Existential turmoils in our society have made the youth vulnerable. They have appreciated vices, signed into it and are dinning with it juggernauts. Gambling has become a normalized enterprise, draining creams of talents into it shells. The mechanisms are brutal. We are in dangerous times.
The environment still has a bitter taste, in a mysteriously torn society; with cremated morals. The ills of our existence bemoaning like an aggrieved child, swallows the image of beauties. It a glassy stream of vices, burning from the fuels of fun in an enthusiastic youth floating on some euphoric atmospheres. Poverty stands behind to watch this beautiful spree with sensational mounting of pressures on these desperate souls. It hasn’t been fair though, looking at our resource ovations. But who knows whether the concept of stupidity has changed or not? Perhaps, the youth never heard of good life on a better course. Too many storms of political noise have unsensitized our senses, condescension to personality, and the tearing apart. Our dignity.
A tamed future, a squandered destiny. Would there be an immediate answer for destitution? Or there is history for reflections? Why yell for future, while there is no present? And after all, if we matter, do we care about values? In this abyss of gambling, where desperation, turmoil, and chaos rule the day? But the emotions of the youth are dancing inside the abyss, in a very polarized feeling that ticks to and fro when several 90 minutes are running down. It is a token from a game, at the same time, a quota for being optimistic. Their fate, in grotesque, lies in sequels of uncertainties from the pitches. These are fine pitches holding 22 legs at different venues, beating the hearts of passionate folks as if there is big bang 2.0.
Inside the territories of gambling, emotions are a highly-in-demand commodity. Sometimes, there is a shortage of it. And yet, there is no satisfaction, only mixed feelings recur. But the youth doesn’t care, about how blurred they look in the eyes of their souls. The open jaws of unemployment, the venoms of meaningless education, and the shackles of materialism have welcomed their miseries with a glass of poor governance.
They have no option but to put their hearts on the line, for unthinkable reasons. Small monies, they get, toils they endure, in exchange for the hope of increment. The glories of their gentleness and the worthiness of their beings aren’t taken into consideration, because their world doesn’t care about fulfillment. It cares about impressive materialistic outlook, with pseudo-technological entanglement. Hence, they are in competition with themselves; their time, resources, education, personality, and future. Some existential economic caricatures have presented to them, a money-making spirit, in the form of self-indulgence which they choose over self-esteem. The sweeping tech updates have made new gadgets become part of human value, which they crave.
But the disappointing part of the modernized life is that those who are gambling have their lives been gambled. Thoughtless youth fall in the lures of pleasures. They sell their liberty for enticement. A glittering world they picture, beholding the miniature to embody their nature. All come to burn into ashes, most times, with residues of paychecks and Momo alerts. The pronouncement of “we will gamble” does not seem much like a vice. Practically, these are flames that boil the blood and mellow their conscience to magnify their bliss.
This mechanism is an up and down delivery; it dissolves desperation with hallucinations that move beyond mere support of a club. The games in question are stirred with hearts, not eyes. Drowning their blood into oceans of anxieties. The simultaneous stretch of happiness and disappointment negates all sorts of feelings at that time. And the expression of it has no patterns and limits. The favorite team can disappoint, at the same time, impress. Sometimes, fans on both sides may literally have no supporting team at all. Their supporting team would be the one who gives them money. Meanwhile, a favorite team must score to make her fans happy, and at the same time win or beat their actuarial odds. But the odds would stand on top because it returns some tokens. These nuisances put fans in limbo every weekend, making them suffer more than the players on the pitch. The weekend looks as if though, mighty stress is going to be relieved. It is rather the opposite. Behind TV screens are these mathematical predictions which shake the hands and break the hearts of football fans.
While enjoying two different brains of tactics on the pitch, their own would be sweating on corresponding predictions. A bruising adventure, emotional confrontations, fumed by emptiness, calmed by narcissism. But can we help these helpless souls? Or do we have the substance to meet their conditions? It is yes and no answers!
Addiction has no turning point. Only systematic drawbacks can help. Poverty has no contest; narrow escape roots are searched. And poverty mixed with addiction can evoke touches of madness, in a beautiful mannerism that pleases sensibility. Our airborne contaminated society has no mercy for such people. It is a jungle where even the fittest can’t survive. The conditions that made this possible too aren’t going to change, they rather compound every day.
Are we going to judge gamblers? Do we have values? Where is morality? Are the youth, indeed made to become vulnerable to gambling addictions? Silence!
And the talking about betting is fuzzy; churches and synagogues are also avenues of gambling, because digitization is innocent, and can easily enter temples. And so, here comes the eruption of corruption, from every unit of the society. The passion behind the attraction is self-motivated. It is a bloodbath enterprise, for those who are into it, at the same time, tokens for those who want small monies to call themselves out. Each and every one has temporarily handed over his life to some small betting apps on phones and on a small rectangular light paper. They stake, anywhere, at any time.
Our lingered youth are simply in bloating fuse. Their interests in books have gone in ruins. Society has surrendered them to anguish, always in tatters. Ladies’ lives are not hooking fortunes, but their private parts are hooking up. Gents have no luck in search for jobs, their luck is in betting. But their remnants are the arm-robbers, weed smokers, gangsters, and fraudsters. They belonged to the same vehicle, only that their destinations were different.
Poised to wake up late in the morning; get some beans and gari to return to his phone to crash the day with the virtual world. At night, is all funfair with some warring ladies who are stripping for cash. That is the basic life cycle of a busy unemployed graduate. An upgrade of such a life means he will become a hustler, but the hustle may go into fossils. An upgrade to hustling may be a career for him/her, whose career may be a burdensome and might be carrying woes and woos. There is no upgrade after this stage, the rest are treacheries. Those who tax everything including the water we drink. It is in their incompetence that we are still not making sense here.
Gambling is not a dream job, is a rigged game for societal outcasts. The gambler may spend all his life gambling and still remain poor, while the gambled continuous to get rich. It is an eviscerating adventure, that drains emotional faculties. But those who want to stop may be tempted to lose some residual income; keeping them comfortably in their addictions.
A money-making market from capitalist insurgents to the descendants of slaves and colonials looks like a 20th-century colonial business 2.0. Literally, it is the advantage over the helpless unemployed youth and their resonance. We might stop thinking about that because there are no answers. We are losing a wholesale of intelligentsia because we are shattering libraries for betting arenas.
The youth are treasures that descend on pleasures to prosper. It is the duty of the society; government, media, schools, and intellectuals to substitute the pleasures for nurture. But here we are in conditions that are sickening. Doomed to predictable failures. Younger and brighter minds, have to sway in gambling. We are in the age of gambling.
By, Opoku Andrew
You can reach him at [email protected] and can read more of his articles on, andrewdisqus.com
