July 11, 2006
 
MANN TALK: Chance, Place and Wiring Equal Success or Failure
 
By Perry Mann
 
Hinton, WV (Special to HNN) – Eugene Robinson, a columnist for the ”Washington Post,” whose articles appear in “The Charleston Gazette,” writes recently about two stories of philanthropy:
 
“One is the story of [Warren] Buffett, who spent his life amassing unimaginable wealth, but ‘all the way along,’ he said Monday, ‘felt that it should go back to society.’ He famously announced years ago that he would not bequeath his fortune to his three children for their personal use; now he has followed through. He will give roughly a $1 billion each to the three charitable foundations the children have established---a fraction of what he’s giving to the Gates Foundation. Buffett said he considers himself just a man who was lucky enough to be born in the right place at the right time, with the ‘right kind of wiring’ to be successful in the American system.”
 
It is a rare man who has amassed a fortune of $44 billion who feels that the money should go back to society. It is even rarer for a man of such wealth to admit that the acquisition of it was the result of luck, place and innate disposition; that is, the result of circumstances that he had nothing to do with. The rarity of it is eclipsed by the vast numbers of humans who have no conception of what Buffett means when he says that the acquisition of the money was not his doing but the doing of circumstances. They have no conception because they cannot conceive that one is a product of determined circumstances; that is, that he has no free will.
 
Conservatives are conservatives because circumstances in their lives have been benign and bountiful. They take full credit for their success in life and never does an inkling of doubt enter their minds but what they have achieved is the result of what they have willed to do. So they say to the poor: “If I can do it, why can’t you do it?” They attribute the poverty of the poor to their lack of responsibility and industry. They never consider that innate disposition, genetic endowment, low intelligence, looks, place and time of birth, adverse environmental influences at home and in neighborhood---determine what a person becomes. A person who has committed a crime under the law of land is held accountable for what he has done regardless of how shocking and degrading has been the environment in which his being has been formed. It’s double jeopardy to try twice those whose genes and nurture have been such that what they have done criminally is the result of chance not choice.
 
Two million of this nation citizens are incarcerated, the majority of which are black males who have been convicted of drug crimes. One doesn’t need a crystal ball or need to be psychic to understand why it is that so many black males are in prison for using and dealing in drugs. History is the answer. Thousands of black males, after centuries of enslavement, migrated to the cities to escape the drudgery of the cotton fields only to learn that there was no employment for them in the cities, except more drudgery, and that their destiny was to gather on street corners to commiserate with one another and while away the days.
 
Humans cannot endure doing nothing since they were born and programmed to do something. So doing nothing eventually leads to doing something whether legal or illegal and if not legal than illegal if the doing makes the dreaded daily boredom endurable even if by the acquisition of some substance that makes the present not only endurable but blissful for a while.
 
Everyone understands the dilemma of boredom. How one deals with it determines a lot about a person. There are healthful ways to deal with it and unhealthful ways. The majority of people re-act to it in a manner that is detrimental to their health. Sixty percent of this nation’s citizens are overweight. They are overweight because they resolve boredom by eating and more eating, not eating vegetables and fruits, but burgers and fries, Fritos and Cheetos, pop and sweets, and everything else that is calorie-pack. Eating doesn’t have the moral stigma of alcohol or drugs. But it is used by the majority to resolve the dilemma of boredom. Jerry Falwell, a man of God, is 100 pounds overweight. He would never take a drink but he obviously indulges in heavy eating. Preachers are famous for it. They preach that a beer is a sin but a Big Mac is a virtue.
 
The rich cannot bear boredom and many are driven to drugs for relief, drugs legally prescribed. The poor cannot bear endless boredom so many are driven to acquire relief from drugs sold on the street illegally. The rich get relief and never know a day in jail. The poor get relief but many are caught and spend incredibly long sentences in prison for doing what the rich do beyond the reach of the law. But all do what they do according to chance, disposition and circumstances.
 
A word from Mark Twain relevant to the topic: “Circumstances do the planning for us all, no doubt, by help of our temperaments. I see no great difference between a man and a watch, except that man is conscious and a watch isn’t, and the man TRIES to plan things and the watch doesn’t. The watch doesn’t wind itself and doesn’t regulate itself---these things are done exteriorly. Outside influences, outside circumstances, wind the MAN and regulate him. Left to himself, he wouldn’t get regulated at all, and the sort of time he would keep would not be valuable. Some rare men are wonderful watches, with gold case, compensation balance, and all those things, and some men are only simple and sweet and humble Waterburys.”
 
Perry Mann is a former teacher, a lawyer, a former prosecuting attorney of Summers County and a regular columnist for the Nicholas Chronicle in Summersville and Huntington News Network. Born in Charleston, WV, in 1921, he lives in Hinton.