Luck is not a matter of chance...Lucky You! Thomas Jefferson once said "I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it." What, though, is luck? Webster's dictionary suggests that luck is the "events or circumstances that operate for or against an individual." In truth, luck has nothing to do with something operating for or against you. Luck is not a matter of chance. It is a matter of being open to new experiences, perseverance, hard work, and positive thinking. When seventeen year old Steven Spielberg spent some time with his cousin in the summer of 1965, they toured Universal pictures. The tram stopped at none of the sound stages. Spielberg snuck off on a bathroom break to watch a bit of the real action. When he encountered an unfamiliar face who demanded to know what he was doing, he told him his story. The man turned out to be the head of the editorial department. Spielberg got a pass to the lot for the very next day and showed a very impressed Chuck Silvers four of his eight millimeter films. This was the foot in the door Spielberg needed to start squatting on the lot, a decision that led to his first contract with Universal Studios. Studies have shown that lucky people tend to be far more open to new experiences. …show more content…
One of the study creators said, "When she would come to the unit to be interviewed, it would be just this whole string of bad-luck stories: "I can't find anyone. I'm unlucky in love. When I did find someone, the guy fell off his motorbike. The next blind date broke his nose. We were supposed to get married, and the church burned down." But to every single interview, she'd bring along her two kids. They were 6 and 7 years old -- very healthy, very happy kids who'd sit there and play. And it was interesting, because most people would love to have two kids like that, but that wasn't part of her world, because she was unlucky in her
“When an unmarried woman became pregnant, relatives pressured her and her partner to agree to a ‘shotgun wedding’… Most social scientists agree that, on average, children who grow up in a one-parent family are more disadvantaged than children who grow up with two parents” (pp. 190). While I was reading these, I was thinking, “Well, duh!” I also found interesting that Neuman found “…people whose parents had been divorced had poorer mental health as adults” (pp. 191). I know that many of these people had other factors that contribute to this so this was not the reason for their poor mental health, but I still thought, “Wow! I would have never made that
Well there is always the fate aspect in everything that occurs in our lives but majority of the outcomes created from the individuals own decisions. It is up to the individual to determine what can occur, if they do one thing then something will be the outcome. A side from that, there is always the possibility of being at the wrong place at the wrong time which can have an affect of on the outcomes of life.
In “Luck Swallows Everything” and “Sanity and the Metaphysics of Responsibility” Galen Strawson and Susan Wolf’s explain the concept of responsibility in both a compatibilist and determinist view. Strawson argued that change was not possible at all when it comes to responsibility due to an individual’s mental nature, while Wolf argues that change is possible for an individual when it comes to responsibility. This essay will be focusing on the criticism of Wolf’s work.
In the story, The Lottery, there are many signs of duality of human nature. Many of the characters appear to be affected by the lottery at first, but towards the end their feelings start to change. Tessie, Mr.Summers, and Mrs.Delacroix all show two sides of humanity and they all generally appear to be good natured people, but are they really?
In his book “Outliers”, Malcolm Gladwell emphasizes a lot about luck by illustrating the importance of birthdays for Hockey players, by comparing the success of geniuses with super high intelligence, and by showing how successful people got opportunities and support because of their luck. At a glance, every reader can find out luck plays a crucial role in success, but does Gladwell wants us to believe luck is all that matters? Although he emphasizes a lot about luck in his book, I don’t think he believes that successful people are just lucky because every successful people he introduces in his book are not just lucky in their lives, but are great hard workers and risk takers.
Taoism has been a major influence in China throughout much of its history and The Joy Luck Club, by Amy Tan, reflects this influence through its infusion of Taoist principals. One of the fundamental concepts within Taoism is that of Wu-hsing. Wu-hsing is a way of understanding a matter by dividing it into five and is often represented by five phases, elements of directions. This is an unfamiliar concept to a western perspective, which tends to divide things into four. Understanding this fifth additional element, however, is essential to understanding The Joy Luck Club.
