Always a good idea to trust the gut, and I think it worked, loved the article.
My grandfather is the same as yours, always up for a good wager - we currently have money on Trump vs Biden (My money is on Trump), and one of my favorite things to do each week is tease him about how I'm going to spend his money when I win.
Despite never being a massive gambler - he was a chemist and family man with 8 kids from a farming family which had about 10 kids - his attitude towards betting is far different from my own fathers.
My father, despite being an entrepreneur (twice over), is staunchly anti-gambling of any kind. Not even so much as a pint on the final score of a game.
He is risk-averse to the extreme, and yet quite successful in spite of this, which I would argue is usually the opposite, but goes to show that you really only need the balls to take 1 calculated risk on yourself and have it pay off in order to win big overall.
Cultivating a healthy attitude toward risk is probably one of the most beneficial traits a young man can develop in order to better his station in life, and I think that's a message that you have sprinkled throughout the post here, with a dose of realism of course.
The wealthiest people in the world are speculators, and that's a large part of the reason why the rich get richer (along with technologies monopolizing effects), but they can afford to lose (much) more than you can. And the game is rigged of course, not to mention the fact that they play it better than anyone else. Seeing everyone lose their minds over Trump not paying income tax has been interesting - why is it surprising to anyone in the slightest?
"You lose when you chase, you win when you are ambivalent", reminds me distinctly of one of the more peculiar books I've read recently called "Reality Transurfing", by a Russian named Vadim Zeland, which concerns itself with notions of fate, manifestation, the Universe etc.
It's worth a read, wherever you lie on the scale of skepticism - I usually say it goes from the Law of Attraction (Think and you manifest) on one end to Confirmation Bias (Think and you notice what was always there), or even the distinctly nerdier RAS (Reticular Activating System), which is basically the same deal.
Whatever spiritual framework (or lack thereof) you fit it into, neediness is always a precursor to failure, and as you mentioned, disrespect. Fortune favors the bold and all that.
As a final note, I loved the analogy regarding the simplicity of gambling in a world of chaos, and the increasing popularity of gambling in an increasingly complex world makes a lot of sense through that lens.
As I've been off Twitter a couple weeks now I was especially looking forward to this week's blog. I've been thinking about the misery tax off and on since last week. Still buying coffee and sweets, though. Ha!
I'm glad you went with your gut. We don't need another echo chamber. I was taught that gambling is bad and will probably never indulge, but you had interesting insights, essentially looking at the human condition through this lens.
As an aside, this week I read Ray Bradbury's 'Something Wicked This Way Comes'. Never read a book like it.
Always a good idea to trust the gut, and I think it worked, loved the article.
My grandfather is the same as yours, always up for a good wager - we currently have money on Trump vs Biden (My money is on Trump), and one of my favorite things to do each week is tease him about how I'm going to spend his money when I win.
Despite never being a massive gambler - he was a chemist and family man with 8 kids from a farming family which had about 10 kids - his attitude towards betting is far different from my own fathers.
My father, despite being an entrepreneur (twice over), is staunchly anti-gambling of any kind. Not even so much as a pint on the final score of a game.
He is risk-averse to the extreme, and yet quite successful in spite of this, which I would argue is usually the opposite, but goes to show that you really only need the balls to take 1 calculated risk on yourself and have it pay off in order to win big overall.
Cultivating a healthy attitude toward risk is probably one of the most beneficial traits a young man can develop in order to better his station in life, and I think that's a message that you have sprinkled throughout the post here, with a dose of realism of course.
The wealthiest people in the world are speculators, and that's a large part of the reason why the rich get richer (along with technologies monopolizing effects), but they can afford to lose (much) more than you can. And the game is rigged of course, not to mention the fact that they play it better than anyone else. Seeing everyone lose their minds over Trump not paying income tax has been interesting - why is it surprising to anyone in the slightest?
"You lose when you chase, you win when you are ambivalent", reminds me distinctly of one of the more peculiar books I've read recently called "Reality Transurfing", by a Russian named Vadim Zeland, which concerns itself with notions of fate, manifestation, the Universe etc.
It's worth a read, wherever you lie on the scale of skepticism - I usually say it goes from the Law of Attraction (Think and you manifest) on one end to Confirmation Bias (Think and you notice what was always there), or even the distinctly nerdier RAS (Reticular Activating System), which is basically the same deal.
Whatever spiritual framework (or lack thereof) you fit it into, neediness is always a precursor to failure, and as you mentioned, disrespect. Fortune favors the bold and all that.
As a final note, I loved the analogy regarding the simplicity of gambling in a world of chaos, and the increasing popularity of gambling in an increasingly complex world makes a lot of sense through that lens.
As I've been off Twitter a couple weeks now I was especially looking forward to this week's blog. I've been thinking about the misery tax off and on since last week. Still buying coffee and sweets, though. Ha!
I'm glad you went with your gut. We don't need another echo chamber. I was taught that gambling is bad and will probably never indulge, but you had interesting insights, essentially looking at the human condition through this lens.
As an aside, this week I read Ray Bradbury's 'Something Wicked This Way Comes'. Never read a book like it.