Saturday 20 June 2009

Everyone's a winner

Luck and religion, I reckon, go pretty much hand in hand. They're both completely nebulous concepts, you can neither see nor interact directly with luck or your chosen deity(ies), but they're terrifically powerful concepts that, for many of us, are a tremendous source of strength.
Let's look at this in depth:
Religion normally centres around the worship of one of more figures which are the personification of certain concepts. Like Christianity, God isn't any one thing, he's a combination of 3, each of which kind of represent all that's good about humanity. Luck tends to be given an idea of a physcial form, too, in the form of the Lady.
Religion rarely works when you appeal to it directly. Luck is much the same.
Religion is far more powerful is you receive something that appears to be as a direct result of your worship when you're really in need. If you pray for an ailing relative and they recover, it's miraculous, but if you pray that it won't rain on the day of your trip to the beach, it's just a nice coincidence. Likewise with luck, getting a free coke from the vending machine's pretty groovy, but having your number come up on your last stack of chips on the roulette wheel is amazing.
Luck and religion are only really efective if you believe. Faith is key. If you don't truly believe, it's easy to pass off good fortune or apparent divine intervention as coincidence.
Being overly reliant and vocal on the subject of luck or religion is an instant ticket into and out of some social circles.
A whole lot of people have made a whole lot of money out of capitalising on people's needs in this area.
Both have prayers. Gamblers will offer up bargains and pleas, as will the most devout worshipper in times of crisis.

Is luck, fortune, fate, whatever you call it a kind of religion in itself? One with no concept of an afterlife, one eternally devoted to the now, to the fragile balance of hope and limitless despair?
This one's really been interesting me, lately.