From WXXI news.

This is connections.

I'm Evan Dawson.

Our connection this hour was made in a debate about who deserves to be successful, who deserves to be wealthy, who deserves to be financially comfortable.

One argument often goes like this.

The system is too often rigged to benefit the few.

Success should be enjoyed by honest people who work the hardest.

Philosophy professor Carlo Felice has a different view.

He agrees with the first part of that statement.

Too often the system benefits those fortunate enough to be born into certain circumstances.

But what about rewarding, good, honest, hard work?

Felicia writes, quote, we should share our success, even if it's hard earned, because we often don't deserve it as much as we'd like to think.

End quote.

Felicia is himself an interesting story.

An Italian immigrant, a philosopher who teaches at Suny Geneseo.

He wrote a book last decade asking us to consider that maybe this world is not an accident, but an expression of a divine super mind.

I love stuff like that.

Connections listeners.

You know, I like to kind of go off in interesting tangents and weird directions.

I was instantly hooked by that idea.

Maybe we'll talk about that later this hour, but we're going to start with Felicia's recent essay, in which she makes the case that success or struggle is even more entrenched than we tend to believe.

And hard work, while admirable, is not simply just deserving of success on its own.

I asked Felicia to come on connections and joust about this notion of success.

And who earns it, who deserves it, and what is earned versus what is baked into our lives from birth.

Here's how Carlo describes his life and success.

Quote.

Some of us do exemplified the much eulogized success story.

I was brought to the United States as a boy by semi-literate parents.

They were hard working peasant farmers who became factory workers in the U.S.. We did not speak English at home, but I was good in school.

I did work hard, and I made smart choices.

My stupid choices didn't hurt too much.

So do I now deserve the good fortune that I have?

Not for the most part.

I think, end quote, that that was interesting.

And I want to find out why he believes this.

Doctor Carlo Felicia is professor of philosophy at Suny Geneseo.

Carlo, it's great to have you.

Thank you for being with us.

Well, thank you very much, Evan.

Thank you for inviting the philosophy person.

it's not every day that that, mainstream, programs invite.

philosophy people.

We need more philosophers in society.

We we need to be having these conversations.

How about that?

We do need a plug for philosophy.

people, and academic intellectuals in general, but, especially philosophers.

I don't disagree one bit here.

So we're going to go in a lot of interesting directions, but I like that a little bit of your background to help the listeners understand more about your own life story.

So you came here as a boy.

How young were you when you came here?

I was 14 years old, and, my parents were peasant farmers.

we lived in a very, very backward pocket of southern Italy, in Calabria.

and we got a chance to emigrate here in the US and, in the late 60s.

And so we came to Chicago and we hit a hard age to come.

14 in November and November in Chicago.

Yeah.

From southern Italy.

we got hit by by the different weather.

And how would you describe your age.

So you are in the American high school system then.

How did it go for you when you made that change.

well I, I had to learn English.

First of all, we didn't speak, any any of that.

and, it took me a while.

Gradually, a little bit of time.

I went through a public, school, in Chicago called Steinmetz.

I eventually learned English.

Did pretty well.

And, and then I went on to college without knowing what was coming.

I kept, I kept going because I, I loved books and ideas and literature and philosophy, and I kept doing it very naively.

Well, why do you say naively?

I did not know, if and how that would generate a, a practical paying existence in the future?

And, as you probably know, people in my field, live a very precarious, economic.

Sure.

Yeah.

a lot of my younger colleagues, unfortunately work, on a temporary basis.

part time basis in multiple colleges for very little money.

And so, so part of, my position is due to, cause I, I worked hard and I had some elements of talent.

but I also was very lucky.

And so I ended up with, a very nice job at Geneseo.

After many other temporary jobs.

And I have been there for, almost 40 years now.

I'm certain age now.

So you've done well in your career, and I think there are many people.

I mean, everything feels politicized.

I don't mean to make many of these points that we're going to talk about overly political, but I think there are many on the political right who would say, don't apologize for your success.

Look at your story.

It is a remarkable story.

Your parents, did their best for you, but you didn't grow up with luxury and you worked hard.

