I'm too scared to write my resume, so I'll talk about one of the things I am shocked that people don't know- Not Every Misfortune Comes From a Personal Weakness. Everyday, people get depressed, children are poor, and people are born in countries without adequate education. I understand the naive appeal of thinking that every misfortune comes from a personal weakness- it absolves you from feeling any responsibility to help, it keeps the status quo in place, and it makes the world a lot simpler place to be- why bother finding out the hows and whys of why things are the way they are, when you can call names, and go back to eating twinkies?

I'm not saying that some misfortune doesn't come from personal weakness, but to tell the truth, it all depends on your position in life. Noelle Bush has been charged with prescription fraud, and has been found with crack cocaine. She got a cushy little rehab placement, ten days in jail. Now let's see how much misfortune the average Tomika would have. Tomika doesn't have parents to pay her tons of cash, so she becomes a crack whore. The condom breaks, and she gets AIDs. Also, she doesn't have the luxury of taking her shit in rehab, she gets busted for whoring, and the cops find the crack on her. She gets 3 years(the average sentence in 1992 was 33 months for a drug offense, it seems), and at her time in prison, is bothered by the guards and doesn't learn any useful skills*. Of course, folks can get drugs in prison too, so it's not like she even gets clean.

The same amount of personal weakness leads to greatly different results. Tomika will get demonized by those who don't know anything, and Ms. Bush goes off scot free. Not to mention, many things happen by chance. I'm born in America, so I have more opportunity than those born in say, Bangedesh. Of course, there's much we can do to improve people's luck. For example, the people of Kenya didn't have as many chances before they started giving free primary schooling to the children because kids who couldn't pay school fees couldn't learn to read. But a whole lot of improving people's luck would involve turning away from the 'bad person' theory of misfortune, and seeking the causes.


*Read the entire report! Quite good.