fine in my limited view and I am the kind of person I mentioned at the start of this post that gets out of bed every morning.

You just have been programed by negativity, I and others are affected by that programming or by real life effects of negativity yet they stay positive, you complain on the internet, meh.... so do I but at least I can see that if I try painting with a wide brush and try labeling everything or everyone its only ignorance that makes me think I can, you seem oblivious to this fact about yourself when you do it like you have in this thread.

Even here on this forum where people who claim they like to think outside the box come to do that, they simply refuse to accept reality.

Yes, you have given a great example of this, refusing to accept a certain reality about how you think you see the whole world and being stuck in a box believing you can think outside of it.

I don't know what else to say but if this is the prevailing attitude and mindset on ATS in 2019, nothing will ever change.

So your point is everyone needs to think like you.




Actually now its clear you do have someone in mind and I take it you must be very lucky.

a reply to: InhaleExhale

I was thinking about it on the porcelain throne, and I think the issue might be trying to have an intellectual or philosophical approach to what is clearly an emotional take on the subject. That seems to be becoming a lot more common nowadays.. But presenting the premise that we are incapable of influencing events as well as lamenting how things will never change because of lack of thought uniformity is not exactly a QED presentation.

In the end, its a rant. I suppose its on me/us for thinking it could turn into a conversation when it was charged with 99% emotion from the start. Which, to be fair, is a pretty standard hallmark of a rant.

A rant is very, very rarely particularly novel or new, certainly not "out of the box," but that could probably be a point in favor of the premise.