What Is Adversity?

Adversity, as Horace so claims, does not elicit talents from people more than any other circumstances; rather, it provides a platform for people with talents to showcase their skills in applicable circumstances. Not all of the many thousands of people who have faced adversities in America’s history have come out with grand talents; in fact, most of them don’t. For every Frederick Douglass, there are tens of thousands of freedmen who, suffering much, accomplish little. The concept of adversity eliciting talents is a textbook case of confirmation bias; people only see cases of people who have accomplished so much with so little because it is a story all like to hear. So many people cite Bill Gates as a successful college dropout; so few like