Tuesday, September 29, 2015

Luck, Is It A Bad Word?

I just saw this Woody Allen movie, Match Point (2005). It's such a great drama movie! For a drama genre, the premise he brought is simple yet it can lead into a deeper thought, in not so typical way.
Despite the value of a movie has many things to do with one's condition including mood, ideology and many other personal stuff but the the thing to emphasize here from Match Point is its premises:
Luck is important
Luck is beyond the hardworking mandatory



Is luck still can relate to our "hard working gets better life" meritocracy world?

The word luck is derived from the word fortunate from the old english. Old english men used to pull it out to describe the well-to-do and those blue blooded nobles. Whilst, they call the oposite with the unfortunate: the poor or they who live as peasants or merely regular townies.The social status used to be unrelated with one's hard work because fortune is somehow taken from none's credit. And unfortunate, it is also none's faulty. They are just born that way. People who born in rich descent will remain rich, and so is the other way around. The system were too hard to change, and the social status was not simply transferable. For us who live out the meritocracy, it sounds like a bullshit: people get what they deserve. You are poor becaues you are lazy, stupid, away from God (?) and so on. In capitalistic system, they make you believe that one can reach certain financial success and social status by doing hard work. But somehow, privilege is more than that. It's more than the study hard, the nice degree, the work hard, and finally you deserve the better social status. There is greater thing which involving them: luck.
And luck, I think that's what makes people less afraid of their (so called) not enough accomplishment and maybe it will also led to make people less guilty about their situation, especially when they are poor.

I found this very nice illustration of privilege here by Toby Morris:
The Pencilsword On A Plate --> You can follow the link.

And also recently we've been going through this faux pas fake graduation news. It's the same problem with the same overcome all over again: how to reach the social status. Yes it's been written satirically and critically in mainstream media and also the alternative ones. But who are we to judge their effort? Because luck apparently is not with them. Even the main character of Match Point prefer to kill the unfortunate life and choose the rich one.

I think the prior lesson is, do not rely only on one's hardwork. "Do your best" is good, but "goodluck" is merrier. Because life is just too confusing and we can't have total control over it.

P.S.:
I'm being too slow nowadays, watching too much tv shows and movies, constantly afraid of not doing my best or not accomplish anything that matter enough. And I think this writing is my justification of hardwork. What a middle-class-undergraduate-student trash :(

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