Gambling - is it a mugs game?

For years I’ve been really anti-gambling because I see it as being just a means of losing money. I guess if I was going to start I would wish to know that I had got an extremely good chance of winning and at present I don’t think the odds of any form of gambling are entirely geared towards what I class as being a means of damaging the working class population in a manner that they may enjoy. Interesting though it is to see the way that gambling is promoted as ‘part of our culture’ when a great many people don’t have the least interest in it as a social activity that involves potential financial loss.

I did wonder when I was considering how little interest I had in gambling that I may have other addictions which weren’t linked to the financial outlay that gambling entails. Maybe there could be some form of addictive personality which may be well documented in the academic literature but not have made it into mainstream culture at present. I state that and I think there is a strong chance that this will change with the forthcoming OCR Psychology A level in which addictive behaviours will make up a substantial part. The person who has advised OCR on this is Prof. Mark Griffiths who was a lecturer at University of Plymouth when I was an undergraduate there in the early 1990’s. I think he’s well positioned to ensure that the specification has wide appeal having won the awards he has over the last few years.

My actions that I now think have an element of addictiveness about them included writing nonsense letters to politicians, or at least what appeared to be nonsense letters. It is interesting what form of gambling this was – gambling of ‘public status’. This may act as a particularly unusual form of addiction to anyone who elects not to engage in such activity and has a calculated approach to life which entails low-medium risk and low-medium gain but stable likely outcomes: what I was doing was poorly planned social action based upon poorly calculated sums of social approval which didn’t lead to any significant growth in my social status. Perhaps this could lead to, if it has not already been represented in literature, a new layer of political correctness regarding what may be classed as the inappropriate behaviour of some – that they are conceptually challenged and lack the ability to plan and carry out a normal course of social activities.

Incidentally, this does create a sense of contradiction because this type of conduct would be classed as likely to be very costly financially as an individual may be far less employable – may be all forms of gambling involve some form of financial cost – maybe how antisocial behaviour could be considered. It is perhaps not that unusual a theory to present to excluded youth as a matter that they may gamble all their status in some respects or others by attempting to ‘win’ the approval of others, usually a small group or ‘in crowd’ – bullying may provide some form of example of this as a particularly badly calculated risk action. Wining in one currency, or with one group of people, may not be to the short-term advantage of an individual, but may make a substantial impact on an individuals’ wellbeing for a short time. If someone were to have undertaken such a longer term program of action and miscalculated through this period what risks were taking place and what wins were coming off there could be a sudden chance realisation of what was taking place to the majority. This may be a reasonable way of construing the sudden total loss of status that one may experience when having a nervous breakdown.

This approach also suggests that there is a means to define social behaviour that is non-addictive and of low risk which is likely to help establish an individual. Should social activity be defined in terms of the improvement of status by our politicians and should this involve means to control the population without their awareness of what social control is taking place? I guess a form of Marxist or Frierian conscientisation could be suitable to progress this agenda so healthily defined social action is carried out both bottom-up and top-down.

Maybe I should have been thinking more about the many forms that gambling may take and then recalculate what degree of cost I have incurred through avoiding placing a few pounds on the gee-gees. Maybe there is enough here to substantiate a slightly different approach to transactional analysis, which is not really being updated in the least here but perhaps a little refreshed. All transactions are potentially gambling and all addiction needs to be addressed. I wonder if this has great harmony with the current political elite?