The figure sends shivers down your spine: in 2009, the French, according to a study by the Agence France-Presse, spent a record amount of 59.1 million euros every day on gambling: a daily increase of more than 10 million euros over seven years. What should we think of this?
First and foremost, we cannot use morality to blame those who seek refuge in daydreaming: every illusion, as we know, is an attempt at healing. Already difficult to find, the delicate balance between the “reality principle” and the “pleasure principle” seems to have long been broken in our societies, in favor of the former. For some, this reality is unbearably harsh and offers very few means to grasp it. In short, humans feel, rightly or wrongly, increasingly unarmed to face it. This is certainly the case for 76% of French people who, according to the Journal du Dimanche, “fear insufficient retirement” while a large majority believes it is now necessary to work beyond the age of 60. Usually a saving grace, the projection into the future no longer makes the present bearable.
The temptation to escape this grim fate through gambling becomes all the more understandable as it is also driven by growing income disparities: the rich are getting richer and the poor, poorer. This problematic situation is exacerbated by its extensions – the extreme visibility, if not the display in enticing consumerist showcases – which inflame jealousy and arouse envy. The banking crisis and its astronomical sums illustrate rather than precede the phenomenon: what is the difference after all, except in scale, between high-risk financial investment in billions and a lottery ticket for a few euros?
While the terrestrial satisfaction of adults seems out of reach, the relationship with gambling and chance allows, at a low cost, so to speak, to dive back into the magical world of childhood omnipotence: buying a lottery ticket or a PMU ticket offers as its sole joy the interval before the unavoidable announcement of a necessarily disappointing result. A delay long enough to draw a few hours of respite from human despair but short enough to prevent the development of an imagination with potentially violent consequences should it take root. It’s all about timing. This timing also invites the repetition of the act: in homeopathic doses, gambling diverts the malaise but doesn’t destroy it. A benevolent addiction: those hooked on online poker or in the dimly lit rooms of casinos know something about this.
Gambling opens up a field of possibilities. It tears apart the thick veil of the temporal and shatters the barrier of the inaccessible. It elevates the unconscious corollary: the forbidden. It provides a compensatory step towards the realization of pleasure: the jar of jam is always kept on the top shelf. During the wild rush or the swirling of the balls in their transparent sphere, it lets one savor the delights of exhilaration, spices up the unknown with passion, and rekindles the flame of the extraordinary. Regardless of the illusion, the mechanism stems from belief: fifty-five minutes of doubt, a few seconds of certainty to paraphrase Bernanos. The playful moment interrupts the inalterable flow of the life cycle, it introduces a random variable into the algorithm of routine monotony. The relationship with money completes the mechanism: due to its origin, fruit of hard-earned labor, money acquires an exceptional value, a supernatural power. It participates in this magic by disproportioning the expected gain and the modesty of the committed sum. Anything can happen: the tenant becomes an owner, the employee invents themselves as an entrepreneur, the loner makes “new friends.” The mortal believes they can access Olympus. The Gods, too, will be amused for eternity.