You work in a field that isn't typically, as you say, all that stable in terms of work and income.

And you've made a wonderful career for yourself.

And that's been hard earned.

No apologies.

What do you what do you make of that?

no, I don't I don't apologize for my career and for living a very kind of charmed and comfortable life and, spending time, in classrooms talking about interesting things, with young people.

I still, enjoy it, and it's, it's rewarding.

Not just, not just financially, in my case, anyway.

but also it also entertaining wise and, it satisfies, curiosity and intellectual needs.

so it's not that I apologize.

but when I step back, I don't want to take too much credit for these accomplishments, because, when I think about how, myself and people like me in many, many different professions who end up succeeding, economically and in other ways, when you think about how you get there, you have to give most of the credit to, luck factors.

so, sometimes you the expression of winning a cosmic lottery because, it because the starting points, of people like me are, fortunate in many, many different ways.

So can I read a little bit more from your essay?

Sure.

That touches on this point here.

That illustrates why my guest, Carlo Felice, who is a philosophy professor at Suny Geneseo, why he recently wrote this piece about how we view success and who earns it and who deserves it.

You write, quote, successful middle class individuals typically inherit good emotional and cultural springboards, such as devoted parents.

We also tend to inherit genetic good fortune, ranging from health propensities to above average cognitive potentials.

We did not earn any of these factors, so we have been mostly lucky.

We were born at the right time and place.

We were not born in the midst of a vicious civil war, or in a permanent refugee camp, or in a gangland ghetto, or barrio, or an eight hundreds Europe.

Yes, we did work hard and we made mostly smart choices, but hard work, determination and decent choice making are not exclusive to successful people.

Many poor people by the millions, if not billions, work hard and make decent choices too.

But their circumstances, both inner and outer, are more difficult.

Their starting points are unlucky, and being born in the wrong time and place is often decisive all by itself.

In addition, genetic limitations and other disadvantages make things worse.

These limitations range widely from basic basic health impairments to severe insanity, and from bad parenting to poor schooling opportunities to few work options.

For many people, hard work yields meager or even tragic results, and making decent choices is much easier when you're healthy and well-fed.

Try growing up in a crime infested favela or in a malaria prone village.

End quote I. I take those points.

Part of my job is going to be to try to probe and push a little bit.

Sure.

So could you also say about your situation, well, let me let me pull back and let me ask you, your parents, you've described him a bit, but what was the what was the wealth or not?

What what was the sort of income?

How comfortable was your parents life in your life as a child?

we were peasant farmers.

We never went hungry.

But, it was a farm cultivated with methods that were the same as in the Middle Ages.

No machinery whatsoever was used.

So we worked all the time.

Even the kids, everybody worked and there were no vacations.

And, limited or zero weekends.

Well, that was the the life.

so my parents, did not get, lucky in their, in their, with their starting point.

They were born in a certain time from certain parents, in certain circumstances, with certain, with certain probably certain, genetic limitations.

But in their case, it was mostly the other circumstances that limited their, their chances in life.

And so they did make a certain life for themselves.

But, it it wasn't great.

And even when we came to Chicago, they were basically, non literate.

They could barely read.

and so the only jobs they could get, were factory jobs, which they found and they paid decent wages, and they had unions and, they were able to, do them kind of a lower middle class lifestyle and purchase a house and, but, but they, their, their lives were limited.

They were limited in many different ways.

What about in the United States?

You know, us to the factory jobs, limited, intellectual awareness.

Never read newspapers or books, didn't it, didn't understand much of what they saw on TV.

So, and it wasn't their fault.

It was just mostly bad luck of when and where they were.

They were born.

So why aren't you in that category?

And isn't part of your argument that someone like you is very unlikely to end up in the life that you had?

the, the, the starting point circumstances that have a big say in how people turn out, comprised of, of two types, the other circumstances and the inner ones, in my case, the outer circumstances turned out to be difficult in the beginning.

But then luckier as we went on, especially wants me to go to Chicago, access to public schools and so forth.

