The Birth Lottery and Native Americans

Just a note before I begin. I have been seeing hundreds of hits per day to my blog from Singapore for about 2 weeks, although that interest has begun to wain since yesterday. Overall, there have been over 4000 hits this month with the vast majority from Singapore. I would be interested in any comments from my new readers, and perhaps even how and why this interest has occurred.

In 2010 when I first started this blog, one of my first posts concerned my thoughts on the randomness of life, when, where, to whom we are  born, and the fact that not enough thought is given to the idea that whether we have won or lost the birth lottery greatly effects the path of our lives. Here is a link to that post. 

https://wurdsfromtheburbs.blogspot.com/2010/04/birth-lottery.html 

At the time, and for the first few years after I posted it, if you googled birth lottery, my post was displayed on the first page of results which translated to a slew of hits. Now, as more and more people have presented their take on this concept, it is more difficult to find my post without accessing it directly through the blog. 

In 2013, I created a second post on this topic, link below. It received a lot less hits than the first, but after reading both I like the second one a bit more, especially the last paragraph. 

https://wurdsfromtheburbs.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-birth-lottery-revisited.html

Yesterday I read an article in the May edition of The National Geographic concerning the forced removal of Indigenous children from their homes. Of course, I was aware of this atrocity, the concept that taking these children from their homes, their culture, was not only acceptable, but necessary to make them less barbaric, more christian, more westernized, etc, but I guess it never dawned on me that this practice continued into the 20th century.

I guess I thought it was a prejudice from the 19th century, never having pursued, or never being taught in detail, just how long this horrific practice existed.

What struck me is that many of the children, now adults, who were featured in the article were born in the late 50's and 60's, the same time frame as me and a few of my siblings.

In other words, if I had lost the birth lottery and been born on an American Indian reservation, I would have been deemed in need of civilizing. I would have been forcibly removed from my home, forbidden to speak my native tongue, dressed in strange clothes, and denied knowledge of my culture. As would at least a few of my brothers.

Conversely, those children profiled in those pages would have experienced a much happier childhood, loved within their birth family structure, not requiring indoctrination, not subjected to the abuse and loneliness that this forced removal created had they been born in the circumstances that I was.

All due to the vagaries of the birth lottery.

According to the article, "there were about 500 federally funded boarding schools for Native children opened in the US and Canada beginning in the 1800's. Most focused on religious conversion, often through forced labor and brutal punishment." Yea, nothing inspires religious conversion like slave labor and beatings.  

And sometimes, these children were sent thousands of miles from their homes. It is well known that Jim Thorpe's incredible athletic talents became known due to his attendance at the Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania. Usually when people discuss this fact, they fail to mention that he was born in Oklahoma, a member of the Sac and Fox Indian Tribe, which means he was sent about 1300 miles from his family for this forced schooling. 

While Thorpe may have lost the birth lottery in terms of his ethnicity, he won in terms of athletic ability, some calling him the greatest athlete of his time, possibly of the 20th century. Sadly, there are not many other stories of forced removal and schooling of Indigenous children that have any such positive results. And, even Thorpe, who won Olympic gold medals, was a successful professional baseball and football player, and has one of the major awards of pro football named for him, has been ill treated in death due to his heritage.

Is it possible to overcome the obstacles that losing the birth lottery can present? That is, in fact, the source of so many inspiring stories of human accomplishment, not just your rags to riches type stories, but those who succeed despite physical and mental handicaps, missing parents, or worse, abusive upbringings.

Birth lottery discussions, and the recognition that winning or losing the birth lottery is a significant factor in the ultimate success or happiness of an individual, does not eliminate the need to do one's best, to make the most of whatever advantages the birth lottery has presented, to strive with every fiber in your body to overcome whatever disadvantages which resulted from losing the birth lottery.

But failing to recognize the advantages gained by simply being born to loving parents, in a prosperous country, with good health and/or above average intelligence, seems a bit arrogant, at best, an insult to the creator, at worst, for denying that so much of what you have is the result of random luck, or due to a favorable cosmic dart throw.

Wouldn't it be interesting if on judgement day we were judged by what we did with what we received at birth? Or what we did to help those who were blessed with less at birth? Or simply whether we were humble in acknowledging our accomplishments and magnanimous towards those who sometimes fell short of achieving theirs?

 

The Birth Lottery Revisited

It has been about a month since my first posting discussing the second amendment.  At this point, the first post has generated over 4700 hits, the second one about 3200.  Amazingly, a significant number of those hits have been from overseas; over 3400 from Poland, 850 from China, 740 from the Ukraine, 570 from France.  I am still seeing over a hundred hits per day between those two posts, but the audience is now mostly from the US.  Strangely, the third post has garnered very little attention.  I have no explanation for the popularity of these two posts but I am grateful knowing that so many people are interested in my thoughts. 

As I have been contemplating this burst of activity, the thought of the birth lottery came to mind again.  How fortunate I am to have been born in the United States during a time when global communication could be accomplished from one's living room.  When we consider that great works of literature, ground breaking Scientific theories, advanced treatises on the law, society, love, government, etc., that were created before the internet may have taken months, even years before they reached the ears and minds of the masses, it is truly a wonder that I can post a few hundred words and within hours, days, a few weeks, thousands of people from all walks of life, cultures and countries can access my words.  And a huge responsibility.  I cannot say for sure that I am always as responsible with my thoughts as I could be, but I know there are those using this great tool of communication with complete disregard for the content and intent of their words.  As a child, someone once told me that we should only say something to another that we would say to our mother.  I recently printed out some of the stories I have written and posted on this blog, as well as some of the posts that have been the most accessed, and gave a copy to my mother.  Perhaps those who fill the internet with tirades, hate, lies, mistruths, rumors and malice might be a bit less eager if they had their mom edit their work first.

