points out rightly, “Gambling is debased speculation, craving for sudden wealth…. This age of lotteries” is a mass hysteria. *
In gambling and lotteries several powerful myths are expressed. The first is the mother’s breast: one needs only to open one’s sucking mouth and, magically, the breast falls in. Another is being fed by some great goddess who takes care of him or her in her hidden ways. In this sense the stated aim of this nation—to increase production—is powerfully undermined by gambling. The stronger the hope to win big on the stock market or lottery or betting on a football game, the less effort one will put forth in honest work. Then work becomes irrelevant: one will live, so goes the myth, by manna dropping from heaven, or more fittingly one lives by the effluence from the world of demons.
This is George Will’s statement on gambling:
Gambling fever reflects and exacerbates what has been called the “fatalism of the multitude.” The more people believe in the importance of luck, chance, randomness, fate, the less they believe in the importance of stern virtues such as industriousness, thrift, deferral of gratification, diligence, studiousness. It is drearily understandable why lotteries—skill-less gambling; gambling for the lazy—are booming at a time when the nation’s productivity, competitiveness, savings rate and academic performance are poor.
THE AGE OF MELANCHOLY
Underneath and covered over by the gleeful noises of the lotteries and the shopping sprees in America is a widespread psychological depression. This was uncovered by two far-reachingstudies extending over two years by the National Institutes for Mental Health. Something has happened since World War II. Psychological depression is now going on at a rate ten times as high as before World War II. * Martin Seligman, one of the psychologists who performed the study, sums up its results: “If you were born in the last fifty years, you have ten times as much chance of being seriously depressed as you would if you were born in the fifty years before that time.” †
The inquiries in this study went on over two years; 9,500 persons were interviewed. The questions studied were whether the person had prolonged low moods, suicidal thoughts or actions, loss of interest in usually enjoyable activities, lack of motivation for extended periods, loss of appetite, and the psychological depressions for which lithium or similar drugs are prescribed.
This widespread epidemic of depression, Dr. Seligman indicates, has gone hand in hand during the past fifty years with a loss of psychological and spiritual guidance. The family influence has evaporated in a culture which has little belief in God.
There has occurred a bankruptcy of sources to which one, particularly the youth, could turn for solace or direction when he or she has had a personal failure. The person has only him or herself as the court of last appeal, and that, says Seligman, is a frail court indeed. We have already cited the rise in suicide in youth in the 1970s, and these studies put that dismal figure into its context.
As a scientific check against their own prejudices, Seligman and his colleagues studied two primitive cultures. One was theAmish of Lancaster County in Pennsylvania, who have no automobiles and have preserved an island of early nineteenth-century community with no influence from what we could call modem American society. The other was the Kaluli of New Guinea. The investigators found that in these societies a person goes through well-established social structures, consisting of myths and rituals when he or she has a failure or some personal loss. The breakdown in myths is made good so that the individual can pick himself up without inner loss.
The individual in our culture, however, when picking himself or herself up after a failure, has nowhere to turn except “to a very small and frail unit indeed: the self.” This again is one reason the profession of
In gambling and lotteries several powerful myths are expressed. The first is the mother’s breast: one needs only to open one’s sucking mouth and, magically, the breast falls in. Another is being fed by some great goddess who takes care of him or her in her hidden ways. In this sense the stated aim of this nation—to increase production—is powerfully undermined by gambling. The stronger the hope to win big on the stock market or lottery or betting on a football game, the less effort one will put forth in honest work. Then work becomes irrelevant: one will live, so goes the myth, by manna dropping from heaven, or more fittingly one lives by the effluence from the world of demons.
This is George Will’s statement on gambling:
Gambling fever reflects and exacerbates what has been called the “fatalism of the multitude.” The more people believe in the importance of luck, chance, randomness, fate, the less they believe in the importance of stern virtues such as industriousness, thrift, deferral of gratification, diligence, studiousness. It is drearily understandable why lotteries—skill-less gambling; gambling for the lazy—are booming at a time when the nation’s productivity, competitiveness, savings rate and academic performance are poor.
THE AGE OF MELANCHOLY
Underneath and covered over by the gleeful noises of the lotteries and the shopping sprees in America is a widespread psychological depression. This was uncovered by two far-reachingstudies extending over two years by the National Institutes for Mental Health. Something has happened since World War II. Psychological depression is now going on at a rate ten times as high as before World War II. * Martin Seligman, one of the psychologists who performed the study, sums up its results: “If you were born in the last fifty years, you have ten times as much chance of being seriously depressed as you would if you were born in the fifty years before that time.” †
The inquiries in this study went on over two years; 9,500 persons were interviewed. The questions studied were whether the person had prolonged low moods, suicidal thoughts or actions, loss of interest in usually enjoyable activities, lack of motivation for extended periods, loss of appetite, and the psychological depressions for which lithium or similar drugs are prescribed.
This widespread epidemic of depression, Dr. Seligman indicates, has gone hand in hand during the past fifty years with a loss of psychological and spiritual guidance. The family influence has evaporated in a culture which has little belief in God.
There has occurred a bankruptcy of sources to which one, particularly the youth, could turn for solace or direction when he or she has had a personal failure. The person has only him or herself as the court of last appeal, and that, says Seligman, is a frail court indeed. We have already cited the rise in suicide in youth in the 1970s, and these studies put that dismal figure into its context.
As a scientific check against their own prejudices, Seligman and his colleagues studied two primitive cultures. One was theAmish of Lancaster County in Pennsylvania, who have no automobiles and have preserved an island of early nineteenth-century community with no influence from what we could call modem American society. The other was the Kaluli of New Guinea. The investigators found that in these societies a person goes through well-established social structures, consisting of myths and rituals when he or she has a failure or some personal loss. The breakdown in myths is made good so that the individual can pick himself up without inner loss.
The individual in our culture, however, when picking himself or herself up after a failure, has nowhere to turn except “to a very small and frail unit indeed: the self.” This again is one reason the profession of
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