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People may interpret others’ success as immoral when achievement feels inaccessible to them.

Moral positions can function to protect the legitimacy of one’s life circumstances.

Deprivation reshapes not only decisions but how meaning and moral value are assigned.

At a friend’s party many years ago, I found myself speaking with two people I had never met before—siblings, though I did not realise that immediately. They were, in different ways, similarly striking.

With the brother, on who earns a life.

The conversation with the brother shifted quickly. At first, he seemed easygoing and slightly amusing, making small jokes that people around him picked up on and laughed at. At some point, the others drifted away, and we were left in conversation on our own. Up until then, it had felt easy. He was quick, socially attuned, the kind of person who knew how to keep a group engaged—making the right remark at the right moment, picking up on the mood, keeping things light.

Somewhere along the way, I mentioned, in passing, that I was doing a Master’s degree at a well-known university. I said it simply, as part of explaining what I had been doing recently, adding that the path there had not been straightforward.

Something in the conversation shifted then.

Not abruptly, but noticeably. The ease thinned. What I had described as difficulty seemed to register differently for him—not as something earned through effort, but as something that implied access, advantage, a world he was not part of. He became slightly more defined in his stance, as if the conversation now required positioning.

He spoke as if responding not only to me, but to what I had come to represent.

He said, quite matter-of-factly, “Anyone who lives comfortably in this world got there through something immoral.” I paused. “What do you mean?” He didn’t hesitate, "People who are doing well for themselves financially, who have comfortable, easy lives," he said, "must have obtained them unethically."

I asked again, more gently this time, “What exactly are you referring to?”

But instead of elaborating, he became defensive. His tone tightened. It was as if the request for clarification itself had crossed a boundary. It seems that to him, the claim did not need explanation; it was already complete.

With the sister, on the right to be born

Later that evening, I spoke with his sister.

She began in a similar way—by locating me. “Are you Chinese?” she asked. When I said yes, she moved quickly, almost without transition, as if she had been waiting for some time to say it to someone.

“So as a Chinese person,” she said, “how do you feel about what your government did—ignoring basic human rights like that?”

She was referring to China’s population policies, framing them as a violation of fundamental human rights. The question was not really a question. It was already a position.

The shift in tone was subtle but clear. What began as an opening moved quickly into a critique. When I responded by situating population control within the context of scale, resource management, broader societal stability, and long-term strategy—carefully, and without defending any policy wholesale—her reaction was immediate. “Well, yes—but still,” she said, “I mean, what the Chinese government did was quite extreme.”

Then I added, almost as a contrast, “But those children were never born—it was something planned in advance. When you think about what is happening in the world right now—wars, people being killed—actual lives being lost… doesn’t that feel more urgent?”

She paused briefly, then said, “Yes, still—you can’t take away someone’s right to have children.”

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I remember feeling slightly confused at that point. Not because the position itself was unfamiliar, but because of the way the conversation held. It did not seem to move, even when the frame shifted.

The same conversation, in two forms

At the time, both interactions felt slightly off. Not because disagreement is unusual, but because of the structure beneath it: the certainty, the resistance to unpacking, the speed with which the conversation moved from curiosity to moral judgment. It felt less like two opinions, and more like a shared way of organising the world.

Only later did I begin to understand why.

A background that explains nothing—and everything

Through further conversations and mutual acquaintances, I came to learn more about their background. The siblings grew up in a family where their parents were never a couple in any meaningful sense. There was no relationship, no partnership, no shared life built over time. Instead, a man and a woman came together repeatedly for one purpose: to have children.

They had four in total.

In the context they were in, each child meant additional financial support through welfare tied to single motherhood. The system allowed for survival without employment, and over time, that became the structure of the household. There was no stable work, no long-term planning, no model of effort leading to outcome. Life was organised around a very basic form of living—immediate, practical, and sustained through what was available. It functioned, but seemed to carry a tension that was rarely spoken about.

And this was not hidden from the children. They knew from the very beginning.

They knew they were not born out of a relationship, or even out of something that could be mistaken for one. They were part of a system of survival. They grew up in an environment without a clear sense of purpose, without a model of investment, without the experience of being chosen in any meaningful emotional sense.

When seen in that light, the meaning of the earlier conversations began to shift.

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