And then colleges, state colleges that could be afford were affordable at that time.

and so, the other circumstances turned out to be better and better for, for me, the, the inner circumstances that determine to a large extent how people, turn out the odds of people succeeding are the ones that, don't get discussed as much.

We do not earn our genetic endowment.

That's a very big deal.

And, that means a lot of different things from a health, tendencies and odds and predispositions to, whether or not one, is prone to impulse control, whether or not, one suffers from, attention deficit deficit issues to all kinds of other, whether one is good at, naturally good at math or at memory.

And a lot of these things depend to a large extent, it's not all or nothing, but to a large extent on, on, on winning the genetic lottery, which we did not earn.

And so who won?

It is inwardly and and what one's capacities and potentials are, is dictated by factors one did not choose or earned, barring, barring past lives which were setting aside for the moment.

Oh, I can't wait.

Let's we're going to get there.

Carla, if you look at the American political scene right now, a lot has been made of the life trajectory of Vice President J.D.

Vance, who, of course, wrote a book called Hillbilly Elegy.

He wrote about growing up in Appalachia, growing up in poverty, seeing a lot of drug abuse and a lot of lives destroyed by both poverty, drugs, etc.

and he rose through it.

He goes to Yale, rises through the ranks.

He's the vice president.

And I'm not going to speak for the vice president.

But certainly people who may share his political views would say, no, it does sound like you're apologizing for your success, and you and the vice president are examples that, while it is harder or more unusual for people who are born into more challenging circumstances to then get out of those circumstances, it is also not impossible.

And therefore we need not blow up any systems here.

What do you think?

not impossible.

Yes.

And I, I identify a little bit with, J.D.

Vance on his life story.

but, the degrees of, of odds of difficulties are where, where, where things are where things get interesting.

Yeah.

even if you're born in difficult circumstances, if you get certain genetic gifts, which I bet Vance has, intellectual cognitive attention spans, in addition to probably supportive, parents and safe neighborhoods, and growing up and things of that sort.

you can, you can, make, of yourself a success.

You still need lots and lots of, luck factors, but, effort makes a difference.

natural tendencies and skills and talents make a difference.

And, we need to, people like him and I, we need to recognize that, these genetic and environmental, fortunate circumstances, are not things we earn.

That's the big point.

We do not earn, our specialty, our talents.

And so even even if we have to work at developing them and so forth, and, and then we accrue the fruits of those of those of the of those talent development and applications, even the work effort to some degree is due to, a core mysterious core factors within ourselves that in some ways we don't earn the tendency towards self-discipline is itself due in part, I don't want to say completely because I do believe in something called free will, which in philosophy, is hardly debated.

And there was a form of free will, called libertarian free will, which my friend libertarians probably would like.

that is somewhat mysterious and but it is for me, it is real.

And it plays an important factor.

So, it's not all luck part of it is earned, but only a small fraction, I would say.

Did you read Sam Harris's book on free will?

Yes, I have read it.

Okay.

You don't sound like you're an admirer.

I'm not on his side on this one.

Okay.

Okay.

No.

so let me just turn on this, and ask you.

So for a talk show host, like the.

There's only one job like this in the entire region.

And I often think about how fortunate is that?

I have it, that I feel like I've hit the lottery in so many ways.

on my weaker days, I want to convince myself now.

You worked hard and you earned it.

This is success that you earned.

So how should I look at my station in life?

I feel exactly the same way.

I find myself in front of 35 kids talking about, issues of social justice.

And I say to myself, how the heck did I get here?

It's such an it's such a wonderful, magical thing.

yes.

I did work very hard.

but, the work was accompanied by certain talents and circumstances that I did not choose for myself.

So just to give you an example, I grew up and I said, amongst, amongst peasant farmers.

And so all my friends were similar to me.

There were kids from these, basically illiterate peasant families.

my cousins were like that.

Most of the people of my age I knew were like that.

As far as I know, I was the only one of that group that was somehow intellectually curious and liked to read.

At that time, we didn't have the smartphones.

You mean naturally?

Inherently.

So something like that.

Yeah.

I was attracted to comic books and then to other kinds of reading materials and eventually to heavy duty stuff.

