This describes something I call the proliferation of vice. It goes beyond gambling and sex. It’s an issue we haven’t fully comprehended as a society. Certainly these younger generations have been more open to mainstreaming vice.
Aaron is right about a generation ago, people had to seek out vices. Today, those same vices are at our fingertips. It’s not just vice. There’s a lot of society impacted by things that are now at the fingertips of everyone. The internet brought vice into our homes. Smartphones and tablets brought it to our fingertips.
On gambling, with today’s arrest of NBA players, it makes you ask how widespread and pervasive this stuff was in the days before mainstream gambling. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to see sports would have PR issues with this.
Confession: I spend $6 on Powerball tickets each week (one for each drawing). That's it for gambling for me. But I do not share the Protestant (maybe just Calvinist?) moral horror at gambling. Yes, I'm fully aware that it can become an addiction and lead to ruinous places. But, IMO, it was mainstreamed the minute state lotteries became a thing. Which was a good long time ago now.
Though I do wish popular culture would tone down the sexual explicitness. I don't need to see couples going at it in the boudoir to get the point that, Yes, they are lovers.
I'm traditionally bought a few lottery tickets myself when the jackpots get insanely huge. But I've stopped doing that in the last few years. I'm not a moral absolutist about it myself, but since I criticize gambling so much in my newsletter, I figured I should completely refrain fro mit.
Part of the problem is we HAVE to frame it as a public health issue. No one wants to be a scold but there needs to be some way of saying something is just bad for human beings; even if one has been a partaker. We have essentially no moral language that can cover this type of thing in the public sphere.
It's a real tightrope to walk. The atheist liberal will say, with zero self-awareness: "How can you Christians vote for Trump when he's so sleazy and un-Christian?" Well, actually, there are many good reasons to vote for Trump. But unfortunately the temptation is always there to start justifying and minimizing the vice. I do think that Trump's vices are less destructive to America than, say, Kamala's campaign platform. Still doesn't make them virtues...
This describes something I call the proliferation of vice. It goes beyond gambling and sex. It’s an issue we haven’t fully comprehended as a society. Certainly these younger generations have been more open to mainstreaming vice.
Aaron is right about a generation ago, people had to seek out vices. Today, those same vices are at our fingertips. It’s not just vice. There’s a lot of society impacted by things that are now at the fingertips of everyone. The internet brought vice into our homes. Smartphones and tablets brought it to our fingertips.
On gambling, with today’s arrest of NBA players, it makes you ask how widespread and pervasive this stuff was in the days before mainstream gambling. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to see sports would have PR issues with this.
Confession: I spend $6 on Powerball tickets each week (one for each drawing). That's it for gambling for me. But I do not share the Protestant (maybe just Calvinist?) moral horror at gambling. Yes, I'm fully aware that it can become an addiction and lead to ruinous places. But, IMO, it was mainstreamed the minute state lotteries became a thing. Which was a good long time ago now.
Though I do wish popular culture would tone down the sexual explicitness. I don't need to see couples going at it in the boudoir to get the point that, Yes, they are lovers.
I'm traditionally bought a few lottery tickets myself when the jackpots get insanely huge. But I've stopped doing that in the last few years. I'm not a moral absolutist about it myself, but since I criticize gambling so much in my newsletter, I figured I should completely refrain fro mit.
Also, off-topic: Very realistic review of the horrible Miranda July novel by a divorced lady
https://libertiesjournal.com/online-articles/what-kind-of-monster-all-fours-alas/
Thanks for sharing.
Part of the problem is we HAVE to frame it as a public health issue. No one wants to be a scold but there needs to be some way of saying something is just bad for human beings; even if one has been a partaker. We have essentially no moral language that can cover this type of thing in the public sphere.
It's a real tightrope to walk. The atheist liberal will say, with zero self-awareness: "How can you Christians vote for Trump when he's so sleazy and un-Christian?" Well, actually, there are many good reasons to vote for Trump. But unfortunately the temptation is always there to start justifying and minimizing the vice. I do think that Trump's vices are less destructive to America than, say, Kamala's campaign platform. Still doesn't make them virtues...