I remember reading this as a naive 14 yr old, because it was one of “the” classics of American literature apparently. It scarred me for months later. I hated it.
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!
The point is that you can see this lottery as a cruel horror. You immediately hate it. It's obvious to us as the readers because it's outside our experience. Of course we wouldn't regularly just draw lots to stone someone to death, that's crazy and good people wouldn't put up with it, right?
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.
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.
The comment I was responding to asked for examples of “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”. The comment wasn't asking for “deliberate deaths caused by adherence to some tradition”.
Expanding the idea of "lottery" that much makes it meaningless, and useless as social commentary. Sometimes people die of cancer, or lightning, or shark attacks, and eventually of old age. What insight is there in calling them "lotteries you don't see"?
At the time (1948), lynchings of Black people accused of crimes (or just not suitablely "humble") were still practiced in the South and some people seriously defended the practice as part of Southern tradition.
Magnanimity has nothing to do with it. Based on the evidence, that's the strongest acknowledgment I can make. Unless we entertain some fantasy scenario where, despite being told that crime is near its lowest levels currently, Black people were dramatically less criminal in the past, so they simply could not have committed enough rapes and murders to justify the 56 yearly lynchings.
And we treat the 2018 murders you're invoking as crimes. Problems to be solved. Most people do not accept that's just how it should be. Almost everyone believes murder should be illegal, policed, prevented where possible, charged prosecuted and punished where it can't be prevented so that it's discouraged. And done through a court / justice system where the process itself isn't just a lottery (whatever improvements we could make here).
The lynchings? Part of the problem was that enough of the societies where they happened did accept those as part of the social order. And they were undisciplined in a way that allowed them to be esentially lotteries -- no requirement for any kind of hearing, no right to defense or appeal, no right for others to know how well any accusation stands up, no right for anyone to even know who the lynchers are. Supposed offenses could be trivial if not entirely fabricated, to cover nothing more than ugly bullying.
The contrast between the two situations could scarcely be starker.
And that's before we get to the ridiculous racial fearmongering that you're selling. You want to talk about 2018 murders? It doesn't look like you want to do that carefully and honesty. If anything the 2018 data shows white people as the disproportionate threat to white people.
Because of the 3,315 white murder victims where an alleged/established perp has been identified closely enough to talk about their race, it appears that 2,677 were killed by white people.
That's 80% of white murder victims killed by white people. This is above proportion of the population that's white at a level that's beyond noise (about 60% of the US is "non-hispanic white", maybe we move up to 75% if we're lumping in white-alone-identifying hispanics and assume that the criminal justice system also errs on the side of assigning perps "white").
514 murders where the perp is black would mean about 15% of white murder victims were killed by black people. Estimates of the portion of the US that's black run about 12-15%, so this tracks proportion.
2018 statistics make it look like, if anything, whites are in more danger from their fellow white people than from a racially integrated society (and this sure tracks the lived experience of most white guys I know).
And if someone says "well, of course white people are killed by more of their fellow white people because that's where they voluntarily associate" ... that wouldn't change the statistically demonstrated nature of the threat, it would only highlight how limited racial integration actually is (and how much more ridiculous it is to complain it "kills whites").
I can see why you're confused - you're reading the table [0] wrong, despite the warning in my post. I'll repeat it: the FBI counts Latinos as White (and Middle Easterners and North Africans (MENA) and Central Asians). That's why there are separate "Ethnicity" columns, with "Hispanic", "not Hispanic", and "Unknown", and why there is no Latino or Hispanic in the "Race" columns. So when the table says "White", it really means "White + Latino + MENA" - for brevity I'll refer to it as just "White+", and reserve "White" to mean non-Hispanic White.
Let me walk you through it and let's try to make the best of the FBI's deceptive definitions, shall we?
Unfortunately, it's hard to determine the interracial victimization rates for Whites from that table. We can try to just subtract Hispanics from White+, but that still leaves the very large part where the ethnicity is unknown - of the 2677 White+-on-White+ offenders, 1036 are of unknown ethnicity. So we concede this battle to the FBI, and use their silly categories for now. 81% of the White+ victims were killed by White+ offenders, and Whites+ make up at least 76.5% of the US population [1]. 4.1% are mixed-race, and it's not clear how the FBI categorizes those, or who they count as Asian that they say they put in the "Other" category, but we're already pretty close to the 81% that would give us 'proportional' (to their population share).
