“just one more hit…man, one more f*cking hit….”
- very vegas famous last words of the double entendre variety.

What is it that attracts people to online poker? I have had several years now to reflect upon this very question, and after much deep introspection, I honestly believe the answer is: fluoridation.

Ok, that random reference was an homage to Stanley Kubrick – an inspiring figure whose mentally delicate patterns have enhanced our collective pallet of movie colourfulness for ever…fluoridation. Continuing with the Kubrick motif, if ‘A Clockwork Orange’ were done today, I think there would have to be a scene, a vice, a redemption related to an All-In moment…Viddy well medium pocket pairs…viddy well.

Poker is the tip of a larger iceberg – one which is rooted in hope and commercialism.
Of all the gmabling choices available today, it is the one where ‘skill’ is a significant factor. This post will not outline the various skills involved (some of which – such as deception – are not exactly admirable). There is a sense of satisfaction – competitive success “singing in the rain” feeling when one wins. In my ramshackle case, delusion of skill-over-luck did not get smashed after the ignominious ‘river’ stole many a pot from my humble possession.

“We humans are the victims of an asymmetry in the perception of random events. We attribute our successes to our skills, and our failures to external events outside our control, namely to randomness. We feel responsible for the good stuff, but not for the bad. This causes us to think that we are better than others at whatever we do for a living. Nine-four percent of Swedes believe that their driving skills put them in the top 50 percent of Swedish drivers; 84 percent of Frenchmen feel that their lovemaking abilities put them in the top half of French lovers.”
-Nassim Nicholas Taleb, “The Black Swan”

Poker plays our egoes like a violin. It tempts us like a mermaid, and delivers us slowly into the depths of infernal Hell. Our man-wiring pretty much dictates a good percentage of us will try the game at least a couple of times…and some of us will continuously return for the proverbial beating. Sometimes it feels good to bleed…it’s a feeling…and I suppose that’s something. Besides, it’s in our wiring to get ‘em back. Man, if I didn’t know any better, I’d say this Online Poker thing is pure money making machine….hmmmm I wonder if the stock market works the same way.

Helene Beck Deutch: 1906 – 2007. Photographer in 1930s and ’40s
…
Born in Debrecen, Hungary, she grew up in the Transylvania town of Nagyvarad, which was later annexed by Romania and renamed Oradea. Mrs. Deutch moved with her family in 1924 to Paris, where she studied photography at the Sorbonne.
Later, she became a photographic assistant at Vogue in Paris, then found work as a commercial photographer with a French printing firm.
In 1931 in Paris, she married sculptor Stephen Deutch, who also had emigrated from Hungary. Unable to earn a living from his sculpture, he learned photography from his wife, according to their daughter Annick Smith.

Transylvanian Romanians (and Germans) voted to join with the Romanian kingdom in 1918 – mainly due to the institutionalized racism that the Magyar minority imposed upon the majority population. This “Magyarization” was particularly brutal after the establishment of the dual monarchy in 1867 – where Austrian influence in the region offically faded. Similar injustices were experienced by other people who were ruled by the minority Hungarians in their ethnic homelands – Slovakians, Serbians, and to some extent Croatians.

I hope there is no racist agenda behind your research, and that your writing simply reflects a lack of adequate resources at the Tribune.

-NewsJunkie

Is it inconceivable to imagine further escalation of this tension? After all, actions usually beget reactions. European nationalism had been on the decline since Jeorg Haider and Jean Marie Le Pen first made headlines over a decade ago. I am sure the ‘mainstream’ secular Europeans are intent on defending secularism against Islam, just as they did and continue to do against the Vatican. No doubt the long standing xenophobic elements in Europe will try and pounce on this collective mood, to raise their political stock.

And what will Canada do if the festering anger and economic dysfunction within much of the Muslim world results in some coordinated terrorist attacks against certain European Allies? Are we as a nation even psychologically prepared to deal with such attacks and the mass celebrations likely to follow? In true Canadian spirit, we would likely find a way to maintain the moral position and continue to follow the mantra of fighting international terrorism. But what if such an attack was state sponsored or condoned? Would Canada be prepared to engage any radical Middle Eastern country that attacked a fellow NATO member through terrorist strikes? Perhaps we should do more to diffuse the situation now in the great tradition of Canadian Diplomacy. Today’s interconnected world was established largely under a Western post WWII paradigm – in which Canada’s place was clearly defined. What will happen if a radicalized Muslim world wants to change the rules?

Perhaps the answer does not lie within the powder keg of today’s angry Muslim world, but rather in the nature of human behaviour itself.

Is it an insult to any religion, including Islam, if a non-believer says or draws something out of ignorance? How about atheistic conviction? In some ways, being offended insinuates that everyone must accept an imposed set of moral values (as defined by a given religious belief system).

The growing tension can be traced to the following point of conflict: different groups may have different moral values. And some groups feel their values are supreme.

However, this over-simplification belies the complexity of the violent reactions around the world. Why are we seeing churches, flags and embassies burned? Do Muslims genuinely feel they are under attack? Is the existence of non-religious secular societies a threat to any religious theocracy? The answer is probably yes to the latter two questions.

Belligerence is a characteristic that you can find in many places and on many levels. In nature, certain creatures are left alone because would be attackers know the consequences of a confrontation. A great example is the skunk – size advantage does not alleviate the fear of having several days of tomato juice baths. Belligerence is effective.

To see how collective destructive behaviour is a product of the human experience, we need look no further than a typical schoolyard bullying episode. Gradually increasing the scale, there are many (too many) cases of ‘groups’ feeling and acting out aggression towards other groups. Yugoslavia in the 1990’s, Sudan today, the American experience with Native, African, and immigrant Americans, L.A gang wars, and gun violence in any major city where one group of youth has to make a ‘statement’ against another.

Does Islam promote belligerence? As with Christianity, Islam was at least partly spread with the sword, but proselytizing through force (in the name of any religion) has likely seen its heyday. That said, if we isolate the passion behind mass collective feelings, we can deduce a pattern. Large-scale violence for a cause (religious, or ideological) is nothing new. Has the Muslim world collectively decided that violence and terror somehow is an effective deterrent against competing cultural ideologies? Is this a defensive strategy? I am certain that the majority does not engage in violence or terror, but it is likely that mainstream attitudes do hold sympathy, or at least understanding for it.

Can we get any insights from other ‘competing’ cultures? Unlike previous iterations of international communism during the Cold War, China doesn’t seem to see the existence of democratic countries as a threat. Is belligerence simply not a character of the Chinese culture? Or have the Chinese strategically adopted elements of capitalism in order to maximize their national benefit?

In general, communists worldwide have given up on the idea of international revolution. Let’s hope cooler head prevail in the current Muslim world. Should the tide of violence and intolerance toward secularism continue, we may be witnessing the onset of a new Cold War between ‘East and West’. If this is the case, let’s hope that the inevitable global rise in nuclear proliferation does not cross paths with religious-based fanatical terrorism.

Unlike the conflict with the Soviet Union, it is hard to imagine any stability coming from Mutually Assured Destruction. Deterrence is irrelevant when actors are genuinely convinced of their righteous place in the afterlife.

The fundamental boundary between church and state is still being defined in much of the world, particularly the Muslim world. Until such basic issues are resolved, we are speaking different languages, and we will continue with competing cultures.

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This column was reprinted with permission from the author. NewsJunkie will be collaborating with myself and others on a new website called “With Good Reason”, scheduled to be launched March 2006. More details are forthcoming.
-Cynapse