Friday, October 27, 2006

Gambling Has Evolutionary Origins

Risk taking is an integral part of evolution without which we would not progress.People many thousands of years ago had to take risks to survive and flourish and had to be rewarded psychologically for doing so therefore the desire to do it again.For those risk takers who failed and died trying it does'nt matter if they got a rush but for those who succeeded and got a rush their genes were passed on to their progeny.So if people took a chance the result would be the same in total whether they won or lost.The losers and their need to gamble would die but the winners and their genes would survive.In either case at the end the gambling gene would carry on because some of the gamblers would be explorers who would find new lands and thrive.The need to gamble is a variation of the need to explore which of course is what we need to grow.Lotteries are a synthetic derivative of our primal need to explore and experience the unknown.Now however the odds have been calculated leaving us at the mercy of our once useful primal instincts.Gambling is the crack cocaine of exploration.