Now let's look at total homicide rates. Wikipedia does part of the work for us [2], but uses those same silly FBI categories, where they say "White", but they mean "White + Latino + MENA". But since in crime reporting, Latinos are counted mostly as White [3], we can simply subtract them from the White+ category, and get an over-estimate (because we're still counting everyone in the "Unknown" ethnicity as White) of the White perpetrators:
Race murders % of murders % of US population murder/population
White+ 3011 45.8 76.5 0.60
Black 3177 48.4 12.1 4.00
Other 382 5.8
Latino 923 14.0 18.7 0.75
White 2088 31.8 57.8 0.55
All 6570 100.0 100.0 1.00
So despite the White murder rate being an overestimate, the Black murder rate is still 7.2x higher. And remember - 2121 perpetrators are "Unknown" whether they're Hispanic or not. If we justifiably assume that the "Unknown" perpetrators have the same fraction of Hispanics as the known ones, the updated table looks like
Race murders % of murders % of US population murder/population
White+ 3011 45.8 76.5 0.60
Black 3177 48.4 12.1 4.00
Other 382 5.8
Latino 1478 22.5 18.7 1.20
White 1533 23.3 57.8 0.40
All 6570 100.0 100.0 1.00
Would you like to argue that cohabiting with a race that has a 7.2-10x higher homicide rate, and another with a 1.4-3x higher homicide rate, doesn't increase one's chance of being murdered? Is that what your friends' lived experiences showed? A source [4] that uses more sensible racial categories has found even starker disparities, but it's right leaning, so I'm sure you'll dismiss it for that reason alone, while never dismissing a left-leaning one. But maybe someone else will find it useful.
Perhaps like Jackson, I think it can be useful to prompt people in a way that might nudge them to notice on their own.
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?
Some may notice this response is in good company with the other psychological mechanisms we use to avoid confronting "lotteries."
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.
That's a great way of announcing that you didn't read my comment, which actually accounts for the principled version of the point you're ideologically abusing.
Net deaths is what matters here. Obviously they aren’t perfect, but no human system is.
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.
> Which is why FDA regulations vs zero regulation have saved vastly more lives than they cost.
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.
I think there are a few things that make it "worthy" of literary consideration:
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
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.
Quotes are also used to quote something verbatim, which is their more traditional role than "questioning". They're also used to refer to a term in a meta way - like I did with the term questioning just now.
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).
What stood out to me was how normal everyone acts. No villains or drawn out speeches just people treating something horrifying like it’s another town chore. That’s probably the part that aged the best (or worst).
Hahaha, that's awesome. A nice adjunct to "Why Don't We Just Kill the Kid In the Omelas Hole" [1] (to take another example of a riff on a classic speculative fiction piece, that exposes the concepts to modern sensibilities).
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?
I really liked the audio version. I would never listen to those ai generated ones, but I guess they might be better than the screen reader for blind people.
Reminds me of circumcision. Nobody questioning, just treating it as a standard thing to torture babies.
I remember reading this as a naive 14 yr old, because it was one of “the” classics of American literature apparently. It scarred me for months later. I hated it.
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!
The point is that you can see this lottery as a cruel horror. You immediately hate it. It's obvious to us as the readers because it's outside our experience. Of course we wouldn't regularly just draw lots to stone someone to death, that's crazy and good people wouldn't put up with it, right?
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.
> If you're looking, you can find them.
Could you give us a hint?
Hit-and-run vehicle collisions.
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.
Abortion in Arkansas is legal to save the life of the mother: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abortion_in_Arkansas
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.
“She Faced a Life-Threatening Miscarriage. Under Arkansas’ Abortion Ban, Even Calls to the Governor’s Office Didn’t Help.”
That's from this morning, reported in ProPublica.
https://www.propublica.org/article/arkansas-abortion-ban-mis...
Then the example is valid.
Supposed “exceptions” for the life of the mother are largely ineffective in practice. By design. https://www.politifact.com/article/2023/jun/23/all-abortion-...
The comment I was responding to asked for examples of “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”. The comment wasn't asking for “deliberate deaths caused by adherence to some tradition”.
