问答题 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. (46)The classic Mayan civilization disappeared so strangely, so unexpectedly, that some massive stroke of bad luck must have been at work--a sudden plague, say, a viral riot.
Of all civilizations, America seemed the luckiest. With its vast spaces and immense natural wealth, with its extraordinary freedom from the stultifications of caste and poverty, the place seemed born in luck. (47)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 de- scribing their national luck as their "manifest destiny."
Whatever the motions of free will and necessity, Herman Melville wrote, "chance has the last featuring blow at events." (48)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 tum mad and eat the children one afternoon.
As 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. (49)"The older I grow, the more impressed I am with the role of luck or chance in life. The world's distribution of wealth depends almost as much on luck as on energy, foresight and skill." Philosopher Sidney Hook wrote a few years ago.
(50)Surely the ultimate purpose of luck, if there is one at all, is to offer such a spectacle that men and women, besides being vastly entertained, come to recognize their common vulnerability to luck's weird and end- lessly inventive impulses. But perhaps luck, good and bad, also has a deeper physiological purpose, programmed into the human animal in the first dawn of his intelligence: to keep the adrenaline "flowing, maybe, and the. brain alert to the world's epic of apprehension, terror, greed and hope.