I.e. I assume people know the role luck plays in life, but are also not interested in the consequences of acknowledging that, and/or are interested in the consequences of pretending like they deserved it.

People do it all the time with friends and relatives. You don’t up front tell someone they’re only worth 10 min of your time, or you prefer visiting someone else in your free time. But you make up excuses or stretch some truths to give both parties plausible deniability, which allows everyone to save face.

Workplace politics is the same. You have a limited amount of time and energy to devote, so you will have to sacrifice some coworker’s or manager’s priorities for other colleague’s priorities. But you’d be foolish to tell them up front. Enter workplace politics, where you have to figure out whose aligned with who and for what purpose do you can figure out your next move.

The more scarce/valuable the resource, the more politics comes into play. And if it gets too scarce/valuable, it will end up in violence/war.

Being able to navigate these signals is a crucial factor to succeeding in society, in my opinion.