Do You Feel Lucky?

We say to our friends: “Good luck!” Or as the theatre crowd oddly says: “Break a leg!” (You would not say that to a rugby player, it might be considered hostile). We might refer to luck as: “A stroke of luck.” "A lucky strike.” "A lucky break.” We might even “get lucky” and “thank our lucky stars.”

Do you believe in luck? Experimental research on this topic would require only two questions: One quantitative, one qualitative. First a binary question: “Do you believe in luck?

• Yes or no?
• More nuanced would be a four-item scale: Very much. A fair amount. Not much. Not at all.

Two positives. Two negatives.

The second question: “Please give examples of your experiences of luck, good and bad, as fully as possible.”

The vocabulary and behaviors related to luck are extensive, which is suggestive of the power of, or at least attributed to, luck. Luck has had many names and near-synonyms over the centuries: chance, destiny, karma, fate, fortune, the gods, and God, Divine Providence. And with recognition of magic, sorcery, the stars, planets and astrology, lucky numbers, fortune cookies, charms and amulets, four-leafed clovers, horse-shoes, and lucky rabbit’s feet (though the horse must have been unlucky, and the rabbit extremely unlucky).

Unlucky are certain numbers, which vary with culture, but 13 is unlucky here. Add black cats, crows, cracks in the sidewalk, and the evil eye. To avoid bad luck, some people employ the open hand or the blue eye. Other methods include prayer, sacrifices, fasting, promises, pilgrimage, or crossed fingers. The cultural variants are legion.

Some think that these beliefs are simply superstitions, unsupported by any evidence (as are many of our beliefs). However, the beliefs are widespread and perhaps universal. Luck was even divinized by both the Greeks with Tyche, and the Romans with Fortuna, who is often portrayed spinning her wheel. Both were female. She is still remembered with the game show, “Wheel of Fortune.”

What the Surveys Say

Some 89 percent of Americans believe in God, according to a Gallup survey (2 July 2016), 10 percent do not and 1 percent have no opinion. There is no comparative survey on belief in luck, but presumably many or all these believers in God also believe in Divine Providence, which might be equated with luck.

A Pew survey on religion in India reported that 97 percent professed to believe in God, 79 percent with absolute certainty, but different gods. Equal proportions of Hindus and Muslims believe in the evil eye (51 percent) and karma (77 percent). (And 67 percent also agree that women should be prevented from marrying outside their faiths.) (Economist 3 July 2021: 44).

“Would you rather be beautiful or lucky?” About 80 percent of the French responded that they would rather be lucky. (Not such a difficult question since if you are lucky you will be beautiful, as well as healthy, wealthy, and wise.) A majority also said that they would rather be beautiful than rich. (Bourdieu 1984: 204) Belief in the value of luck is very strong.

An American survey, in contrast, asked Americans about what mattered most in how people fared in life. Respondents had two choices: luck or hard work. Liberals and Democrats tended to pick the former, and conservatives and Republicans the latter (Miller 2005). But they had probably not read Dawkins.

What the Theorists Say

Blaise Pascal knew better back in 1660: “… You find yourself in this world at all, only through an infinity of chances … A visit made by chance, an idle word, a thousand unforeseen occasions.” (Lapham, 2016:35).

Richard Dawkins is clear on this: “We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones … what I see as I write is that I am lucky to be alive and so are you (2000:1,4).

Sheer luck to be alive, and to be born alive and to survive. Then more luck, good or bad, depending on the circumstances of one’s birth, which is determined before we are born: our parents, good enough or not, wealthy enough or not, criminal and so on, as well as the country and timing of one’s birth, in peace or war. Most of our luck we did not make.

Chance Is Biblical:

I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all (Eccles 9:11).

Hence, surely, the divinization of Fortune by both the Greeks and the Romans, and its continuing role through the Middle Ages. Dante discussed Luck in Canto 7 of Hell:

Lo! This is she that hath so curst a name

Even from those that should give praise to her –

Luck, whom men senselessly revile and blame;

But she is blissful and she does not hear;

She, with the other primal creatures gay,

Tastes her own blessedness and turns her sphere. (1983: 112).

Chaucer, born about 20 years after Dante died, was also interested in luck. He wrote a short poem to “Fortune” (1957:535-6), and the monk’s tale in “The Canterbury Tales is a dismal monologue about the ill-fortune and falls from glory of kings and queens and generals and all, starting with Lucifer and Adam and going on to Caesar, Alexander, Samson, Hercules, and many others, until he was interrupted by the knight and told that he was “boring” and that he wanted to hear stories about good luck." The monk advised in his first verse:

For sure it is if Fortune wills to flee,

No man may stay her course or keep his hold;

Let no one trust a blind prosperity,

Be warned by these examples, true and old.

