Chickens do not talk not because they lack ambition, not because they never tried. They do not talk because their DNA forbids it. Every neuron, every vocal cord, every twitch of their beady little heads is prewritten in a double helix that will never bend for dreams. The code does not negotiate. It does not care about desire or struggle or the moral weight of suffering.
Genes are cruelty incarnate. They are the cruel lottery you never bought a ticket for. Some creatures wake up with a body that can run faster, a mind that can strategize, a voice that can charm. Others wake up with defects, weaknesses, limitations. There is no fairness in the system. It does not reward persistence. It rewards luck. That is why some humans build empires while others starve in plain sight. That is why some minds create revolutions while others can barely read a manual.
The single most important determinant of your life are your genes. Forget society. Forget opportunity. Forget effort. Effort only magnifies what you already have or exposes what you lack. Genes dictate height, strength, metabolism, intelligence, temperament, susceptibility, and resilience. Everything else is a sideshow. A cruel joke we tell ourselves so we can pretend there is agency in a system that is inherently blind.
Some are born with the lottery ticket of life in their hands. Their voices resonate, faces symmetric, their bodies perform, their minds navigate chaos. Others are born with a busted ticket: frail, slow, forgetful, cursed with limitations that no amount of self-help or hustle can erase. There is no hidden meritocracy. There is no moral accounting. There is only the random, indifferent genome.
Success is not earned. Failure is not deserved. People who succeed in this world are the beneficiaries of luck, the people who don't are not beneficiaries of luck. It's as simple as that. You can labor, you can study, you can claw your way up—but you are always playing within the prison that is your DNA.
And when you look at the chicken, pecking at its grains, silent in the sun, know this: it is you, too, in another form. Looking at the mirror. Limited by random design. And the universe? Continues to laugh and reward the beneficiaries of that lottery. Everyone else gets the scraps. Everyone else waits for the miracle they will never inherit.