But none of the cousins and friends, they were exposed to the same kind of newsstand.

Just not interested.

Not interested.

And that paved the way for more, in my case, anyway, for this academic success story, I did not choose that, natural intellectual curiosity and that that the pleasure of reading, and so, that's part of this kind of magical thing.

So I have to give credit for fact there's about my being that I did not earn and I did not choose.

So even though I did work hard and I could have chosen not to, maybe although the character was complicated.

still, when you look back and from bigger perspective, we have to recognize that, in, in a large extent, we were just lucky.

So this is how truly generous and kind my guest is.

I asked him to critique how I should view my situation in life, and he he's not willing to tell me that I should check myself when I feel like I've I've deserving of all this success.

You turned it around to yourself because.

Because you're a kind person.

but let me say, I want to say a few things about my own life that I think about a lot.

I grew up in a very safe place to live, grew up comfortable, never experienced poverty, mediocre student in high school.

And by that I mean I got decent grades, didn't work as hard as I could have started to work harder in college, but got into the Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University, one of the really good journalism schools out there, I got waitlisted.

I did not get in right away.

I had a family member who knew somebody, who knew somebody, and I don't know what happened, but I'm sure somebody made a call on my behalf.

And then I got in.

I didn't I didn't get right in.

I got waitlisted, so I get in because I got that help.

Then I, you know, worked decently hard but did some to your point about mostly good choices, but some stupid choices.

I mean, I was I was in a car with a bunch of people drinking underage one time, pulled over at 2 a.m. by police who, could easily have done whatever they wanted with these late teenagers.

And, they send us home.

No, nothing.

Nothing at all.

Seven kids in a car, 2 a.m.. Well, the dumbest things I've ever done.

No consequence.

I'm not even sure my parents know the story.

I hope they're not listening.

you're in trouble now.

and at every station in my life, I was fortunate enough to.

I think couple what I've developed into a harder work ethic.

And now I'm working harder than I've ever worked in my life.

But I've always had good circumstances.

I mean, I've never felt like, why me?

Why me, why me?

Why is our dark cloud even to the point where I got this job when the previous hosts had a stroke?

I mean, everybody who remembers Bob Smith, God rest his soul.

You probably listen to him.

Yes.

I mean, a tremendous intellect and, you know, set a very high standard on this program.

And and Bob had a stroke and I was at a point in my life where when they reached out to me, it actually it worked.

Even if I took a pay cut, I could come to do a job that I loved.

So.

I mean, all of those things.

Professor, I'm reading your essay.

I'm going.

I think he's right, you know?

But we don't.

But we also want to tell ourselves, you know, don't take away from my success.

Don't take away from my hard work.

Don't take away from everything I've contributed to this.

And so I, I want to say two things.

And I want to hear from you on this.

The first is that I am trying to remind myself how fortunate my life has been, and how there's a million other people who could be in this chair with this microphone, not just me.

And it's not just because I'm the best at it.

By no means do I believe that I am the best at it.

Couple that with the very human desire to say, but we work hard.

And if you work hard, that's when you deserve success, not when it's just handed to you, but when you work hard.

Well, I do work hard, so what do you how do you deal with this human push pull that says hard work is what deserves success?

That's the story.

You work hard, you're successful.

You've earned it.

What do you do with that?

the balancing act between, it, the balancing act in, being honest with ourselves between, recognizing that to some degree, those of us who have been honest and hard working and made smart choices overall, we deserve our accomplishments in our positions.

If it works out like that.

And on the other hand, recognizing how lucky we have been in a thousand different ways.

it's it's it is a balancing act because people sometimes don't like to think of that.

They don't like to hear that.

No, most of us, most of us, naturally, if we succeed, have a tendency to overestimate how much things are due to factors that we have earned in some ways.

And this is where not recognizing that one's own talents, such as they are, are things that, to a large extent, we don't earn.

and so, we tend to over, yeah.

we tend to become a little too smug and not off balance.

Not modest enough about these things.

Yes.

What are your students say when you talk about.

