Lottery Ticket Society
Ultra-hyperbolic discounting & conflating money with fulfilment
In the last Self-Care Supremacy article, Romanticise your Life, we talked about how managing fear and believing can get you very far in life.
Today’s article is about a flawed conception plaguing the modern masses, it always existed, but it is now more prevalent.
That money today has much less value than “money today” years ago — and if it has no value then what’s the point in saving it?
They rationalise that it’s only value is in spending it all now — all part of a failing attempt to get the things we think we want.
THE SUPERFICIAL NOW
But the obsession with the NOW does not only carry financial-economic repercussions — it also has existential ones, affecting how we understand our identity, the relationship with the self and how we experience life in general.
People today, especially post-COVID, don’t value creating something over decades. They don’t value substance or overcoming adversity.1
They value the short term. It’s all about the now. And there’s a lot of value being assigned on the readily apparent and the superficial — rather than the substantial.2
Easy example is: they care about money and (financial) power, but they don’t care about how you got it — as long as you have it.
LOTTERY TICKET LIFESTYLE
And if you scratch a few lottery tickets and you win something, they use that hindsight, that history to say, it worked for me — do this, do that.
The people who survived that stupidly-high-risk thing (i.e. their lottery ticket won!) are the ones who are in the podcasts and in the beach clubs talking about how they made it.
The people who didn’t survive (i.e. their lottery ticket lost!) are either literally dead or metaphorically dead, and they’re not going to share their experience.
But even if they do share it — no one cares what a “loser” has to say.
We only care what “winners” have to say.3
THE ETERNAL NOW
There is a better now than the superficial now — the eternal now.
“Wherever you are be there.”
This is of major importance today with attention merchants and other technological leeches thieving away our capacities to focus, reason and create.
But even more than that, as our perceptions of value, success and fulfilment shift — so do the things we want.
When you start to live the present with fullness, serenity and fulfilment — the former wanting of false trappings of success starts to diminish in value.
🤔: “Why do I want these things?”
💡: “In fact, I don’t.”
WHO NEEDS TO HEAR THIS
Forward this article to people who comply with at least one of the below.
Inability to put the past, present and future into perspective.
Puts excessive value on the superficial now.
Unable or unwilling to delay gratification in achieving something.
Thinks money is the solution to all their problems.
The concept of Delaying Gratification from The Road Less Travelled is more rare today than it was when Scott Peck wrote the book.
Goes without saying that the proliferation of social media and short-form content has contributed to this phenomenon.
It’s called Survivorship Bias. https://stephenlynch.net/survivorship-bias-dont-believe-the-hype/
This framing of survivorship bias in the context of risk-taking mindsets is realy sharp. The contrast between the superficial now and the eternal now adds a philosophical layer that most discussions on delayed gratification miss completely. I've noticed in fintech how people chase lottery-ticket outcomes while ignoring compound strategies, and this articel made me rethink why that pattern is so persistent.