Gambling In Life

Spring is all around here. Kids at home enjoying the their spring break.Spring here in Phoenix always bring us pollen, pollen brings us allergy. This is the season my five year old always recriminates her ear infections. This year it’s bit better for her after insertion of an ear tube. Kids surrounded are enjoying the season. Yesterday we all went to a kite festival in Fountain hills near Scottsdale. After many years I groove the kite fly. Kids enjoyed the festival of kites. While going there have noticed couple of casinos on the road and I gazed the parking lots with many cars. All now in rumination -Gambling In Life.

Optimism is the keynote of human life. Amidst the dire uncertainty in which man is engulfed, he, at all times, sees or likes to see a ray of hope, a tinge of certainty. Even when he lost in the desert of failure and despair everything is not lost to him. Depending on something benign and benevolent, which is yet unseen to him, man craves for brighter days which could be of some meaning and value to him. Moreover, because of the limitations of his own power he has a strong inherent belief that his life is controlled by some unknown ‘force’ which he names God or Fate or Chance. The presence of this belief has affected man right from the dawn of his life on this earth. And he, to his utter helplessness, steeped his overpowering belief in the unseen and unknown, begins to toss his life in the ways of fortune. And subsequently he becomes prone to gamble his life at every phase. Thus I believe the history of gambling is, as it were, as old as the history of man himself.

Man’s addiction to gambling may still be due to another cause – his wish to get a maximum gain on a minimum effort. Therefore, in gambling the character of the hoped for gains has always become significant. This gain is embedded with ‘betting’ or ‘staking’ of something of value, with consciousness of risk and hope of gain. It is a game, a contest or an uncertain event the result of which may be determined by chance or accident which may have an unexpected result by reason of the better’s miscalculation. Whatever may be the fact, it is true that the desire to gain is the main criterion of gambling. The savage hunter  is as addicted to gambling in his hours of ease as the civilized stock broker or horse racer in his hours of business.

In primitive societies, it is always connected with religion.Ex: China, Korea,India, etc.History shows many evidences of banning the gambling but many have them faded over the time. Governments take this as an opportunity to get money from it’s people. But not withstanding all the short-comings that are inherent in gambling it is impossible to assert that man will ever be able to eradicate this evil of society- if it is at all an evil, as a matter of fact, his optimistic view of life nurtured with a spirit of adventure and supported by a belief in a benign force, will induce him to take to gambling in one form or the other.