Ethics

Poker is a predatory undertaking. The object of the game, specifically, is to take as much of other people's money as you possibly can while abiding by strictly defined rules (and also, one hopes both for the good of the game and general civility, within the bounds of poker etiquette as well).

It is to be assumed that people sit down at the table voluntarily, and are equally free to stand up and walk away when they please. No one is forced to play or forced to quit (unless they run out of money, and then it's not that they are "forced" to quit but that they no longer have the requisite wherewithal to play).

But the reality of it is, in fact, otherwise. You cannot play poker as intensively as I do and not know this.

I see the compulsive gamblers. I see the people so desperate for social interaction that they essentially 'pay' for company by losing at the table. I see the people who ~ despite all ongoing and mounting evidence to the contrary ~ believe they can score big in the game and thereby dig themselves out of a financial hole. I see the people whose emotional state is so precarious that I'm convinced that one more bad choice or bad bit of luck will tip them right over the edge into some sort of abyss, with potentially disastrous consequences for them and/or the people around them.

I don't want to play with those people, but they are everywhere. And they are not always easy to spot right away. Sometimes you only realize how bad things are three or four hours into the game. And maybe only after you or others have relieved them of a buy-in or two. I hope that the empathy which helps make me a good poker player never deserts me. I do not wish to be blind or indifferent to the suffering of others.

Tonight, for the second time in a week, I found myself feeling uncomfortable about some of the other players in the game. I no longer wanted to participate in what looked like a trainwreck in progress. In both cases, I could have stayed and undoubtedly continued to prosper in monetary terms. Instead, I bowed out, while suggesting to the individuals still there that it might be wise to stop. In one case, last Saturday, they agreed and the game came to an end. This evening, however, I left the game still roaring, and the various conflagrations were actively being stoked. It didn't look good to me, and I departed ~ once again taking a friend aside (Mr. Actuary) and telling him I had a bad feeling about the situation. But he had dollar signs in his eyes and didn't want to quit; his greed was impairing his judgment, in my view, as badly as compulsion was twisting the behavior of some of the other players.

I do not want to be on either side of that equation. This is why I like tournaments: defined buy-ins essentially mean a built-in stop-loss. Nobody with the merest modicum of common sense is going broke playing in a tournament.

Cash games are another matter, and this is why, when all is said and done, I prefer to play cash in a casino. Casino play has overhead associated with it. You have to deliberately GO to a casino. You have to be prepared to pay a rake. You probably are paying for food and drink and lodging. You are actively going there to engage in gambling activity, and you know it's going to cost you something. The vast majority of people playing poker in a casino know what they are there for, and they can afford it. Yes, you'll run into the degenerates, the people who are desperate or mentally ill, but they are easier to spot and they are very distinctly a small minority. If I find myself at a table with such a person, I will generally seek to move.

I am well aware that avoiding the problem doesn't solve it; just because I'm not contributing to it directly doesn't mean it isn't still there. Those folks are, to some extent, seeking out their own destruction. I can't fix them, but I can at least do my best not to exacerbate their troubles.

I am okay (more than okay) with not profiting as much as I might otherwise, as a result.

Is any of this a reason to condemn poker playing, or gambling in general, to the point where it should be anathema to an ethical person?

I don't think so, in much the same way that I don't think that most things consenting adults do which are fine and fun in moderation but dangerous in excess should be banned, prohibited, or shunned. Properly handled regulation, licensing, and even taxation could be good ways to fund necessary health or rehabilitation measures for those who, for one reason or another, devolve into a bad state as a result of their gambling. I believe it is possible to play responsibly and, by example and by advocacy, to help others to play responsibly. Driving it underground through legal sanctions only, ultimately, makes things worse for people who are already troubled. The libertarian in me also believes that people shouldn't be entirely sheltered from the consequences of their own choices and actions.

Is it the best and most ethical way to spend one's life?

Definitely not. Aside from the minor benefit of facilitating the redistribution of wealth from less to more intelligent (for several different definitions of that term) people, poker-playing has no redeeming social value whatsoever. Its entertainment value is, at best, morally neutral. For those who play a lot ~ like me ~ I believe it's imperative to participate in some kind of really morally constructive activity to bring balance to our lives. I am on the lookout to add something like that to my life in a deliberate, well-organized way.

