Last night I got hung up on a game show on TV – it was called “The wall”. I had never seen it before and was curious as to its schema. In essence it is a trivia show with a contraption like a pin ball machine, except the user cannot influence the trajectory of the ball once it enters the pin maze. The machine randomly defines monetary prizes that can be positive or negative depending on the correctness of the participants’ answer. Other than their answers the users can also influence the stakes by selecting the number of balls allowed to trickle down. In one such instance one of the players justified the risk of giving up a sizable monetary balance for the opportunity to win a million dollars with a statement “This is the American Dream after all” – and so he went for it.
My recollection of the American Dream was somewhat different – here achieving success in life through hard work and persistence and leveraging the opportunities of free enterprise to get ahead independent of one’s upbringing and resources. The foundation of this phrase is captured in the declaration of independence and the constitution and as I found out it was popularized by the author James Truslow Adams during the Great Depression in 1931. So, gambling for a fortune was not in the picture back then! Nowadays billboards for casinos, lotteries and betting outlets look to lure people into this direction all the time. I still think the odds are with the original definition!
(Two notes – First the bet in the game show did not pay off. Second, the participants in the show I watched had good jobs in their daily lives, a growing family and in fact were selected to be on the show for their selfless help to their neighbors during a disaster.)