DE Weekly: Existence, Essence, & the Cosmic Lottery
Below is an archived email originally sent on March 30, 2026.
Existence, Essence, & the Cosmic Lottery
Every now and then, I come across a post online, usually accompanied by a graphic of some sort, that says something like, “If you were born in North America, remember that you had a 3.04% chance of being born there. How lucky you are!”
The same graphic contrasts this claim by saying the chances of you being born in Asia was 49.69%, and your chances of being born on the African continent 34.87%.
These percentages are presumably calculated based on the current population of each country and continent today, and on nothing else. Needless to say, they are total fabrications and there is nothing even remotely correct about the statement, “You had a 3.04% chance of being born in North America.”
I scrolled through the comments on one of these posts I saw recently, and something someone said stuck out to me. They said:
“Here is [this] strange . . . idea surfacing again; that there is an ethereal plain where disembodied souls dwell waiting for a body. I am not “lucky” to be born to my parents, as if I was born to another set of parents I would cease to be me.”
The first word that came to my mind after reading that was Bingo. Exactly right.
Here’s why the “cosmic lottery” idea is incorrect.
The sheer number of things that had to happen––choices made, events experienced, partners coupled, etc.––for you to be born is almost incomprehensible to try and apprehend.
Since the beginning of time, the amount of factors that had to fall exactly as they did, the amount of people who had to meet and procreate and provide and survive and move and live and die for you to be you is exactly why you are you in the first place.
For you could not have been anyone else.
Saying that I had a higher likelihood of being born in Asia than in North America presumes that my existence is an accident; such a claim presumes the existence of some cosmic lottery system that spit me out where I ended up being born.
Our existence is many things, absurd among them, but it is not an accident.
There are trillions of galaxies in our 13.8-billion year old universe, along with innumerable stars, planets, celestial bodies, and the like, and Earth developed in just the right way for all the necessary preconditions for human life to form and for everything to come into existence that was a prerequisite for your existence, and for mine.
And thus, the cosmic lottery idea, whether approached from an atheistic viewpoint or a deeply religious one, is not a realistic one.
Whether it was evolution and survival of the fittest or a stroke of the divine paintbrush of God, I could not have been anyone but myself. And you could not have been anyone but you.
With my own view out of the way, in Existentialism, what is the prevailing view on this?
The phrase “existence precedes essence,” which largely helped give Existentialism its name and was supported by Martin Heidegger and later Jean-Paul Sartre, proposes that the most fundamental thing about who we are is our existence (the fact that we exist in the world). Anything that comes after that (our essence) is secondary.
In his lecture Existentialism is a Humanism, Sartre says:
“What do we mean by saying that existence precedes essence? We mean that man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world––and defines himself afterwards. If man as the existentialist sees him is not definable , it is because to begin with he is nothing. He will not be anything until later, and then he will be what he makes of himself.”
Reading this quote, it is easy to see where modern man got the idea that we are “lucky” to be born into the circumstances we were born into, while others are “unlucky.” Sartre could well have invented the idea himself!
However, such an idea collapses upon itself when we consider another of Sartre’s existentialist concepts: Facticity.
Facticity refers to the unchangeable characteristics of one’s existence––the ones we’re born with. These include our birthdate and our body, but also our family’s past and the environment we are born into. It includes, too, our race, nationality, sex, and the genetic predispositions inherited from our parents.
So, facticity includes everything that makes you you, and thus constitutes the unique individual being that you are. In other words, you could never have been born as anyone but you, as in any such case, you would cease to be you.
In a roundabout way, Sartre might have proven that essence does, in fact, precede existence after all.
All this to say, I know myself as I am. And you should know yourself as you are.
You could not have existed under any other circumstances than the ones in which you were born. You are not a cosmic accident; rather, your existence is on purpose.
Yes, life itself may be absurd, as Existentialism claims. You may have no predefined path or purpose in life, at least as it relates to your being-toward-death.
But as it relates to your being-in-itself and your being-in-the-world, indeed, to your very being qua being, your purpose and meaning in the world is that you are yourself. And you could never have been anything else.
You exist, and you exist on purpose.
“The world is inseparable from the subject, but from a subject which is nothing but a project of the world, and the subject is inseparable from the world, but from a world which the subject itself projects.” ― Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception
Thanks for reading.
Sincerely,
Brandon J. Seltenrich
P.S.––
The chances of your existing as yourself were 100%.
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