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Professor Colin O’Gara is Head of Addiction Services at St. John of God Hospital and author of the book Gambling Addiction In Ireland: Causes Consequences and Recovery.
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There is a pattern, I suppose it’s so well-known that it’s a cliché, of people mellowing their view as they get older. One version is the famous quote, I think wrongly attributed to Churchill, ‘If you’re not a liberal when you’re 25, you have no heart. If you’re not a conservative by the time you’re 35, you have no brain.’ But I think that isn’t exactly the effect in reality; regardless of your political views, as you get older, life’s complications present themselves, so it is harder not to take account of them and acknowledge that there are many exceptions that don’t fit into the more strident views you might have on any topic. Nuance is important.
You might be a free market capitalist, and point to the explosion of wealth that it is associated with, and say that everything should be governed by the market, but if you don’t eventually notice that some areas of life persistently just don’t respond to market forces, then you’re not paying attention.
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