Categories
Psychology

Bad Luck Bamboo and the Magical Indifference of Nature

I got myself some lucky bamboo a few weeks ago, just before the scattered tapestry of our world began rapidly unravelling under the weight of a viral pandemic. It makes me wonder about luck – not because I really believe in anything fundamentally magical or, at least, “lucky” but because superstition and unfounded belief are […]

Categories
life

Crazy Circles: Life’s Game of Chance

On a summer Saturday road trip, listening to a song (“Crazy Circles“) by old rock band Bad Company and the lyrics caught me mid-thought on a topic of entropy and political power: “Life is just a game of chance.” While it is true that life is fundamentally random and the large-scale statistical drift into patterns […]

Categories
Philosophy

Succeeding “against the odds” ?

Do we make our own luck or does luck and the blind power of statistical necessity make us?