It all comes down to definitions, doesn't it? What we call "luck" or "fate" is a concatenation of forces and circumstances interacting with personal actions and choices. (Some would argue that one's intentions and/or expectations also figure into that equation.)

When circumstances (e.g. natural disasters, warfare, abject poverty, plague, etc.) render individual actions irrelevant, or when the individual is a young child, one cannot help invoking "fate," but I think most of us know that word has no real meaning.

My objection to such efforts as these to explain away the impact of circumstance is, as I stated in my article, that it tempts us to neglect our duty to look out for one another, to be the force for good "luck" in other lives.