Did you talk about this with students?

you know, some of them will recognize this, but, I haven't talked about this in sufficient depth.

We didn't get to this.

It typically we don't get to this point because, Yeah.

you got a you got a lot of other things you're working with the students.

so part of why I was interested in having this conversation now is just the timing of sort of the, the backdrop of politics and the conversations about policy.

And, I mean, I'm sure we're not going to go on a diversion about Donald Trump.

I'm sure you have got a lot of thoughts about someone born into a situation, someone who was given all kinds of millions able to fail, fail, fail, fail, and continue, you know, on that same course.

So I think that's very clear.

And Donald Trump and JD Vance, very different stories, but they are definitely part of a policy framework that says, we are a country of hard work.

We are a country that rewards hard work.

We must incentivize hard work.

And the balance that you describe, I don't think they would I don't think they'd be on board with you at all.

So the question I have is, what do you do about this?

What do you think we should as a society do about this?

And if we thought about this issue the way that you want us to think about it, what do you think we would naturally do about it?

doing about it?

that's, that's not an easy thing to say.

let me first pick back up a little bit on the point you were making before about my being too kind to you as, as as people in philosophy.

We want to be we want to tell the truth.

So I don't know that, saying that it's okay to have some degree of pride in what's accomplishment, as long as you keep it in perspective.

I don't think it's a matter of kindness.

It's a matter of truth telling.

And the the number one.

You know, I teach a lot of ethics classes.

The number one insight in an ethics class that we want to convey is that human beings count the same wherever, whoever they are.

and, we can't the same whether we are born gifted or handicapped.

And therefore, if those who are gifted succeed, at a significant level, and if it's mostly due to factors they did not earn and therefore luck factors, they have kind of an obligation to help out those in society or the world who have been, less fortunate in the in, in their starting points.

Again, you know, everyone in politics claim to be in favor of equal opportunities.

There's lots of disagreement about the equality of outcomes.

And I I'm with the people who say we shouldn't focus on equal outcomes.

I do think that we should focus on equal opportunities, but this I'm getting I'm getting to your point about what to do about these things, getting to, arranging for rules in a society that help the equality of opportunity is doing a great deal.

It requires a lot.

And in our world, it would require some rearranging, redistribution of resources.

we cannot do we cannot create equal opportunities completely, but we can move in that direction.

one of the things we cannot fix are the initial talent disparities among individuals.

but we can fix, to some degree the other circumstances, such as getting all the kids, equal educational chances.

But to do that, you need to have equal schooling of equal quality anywhere kids grow up.

But to do that, you need to revise the funding model for schooling.

That's one thing that, any one should recognize.

It's not equality of outcome, it's equality of opportunity.

But the funding that would have to be given to poor districts, rural or inner city is significant, and it has to be taken from somewhere.

And the people who succeed due to luck factors to a large extent, including myself, should, they should not feel as if they're being, violated.

If society asks them to give more of what they have than their Curlin giving, perhaps through taxation, ideally we should do it voluntarily, but that's not going to work for many people anyway.

And so a system has to, try to fix itself.

And so one of the things we could do fix the funding for poor schooling in this country, by the way, since people come to same everywhere, some of this, suffering, some of this obligation should apply to people anywhere.

And we have created a global, system in which the inequalities are just immense.

So you're giving us so much to think about.

I'm so glad you're here.

By the way, Carlo, I'm so glad you said yes.

there's so many things I'm just flagging for myself.

People count the same everywhere.

It is a very short, direct way of thinking about a philosophy of life.

But I think a lot of people would claim they agree with.

I think most people would say, oh yeah, absolutely.

People count same everywhere.

Does our society reflect that?

Most people believe that.

I don't think so.

And so I'm glad that you also said then we think about schooling.

Yes, we talk about urban centers where schools are often suffering, but also in rural America, this is not discussed enough.

Yes, rural schools can be very poor and very struggling and very left out of the conversation, especially in southern states, I have no doubt.

I mean, I haven't necessarily traveled there probably in the way you have, but I appreciate that point in your essay you write about redistribution and that word is loaded, as you know, of course, as you know, but I like the idea that if you're going to think about that word, people often who recoil at redistribution associated with equality of outcomes, redistribution for the purpose of equality of outcomes, as opposed to redistribution for the purpose of equality of opportunity.

