Purchasing Happiness

IN EARLY AMERICAN HISTORY, lotteries were a common way for states to raise money for schools, roads, bridges, and so forth. The late eigtheenth and early nineteenth centuries were a time of very limited religious influence in european and american culture, the enlightenment, the "age of reason", when the emergence of modern science prevailed over superstition and religion. Lotteries were not seen as a moral issue, nor in general was gambling.

The american republic of 1776 was designed as an experiment in enlightenment, not christian ideology. But then came the eighteen thirties and forties, and "the great awakening", when a revival of religious fervor swept across the land, and began to underscore attitudes about everything, including gambling, including state run lotteries.

Perhaps the term "great awakening" is misleading. Was it an "awakening", or a slumber? Certainly for the lottery industry, it was the latter; fundamentalist christian values do not include gambling, in any form.

By the time of the civil war, lotteries had essentially vanished from the american landscape. Then, beginning in the middle of the twentieth century, state run lotteries for the purpose of raising public revenues once again appeared, and as we speak, there are only about five or six states in the united states which DO NOT have a lottery.

In an era of staggering national debt, can a national lottery be far away?

It is hard to find anyone who has ever won a lottery and remained happy about it for long. The most frequent result is that lottery winners end up broke, in debt, and lonely. The psychology behind this is interesting.

In the first place, we tend to see happiness as something which we "find", rather than something we manufacture, and when we win a lottery, we expect it to make us happy, so we don't bother to make ourselves happy.

And of course, true to the adage, the new money doesn't make us happy either , because happiness can never come from outside ourselves, it can never be purchased. Brand new millionaires discover friends and relatives they never knew they had. They make purchases they never thought they would be able to make, but always thought they wanted to make, but really don't need, and never needed, to be happy.

The new mansion, the new expensive cars, vacations, and other possessions seem to become a little bit more ordinary with each passig post lottery day. Soon, the lottery winner starts taking the new possessions for granted, just as he or she did with the old possessions. A house is a house, and a car is just a car, but we are still stuck with who we were before we hit the jackpot; a person who did not manufacture enough happiness.

Lotteries have been proven to be an effective way to generate revenue for the public trreasury, but not happiness for the private person.