3 ms·

You (and I) have the luxury of irrelevance and thus can be flippant in our opinions... so I see your point but if I were actually in charge of a community and a

You (and I) have the luxury of irrelevance and thus can be flippant in our opinions... so I see your point but if I were actually in charge of a community and a significant percent of my small community was diseased with addiction to gambling, banning playing cards seems pretty tame and reasonable.

sjsdaiuasgdia 2y ago
Pretty ineffective, though. You don't need playing cards to gamble. The cards and the games that use them bring some established context and process which is certainly convenient, but they're not required to gamble. If people want to gamble, they'll tend to find a way. All you really need is 2 or more participants and an outcome to observe. Two shepherds watching a flock of sheep can gamble between themselves on which side of the field the sheep will mostly be on at mid-day. For my own perspective as someone who did grow up in a "no playing cards" religious group, it didn't help much regarding gambling. My siblings and I made wagers on random things all the time, including card games we made up ourselves with Rook decks. The "evil" connotation did have some particular effects, personally. I remember around age 8 or so, some classmates with a standard card deck taught me how to play "Go Fish". No wagers, just playing the game. I was still apprehensive to join the game, and I spent the rest of the day alternating between being afraid of my parents finding out and worrying that my soul had been damned.
- inanutshellus 2y ago
  It's 1880. you're the mayor of a small town of 300 people and two girls have been sold by their families to pay a gambling debt. A mother appears in front of you, with haunted eyes and a worry-worn handkerchief in hand. "You cannot save those two missing girls, but you have to stop this from happening again! Help those that cannot help themselves." What do you do, Mayor Sjsdaiuasgdia? My guess? exactly what rational people did * Be vocal about the worst-case scenario * Criticize those that ignore the warnings * Ostracize those that ignore the criticism * Do your level best to discourage "gateway" behavior as best you can but maybe they're fools. What would you have done? Tell us, Mayor Sjsdaiuasgdia!
  - sjsdaiuasgdia 2y ago
    Maybe I'd give a little thought to why selling their daughters was or seemed like the only solution to those families. And I'd definitely want to track down and prosecute the people who are going around buying children. I don't disagree with any of your bullets, but none of those bullets actually require saying "playing cards are evil." They all work just as well with a theme of "Gambling can be fun, but it's addictive, and you might not know you've lost control til it's too late."
  - jollyllama 2y ago
    Same thing that's done nowadays, steer the riled-up citizens to label the establishments where gambling takes place as nuisance properties shut them down.
pessimizer 2y ago
Not if you allowed them instead to play poker for money with Rook cards.

sjsdaiuasgdia 2y ago

Pretty ineffective, though. You don't need playing cards to gamble. The cards and the games that use them bring some established context and process which is certainly convenient, but they're not required to gamble. If people want to gamble, they'll tend to find a way. All you really need is 2 or more participants and an outcome to observe. Two shepherds watching a flock of sheep can gamble between themselves on which side of the field the sheep will mostly be on at mid-day. For my own perspective as someone who did grow up in a "no playing cards" religious group, it didn't help much regarding gambling. My siblings and I made wagers on random things all the time, including card games we made up ourselves with Rook decks. The "evil" connotation did have some particular effects, personally. I remember around age 8 or so, some classmates with a standard card deck taught me how to play "Go Fish". No wagers, just playing the game. I was still apprehensive to join the game, and I spent the rest of the day alternating between being afraid of my parents finding out and worrying that my soul had been damned.

inanutshellus 2y ago
It's 1880. you're the mayor of a small town of 300 people and two girls have been sold by their families to pay a gambling debt. A mother appears in front of you, with haunted eyes and a worry-worn handkerchief in hand. "You cannot save those two missing girls, but you have to stop this from happening again! Help those that cannot help themselves." What do you do, Mayor Sjsdaiuasgdia? My guess? exactly what rational people did * Be vocal about the worst-case scenario * Criticize those that ignore the warnings * Ostracize those that ignore the criticism * Do your level best to discourage "gateway" behavior as best you can but maybe they're fools. What would you have done? Tell us, Mayor Sjsdaiuasgdia!
- sjsdaiuasgdia 2y ago
  Maybe I'd give a little thought to why selling their daughters was or seemed like the only solution to those families. And I'd definitely want to track down and prosecute the people who are going around buying children. I don't disagree with any of your bullets, but none of those bullets actually require saying "playing cards are evil." They all work just as well with a theme of "Gambling can be fun, but it's addictive, and you might not know you've lost control til it's too late."
- jollyllama 2y ago
  Same thing that's done nowadays, steer the riled-up citizens to label the establishments where gambling takes place as nuisance properties shut them down.

pessimizer 2y ago

Not if you allowed them instead to play poker for money with Rook cards.