Self-Made

Aug 1 2019

The small ducklings

are little balls of fluff

that seem unsinkable;

like bobbing corks

that would shoot up and out

if a finger forced them under.

They frantically shadow their mother,

webbed feet, beneath the mirror surface

paddling furiously,

a determined flotilla

churning the calm.

So when one pauses, nods

vanishes

I think of dumb luck.

Of chance, fluke, and happenstance,

not Darwin's fitness as destiny

or the deserving rich,

whose article of faith

is that they are self-made

in a world of just rewards.

Because the pike's razor-sharp teeth

which strike from below

are oblivious to such certainties.

Because in life, there is the accident of birth,

and too much coincidence, contingency, randomness

to imagine agency rules

one's fate is earned.

And the children who are watching from shore

and are hustled away

and return to their play.

Or are instructed in the cycle of life,

by concerned parents

who do not mean to be unkind

but are too earnest to shield the eyes

of their impressionable young.

She, too, is a fine mother

and shepherds her little ducklings

as best she can.

As unbearably cute as they are

on this Arcadian lake

on this beautiful day.

Never mind what lurks

in the murky depths

its sun-dappled face conceals.

I've been reading a lot about something called the Universal Basic Income, a concept for a government program that will, depending upon your ideological worldview, either revolutionize social welfare or signal the beginning of the end of civilization. This sharp divergence became clear as I debated my sister-in-law. All she can see is moral hazard and the undeserving poor. While I see the research that shows how unexpectedly beneficial programs like this have proven not only to the disadvantaged but to society as a whole (for liberals like me, and especially in a society that is becoming more unequal and more resistant to social mobility); to cost saving (for the tax-cutters), and to efficiency (for the libertarians who champion small government and less bureaucracy). Really, I think her attitude comes from a worldview that believes we actually live in a meritocracy: that successful people are self-made; that the system is not rigged to favour the already rich or well-connected; and that the poor are deserving of their fate as much as the rich have earned theirs.

I'm also a fierce Darwinian. My intellectual formation has led me to reduce everything – from human behaviour to my understanding the natural world – to evolutionary biology, where all comes down to survival and reproduction. But truth is, the process of selection is not so clean. The sardine that gets plucked and eaten from a vast wheeling cauldron of sardines was no less genetically endowed, no less fit; it was simply the victim of dumb luck. There is no “selection” here, just randomness and chance. And yesterday, when I saw the ducks obediently trailing their mother – so at home on the lake, innocent and oblivious – I immediately thought how vulnerable they are here in open water; wondered how many will ultimately succumb to the perils of early life; and affirmed this notion of fluke and happenstance. Darwinian pruning works in theory and on average and in the long term; but you can't rigorously apply it to individual outcomes. Contingency rules. 

But while Darwin had it right, “social Darwinism” is intellectually dishonest. The “accident of birth” is not just genetic; it depends on the social environment. So outcomes should be seen as much through a sociological as a psychological lens: that is, not just the responsibility of the individual's character and choices; but of institutional impediments, social organization, and the unequal opportunity that comes from being born poor, or of a certain race or appearance or population group, and in a place and time. There may be the “undeserving poor” and the irredeemable; but their numbers are inconsequential enough that their existence should not determine social policy. And while there are, indeed, self-made men (and women, of course!), here again outcomes are due to so much more than individual fitness. Because so much in life's long passage is chance, not just preparation and initiative. Even the fact of being born well-off confers great advantage. So the rich do get richer; but by and large not because of any inherent justice or moral superiority or personal attribute.

Anyway, I saw an opportunity to write a political poem on the fallacy of the “self-made man”, but one that wouldn't seem quite so political, or pretentious, or preachy as that sounds.

I'm a congenital pessimist, and generally pretty morbid. Danger lurks everywhere. And death is the single thing all living beings share. So the ending is all me. But for those looking for uplift, I can only hope that its darkness is somewhat redeemed by those cute little balls of fluff!