Stephen Monrad

Lots of people buy lottery tickets each week in the hopes of winning millions of dollars. This behaviour is strange because it is time consuming to stand in line to buy the tickets, keep track of them and check them when the numbers are drawn. Since standing in line and keeping track of bits of paper isn’t much fun, you think people would be more efficient with how they gamble.

For example, if you plan to buy a lottery ticket for a dollar each week, you will buy 52 tickets over the course of the year. You could save yourself a lot of bother by buying the 52 tickets all at once for one draw. Your chances of winning would be exactly the same. Why do we make the extra 51 trips when they are totally unnecessary?

The answer of course is that people are irrational. People buy lottery tickets each week because it gives them hope that their life might be transformed soon. All the worries and fears that plague them could be brushed aside if the right numbers are drawn. Lotteries sell a dream. Your life might be transformed in a few days if you buy a ticket.

What bothers me most about the dream being sold is that it encourages people to be passive. Instead of hoping for a miracle, people should take a more active role in improving their lives. While lotteries may appear harmless, the advertising used to promote them encourages people to be passive and disengaged. I think we need better dreams.

Instead of dreaming of winning the lottery, we should dream of finding pleasure in the simple things in daily life. We should dream of meeting new and interesting people. We should dream of making the world a better place. These dreams encourage us to reach out and take risks. Dreams that encourage us to engage help us grow and have a much better chance of bringing us happiness.