28. 🎲One More Spin: Why Do We Do Things That Hurt Us?

Imagine this: You’re sitting at a casino table. You’ve just won a giant pile of chips. Logic says:

“Stand up. Walk away. You’re rich now.”

But instead, you whisper to yourself:

“Just… one more spin.”

This is the story of Alexey, the main character in Dostoevsky’s novel The Gambler. He keeps chasing that one more spin, even when he knows it’s destroying him. He wants money. He wants love. He wants freedom. But every time, the roulette wheel wins.

Sound familiar?

“Just one more episode.”

“Just one more round of Roblox.”

“Just one more YouTube short.”

We’ve all been Alexey.

Why Do We Choose Self-Destruction?

Humans are strange. We’re the only species that deliberately chooses things that hurt us.

• Bees sting in defense, and some die right after, because their stinger tears out part of their body. A one-time sacrifice.

• Elephants in captivity sometimes sway, bob, or even harm themselves when stressed, behaviors that make no sense for survival, but reveal deep psychological tension.

  
  

But humans? We do it on purpose. We binge. We overspend. We procrastinate. We overeat. We doomscroll at 2 a.m. and rage-quit games even though we know we’ll regret it.

The question is: why?

Two thinkers give us two very different answers.

Dostoevsky: Defying Fate

For Dostoevsky, Alexey gambles not just for money, but for a weird kind of power.

In his normal life, he’s just a lowly tutor. Nobody respects him. He’s invisible.

But at the roulette table? He becomes a god of chance. He can shout at the universe:“I make my own rules. Even if I lose everything, at least I choose it.”

It’s tragic, yes. But it’s also a kind of freedom. By self-destructing, Alexey proves he’s not just another machine following society’s orders.

So Dostoevsky asks us:

👉 Are we free when we play safe and survive? Or are we free when we break the rules, even if it hurts?

Bataille: The Sun Made Us Do It

A French philosopher named Georges Bataille looked at the sun and said: “This explains everything.”

The problem, he argued, isn’t scarcity. It’s surplus.

The sun pours down way more energy than we can ever use. Plants capture just 1-2%. The rest? Lost. Wasted.

Humans are like that too. We create more energy, more ideas, more stuff than we need. And if we never release it, that pressure builds. Eventually, it explodes in ugly ways: war, financial crashes, social chaos.

So Bataille says: we need glorious waste. Things that don’t “make sense” economically but are vital for survival.

• Festivals

• Art

• Wild celebrations

• TikTok dances

• Building a sandcastle just to laugh as the wave destroys it

These “pointless” things are not pointless at all, they’re safety valves. They burn off extra energy before it burns us.

So What About Us?

Think about your own life:

• When you say “one more spin” with your phone at midnight, is it defiance (like Alexey)?

• Or is it just your brain burning off surplus energy because it can’t stand still (like Bataille)?

  
  

Maybe both. Maybe neither. But here’s the wild thought:

👉 Sometimes, the things adults call “useless” — your games, your memes, your goofy dance videos — are actually saving you from exploding.

And yet… there’s a thin line. Alexey crossed it. His “waste” became destruction.

The trick for us is to find the kind of waste that creates joy, not ruin.

💡 Homework Question

Share your thoughts in the comments section below in 3-5 sentences:

What’s your “one more spin”?

• Is it a game, a show, a hobby, or something else?

• Do you think it’s destructive, or does it actually help you feel alive?