Yes.

And that framework may be more appealing to people if you put it that way.

I, I hope so, and I'm not sure why it isn't being put like that more often, even by people on the so-called liberal side.

Maybe, maybe it is.

And it's just not being heard.

I haven't heard of it.

I mean, you're getting me to think of it that way, but I haven't heard of it that way otherwise.

So, and by the way, listeners, we're going to share in our show notes.

Carlos essay, if we could doctor for each essay, if you want to read that, I've got to take our only break, Pat in Geneva.

I'll take your phone call the other side of this break.

listeners, if you want to weigh in on these subjects that we're talking about with, Carla Felicia, who is a professor of philosophy at Suny Geneseo and has been writing about success and what is deserved, versus perhaps a different way of thinking about these kind of values.

we're welcome.

Your feedback.

844295 talk.

It's toll free.

(844) 295-8255. you can email the program connections at six.

I talk, and yes, I promise I'm not going to go too deep for for Doctor Fleet.

Yeah, well, we'll save most of us for the next time, but I want to get a little weird on the other side of this, too.

So let I.

There we go.

Let's take that break.

Come right back on connections.

Tune in Friday for Environmental Connections with me.

Jasmine singer.

In our first hour, we're looking at how development is reshaping the cities green spaces and what that means for flood risks and biodiversity.

Then in the second hour, we'll explore a local conservation effort aimed at saving Rochester's frog.

How can building small seasonal ponds protect biodiversity?

That's all coming up Friday on environmental connections.

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This is connections.

I'm Evan Dawson, and this is Pat in Geneva and was Finger Lakes Public Radio.

Hi, Pat.

Go ahead.

Hi.

I couldn't be farther from, in some ways further from the education your guest has.

I'm, I was a carpenter, and I couldn't make a living in New York state.

Years ago, 1983.

And I moved to Maryland and, and that was quite a lot of success.

And, now I'm able to be back in the Finger Lakes, which I love.

Excuse me, but I'm thinking of, and Thanksgiving.

A couple of years ago, we went around the table, which was not a family tradition.

Like, what are you thankful for?

And everybody did sort of a standard thing.

And I said, you know, I'm thankful for those things that turned my life upside down, backward, left, right, and just left me listless.

And look where I ended up because of it.

And I remember my niece, my grand niece looked at me and she said, oh, that's good.

But that's if I had one thing to say to younger people, I would say, you know, adversity can destroy you or it can turn your life in a direction you would never have otherwise gone.

And I've had any number of those things happen in my life somewhere, you know, failed romances and so forth.

But when I moved to Maryland, one of the things I realized really quickly was I was going to be successful because I was white, because down there I had never seen in Syracuse or I lived in Cortland, I had never seen at least close up.

I had never seen true racism.

But I saw it down there big time.

And, it, it was one of the things that that made me appreciate my upbringing.

You know, my parents gifted us with language.

They gifted us with, we were not wealthy by any stretch, but they gifted us with an appreciation of history and the things we could afford to do, which was usually natural history and human history.

Anyway, I could go on and on, but, my my, if I, if I had anything to say, I would say anybody younger listening is, you know, when you get knocked down, everybody says, you know, you get knocked down, you jump back up and you go back at it.

But but realize that it it's not the end of the world and not always.

And it can definitely lead you in a direction you would otherwise never travel.

Pat, thank you for this phone call.

And I just want to say we have you had such a great audience of connections.

Pat is bringing up the subject of adversity, which is, I think, a good chance to to challenge some of what Doctor Felicia is saying here.

So and so I'm going to do it in this way because Pat, your point is well taken.

adversity can really be a benefit.

and Doctor Felicia, if what you are describing a different kind of world where quote unquote success or material good wealth is, is more evenly spread and shared.

Are we taking away the possibility that more human beings would experience and benefit from adversity?

Do you want to take adversity away from people?

