How to get lucky

If it's Wednesday it must be Morford on why some people are lucky and some people aren't.

See? Obvious. But there’s a catch: Despite its simplicity, it’s not at all easy to change modes and switch that luck energy on. After all, misery is addictive. Millions of people are deeply attached to their suffering, their haphazard convictions, their inability to see how their own nervous monofocus and attachment to particular goals or obsessive desires might be blocking out all manner of opportunity right here and now, in the white-hot immediate moment.
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Can we extend this a little? Can we say, with reasonable seriousness, that this is perhaps a fundamental difference between the progressive and conservative mindsets? Open-minded, flexible and awake versus regressive, uptight and fearful? It’s not a perfect formula, but my guess is it’s not far from a universal truth.

This much we know: When conservatives and fundamentalists of any sort don’t get the world they demand and expect, what happens? They rage. They lash out. Regress. They wallow in paranoia and resentment, or dig their heels into the bogus idea that the “old ways” were better, when they almost never were.

They also reject current reality. Maybe they buy guns, listen to hate radio, join reactionary movements, see liberal conspiracy everywhere, become libertarians or NRA members or (worse) Tea Party zealots who can’t tolerate, much less understand, the realities of nature, God, science, love, sex, the world. “It’s just not fair,” they say, like a toxic mantra, until they die.

It will be great good luck for the rest of us when they do.