Beginnings matter when determining success

Interesting article and actually a pretty popular and mainstream view on the issue (“We can work hard, but our starting point influences our fate,” Human Matters, April 14, 2013). I admit there is a “luck-of-the-draw” factor involved in experiencing “success” in life ... but what of those that have the opportunity and talent and blow it all up? Plenty of professional athlete and entertainer examples of that. My belief is that we all can make the most of the hand we are dealt through hard work ... and behaving ourselves. No substitute for the second point there. No guarantee of equal outcomes, but our choices determine our end points. — J.C., Houston

I don’t have much investment in the measurable popularity of “a view,” if such a thing is in fact measurable. Nor in whether any given view is mainstream. What compels me is not a view, but an immutable, observable fact, which given individuals might or might not find popular and might or might not want to mainstream.

Here again is that observation: the single most consistent predictor of outcome is the starting point.

As you say, what of those who have opportunity and talent and blow it all up? Answer: I think those folks buttress my point. Some “starting points” overly determine (that is, predict) an individual’s likelihood of “blowing up” even opportunities and talent.

For example, if you showed me a pie graph of homeless people in America, I’m convinced that some chunk of that graph, if handed a modest home, a middle-class job, a secondhand car and, say, a checking account spotted the first $5,000, would predictably find themselves homeless again in short order. Why? Because there is more going on here than bad luck in capitalism. More going on here than the variables of work ethic and “good” behavior.

For the record, I have the same concerns collectively when America “hands a democracy” to a nation run for centuries by despots.

Your belief is that “we all can make the most of the hand we are dealt through hard work and behaving ourselves.” My rejoinder is that work ethic and the ability/willingness to restrain instincts (behaving ourselves) are themselves overly determined by the starting point! You presuppose something here that is itself a variable.

Hear it this way: Of course, hard work and good behavior bode well for success. And, frankly, there’s no excuse for not working hard and behaving well regardless of our movement toward success. As I said in the first column, each of us is (and must be) radically responsible for our choices, even those “choices” radically overdetermined. Who knows, for example, how “free” was Charles Manson’s choice to psychologically manipulate homeless, immature, runaway hippies, or to commit murder, or to order murder. Likewise, who knows how “free” he was not to do those things. But, either way, prison is where he belongs.

I’m not arguing in the April 14 column, or here, for “a pass” for myself or anyone. What I am arguing for is an authentic, essential human humility. And from that humility, perhaps a greater compassion for the human condition and for the human beings trying to find their way within the powerful determinants in that condition.

If you’re an American male reared either without a father or with an “anti-father” (abuse, cruelty, etc.), the statistical chances of you someday going to prison simply skyrocket. I’m not saying all boys without fathers go to prison, or that fatherlessness causes anti-social behavior. And I’m absolutely not saying the boy-turned-man in question should be any less accountable for the robbery or trafficking or murder he commits.

Just saying his starting point overwhelmingly predicts his outcome. Not a popular view. A factual one.

My “take” is that if any view is popular and mainstream, it’s the notion that all success is a result of hard work and moral living (behaving ourselves), and all failure is a consequence of laziness, entitlement and immorality (not behaving ourselves), and that we are entirely free to pick either course. I would go so far as to say we clutch so fiercely to the first two ideas because the human ego desires so desperately to believe the last — we are entirely free.

You say, “No guarantee of equal outcomes, but our choices determine our end points.” Is there a flaw of logic here? Or at least a contradiction? If our choices in every case determine our end points, would that not in fact guarantee equal outcomes? Or, if there is no guarantee of outcomes, then aren’t you admitting variables?

And, couldn’t one of those variables — a hugely powerful variable — be the starting point?

Steven Kalas is a behavioral health consultant and counselor at Las Vegas Psychiatry and the author of “Human Matters: Wise and Witty Counsel on Relationships, Parenting, Grief and Doing the Right Thing” (Stephens Press). His columns appear on Sundays. Contact him at 227-4165 or skalas@reviewjournal.com.