Entitlement

Words to live by.

You are not entitled to play bad just because they are playing bad. You are not entitled to tilt on the grounds that anyone would tilt after the terrible luck you've had. You are not entitled to play a marginal hand as a reward for folding correctly before the flop many times in a row. You are not entitled to call all the way when you are beat, just because you have a big pair in the hole. And no matter how good you play, or how bad they play, you are not entitled to win. If you have time and money, you are entitled to a seat at the table. That is all.

~ Elements of Poker, by Tommy Angelo, p. 75

What must it be like?

Procrastinating at Starbucks this afternoon, I'm sitting near this
young lady. (Have I mentioned how much I love my iPhone?) You can't
tell from this picture, but she's studying for the GREs. She's also
the epitome of "hot." Blonde, slim, full-breasted, snub-nosed, creamy-
tan perfect skin, chicly-garbed, impeccably groomed right down to her
pink pedicured toenails.

I can't imagine how different her experience of social interactions,
particularly with men, must routinely be from mine. I could envy her
youth and physical perfection, but on some odd level I'm profoundly
grateful that my life has never been complicated by being a living
embodiment of a cultural obsession.

Anticipatory Nostalgia

I had my first pang tonight. Coming into the studio, smelling that peculiar combination of old dried clay and plaster dust, it suddenly came home to me how unique, how irreproducible this place is ~ and how there will never be anything like it in my life again. I wonder if, in selling this place, I am somehow betraying a whole way of life, one rhat I myself perhaps gave up on too easily.

Tomorrow will be the first of several days of throwing things out ~ it's going to be a veritable orgy of discardation. And I'll feel the pain of it as of knives whose tips have been dipped in resentment.

Who am I? What am I doing? What will I become?

Doubt & the Devil

There's nothing like having actually put in an application for an M.Div program to cause every rational doubt you've ever had about a Call to come surging to the surface. Not to mention the irrational ones.

Assessing the current state of my life, which is not pretty, I have to say that it would be convenient to lay it all at the foot of some external evil trying to foil my progress toward God and service to God. I don't think that's what's going on though. I think that I've got a lot on my plate and the stress caused by my busy-ness is compounded by a significant underlying, but well-masked, bout of depression.

I am: taking two seminary courses; clumsily juggling a daunting workload; having first dates with strangers I meet through an online dating service; trying to cope with family stuff. And somewhere in there, I've got the black dog lurking. It's not the best situation.

Last night, in amongst some malformed dreams, I received some kind of message — whether from God or from my subconscious, you be the judge. I woke up thinking this way... It occurred to me that very few people ever have the notion that they are meant to be ordained. And that of those that do, very few are quite sure about it all the time.

If only those who are sure go forward, there will certainly never be enough ordained persons to sustain any institutional church. Should all institutional churches die? (I don't think so, although I suppose an argument could be made for it.)

I think about the conversations I've had lately — at my apartment building's front desk, over a poker table, in a noisy bar — with people who are curious about theology, who want to understand Christianity, who are clearly if perhaps not consciously hungry and thirsty for a live-giving faith. I have been (I still am, perhaps) in their shoes. They are so afraid of being judged and condemned for thinking about these matters.

I think maybe I have something to offer. I think maybe that with more thought, prayer, education, and the approval (deus volente) of my institutional church, I might have something really different to offer as an ordained person. I am never going to be a cookie-cutter representative of the faith.

Maybe that's a good thing.

Adam & Eve Under Glass

Adam and Eve had lived in a bell jar on my parents' fireplace mantel as long as I could remember. Now they live on top of the bookcase holding my theology library.

The fruit of the tree of knowledge, indeed.

These are not the gifts You are looking for...

Setting aside all modesty, I must say that there are number of things I'm quite good at. (I'll spare you the enumeration of my talents, such as they are.)

All my life, I was led to believe that my gifts would tell me who I was supposed to be, and what I was supposed to do with my life.

It seems to me now, in the end, that it is my failures and my weaknesses that are teaching me where I am to go. God lavished me with a variety of capabilities and favorable circumstances, and in my haphazard fashion I have pursued one avenue after another, trying to derive meaning and satisfaction from the exercise of my strengths.

