Ever since the launch of the computerized lottery, Taiwan's media have given a back seat to tabloid news and sex scandals in favor of all manner of stories about lottery madness. Day after day, newspapers are filled with reports about the many weird, wonderful methods of finding lucky lotto numbers.
Some skip meals and sleep in a restless search for the numbers. The birthdays of celebrities, the death dates of relatives and the scenes of car accidents have all been treated as clues.
Over the past few days, lucky places to purchase lottery tickets have become the center of the public frenzy. The areas flooded during Typhoon Nari have become popular sites for such purchases because "water brings fortune" (遇水則發), according to a Chinese saying.
Contemporary psychiatry recognizes a condition known as pathological gambling. It is characterized by a compulsive desire to gamble. The pathological gambling phenomenon in Taiwan is already causing grave social and economic harm. In their lotto frenzy, many people are neglecting both their work and their children. Many may even be troubled by apparent emotional problems, such as anxiety, depression and insomnia.
Those afflicted with pathological gambling may be a small minority, but it appears, unfortunately, that many more people adopt unhealthy attitudes toward buying lottery tickets. Such people run a higher risk of becoming pathological gamblers than people in general.
Whether collective lottery gambling has affected the health of our entire society is an issue that demands attention. The late US psychiatrist Ernest Gruenberg devised the theory of socially-shared psychopathology, stating that in an organic society, certain sick and unhealthy ideas or implications are communicable, which can result in their being emulated. Typical examples include suicide, drug abuse and collective voyeurism. The phenomenon, which falls into the research category of psychiatric epidemiology, spreads even faster in modern societies with thriving mass media. The lottery fever of recent weeks is a telling example.
Lottery fever reveals the serious sickness in Taiwanese society. First of all, it exposes the Taiwanese people's tendency toward speculative behavior, as well as their opportunism. Secondly, it reflects the fact that even in Taiwan's highly educated society, the public remains superstitious and unscientific. Superstition and gambling also occur in Western societies but are mostly confined to specific minorities, rarely expanding to the level of a national movement.
Some have emphasized that profits from lottery ticket sales can contribute to social welfare. It is disturbing, however, that they neglect the emerging negative social consequences.
If the national lottery movement is essentially a socially-shared psychopathology, the social losses which it will cause are perhaps beyond the imagination of the economic and financial experts in the new Cabinet, which has vowed to boost the nation's economy. Highly pervasive superstition and speculation erodes the foundation of society, results in a poor quality of life, and creates family problems and crimes, while ill-health leads to reduced productivity and economic loss.
The lottery craze shows the fragile psychological foundations of Taiwanese society. The national lottery movement, I am afraid, has once again exposed the social psychopathology developed over 50 years in Taiwan. How can we educate our people in such a way as to eliminate their unscientific, selfish, vulgar, speculative and cowardly characteristics formed under 50 years of authoritarian rule? Can we do so by relying on Harry Potter or the Gladiator?
Andrew Cheng is a researcher at the Institute of Biomedical Sciences at Academia Sinica.
Translated by Jackie Lin
The gutting of Voice of America (VOA) and Radio Free Asia (RFA) by US President Donald Trump’s administration poses a serious threat to the global voice of freedom, particularly for those living under authoritarian regimes such as China. The US — hailed as the model of liberal democracy — has the moral responsibility to uphold the values it champions. In undermining these institutions, the US risks diminishing its “soft power,” a pivotal pillar of its global influence. VOA Tibetan and RFA Tibetan played an enormous role in promoting the strong image of the US in and outside Tibet. On VOA Tibetan,
Former minister of culture Lung Ying-tai (龍應台) has long wielded influence through the power of words. Her articles once served as a moral compass for a society in transition. However, as her April 1 guest article in the New York Times, “The Clock Is Ticking for Taiwan,” makes all too clear, even celebrated prose can mislead when romanticism clouds political judgement. Lung crafts a narrative that is less an analysis of Taiwan’s geopolitical reality than an exercise in wistful nostalgia. As political scientists and international relations academics, we believe it is crucial to correct the misconceptions embedded in her article,
Sung Chien-liang (宋建樑), the leader of the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) efforts to recall Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Lee Kun-cheng (李坤城), caused a national outrage and drew diplomatic condemnation on Tuesday after he arrived at the New Taipei City District Prosecutors’ Office dressed in a Nazi uniform. Sung performed a Nazi salute and carried a copy of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf as he arrived to be questioned over allegations of signature forgery in the recall petition. The KMT’s response to the incident has shown a striking lack of contrition and decency. Rather than apologizing and distancing itself from Sung’s actions,
US President Trump weighed into the state of America’s semiconductor manufacturing when he declared, “They [Taiwan] stole it from us. They took it from us, and I don’t blame them. I give them credit.” At a prior White House event President Trump hosted TSMC chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家), head of the world’s largest and most advanced chip manufacturer, to announce a commitment to invest US$100 billion in America. The president then shifted his previously critical rhetoric on Taiwan and put off tariffs on its chips. Now we learn that the Trump Administration is conducting a “trade investigation” on semiconductors which
RSS