The Lottery – Shirley Jackson (1948)
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Why one small American town won’t stop stoning its residents to death -https://archiveofourown.org/works/73396436?view_adult=true
Now looking back, I don’t think this story would scar me as much anymore. But I still don’t see the point it. Is it an allegory for something deeper than what it is. I still don’t like it much anymore!
What are the lotteries you don't see, because you're used to them, and they're just part of how the world works, like this one is to the people in the story?
If you're looking, you can find them. But it's also as uncomfortable to find them in real life as it is to read the story. So, most of us are happy to keep some other ideas between us and these lotteries. Those people just didn't do the right things. They should have been more careful, more prepared, more like the people who didn't get stoned. They should have done it the right way. They should have known their place. And if it's their time, well, what are you gonna do, mondays amirite?
And if that's true, then you can be safe because you will do the right things. And nobody has to go to the bother of persuading a society with any changes at the margins on which it sacrifices random people.
Could you give us a hint?
Innocent bystanders of gang violence.
Factory workers killed by industrial machinery.
That chemical tank in Los Angeles that is about to explode.
Woman in Arkansas with ectopic pregnancy. (Abortion is illegal in Arkansas.)
Now you think of one.
None of your other examples are comparable to the story. They're not deliberate deaths caused by adherence to some tradition. They wouldn't be prevented if people "just stopped doing it". They're accidents and violence, that we've taken reasonable steps to prevent (traffic laws, car safety standards, the criminal justice system, worker safety laws,...), but haven't been 100% successful.
That's from this morning, reported in ProPublica.
https://www.propublica.org/article/arkansas-abortion-ban-mis...
Giving examples of specific "lotteries" I see is just as likely to activate those psychological mechanisms I talked about (or a partisan frame) as it is to open anyone's eyes.
If you want hints, though, watch for where you see the psychological mechanisms in yourself or others. "Those people just didn't do the right things. They should have been more careful, more prepared, more like the people who didn't get stoned. They should have done it the right way. They should have known their place. And if it's their time, well, what are you gonna do, mondays amirite?"
If you hear someone saying something like that, if you find yourself saying it... interrogate that. There may sometimes be real truth to it. But ask yourself: is that really all there is to it? Does the world have to be that way? If it were your child who "drew the lot", would you be satisfied?
Like "they didn't prepare correctly" or "they didn't do the right things" or "mondays amirite" there may even be cases where it's true, and a robust analysis of lottery situations sometimes reveals local maxima or tradeoffs that are tough to shake.
But they can also be spoken with a post-hoc resignation that discourages the very analysis that might confirm them... because such an analysis might also disaffirm them.
One question to ask is whether a way of addressing a "lottery" encourages you to stop analysis and reflection, or to work your way through analysis and reflection.
Your prose could also be improved by omitting the rude remarks.
https://www.amazon.com/Regulation-Pharmaceutical-Innovation-...
https://www.amazon.com/Overdose-Government-Regulation-Pharma...
Aviation engines still use leaded gas for general aviation due to regulations that make it impractical to redesign the engines.
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/leaded-gas-wa...
For more information, google "why do cessna engines still use leaded gas?"
The market for effective drugs is global. FDA regulations have a significant but not that burdensome influence on drug discovery. At the other end, the opioid epidemic is a demonstration of just how many deaths can result from insufficient regulation of just a single drug family.
Which is why FDA regulations vs zero regulation have saved vastly more lives than they cost. Conservative estimates put it somewhere in the 2 orders of magnitude range.
The first book I linked to did the research and showed otherwise. The key aspect usually not admitted is the deaths caused by drugs not developed due to costly regulations.
As to the leaded gas issue, that’s a function of less strict regulations allowing unleaded gas. Many countries have banned it without issue.
As for leaded gas, the problem was changing the engine designs would require recertification so expensive that people just keep using 1960s engine designs.
Regulations have an effect of stifling new development - in drugs and airplane engines.
As for drugs, there is a way out. Allow legally consenting adults the right to sign a piece of paper stating that they understand that drug X is not approved by the FDA and they take it at their own risk.
You say that as if no such study exists. They do and the costs are known to reasonable levels of accuracy, what’s generally excluded is the benefit of drug regulations. Regulations on opioids alone (granted there’s a lot of opioids) have saved million of American lives since that book was published, but it’s easy to exclude such numbers if you want to make regulations look bad.
> As for leaded gas, the problem was changing the engine designs would require recertification so expensive that people just keep using 1960s engine designs.
Nope, ~80% of existing light aircraft in the US can 100% legally fly on unleaded gasoline. This isn’t a technical problem or the burden of regulations. This is a group of people that didn’t want to spend money because the transition isn’t free.
Opioids were approved by the FDA, and were by prescription only.
How did your studies account for drugs never developed? The rate of new drug development dropped drastically after the 1962 Amendments.
By prescription only is a regulation. Without that Coca-Cola would still have coca leaves.
> drugs never developed
The way you get good data on that is to look at the actual drug discovery process and how decisions are made.
Automated in vitro testing has been used, but the number of potential compounds make that impractical even with essentially zero regulation at that point. Once you get down to some actual evidence for a drug funding is surprisingly plentiful. The often quoted 2 billion per drug includes all the failures, for any given candidate the cost is low at every individual stage until you have something with significant promise. Which makes sense as the average drug is worth vastly more than 2 billion so at every stage further investment looks viable.
What about the lives saved by crappy unsafe drugs coming to an unregulated market, either because they're snake oil / ineffective but marketed as potent, or because they're actively harmful, or non properly tested?
As for the book suggestions: free market economists in favor of deregulation? Color me surprised!
1. Read a straight horror story, it's quite a surprising twist at the end
2. A critique on the senselessness of following tradition just for the sake of it -- the way a society can just go along with something without really understanding why
3. The banality of evil, and how it can often look like something totally ordinary, rather than some nefarious demon
I loved it when I first read it -- it truly shocked it in middle school and I still have a visceral feeling when thinking about it many years later
I've always taken it to be a critique of the draft, aka "the lottery."
I remember a question in English class asking what I think this could be about given the context that it was right after the war.
Usually quotes are used to question something another person or other people say so I would think you’d quote “classics” or “classics of American literature” to question this story actually being a classic as many other people might say.
Putting quotes on the word “the” in this context seems to be for emphasis and I’ve seen this numerous times with non-native speakers.
If you are a native speaker I don’t mean to be rude, I’m just curious.
In this case, he uses them for emphasis, like one would write "it's considered one of THE classics".
The point is any society and micro-society works like that in many cases. Doesn't have to be the specific form in the story (don't want to spoilt it for others).
Can we imagine a world where we can question everything? Where we have the means to do so?
The Lottery parallels plenty of other works - of the banality of evil. Of how we can turn to cruelty through our traditions and patterns. But can we imagine a future where we create space to ask questions? Constantly?
Reminds me of circumcision. Nobody questioning, just treating it as a standard thing to torture babies.
If there is one thing that drives me nuts about old literature, it is how verbose authors seems to be.
Looking at the aesthetics of the era, there is just so much frivolity and extraneous flourish. Clean lines and minimalism are avant garde. Yuck.
I got shit to do. Art doesn't need to waste my time unnecessarily.
A, yes, how efficient to denounce anything that's not mere plot driving dialogue as "pointless detail".
>Looking at the aesthetics of the era, there is just so much frivolity and extraneous flourish. Clean lines and minimalism are avant garde. Yuck.
Frivolity. Humanity. Literature that's not the equivalent of an IKEA furnished Airbnb. How dare they!