Word: luck
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Generally, luck is something that happens to individuals. If a society or a century is considered as a whole, the random individual events that are set down to luck or fortune form more coherent overall patterns; large historical forces become discernible. But entire societies should not mock luck either. The classic Mayan civilization disappeared so strangely, so precipitously, that some massive stroke of bad luck must have been at work-a sudden plague, say, a viral riot...
...civilizations, America seemed the luckiest. With its vast Edenic spaces and immense natural wealth, with its extraordinary freedom from the stultifications of caste and poverty, the place seemed born in luck. Or so it appeared to the white Europeans who settled the continent, if not to the Indians they violently displaced or the Africans they imported in slave ships to work the plantations. Americans eventually made the mistake of describing their national luck as their "manifest destiny." In any case, America became the place where the world came to get lucky. Americans believed in the splendidly transforming powers of luck...
Whatever the motions of free will and necessity, Herman Melville wrote, "chance has the last featuring blow at events." Luck may be simply another name for the odd, unexpected notes in the huge symphony of things, of circumstance and coincidence, chemistry and character, diet and disease, weather and timing, the vastly subtle totality of being. But whatever the agnostics say, luck is not completely blind, or completely wild either. Within limits, it can be domesticated-although it will always be part wolf and may unexpectedly turn mad and eat the children one afternoon...
...Hector Berlioz said, "The luck of having talent is not enough; one must also have a talent for luck." Genius, in fact, may be defined as the ability to control luck. A turbulent gambler like Dostoyevsky was not overcome by the hectic fortunes of his experience, but turned them into his art. Outside the genius class, however, there is such a thing as a predisposition to good luck; it might be said on the evidence up to now that Reagan has it, while Ted Kennedy does...
Baseball's Branch Rickey once offered a serviceable definition: "Luck is the residue of design." To be sure, luck obeys the laws of a spooky kind of antiphysics, but it responds to risk and reflexes. To some extent, it is true that people make their own luck. Given a lucky chance at the story, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward ran hard. Good luck must have room to occur. It can be encouraged, even though its exact mechanics remain perverse and mysterious. For its part, bad luck is so eventually inevitable that it is almost a sin to be surprised...