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06972_Field_TCUM T537.txt
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1996-04-10
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818b
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16 lines
Alcohol and gambling have very different meanings in
different cultures. In our intensely individualist and fragmented
Western world, “booze” is a social bond and a means of festive
involvement. By contrast, in closely knit tribal society, “booze”
is destructive of all social pattern and is even used as a means
to mystical experience.
In tribal societies, gambling, on the other hand, is a
welcome avenue of entrepreneurial effort and individual
initiative. Carried into an individualist society, the same
gambling games and sweepstakes seem to threaten the whole
social order. Gambling pushes individual initiative to the point
of mocking the individualist social structure. The tribal virtue is
the capitalist vice.
When the boys came home from the mud and blood