But it seems those obvious paths are not the ones that lead me on the right road. I need to pay more attention to the dangerously untrod outback of my inner territory, where the Spirit has been whispering subversive and counterintuitive psalms to my soul.

The Hound of Heaven

Sometimes I do feel as if I'm the victim of an elaborate conspiracy.

Today I ran into a couple who own one of the other condos in my Dad's brownstone. They live in Washington too, and go to my church. They insisted upon taking me out to lunch, and getting me to tell them what was going on in my life.

They asked me about my classes at WTS. The husband zeroed in on the topic like a laser beam, and wouldn't let it go. "That's where you heart is, isn't it?"

I explained the many complications of my circumstance: financial, diocesan, chronological, personal.

"Aren't you ready to make a change?" he asked me. Oh if he only knew just exactly how ready; I'm in the throes of another work nightmare.

Their enthusiasm on my behalf seems to come out of nowhere. Do you think if I stuck my fingers in my ears and said "la-la-la-la-la" very loudly, I could avoid hearing this message again and again?

[P.S. The last word in depravity: using your Theology course readings as procrastination fodder. I have no shame.]

Why I do it

I have a sick, sick pattern of procrastination. I put off big tasks until the very last minute, when — in an increasingly exhausting orgy of brinksmanship — I make a mad dash for the finish line. It's a stupid and self-destructive habit, and if I had an ounce of maturity and real self-esteem I wouldn't do it.

But I do do it.

And last night, at three in the morning I finally understood why. I had finished my latest Gospels paper, and was blearily brushing my teeth in the bathroom. Suddenly I realized that I needed to add one more paragraph to the essay, one that would complete the assignment more satisfactorily and actually provide a spark of creativity and original thinking that I'd felt was utterly missing from the current version. I woke the computer from sleep, typed the paragraph, and reprinted the last two pages.

And I had the Rush. That rush where I said to myself, in my bruised and debilitated state of mental and physical overextension: "Damn, I'm good."

It doesn't matter how accurate or delusional this assessment is. What matters is how I feel in that moment, the glowing sensation of validation, however temporary (and it is always temporary). How hungry I am for that approval! And oh how much I am willing to put myself through in order to experience it, however briefly....

Darkness rolling in

It's something of a miracle that I haven't been long since swamped, given the positive shitstorm of miserable stuff that's been going on lately.

Nevertheless, today is the first day in a while that the fringe of depression is tangible along all my nerves. I will do what I can to avoid being utterly enshrouded. But already my senses are stifled, and I can feel the hopeful tatters of joy blowing out of my grasp. Already I'd like to sleep for a month.

I don't know which is worse: seeing it coming, or not seeing it coming.

Sleep? Sleep is for sissies!

We don't need no stinkin' sleep!

OMG, I once again yanked the poor, abused, metaphorical bunny out of the hat, finessing the equivalent of three weeks' worth of reading and writing in about 16 hours of sustained effort. Usually the procrastination is caused by my stupid adolescent psychology; this time I actually had circumstances that made it very hard to get anything done at all.

But I tell you: I am too damned old for this all-nighter crap. I am running on fumes right now, and worried that I've undone all the good antibiotic action that's pushed back my illness in the last couple of days.

Oh, and I've got to squirt out another quickie (ooo, that sounds nasty) in time for my Theology class tomorrow. Wheeeeee!

Oy.

Some things are more important than others

I am exhausted. Physically, yes, but even more so emotionally.

Is the life and death of a seven-month-old kitten more important than my second New Testament: Gospels paper? I don't know; but I do know that I haven't had even a scrap of the wherewithal to get going on it up to now, and that it ain't gonna happen tonight either.

That will leave me tomorrow to produce it in. Oh swell. Should I pull an all-nighter just when the antibiotics are starting to kick in? (I finally went to see a doctor; I now have pills that cost eleven dollars apiece, if you can believe it.)

See Pascale. See Pascale weep. See Pascale's academic reputation go down the tubes. Slide, Pascale, slide. It's a slippery slope, but going downhill isn't as easy as it looks.