The Ovary Lottery and the Lucky Sperm Club

It has been said that the biggest luck in life is which family you are born into, which parents you are born into, whose pairs of legs you fell through. Not only that, they said the zip code you're raised in is the most accurate predictor of future success. More than sex, race, even IQ! Check here, here and there.

I'll drop few support opinions here, but before that, I want us to know that there are differences between standards of living and quality of life. Also, I don't want us to confuse happiness with satisfaction or confuse providing amenities to a child with raising a child. All I have stylised in bold won't be significant in my oncoming opinions when it is thought of in isolation, but when other things are taken into consideration, you'll see that being successful is a factor of many things that differ from people to people, and it's more than being born to rich parents or in developed countries.

To give you a general overview of the terms. Consider standards of living and quality of life in the context of living in a mansion and getting brutally molested constantly. You are definitely enjoying the conveniences the mansion offers but you arguably have been living a bad life inside it.

For happiness and satisfaction, consider a rich man who's determine to keep on accumulating more and more wealth to a poor man who's getting poorer everyday but has decided to live and survive within this means, not focusing on how much money he has. The poor man is not happy with his poverty, he just decided to be satisfied with the way his life is, even if he gets poorer tomorrow, it doesn't change his satisfaction. As for the rich man, there's a popular saying that money can't buy happiness, but he's definitely happy and enjoying his life, he's entertained everyday and isn't suffering from depression or anxiety. But there's a logarithmic relationship (it's maths) between money and happiness. When money exceeds a point it does not bring happiness as much as it used to. It follows a logarithmic behavior, money will only bring happiness when you're coming from poverty, but if you're already rich, there's no change in status, so your happiness won't increase as much if you make more money, it might not even increase at all! The only thing is, the rich man can never be satisfied with what he has currently. If being rich (having money) makes him happy, then he'll want to increase his happiness by making more money, but he soon finds out he's not getting any happier. So now, he looks for other means to get happier. But in reality, he is actually happy he only lacks satisfaction. I had to use more words to explain this because money and happiness is a popular discussion.

Lastly, providing amenities and raising a child. For a simple case, consider parents who give their child every tools he'll need to survive and leaving the child with a lot of property when they die. but they lack parenting skills, acting more like sponsors than parents. They don't connect with their child's emotions and help him grow into a better person, there's no love shown to their partners and to the child. Sure the child will be rich, but, he'll never give a meaning to his life. Consider another set of parents who live and nurture their children in trashcans, they can't buy the latest gadgets for their child but they know how to raise children to be mentally healthy. Infants don't know what's poor or what's rich but they were born with the ability to know the difference between love and hate, care and neglect. Such a child wouldn't trade his parents for a billion dollars!

Now to my opinions, let's get right to it!

1. Having rich's parents will determine how successful you'll be: Yes, you read that right, most of the opinions I give are all in support of the ovary lottery and are independent of all I have explained above. In fact they are not really opinions, they are just re-assertions of what ovary lottery is. You might be thinking why I have decided to think or approach it this way, well, I explained that at the end of the blog post. It's definitely true that the income class you were born into more of less determines your future class and quality of life. However. if your parents can afford to give you a trust fund and pay for an ivy league out of pocket, that's a huge advantage over someone born into a poor family like I was, regardless of what exactly your parents meant to you. I can't compare the opportunities that the children or even grandchildren of Aliko Dangote with the opportunities I have. We are worlds apart, and that's because they won the ovary lottery! Also, there are people who would wish for my position because I have a parent (only my mom) who looks after me, while they don't have anyone to call parent (Life no balance at all). So take it, how rich your parents is will determine how successful you'll be, it's what makes rich people children get richer and poor people's children stay poor.

2. Been born in countries with high standards of living will affect your quality of life: I can't emphasize this enough. Me and my friend, Habib (a fintech enterprise application developer) have once ranted about the poor infrastructures low earning families ENJOY in Nigeria. I told him, white people or people in developed countries won't be able to survive in our environment here, and we would be exponentially productive if we had lived in a developed country. As a joke, I told another friend of mine, Juwon (a web and mobile app developer), if the whole world goes back to stone age, Africans in Africa won't feel it, lol. it's just how much the environment we find ourselves in can influence our lives, positively and negatively. The next Albert Einstein and the next Bill Gates and the next Michael Jackson will be born in a Bangladeshi sweatshop, to a poor road side mechanic in Ibadan, Nigeria and to a starving mother in Uganda but they will never explore their potentials because of their environment.

3. The amount of wealth and comfort you have is normal for you regardless of how much of it you have: This is controversial and it seems like something an oligarch (or a religious leader) will tell his slaves (or followers). I don't want to include it here anyway. This is definitely not for the starving children around the world, it isn't for the nude and shelterless peoples who don't deserve that extreme way of living. I have only included it only because it preaches satisfaction for you and I. We have so little to be happy with but we have enough to be satisfied with. I'm not saying you give up your dreams, what I'm saying is never be happy with your status if you haven't met your goals but be always grateful and thankful for where you are, be satisfied with all you've accumulated.

There's you have it, I'm going to stop here. So, about why I alienated the points from things I listed at the beginning and made the opinions totally in support of the ovary lottery. It is because, WHAT IS TRUE MIGHT BE AN ILLUSION OF THE TRUTH ITSELF. There are rich people suffering from depression and there are happy people who are poor. There are people who think the truly rich people are the poor and also people who think the truly poor people are the rich. Also, our definition of poverty or wealth varies among peoples and cultures. But whichever the angle this is viewed from what will always be certain is, a child who is born to wealthy parents (or parents who control large resources) and who are willing to pass their wealth to the child is likely to be wealthy himself compared to the child who don't have wealthy parents. I don't want to be salty with sentiments by saying "Having rich parents does not determine your success it might only determine your wealth". That's incorrect, having a lot of self-made stories does not mean rich kids will get unsuccessful when instead many rich kids end up successful. It also doesn't change our orientation in this age where we equate success with wealth.

Lastly, and truth be told, we are a product of luck, we didn't choose our height, social status, country to be born into, race, beauty, religion or family we should go to . It's entirely luck if you are born in wealth,but we shouldn't think much about it. It will only breed insatisfaction, competition, contemptous relationship between the rich and poor kids. Ironically, agreeing to the ovary lottery in itself will demand good parenting skills from anyone who agrees with it.

Posted by Kompleksanda

Follow me everywhere @kompleksanda