Expanding the idea of "lottery" that much makes it meaningless, and useless as social commentary. Sometimes people die of cancer, or lightning, or shark attacks, and eventually of old age. What insight is there in calling them "lotteries you don't see"?
None of your three examples are actions that are willingly (either actively or passively) carried out collectively by people in society.
At the time (1948), lynchings of Black people accused of crimes (or just not suitablely "humble") were still practiced in the South and some people seriously defended the practice as part of Southern tradition.
[flagged]
>overzealous lynching did I believe sometimes cross the line
Very magnanimous of you to acknowledge that.
Magnanimity has nothing to do with it. Based on the evidence, that's the strongest acknowledgment I can make. Unless we entertain some fantasy scenario where, despite being told that crime is near its lowest levels currently, Black people were dramatically less criminal in the past, so they simply could not have committed enough rapes and murders to justify the 56 yearly lynchings.
Extrajudicial executions are never justified. They are normally referred to as “murders”.
And we treat the 2018 murders you're invoking as crimes. Problems to be solved. Most people do not accept that's just how it should be. Almost everyone believes murder should be illegal, policed, prevented where possible, charged prosecuted and punished where it can't be prevented so that it's discouraged. And done through a court / justice system where the process itself isn't just a lottery (whatever improvements we could make here).
The lynchings? Part of the problem was that enough of the societies where they happened did accept those as part of the social order. And they were undisciplined in a way that allowed them to be esentially lotteries -- no requirement for any kind of hearing, no right to defense or appeal, no right for others to know how well any accusation stands up, no right for anyone to even know who the lynchers are. Supposed offenses could be trivial if not entirely fabricated, to cover nothing more than ugly bullying.
The contrast between the two situations could scarcely be starker.
And that's before we get to the ridiculous racial fearmongering that you're selling. You want to talk about 2018 murders? It doesn't look like you want to do that carefully and honesty. If anything the 2018 data shows white people as the disproportionate threat to white people.
Because of the 3,315 white murder victims where an alleged/established perp has been identified closely enough to talk about their race, it appears that 2,677 were killed by white people.
That's 80% of white murder victims killed by white people. This is above proportion of the population that's white at a level that's beyond noise (about 60% of the US is "non-hispanic white", maybe we move up to 75% if we're lumping in white-alone-identifying hispanics and assume that the criminal justice system also errs on the side of assigning perps "white").
514 murders where the perp is black would mean about 15% of white murder victims were killed by black people. Estimates of the portion of the US that's black run about 12-15%, so this tracks proportion.
2018 statistics make it look like, if anything, whites are in more danger from their fellow white people than from a racially integrated society (and this sure tracks the lived experience of most white guys I know).
And if someone says "well, of course white people are killed by more of their fellow white people because that's where they voluntarily associate" ... that wouldn't change the statistically demonstrated nature of the threat, it would only highlight how limited racial integration actually is (and how much more ridiculous it is to complain it "kills whites").
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2018/crime-in-the-u.s.-...
I can see why you're confused - you're reading the table [0] wrong, despite the warning in my post. I'll repeat it: the FBI counts Latinos as White (and Middle Easterners and North Africans (MENA) and Central Asians). That's why there are separate "Ethnicity" columns, with "Hispanic", "not Hispanic", and "Unknown", and why there is no Latino or Hispanic in the "Race" columns. So when the table says "White", it really means "White + Latino + MENA" - for brevity I'll refer to it as just "White+", and reserve "White" to mean non-Hispanic White.
Let me walk you through it and let's try to make the best of the FBI's deceptive definitions, shall we?
Unfortunately, it's hard to determine the interracial victimization rates for Whites from that table. We can try to just subtract Hispanics from White+, but that still leaves the very large part where the ethnicity is unknown - of the 2677 White+-on-White+ offenders, 1036 are of unknown ethnicity. So we concede this battle to the FBI, and use their silly categories for now. 81% of the White+ victims were killed by White+ offenders, and Whites+ make up at least 76.5% of the US population [1]. 4.1% are mixed-race, and it's not clear how the FBI categorizes those, or who they count as Asian that they say they put in the "Other" category, but we're already pretty close to the 81% that would give us 'proportional' (to their population share).
