Let’s stop using clever language to hide the dangers of legalized gambling

I love language—written, spoken, and sung. As a regular preacher, words are very important to me. Understanding the best use of language – including vivid images, powerful ideas and inspiring ideas – is essential to my appointed calling to bring people closer to God.

He is also a close follower of developing social trends, including the spread of legalized gambling. What I have noticed is that, as legalized gambling has expanded in the city and state, so has the language used to describe it. This is not a coincidence. Language does not only explain reality, Pastor Desmond Tutu once said, but “language create that truth it describes” (emphasis added).

We often hear from commercial casino marketing campaigns. I pray to people of good faith, too, to find a word, in clear moral language, to describe the reality of the reality that legalized gambling creates: a life without purpose, a city that unhealthy, and little hope. Through the use of moral language, a supernatural reality is created, where good life decisions are made.

The language of legalized gambling is smart, familiar, and above all, just plain fun. The Chicago casino has been described as a “once in a lifetime opportunity” that will create “good paying corporate jobs” and will be a “major source of income” (because it will attract gamblers who live in outside the city).

The use of “gaming,” “entertainment,” and “recreation” as pejorative terms has blurred our understanding of gambling. To put it bluntly, the Des Plaines casino, which opened in 2011, was built on a shallow lagoon to meet regulatory requirements at the time to qualify as a “boat casino”. in the river.”

For some, this kind of talk is just clever marketing. To me, it’s downright offensive, and I refuse to let it go quietly.

‘It destroys our brains, it degrades our dignity’

While I have no idea that we will change policy decisions to improve gambling, I hope that people of good faith who work hard, play by the rules, and serve their communities will find the unequivocal moral language to call legalized gambling. i. Legalized gambling controls and destroys our brain function in the same way that cigarettes, opioids and social media do. It separates us from family, friends and colleagues and makes us stand out from the crowd. Worse, it lowers our human dignity and reduces us to our animalistic desires. We become mice searching for a parade designed to promise, but ultimately reject the reward.

We hear a lot that society is in “vibecession,” a disconnect between economic performance and how people feel about their lives. As I see it, the movement is also cultural: Bad ideas thrive when governments, on the one hand, encourage destructive behavior for much-needed revenue, and on the other hand, warn community with “problem gambling” in which 1.1 million state residents. have or are at risk of developing. A confusing confusion like this is hidden when the language used to describe it gradually changes to change the meaning.

Since moving to Chicago six years ago, I have been blessed to meet and develop relationships with the welcoming, kind and humble people who live here. I heard the wind of philoxenia (“friend to a stranger”) here often, and I say that as a former New Yorker. To me, this city is best understood by “building, tearing down, [and] to restore” humanity, as Carl Sandburg noted, whether it is recovery from a great fire, a great flood, or a great pestilence. This is an important legacy that needs to be preserved, and to me, it counters the degrading, distracting, limiting effects of legalized gambling.

September 9th is the one year anniversary of the day the land casino opened its doors for the first time in Chicago. Inevitably, the reports will focus on how much or how little gambling money was made and whether or not the casino was a good financial venture for the city.

As a man of faith and a good witness of this city, I will have special prayers that day. Among them, I pray that people of good faith will not forget that their understanding of their own dignity creates their own reality. In a world full of obstacles, temptations and uncertainty, only truth matters.

Eminence Metropolitan Nathanael is the Hierarch of the The metropolis of Chicago and oversees the Greek Orthodox organization of the Midwest.

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