A traffic accident does not usually make national or world news unless it is unusually violent. This is the case regarding the accident near Toronto, Canada in which a driver in one car hit another killing a grandfather and his three grandchildren while sending the grandmother and great-grandmother to hospital.
The collision is said to have taken place at right-angles.
Allowing for the two vehicles to be the size of a normal SUV, and also allowing for a speed of about 100 kph, we can reasonably estimate a “time window” for the collision of three seconds.
If either vehicle had gotten to the intersection five seconds earlier or later than the other then four people would not be dead, two would not be in hospital, and one would not be facing 18 criminal charges.
Luck. Fortune. Fate.
Despite the “luck” factor in this accident, the driver will face serious punishment no doubt including incarceration. Justice demands he suffer because the means for avoiding this event were his. He had broken some laws regarding speed and alcohol consumption and he will suffer the full brunt of the retribution.
But sometimes what we call “luck” relates to how we are born. The driver who killed four people was “lucky” to be born into a family with a net worth well over $1 billion. Such luck did not excuse him from adhering to the laws of the society in which he lived.
Just because he was lucky enough to be born into material wealth did not mean he was exempt from other laws and conditions in his society.
Luck, though, is never really meaningfully discussed or analysed. Being lucky in the selection of one’s ancestors does not allow us to do as we please otherwise.
What about being unlucky?
If someone is unlucky enough to have been born in Pakistan or Afghanistan or Iraq or Mexico does that make it legal or moral to rectify the situation by illegally entering another country? What if that action materially diminishes the standard of living and life chances of least advantaged “aboriginal” members of the host society? Is it just “their bad luck”?
As we consider the idea of “luck” and then consider it further in the two contexts of a local traffic accident which directly effects a few families and major demographic shifts which could have historical significance for untold future generations we confront the limitations of our own ways of understanding.
We effortlessly and unconsciously shift our “interpretive schemes” from one “partially rational worldview” to another.
We place boundaries on which facts will be allowed, which disallowed, and what moral codes involved in making the determination of “appropriateness” in response.
We use the same words. With different meanings.
Chaos theory reminds us that even minor changes to the “initial conditions” can lead to massively different outcomes.
A five second delay can spare two families untold grief. Some ill-chosen words can lead to a continent in flames.
Where is the boundary which separates luck from prudence?
Unjustified Margins 