Petty Gambling

by konceptual99 35 Replies latest jw friends

• 

  konceptual99

  I knew an elder and his wife that were on Who Wants to be a Millionaire. They did not actually get to try for the £1,000,000 as they did not get through the selection round. They had LOADS of grief. He was fortunate not to lose all his service privilages and there was lots of talk about them being greedy etc.

  The truth of the matter is that people were just jealous. If someone said to them they could win money by answering a few questions then they would. No gambling was involved. It's a quiz. You could argue about the "love of money" and what "heart condition" (TM) it exposed but it's still jealousy underneath it all. How much money is it OK to win? Would someone turn down an inheritance since they did not earn the money?

  It's never logic or reasonableness that drive the moaners - just simple jealousy. I've said it before but I've never seen so much jealousy and bitterness over what others have as in the org. The prevelance of schadenfreude is outrageous. I know very few that a genuinely happy for other peoples' success or opportunity.
• 

  NVR2L8

  There was a MS in our circuit who tried out for Canadian Idol...he wasn't select but his tryout was on TV...he was deleted because JWs should aspire to be idols...
• 

  Iown Mylife

  Anything you want to do is fine as long as you keep it quiet. Learn that and you got it made.

  Marina
• 

  St George of England

  I often wonder what would happen if you won say £1,000,000 on the lottery and then wrote to the WTS offering them half of it.

  Would they accept it?

  You bet!

  George
• 

  sir82

  I don't recall if I saw it in writing, or heard it in a talk, but the reasoning on gambling vs. the stock market goes something like this:

  In traditional gambling, your winning depends on someone else losing. Your gain is 100% the result of someone else's loss. You are "greedy" because you want someone else to suffer so that you can gain.

  The stock market is not a "zero sum" game. You are investing in a company, and that company can make a profit without necessarily causing other busineses to fail, or others to lose money. So it is not "greedy" in that your gain is not directly dependent on someone else's loss.
• 

  konceptual99

  I've heard that reasoning as well.

  The fact of the matter is that there is always someone losing out in the commercial world. You may get a nice dividend on a share or it may be increasing in value but what has the company had to do to acheive that? Are their staff being paid and treated fairly? Are customers being ripped off? And so it goes on...

  I really don't think that corporate greed is any different to any other kind of greed. Unethical behaviour in the commercial world happens all the time. Witnesses are actually very poor judges of ethics. Very few actually develop convictions about what businesses or products they will patronise since they avoid the questions around politics and ethics that most intellectual people have to face when decieding exactly what they feel the moral position is on any given subject.

  So gambling is wrong but investing in a corporate with questional ethics and business practices is fine.