There is truth in saying working harder does seem to generate more luck, in so far as, if you lay in your room all day and did nothing, you won't be getting any luck.
It's just silly to paint yourself as this hard worker that got back what you put in, whilst ignoring the ills that you put in. I'm sure he did good stuff because of work he personally did, but it's laughable to think he could get to where he did, if he wasn't born into the planter class.
And no, that doesn't mean if you were culturally disadvantaged you couldn't do anything, it's just a lot harder and you had no free will in that. Every opportunity (and decision, really) is just a consequence of where and when you are, and should be taken not as a personal character assessment. I guess you could argue that means Jefferson is morally fine because that's just the kinda life he was born into so how would he know different, or maybe he just lacks some empathy :P
Of course less famous people also had good work ethics we just don’t have their quotes immortalized.
So all you’ve really done is subsumed any discussion of the merits of the idea itself into a hand-wringing fest about privilege that was inevitable from the beginning and could equally apply to any famous quote from history. I really don’t see the value in this kind of hand-wringing.
It's just silly to paint yourself as this hard worker that got back what you put in, whilst ignoring the ills that you put in. I'm sure he did good stuff because of work he personally did, but it's laughable to think he could get to where he did, if he wasn't born into the planter class.
And no, that doesn't mean if you were culturally disadvantaged you couldn't do anything, it's just a lot harder and you had no free will in that. Every opportunity (and decision, really) is just a consequence of where and when you are, and should be taken not as a personal character assessment. I guess you could argue that means Jefferson is morally fine because that's just the kinda life he was born into so how would he know different, or maybe he just lacks some empathy :P