The choices we don’t have

We like to think that we’re masters of our own world, but we aren’t. So much is out of our control. It’s the main reason I’ve developed more of a bleeding heart.

Factors

No matter what the Randroids think, humans aren’t born with a tabula rasa. We enter this world with certain qualities bestowed upon us. Just a few of these are:

  1. Genetics
  2. Cultural heritage
  3. Language
  4. Geographic location
  5. Access to emerging technologies

I am an English speaking (#3) 3rd generation(#2) American (#4) born to relatively healthy parents (#1) and have competence with computers (#5). I had no control over any of that.

Lucky ducks

This is not to belittle myself or my family, but just a matter of perspective. If we’re relatively safe, healthy, and free, it isn’t because of our innate goodness. We got kind of lucky.

And it’s not to say that we can’t make our lives better or worse depending upon our actions. But world is big and has a momentum of its own. Our options aren’t as wide-ranging as we think.

Advertisement

Leave a Comment

Filed under Reflections, Whimsy

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out / Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out / Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out / Change )

Connecting to %s