We're never going to take adversity away from people's lives, even if we construct the most fair and just society and the universe.

maybe the most, just societies available these days are the Scandinavian countries, according to all kinds of indices.

but individuals there face similar kinds of adversities that we face everywhere else.

You know, the life is what it is.

We're all susceptible to diseases, car accidents.

love disappointments.

And on and on and on.

and so those will be with us forever.

It's the nature of life.

As a Buddhist would say, life is suffering.

Okay.

A little bit overstatement, maybe, but, but there's a lot, a lot of truth to it.

Pat, that's a that was a awesome call.

Thank you for that.

And thank you, by the way, for filling in a gap that I had in my notes to.

I should have been thinking about this.

That's why we've got great listeners.

network connections is, if I could say one more thing about this that relates to current young people.

the there is a certain degree of greater fragility that I notice in younger people at the college level.

And probably other levels younger than that as well.

They, they, they, when they suffer adversities, they're less resources and maybe than the younger people used to be in, in, a few decades ago.

I've been at this for a while now, and, maybe some of it has to do with, the social media smartphone factors.

But there is a slight difference in, in that respect.

And, and we need to encourage people to be a, a little more resilient.

Okay.

See that that's something that your critics on the right would more agree with.

So I absolutely something for everybody with them.

So you're with them on that.

Okay.

Roger says great show.

Could success be a result of luck plus hard work and or talent?

I can't imagine having success simply by luck alone.

What do you think?

Absolutely.

it takes.

It takes both, a lot of hard work and a lot of luck, but, I wouldn't put in also, natural talents, which, again, for the most part, we do not earn.

We need to, we need maybe the notion of, people who succeed in some ways, having won a cosmic lottery.

That kind of image is something we we maybe should keep in mind more often, because that's often the case.

And, we won the lottery, and we individually did not really buy the ticket.

If anybody bought the ticket, it was our parents.

We are born a certain time and place.

If we are born in a very poor favela type neighborhood in a big city in Latin America or in parts of Asia or elsewhere, and we suffer some kind of misfortune.

we are not going to make it out of there.

as young kids, it's, if we make bad choices in that circumstance, that's it for us.

So, when and where we're born, just by itself is such a big deal.

David writes to us from Vancouver, Canada, to say that, he's had a lot of similar experiences as you.

He's been in academia.

He is, summing up some of his notes.

He's just in great agreement, with your philosophy on this.

He is viewed himself as very fortunate to be in, to be born with certain gifts that put him on a path toward academia.

He's tried to give back in many ways, he says, I still struggle with the tendency to think myself somehow more deserving and somehow special.

It's a conundrum that is very hard to escape.

That said, I do think that we are all special equally, so none of us intrinsically more or less worthy than any other, I'm with it.

I agree with that.

So, Doctor Felicia, I want to ask you totally different question here.

What is the I'm going to use the word weirdest, but weirdness isn't what mainstream thought in this country considers outside the norm.

What is the weirdest idea that you hold that you also think is probably true?

I do think that, if the universe were to be fair in a cosmic way, fair to everybody that matters.

And by the way, I mean to include not just humans there, but, our cousins, the non-human animals.

If the universe, were to be fair to all the beings that matter, there is no way that it can be fair.

if we only have one life.

So we need to have multiple lives for the sake of fairness.

You know, if there is an intelligent force behind the universe, which I suspect there is.

But, you know, proving that's a different ballgame if there is, this force probably is.

I'm going to use the term, that might be troubling to some of my, fellow theists, this, intelligent, force, might be obligated to, set up, the cosmos in such a way that we have multiple lives.

So reincarnation as a form of fairness and justice.

Yes.

And so do you believe in reincarnation?

for the most part, yes.

Okay.

see, that's why we asked you, by the way, this is not a philosophical, mainstream Western.

I don't think, you know, my colleagues will not agree with me.

That's okay.

That's why we're talking about, by the way, cannot recommend a movie more called Defending Your Life.

if you haven't seen it, it's Meryl Streep, Albert Brooks from the early 90s, in which as part when you go to Judgment City, after you die, you get to go to the Past Lives Pavilion and see some of who you've been in the past.

do you feel like we can have any connection or knowledge of past lives?

there, I mean, the world is a very weird place.

