Aversion to gambling

Whilst far from unique, the depth of my aversion to gambling is unusual. It pains me to see people forfeiting their wages in the hope of winning a jackpot. I hate being told about next week's housekeeping money being fed into insatiable slot machines. I feel sickeningly upset when I hear about a student who, having spent their year's student loan at the local casino, then runs up thousands of pounds of debt in a futile attempt to assuage a gnawing hunger to gamble.

My aversion has multiple components:

1. I detest the anxiety involved when hoping to win (anything). There is already more than enough anxiety in my life, and adding to it would be perverse.Clearly, some people enjoy the frisson that is probably a key part of the experience for them, an enjoyment that maintains their behaviour.
2. I cannot bear the disappointment of losing money. For some people, it is losing that spurs them into further gambling in the hope of recovering their losses.
3. When I hear about someone losing money, I find it easy to imagine how I would feel were I to lose that money (sympathy rather than empathy)
4. I imagine the consequences of losing evey last penny, and being unable to afford to buy food, warmth, light. I lived on the bread line back in the 1980s, and feel a powerful urge to avoid a life of penury.
5. I imagine losing all my possessions: house, car, computer, smartphone, books, music, DVDs. These are things I have chosen carefully, and in which I have invested much of myself: they mean a lot to me.
6. I imagine losing the important relationships in my life. There is a desolate scene in The Full Monty in which the character who also plays Mr Chuckles loses his family.
7. I imagine the shame of having to admit to people that I have gambled everything away.
8. I imagine the fear of being caught up in the murky underworld of debt recovery. The scene in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, in which Tom and his mates are threatened by Barry "The Baptist" with mutilation and shame if they don't pay a gambling debt, is nauseatingly unsettling.

I feel ethically antagonistic to the idea of business turnover and profit deriving from people losing their money. Harsh though it may sound, I cannot but help think of these businesses as behaving parasitically. I am also aware that a proportion of gambling that takes place probably attracts the attention of organised crime (or is that just in the movies?), also parasitical, with which I wish to have no involvement, and have every desire to avoid funding.
A society that places emphasis on gambling is a society that peddles fantasies of escape from reality.
In contrast, I feel strongly drawn towards a work ethic that prizes working for a living, with a concomitant ethic that prizes working hard, for which one should be proportionately rewarded. I believe that I become more who I truly am through engagement in my work, and especially by working hard. Gambling is the antithesis of these ethical principles, and an implication of gambling is that work is for suckers.
As we have witnessed, with astronomical quantities of money disappearing from national economies as a result of the sub-prime mortgage scandal in the US, followed by the collapse of some commercial banks, followed by the near bankrpting of countries such as Greece, Spain, Portugal, Italy and Iceland, how money is spent can have a very significant impact on the lives of hundreds of millions of people. When money is spent on the wrong things, in this case on speculation, governments fall, workers are thrown out of their jobs, pensioners lose their pensions, and the standard of living drops. Speculation of this kind is no different from gambling, except that vast numbers of innocent people are swept up in the subsequent destruction. I can't help but wonder what would happen to national economies were people to stop gambling and start businesses instead.

There is considered to be something glamourous about a casino When Ian Fleming's character James Bond walks into a casino, we are being told that he associates with very wealthy, champagne-sipping people who can afford to dress elegantly, and who wish to suggest they are so wealthy that they can afford to risk losing some of their wealth. The reality of casinos in Sunderland, UK, or I guess Las Vegas, Nevada, is perhaps rather more seedy. The gambler's hope (although not the only reason why they gamble) is to win money. Their msitake is to over-estimate the probability of winning. A casino is a business that understands the probabilities, the net effect of which is always to relieve people of their money, albeit perhaps over a period of time Were the opposite true, casinos as businesses could not exist. Regarding betting, the sleigtht of hand is slightly different: for bookmakers: to survive in business, the odds have to be weighted in favour of the business. Lottery's work slightly differently again, in which the prize money is dependent on total stakes, and the lottery company makes its money by retaiinng a proportion of the stakes.

I have never bought a lottery ticket, and even though they seem to be sold everywhere in the UK,  I do not know how to mark a lottery ticket. At the odds of 14,000,000 to 1 against winning, it seems incredible to me that people do buy lottery tickets - maybe it manifests the intensity of their desperation for a better life.. I have never visited a casino, and find it easy to imagine the range of negative feelings that I would probably experience were I to do so. I once went into a betting shop, simply because I did not know what they look like. I felt sorry for the people who spend so much of their lives in such places, for the one I visited was grim. Far from feeling tempted to place a bet, I felt soiled, and could not leave fast enough.

...to be continued...

Shrinking U.S. Cities Find Splendor in Green

The article below is one of several I have seen recently along the same lines:

World Environment News - Some Shrinking U.S. Cities Find Splendor in Green - Planet Ark

I am aware that there are many millions of people, particularly in South America, Africa and parts of Asia, who would experience a vast improvement in their quality of life were they to be given the opportunity to live in these abandoned neighbourhoods. Is it ethically more sound to raze the houses to make green space, or to provide shelter for people who have none?

I am slowly but increasingly persuaded that no-one should be given the right to exclude other people from land that is not theirs: Israelis should have no right to exclude Palestinians from living in Israel; nor supporters of the British National Party [Front Nationale, Vlaams Blok/Belang] to prevent people with darker-coloured skin from living in western Europe. I guess that there are residents of Flint, Michigan, who would object to people from elsewhere in the world (such as refugees, asylum seekers and economic migrants) taking up residence in abandoned neighbourhoods.

A related, though separate, issue concerns social welfare. Were familes say, from Timbuktu, to relocate to Flint, Michigan, or to Pennywell, Sunderland, who would be responsible for their social welfare?

[To be continued ...]

New job

It is already Friday 23 September 2005, the week having passed as though a techno-beat of stroboscopic flashes. On Monday of this week I started a new job at the University of Sunderland, UK. I have been appointed as Senior Counsellor in the student counselling service. I feel proud and excited, and also somewhat breathless at the pace of events.

Having been out of work for several months, everything in my life had progressively slowed down. I was on holiday in sultry south west France for two and a half weeks during August. On returning to the UK, I would watch movies on video until one or two in the morning, and then sleep in until eight, breakfast, shower, read any mail, and then prepare lunch. After lunch, if I felt energetic I might go for a walk, or go shopping. Otherwise I would read a book until dozing off until it was time to prepare the evening meal. The rest of the evening would be spent watching television, then a movie, and the cycle would have restarted. Sounds like retirement: pleasant enough, but pointless, without direction, and living on borrowed.

Already one gear up, the pace of life is faster and, thankfully, continuing to accelerate. Work is important to me. Work provides me with part of my identity without which I start to fade. I am meeting and getting involved with people new to me. I am encountering people whose need can be addressed through my competence.

[To be continued]