Little Mermaid
Daily Ramble
I was lying on my surfboard this morning ruminating on the oft-ignored idea of Lady Luck in our lives. It came to me by way of Malcolm Gladwell and his latest three-part podcast series on Disney’s The Little Mermaid. Stay with me. I promise this all ties together.
In the series, he breaks down how the Little Mermaid, despite its initial warm fuzzies, winds up planting a destructive seed in children’s concept of life. The way the story goes, it plays out as a story of good versus evil. Quick recap if you’ve not seen the 1990s Little Mermaid: Ariel is the hero and Ursala is the villain. Ariel’s ability to succeed and overcome the terrible Ursala comes from her goodness and virtue. It paints the picture for our children that being pious leads to good outcomes. More importantly, it leads to the opposite conclusion for children when bad things happen in life — I must be a bad person. Moral catastrophe. But we all know bad things happen to good people all the time; it doesn’t make people bad.
Malcolm digs deeper into the history of fables and discovers that post-Enlightenment era, fables changed. Pre-Enlightenment era fables were full of dumb luck — literally. He quotes one fable about a mentally disabled child who spent the last of her family’s money on a doll instead of food. The doll turned out to be magic and granted the family untold riches. Dumb luck. As opposed to Ariel in the Little Mermaid, this type of story actually better-prepared children for life because the tenuous link between virtuous behavior and life’s rewards was avoided. Lucky breaks happening to people despite their behavior better aligns with reality.
How do I know? Because I see countless examples of virtuous people struggling to get by while dumb luck randomly helps individuals despite their moral character. So much so that most people who get lucky breaks think they are deserved rather than dumb luck. You can hear these same folks pounding their chests, decrying those who aren’t working hard enough while talking up their abilities. The ancients literally built gods into their worldview to explain dumb luck, but today, we’ve grown up with fables teaching us it’s a result of our innate goodness.
I’m sorry to break it to you. The ancients had a better grasp of things. Just look around and see who’s gotten whacked by the lucky stick. We really need to stop teaching our kids that it’s tied to their behavior. Being virtuous is something we should aspire to because it’s a more honorable way to live — not to earn a pot of gold. The humility that comes with accepting luck in our lives would not hurt anyone as the game of social media “likes” and “shares” drives our children to mental illness.
So let’s start an AA for those of us in luck denial. I’ll go first: I can’t believe how lucky I am to live the life I have. Yes, I’ve worked hard, but dumb luck has frequently played a part in ‘my’ achievements.
Your turn.
Public Service Announcement Things on the Interweb
Russell Brand lays out a highly accessible argument as to why we should resist vaccine passports. Regardless of your take on vaccines, basic freedoms are at stake right now.
Bitcoin Price Prediction
Yesterday: $38k - $42.4k
Today: $37.2k - $40.2k
Weekend: $36.5k - $40k
After three days of trying to break into the $40k range, the bulls finally exhausted themselves, allowing the bears to break down the price. Currently, we’ve pulled back to the low $38k area, but there’s a risk that this could bleed further. This price action at the top of the range is not surprising. It would have been more surprising to break out directly after such a strong push from $29k. The strength the bulls show while momentum resets will be the telling part of this pullback. Ideally, we’d close the week over $38k, but a close over $36.5k would make me continue to believe the bottom is in. If the bulls have taken charge, then we’ll avoid coming into the low $30ks again.
Bitcoin Q & A
Q: Do I need any special equipment to send and receive Bitcoin on the Lightning Network?1
A: No.
The only thing needed to send and receive Bitcoin using the Lightning Network is a Lightning-enabled Bitcoin wallet. My favorite wallets for this are Muun and Blue Wallet. Both are mobile-friendly wallets that allow sending and receiving of satoshis through either the Bitcoin base chain or the Lightning Network built on top of Bitcoin’s base chain.
Thanks for reading,
Kent
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Thank you for the question David L!