[RetroTechie]

When born, you're handed a set of cards that you 'play' life with. Among others:

Genes (affecting gender, skin color, attractiveness & more). Birthplace (affecting citizenship, or 1st-learned language). Wealth of parents and/or that country. Upbringing (including religion). Sisters/brothers or single child. Parents who stayed together or single parent. Etc etc.

For your family: great they worked to get you where you are. And yes that was work not a lottery. No need to minimize their effort.

But for you as recipient of that, it was a lottery ticket. You did not work, or decide what your family did for you. You did not decide what genes you wanted to inherit from them. You did not pick your birthplace.

So the "lottery" part does apply: for each recipient of a set of cards.

[zhoBEENG]

I think you two commenters have both expressed the opposing ideas at the core of so much of the political/worldview divide of the world today.

Position 1: a human is an entity distinct from their family.

Position 2: a family is an entity that exists across generations, and no individual in the family can be abstracted from it.

I don’t think you two, or anyone else, is ever really going to suddenly change their mind on this point. It’s at the foundation of the irreconcilable divide between leftism and conservatism.

Ultimately, since we have plenty of evidence to show that people will just shout past each other when they hit this ideological sticking point, I think a better approach would be to individually answer the question: “Which is a better model for predicting the world?”