One of the things President Obama is famous for is dissing
the successful as "life's lottery winners." This parallels his charge
that successful businesses don't deserve the credit for their success, saying
"You didn't build that." This is politically shrewd, because it taps
into two basic weaknesses of human nature: envy and greed. His philosophy, and
that of many liberals in generals, conveys the message that voters are
justified in their envy of success and wealth. Voters are encouraged to demand
income redistribution because the wealth of others was not earned.
Fairness doctrine dominates the
ethos of liberals and lies at the heart of their increasingly successful
efforts to punish success by government regulation and taxation policy. If
success is due to circumstance and luck, then it is only fair to push for more
equal outcomes in the efforts of people to succeed. Voters, perhaps now a
majority of them, like the idea of leveling the playing field by taking from
the successful and giving to those who have not succeeded.
At the other end of the spectrum,
the lottery mentality offers an excuse for those whose lives are mostly marked
by failures. Their problem is bad luck, or exploitation by the successful. This
is another example of unfairness, perhaps even of the mendacity of those who
have won life's lottery. No longer do we have to blame failure on bad choices
and decisions or on laziness. Poverty or antisocial behavior can't be blamed on
freely chosen actions. Those who fail can find scapegoats and blame them.
Politically, liberal politicians
have found the guarantee of success: convince people they are victims and
pledge to punish the perpetrators and restore fairness. As Jeff Bergner put it
in his essay, "One cannot build a cult of victimhood on the soil of
personal responsibility."
It is not just craven politicians
who reject personal responsibility. Many brain scientists have arrived at the
same conclusion from highly flawed experiments that seem to show that a person
makes choices and decisions well before their claim of when they made them.
This research has been interpreted to mean that the unconscious mind makes the
decision and later that becomes known consciously. Thus, the decision cannot be
made freely. It is driven unconsciously by our genes and past learning
experiences.
Thus, scientists provide support
for redistributionist and retributionist social policies, because life success
is not based on merit. We now have defense lawyers arguing "diminished
capacity" for criminal clients. We even have clerics who argue from
original sin and predestination perspectives that we can't help our bad morals.
I am writing a book on
"Making a Scientific Case for Free Will." So far, despite my track
record of science-publishing success, no publisher will touch it. Has free will become
politically incorrect?
So why try? If you succeed, you
won't get credit. You will get diminished, perhaps even punished. If you fail,
you won't get blame. In fact, you will get compensated. This is what life in America
is coming to in this new age of "life's lottery."
Sources:
Source for quote: Bergner, Jeff. 2015. The fame of life. The
Weekly Standard, June 29, p. 25-26.
Source for critique of free-will research: Klemm, W. R.
2010. Free will debates: simple experiments are not so simple. Advances in Cognitive
Psychology. 6: (6) 47-65.
