The Great Birth Lottery

I've been home for the last week visiting my family in celebration of my thirty-first birthday. It's always a a joy come to home and see my family and friends and to be reminded of what's important to me. The contrast in my own behavior (namely my sense of urgency and desire to crank through chores) is astounding, but that's a topic for another post. 

What's giving me reason to pause today seems especially appropriate given the current flare up in The West Bank - the great birth lottery. The notion that the tribe you're born into and the parents who birth you are  completely out of your control but often the most defining facts about your life. I don't have the perspective to make this argument as well as the great Rawls (nor am I really thinking about how we ensure equal opportunity), but I like to think he and I share heavy hearts over how the great birth lottery brands one with an identity and, at that level, undermines the notion of individual agency.

Ali Rizvi of Huffpo writes, "There are now at least two or three generations of Israelis [And Palestinians] who were born and raised in this land, to whom it really is a home, and who are often held accountable and made to pay for for historical atrocities that are no fault of their own."

I couldn't have said it any better myself. The same sentiment holds true for race relations in the US, the India/Pakistan boondoggle, and every family descended from crotchety, old world thinkers (so basically every family). Tribal loyalty and the walls (both literal and emotional) we erect to maintain a distinct (often superior) sense of identity have never seemed so misdirected to me as they do now.

In the context of my own life, I look at how birth parents and generations old arguments play such a large role in family relations. And bums me out like Israel/Palestine bums me out.