(1959:205)

Over 100 years later, in 1517, Machiavelli mused about luck in “The Prince.” “I believe that it is probably true that fortune is the arbiter of half the things we do, leaving the other half or so to be controlled by ourselves.” (1961:130).

Shakespeare lamented in Sonnet 29:

When in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes

I all alone beweep my outcaste state,

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries

And look upon myself and curse my fate …

But then he remembers her, and all is well.

Francis Bacon was also a great believer in fortune but attributed it largely to folly: It cannot be denied but outward accidents conduce much to fortune: favour, opportunity, death of others, occasions fitting virtue. But chiefly the mould of a man’s destiny is in his own hands … And the most frequent of external causes is that the folly of one man is the fortune of another. (1985:181)

La Rochefoucauld upped Machiavelli’s estimate and declared definitively: “Chance and caprice rule the world.” (1981: 92). Others might declare power, money, evil, or even love more significant.

Arthur Schopenhauer was also impressed by luck: An ancient writer says, very truly, that there are three great powers in the world: Sagacity, Strength, and Luck … I think the last is the most efficacious … A man’s life is like the voyage of a ship, where luck … acts the part of the wind, and speeds the vessel on its way or drives it far out of its course. All that the man can do is of little avail; like the rudder, which, if worked hard and continuously may help in the navigation of the ship; yet all may be lost by a sudden squall … On looking back over the course of his life – that labyrinthine way of error … a man must see many points where luck has failed him and misfortune came; and then it is easy to carry self-reproach to an unjust excess. For the course of a man’s life is in no wise entirely of his own making. (n.d.:169-70).

He added, gratuitously: “Our brains are not the wisest part of us.” (n.d.: 171).

What Experience Says

Many have acknowledged the defining role of luck in their lives. The author Richard Russo drew a high number in the Vietnam War draft lottery (the luck of the draw) which exempted him and explained: “There are certain times when it’s good to be smart and certain times when it’s good to be industrious, but that night it was good to be lucky.” (Time 29 July 2020: 64).

Barack Obama likewise in the 2004 Senate race. His main Democratic and Republican rivals were both felled by sex or divorce scandals. He wrote that “Later some reporters would declare me the luckiest politician in the entire fifty states … there was no point in denying my almost spooky good fortune” (2006:18). Then again: “with each passing day, I understand more fully how lucky I am to have Michelle in my life.” (2006:363).

Michael J. Fox, who contracted early-onset Parkinson’s when he was 29, entitled his autobiography “Lucky Man.” Why lucky? One might ask. He explained that it made him give up drinking, saved his marriage, so he and his wife had more children. He had a successful career: “I regarded the whole thing as a matter of luck. Would the luck hold? That seemed too much to even ask for.” (2002:92). Then he raised $1 billion for Parkinson’s research.

These stand for the many others who have recognised the importance of good luck in their lives. It bears reflection for its many types, including the draw, politics, and illness.

Not all luck is good. “Third time unlucky” is the headline for an article on the third virus surge in Africa, with confirmed cases at five times the global average, a confluence of several factors: poverty, inadequate health system infrastructure due to above; plague denial by some leaders, and so far, a lack of supply, a failure of rich countries to support poor ones, and a failure to realise the globalization of the virus. Of the three billion doses administered worldwide, only 2 percent were in Africa. (Economist 3 July 2021: 49-50). Luck had nothing to do with it, as Mae West once commented.

When good luck happens, we may be tempted to attribute this to our hard work, virtue, skill, beauty, charm, or other treasured assets. When bad luck happens, it is not our fault, obviously, it was just bad luck. The cry of “That’s not fair!” may work in the playground or the home, but not so well in the cosmos, which is amazingly deaf.

Bad Luck

There is much advice from popular culture about how to cope with bad luck, which implicitly, like language and behavior, recognizes the role and power of luck in our lives.

• Life is not fair (the parental approach).
• Grin and bear it (the stoic approach).
• Water off a duck’s back (the approach naturalistic).
• S … t happens (the approach resigned).
• Offer it up (the approach spiritual).
• Into every life a little rain must fall (the approach philosophical).
• This too shall pass (the approach chronological).
• Every cloud has a silver lining (the approach optimistic).
• It could be worse (the approach consolatory).
• The life of man is doomed to trouble (Job and the approach pessimistic).
• Suck it up! (the modern approach).
• It is what it is (the approach oxymoronic).
• Deal with it! (the approach unsympathetic).
• When the going gets tough the tough get going (Billy Ocean and the approach assertive).
• Keep calm and carry on! (the British approach).

We have various options. But the trouble with bad luck is that it is bad. Too bad. Please select one or more of the options above.