Indeed, I believe that it is neither advantageous nor even logically plausible to accede to either side of this debate: simply admitting to one extreme (e.g., that luck should never be considered when assessing others, or vice versa) automatically creates a multitude of problems. If we do consider luck when assessing someone's moral character, we open ourselves to the very real possibility of punishing two people unequally for the same exact action or intention, which is incompatible with our notion of justice. Yet if we decide that luck should not be a factor, we are in effect embracing the notion that we are not responsible for our actions, and in such a case, punishment would be futile; without legal guilt and punishment, however, society would be chaotic, which again assaults our notion of justice. We shall see that this issue is closely tied in with the more general idea of free will vs. determinism, which itself is a fundamentally disturbing problem. As long as the free will debate remains inconclusive – as most people feel it is – so too will the debate over moral luck remain unresolved.
The French Revolution was a time when many people sacrificed their lives for their beliefs. As the French Revolution moved on, more people joined the movement and risked their lives. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens is set during this time. Many people who sacrificed their lives for the Revolution felt like it was their fate to do this. This idea of fate is described many times in Dickens’ novel to magnify the story. The theme of fate is prevalent in the novel through the lives of many characters. This theme is used to show how a person is unable to escape their fate because it is already decided. The metaphors and symbols in the novel are greatly used to contribute to the theme of fate through the symbols of knitting, the fountain and water, and the wine.
The person that I interviewed for this paper was Patricia Margaret Lassiter. Born in Maryland on November 7, 1967 she was an only child. The lifestyle that she grew up in was much disoriented and was one that no child should be put through. Both of her parents were alcoholics and very abusive, and would even let their daughter drink alcohol because they thought it was comical when she passed out. Her father was abusive to both his wife and Patricia, so in the best interest of protecting her child, Patti (Patricia’s Mom) left her husband, and filed for a divorce. After the parents divorced, Patricia’s parents went to court, and both tried to fight for custody of their daughter. In the end, it was up to Patti, who was only in the 1st grade, to decide who she wanted to live with. Being torn apart she made the decision to go with her mom, but later regretted it. Her mother had many relationships, but went through the same process as her last marriage. The relationships her mother was in were all abusive due to alcohol, and many nights Patricia would have to run away while her mother protected her from these abusive men. One morning Patricia’s mother took her to school even though Patricia insisted that school wasn’t opened that day. Dropping her off at school Patti told Patricia to go to class, and wait for the teacher. After waiting in her classroom for hours, someone finally found her, but when Patricia tried to come into contact with her mother to pick her up from school she would not respond. That was the very last day she saw her mother. Social Service came by the school, and put her in a foster home for three days, and then was transferred to live with a lady called Shirley. From time to time she had visits from her father, and...
Gabi Rodriguez is a senior in high school and must come up with a project to graduate. Her first idea was to do statistics in foster care. She gets a name of a girl who is foster care from her teacher, Tyra, and when she is talking to her, Tyra tells her that she’s pregnant. She talks about how things have changed since she became pregnant, and
With this short but very interesting and informative class I have just scratched the surface of the what it takes to make a full fleged film. It takes much more than I had presumed to make a movie in Hollywood. The number of people that it takes to make a minute of a movie let alone the entire movie was astonishing to me. There are many things that it takes to start making a movie but without an idea of some sort there is no movie to be made.
It’s certain that winning the jackpot is extremely rare and exciting. For some people, especially who’s in need of money, this can be a game changer for them; and for those who spends the fortune wisely, often ended up having a great life as well, so why, under any circumstance, that winning lottery will have
the point that she was adopted made her to ponder about the factors that families
"Luck" is a short story by the brilliant American novelist Mark Twain. In this story, readers learn about the life of Scoresby, a military hero, through the depiction of a clergyman who was once an instructor in a military academy. This was actually a story within another story. As a matter of fact, an unnamed narrator retells the story he once heard from the clergyman. This story is told in the first person point of view. In the first person point of view, the narrator participates in the
Fortune is merely another word for chance. The antediluvian view of human affairs, frequently referred to the "wheel of fortune," portrayed human life as somewhat of a lottery. One could rise to the top of the wheel and enjoy the benefits of dominance, but it was always short lived. With a capricious swing up or down, one could reach their goals just to later crash and burn.