There are many, many, many, many individuals, who have reported, having, had glimpses or more of allegedly, their past lives as kids, as young kids, and, such reports are available, in many different online sites.

there has been, a systematic attempt to study these alleged past life stories, in the University of Virginia for decades.

I have two figures in mind, who, who have investigated these claims and they have, assembled details of these alleged memories from very obscure, past, individuals whose records, very hard to find are not part of the public.

knowledge or library system.

And, and so, they investigate it to see if these details are checked out and in, at least some cases, they did.

So there is some study of this and the academic world, which is underreported because let's let's face it, frankly, in, in the West for both, scientific and religious reasons, we maybe don't want to hear about this.

It's not popular in academics to say I'm studying reincarnation.

It's not.

But do you believe in reincarnation because you think the universe truly couldn't exist without it, and maybe even conceive a fair or just?

Is that the.

Is that the basis for why you believe that?

Number one basis that I do like, I do like, the past, the presence of evidence because evidence matters.

And so these, individual cases, and there are now thousands that we know about, should be, should be taken into account.

Okay.

What have I told you?

I think that I could show you that some of them are hallucinations or just dreams or scam artists.

I'm sure there are many of them like that.

Yes.

but the devil is in the details.

And again, some of these involve knowledge of very obscure facts that, no one could have, could have had available to them.

Do you believe in any of the modern forms of religion for as an explanation for divinity?

as you, as as you and many people know, the, native religions of India, which includes Hinduism and Buddhism in their many variations, they've always accepted, reincarnation.

as part of their metaphysics.

And they still do.

so, I don't embrace either of those two, but those are the ones that come closest to my vision.

So when you wrote about and when you wrote The Purpose of Life and Eastern Philosophical Vision and you wrote about the way that we might suppose that the world is not an accident, but an expression of a divine super mind.

though boy, we don't have time for this.

We got two minutes left.

What are we going to do with this?

All I want to ask you briefly is, Do you understand why people sometimes feel cynical about the notion of a creator?

Because of how much suffering there is, because of how much injustice there is?

Oh, absolutely.

A lot of very smart people turn against the religions because of that, of that issue, which is commonly called the problem of evil, which is basically the problem of, the suffering of innocence or harm.

yeah, it usually sounds like childhood cancer exists.

Therefore, any any creative force would have to be evil.

Yes.

And that's exactly why.

If we only have one life, that remains something un, resolvable and attempts to compensate, these the young innocents who don't get a shot at life even though they're equally deserving.

That's the unfairness part.

Attempts to compensate by means of having, let's say, or or the counterpart on the other side.

they, they they they fail because they create other kinds of problems that we could talk about some more.

I'm gonna have to invite you back here.

Would you come back, by the way?

I would be gladly.

Oh, I as long as, Yeah.

the the public does not, lynch me.

No, no, not at all.

Last 30s here.

So let me close with this question here.

You wrote this, as I'm sure you've been thinking about this question of success and fairness and who deserves material success, etc., for a long time.

But do you feel like this country, at least, is moving further away from the vision that you would like us to see at the moment?

But we're going through a kind of, it seems to me, a kind of temporary, social illness.

And maybe we just have to go through it now.

We're not at the moment moving in the right direction towards, social fairness.

But history is long, so we'll see.

Thank you for making time for the program today.

Thank you for having me.

And well, you know, you're he laughs because he's humble.

He knows the idea.

And the reincarnation stuff's kind of out there.

But it's also fascinating.

I love talking about it.

I love anything that pushes my mind in different directions.

And I particularly think that the essay that you wrote, we should all be thinking about these issues.

Not to say we should all agree that's not how the world works, but we're going to share this in our show notes.

So you see what Doctor Felicia wrote about success, what is earned, what is not, what is inherent, and what luck, well, what factor luck plays.

And then yes, come back sometime and talk again.

Thank you doctor.

Thank you very much.

Carla.

Felicia is, professor of philosophy at Suny Geneseo.

From all of us at connections.

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