Recent interviews of participants show a striking modesty in their dreams of how to apply the winnings. One soul even mentioned having their car fixed. The scope of the pool, driven by an enormous collective wish, is overwhelming the imagination of the lottery public. In this it resembles the detachment, especially since the crisis of '08, of global finances from what we, in our class innocence, regard as the real world.
This mania, so generally condemned, has never been properly studied. No one has realized that it is the opium of the poor. Did not the lottery, the mightiest fairy in the world, work up magical hopes? The roll of the roulette wheel that made the gamblers glimpse masses of gold and delights did not last longer than a lightning flash; whereas the lottery spread the magnificent blaze of lightning over five whole days. Where is the social force today that, for forty sous, can make you happy for five days and bestow on you—at least in fancy—all the delights that civilization holds?
Balzac, La Rabouilleuse, 1842
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