Now let's look at total homicide rates. Wikipedia does part of the work for us [2], but uses those same silly FBI categories, where they say "White", but they mean "White + Latino + MENA". But since in crime reporting, Latinos are counted mostly as White [3], we can simply subtract them from the White+ category, and get an over-estimate (because we're still counting everyone in the "Unknown" ethnicity as White) of the White perpetrators:
So despite the White murder rate being an overestimate, the Black murder rate is still 7.2x higher. And remember - 2121 perpetrators are "Unknown" whether they're Hispanic or not. If we justifiably assume that the "Unknown" perpetrators have the same fraction of Hispanics as the known ones, the updated table looks like Would you like to argue that cohabiting with a race that has a 7.2-10x higher homicide rate, and another with a 1.4-3x higher homicide rate, doesn't increase one's chance of being murdered? Is that what your friends' lived experiences showed? A source [4] that uses more sensible racial categories has found even starker disparities, but it's right leaning, so I'm sure you'll dismiss it for that reason alone, while never dismissing a left-leaning one. But maybe someone else will find it useful.[0] https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2018/crime-in-the-u.s.-...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Sta...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_crime_in_the_United_S...
[3] https://factually.co/fact-checks/society/latinos-considered-...
[4] https://national-conservative.com/extremist-files/interracia...
Perhaps like Jackson, I think it can be useful to prompt people in a way that might nudge them to notice on their own.
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?
Being born to the wrong parents, or in the wrong neighbourhood, or with any number of medical issues.
If you try too hard to prevent deaths, you wind up causing deaths.
Some may notice this response is in good company with the other psychological mechanisms we use to avoid confronting "lotteries."
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.
Everything you do risks death in one way or another. Even eating (you can choke to death). Maybe a regulation requiring all food must be liquefied?
That's a great way of announcing that you didn't read my comment, which actually accounts for the principled version of the point you're ideologically abusing.
I find your prose difficult to read, and made my best guess at it.
Your prose could also be improved by omitting the rude remarks.
Only if you’re ineffective. One of the best ways to prevent people dying is promoting long term economic growth.
If you try too hard to be anti-regulation you cause even more deaths and misery.
Regulation of drugs has caused deaths due to high cost of compliance with FDA regulations meaning far fewer drugs get developed that may save lives.
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?"
Net deaths is what matters here. Obviously they aren’t perfect, but no human system is.
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.
> Which is why FDA regulations vs zero regulation have saved vastly more lives than they cost.
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.
I think there are a few things that make it "worthy" of literary consideration:
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
> Is it an allegory for something deeper than what it is.
I've always taken it to be a critique of the draft, aka "the lottery."
This is the typical interpretation.
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.
I’m curious if you’re a native English speaker.
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.
Quotes are also used to quote something verbatim, which is their more traditional role than "questioning". They're also used to refer to a term in a meta way - like I did with the term questioning just now.
In this case, he uses them for emphasis, like one would write "it's considered one of THE classics".
>* But I still don’t see the point it.*
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).
[dead]
What stood out to me was how normal everyone acts. No villains or drawn out speeches just people treating something horrifying like it’s another town chore. That’s probably the part that aged the best (or worst).
The speeches may not have felt drawn-out, but the writing sure did
If there is one thing that drives me nuts about old literature, it is how verbose authors seems to be.
One thing that drives me nuts about modern readers is how shallow their attention spans are.
Ah yes, how virtuous to consume so much 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.
I got shit to do. Art doesn't need to waste my time unnecessarily.
>Ah yes, how virtuous to consume so much pointless detail.
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!
The lottery: and other stories https://archive.org/details/lottery00jack/mode/1up
The antecedent to The Running Man and The Hunger Games.
[dead]
Because I’m surprised to see Shirley Jackson on the front page, and maybe someone else will get a smile:
Why one small American town won’t stop stoning its residents to death -https://archiveofourown.org/works/73396436?view_adult=true
Hahaha, that's awesome. A nice adjunct to "Why Don't We Just Kill the Kid In the Omelas Hole" [1] (to take another example of a riff on a classic speculative fiction piece, that exposes the concepts to modern sensibilities).
[1] https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/kim_02_24/
Wasn't there recently just a two button trend with a similar theme?
This story remains pertinent.
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?
I really liked the audio version. I would never listen to those ai generated ones, but I guess they might be better than the screen reader for blind people.
Reminds me of circumcision. Nobody questioning, just treating it as a standard thing to torture babies.