...the need to feel like an oppressed underdog who has succeeded against all odds is as American as apple pie. One thing America is fascinated by is the ruling class of the uber-wealthy, and the more uber-wealthier they get the more we're fascinated by them, and yet they always feel like they have to win some public relations war for our affection that doesn't exist, be it corporations crying foul on being asked to pay taxes, or NFL owners having to swallow only making a trillion dollars a day. Nobody likes to admit out loud "part of my success is due to economic and social conditions cemented long before I was even born"; we must be made to believe that Successful Person X was left to die in a dumpster, then pulled himself up by his own bootstraps and became a real rags to riches story.Today via Sully HERE we see Michael Lewis give a graduation speech at Princeton, in which he reveals a dirty truth about America: no man is an island, and the difference between success and failure can be not only paper-thin, but largely ascribable to, oh no!...luck:
The book I wrote was called "Liar’s Poker." It sold a million copies. I was 28 years old. I had a career, a little fame, a small fortune and a new life narrative. All of a sudden people were telling me I was born to be a writer. This was absurd. Even I could see there was another, truer narrative, with luck as its theme. What were the odds of being seated at that dinner next to that Salomon Brothers lady? Of landing inside the best Wall Street firm from which to write the story of an age? Of landing in the seat with the best view of the business? Of having parents who didn't disinherit me but instead sighed and said "do it if you must?" Of having had that sense of must kindled inside me by a professor of art history at Princeton? Of having been let into Princeton in the first place?Sorry for the long quote - I know, I know, you're itching to get back to ME!!!
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....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...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.
All of you have been faced with the extra cookie. All of you will be faced with many more of them. In time you will find it easy to assume that you deserve the extra cookie. For all I know, you may. But you'll be happier, and the world will be better off, if you at least pretend that you don't.
I don't care if you succeeded against all odds or were born on third base - if you're a success at something, good for you. Just quit trying to give us some 100% bullshit bio about the whole thing. Being lucky isn't a crime, just don't be a fucking douchebag about it.
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