Fateful Preferential Treatment
Dear [Mentat],
Well, perhaps the word preferential is not quite so accurate a description of what’s actually going on here. No, he didn’t get preferential treatment just because he went to a top notch school and his parents loaned him money to get started. However, his parents’ hard work and the scholarship did indeed place him in a position more favorable to succeeding than those who received no such assistance.
It also seems that through this particular scenario, you’ve made my very point, that parents and the support they provide, can be integral in the child’s overall ability to attain success. The more successful the parents, the more opportunities they can create for the child, and thus, the better his chances of finding his true niche, and becoming successful himself.
True, the help of the parents is not a sufficient condition for success. But it sure has a decidedly positive influence on the child’s destiny. Indeed, the better the parents treat their kid, and if that treatment is better than others treatments, then it could be deemed as preferential treatment when considered by someone not treated so well.
Further, I disagree that a family’s multi-generational nest egg building means nothing. A wealthy family embodies beliefs, traditions, practices and such, that can take many generations to evolve. In fact, most of the actors in Hollywood come from families where the parents also acted in some fashion – in plays, musicals, and such. The children can, if so inclined, pick up where the parents leave off when they retire.
Obviously this positions the child farther ahead than those who must start from scratch, without any success of their parents upon which to build. This sort of fateful preferential treatment (as in the way fate seems to treat some here on earth better than others) indeed complicates life for those not so favored by their destinies. Surely you can see that strong and proper pushing by the parents can hurl the child on a trajectory toward a more positive and rewarding destiny. While the parents do not completely control the destinies of their children, they can make them or break them with how well they rear them.