But I stray from the topic.  Or did I?

In my first birth lottery post, I discussed the simple fact that there are so many humans without the basic sanitary facilities and access to clean water that we, in America, take for granted.  Truly, compared to the hundreds of millions of people on this planet who live in complete squalor and utter poverty with little hope of improving their lives, or even their children's' lives, the poor in America are much better off.  As one of my good friends has said to me in the past, the truly poor of the world would give their right hand to live as the poor in America live.  And we should be proud that our poor are so much better off than those of so many other countries, yet this should not be used as an excuse to ignore the fact that there are still those in America who go to sleep hungry at night and do not have access to routine health care services.   Poverty is relative to one's surroundings, so while it may be true that America's poor may earn 1000 times the salary of those in Sri Lanka, it is also true that they need 1000 times the money to maintain even a basic standard of living within our borders. 

For those of you who have cable TV, you may have discovered that their is a channel called the Wealth Channel.   While I am sure that not all the shows on this channel merely depict excess wealth, there are a number that take us on tours of the homes and playgrounds of the rich.  We get to see the oh so extravagant possessions of those who won an even bigger prize from the birth lottery.  In some cases, even their pets were bigger birth lottery winners than most people! Yet, at the same time, it was recently documented that tens of millions of working Americans are paid less than $10 an hour.  Those people work a year to earn what some on the Wealth Channel might spend on pet food.  

Is it possible that some of the rich in America, having won the birth lottery by being born in a country where there is such great opportunities, are rigging the game in their favor?   When the CEO's of our largest corporations earn an average of 380 times the average worker in their company, does that not tilt the randomness of the birth lottery to favor the winners even more? 

I know, I can see some readers shaking their head and wondering why I disparage those who have earned their salaries, why I expect them to give up some of their rewards, how I imagine great people will continue to pursue greatness when they are penalized or hindered.  Frankly, I don't.  I would like them to realize how lucky they have been to have been born with such intelligence, ambition, drive, etc, and then to truly earn the title of a "great" person by working to help others as much as themselves.  Really, how great is someone who achieves wealth at the expense of their fellow humans, whether it be through slashing the salaries of their employees or merely moving jobs overseas where expectations of salary are less?  How great is a person who excels on the backs of others yet takes full credit for the success?     

The birth lottery is about more than one's nationality.  It is about more than one's innate intelligence,  more than one's physical size or features, more than one's having been birthed with two arms and two legs, or no arms and no legs.  The birth lottery is about recognizing that we have done nothing to earn where we were born, our genealogy, or even the time in history when we came into being.  It is about being thankful for our life, humble in our achievements, and generous with our rewards knowing that a truly rich life is one in which the world is left a better place for where and when one was randomly born.         

The Birth Lottery

Congratulations! You have won the lottery!

Don't worry, this is not a communication from Africa which will require you to provide me with your checking account information. And not one of those lotteries where you win a chance to win something if you spend a few thousand dollars. You have actually won.

I read two magazines on a regular basis. The Smithsonian and National Geographic. This months' Geographic is devoted exclusively to Water. I would recommend reading any issue of either magazine but if you have access to a paper copy or would want to read it online, spend some time on the April Geographic.

As presented by the issue, think about these numbers:

46% of the homes in the world do not have water access inside the home

900 million people on earth do not have access to clean water

2.5 billion people on earth have no way to dispose of human waste safely

3.3 million people, mostly children, die each year due to the effects of dirty water, the lack of a toilet and proper hygiene

In places where potable water is not as easy as turning on the faucet or stopping at the local supermarket for a bottle of water, the job of fetching water (and not necessarily drinkable water) falls almost exclusively on woman. This point was illustrated by the writer who spent a morning with a woman who lives in Ethiopia. She spends hours each and every day walking miles to the nearest source of water. While she is away, her four year old son babysits his two younger siblings.

So, what exactly did these people do to deserve being born into societies that are without clean water? Conversely, what did you and I do to earn birth into today's America? I am not sure where I first heard the phrase but the answer is that we won the birth lottery and they did not. The consciousness that is you was born into the body that you see in the mirror everyday, not because you did something special in your pre-birth years, not because your parents prayed for you in particular (although I am sure most of them are glad that "you" arrived). Not because god loves you more than anyone else (because if you go that route then does that mean that god does not love at all the people that are born into such difficult lives) but only because you won the birth lottery. And you think you never win anything!

So, what is the point of this blog? To make you feel guilty about your winnings? No, everything is relative and even knowing these facts doesn't make it much easier to deal with our own problems. Besides, I a firm believer that guilt is a waste of time.

Is it to encourage you to give up the material trappings of our modern age and go to the slums of the third world to help the poor? No, people like Mother Theresa were special precisely because they are unique. Hopefully, your sense of humanity will move you to help those less fortunate than you in your own way.

Is it a socialist plot to force you to hate all rich people who have the resources and could actually make a difference? No, despite my belief that the income inequity that has grown within this country and without in the last 30 years is a major problem, I respect people who are able to excel in any endeavor. I never had the gumption to start a business and risk it all so I try to limit my disparagements to the wanton excess of the rich not the ambition that made them successful.

No, the point is to get you to think about the randomness of life. Pure and simple, you have been given a special opportunity that you didn't earn. But it is an opportunity that you can prove worthy of. Make the most of it. But rather than pursuing material gains, pursuing wealth, perhaps we should focus individually and collectively on creating a day when the losers of the birth lottery have clean water and access to proper human waste disposal. Or can spend their day growing food, or taking care of their children instead of hiking miles on end to scoop out some water from a muddy puddle. After all, perhaps today's winners of the birth lottery are tomorrow's losers.