As I write this, I am in an American casino. No, it is has not come to that. I am attending a conference that happens, this year, to be held at a resort. It is also snowing here, but let us not complain about the weather. There are folks wandering around with slots tokens bumping into people with academic scripts. Strange bedfellows.
I have no experience with casinos, and I do not want to dump on anyone's hobby, especially when I do not really know what I am talking about. But as I pass rows and rows of people in front of gaudy, lighted machines, I do not see a lot of happiness in these difficult times. While the advertisements suggest that I should be surrounded by beautiful people in the full bloom of youth, the clientele seems to be much older, despairing. The slots, as you probably know, are simple video games, the sort of things these people surely once disparaged when their kids were parked in front of the television. But now they are wasting more than just time. On walls and walls of television screens, you can see your favorite sports superimposed over the latest odds; you can play bingo in your room.
About the only thing that makes any sense are the more "social" activities: the big tables of people engaged in poker or craps. But even tables packed with people playing blackjack are contrasted by those with one lonely gambler trying, alone, to beat the house.
Why is it that people are so obsessed with having things handed to them, getting something for nothing? Why would the noise and the thrill of long odds arouse something in them that they cannot find elsewhere? This huge concrete silo, like the others that surround it, is plunked in the middle of a decayed downtown, crawling with homeless people, peppered with pawnshops.
Surely this is all some indication of how far we have strayed from some ideal.
