We’ve turned the basement into a casino!

A man who turns to fortune-telling to assuage his conscience. A society that chooses its victims through a lottery. Does “mathematical fairness” absolve the citizens of Omelas, or does it simply creates a more sophisticated illusion of justice?

Today it’s the dark philosophy of Jorge Luis Borges’s “The Lottery in Babylon” and Machado de Assis’s “The Fortune-Teller.” How do we use fate, destiny, and algorithms to justify systemic inequality and sacrifice, unsettling our modern reliance on “chance” to explain the suffering of others?

Episode 6.31 –

Tyranny of Chance: Assis, Borges, and the Randomized Bargain

Readings & Resources:

Assis, Machado de. “The Fortune-Teller” (“A Cartomante”). Gazeta de Notícias, (1884). [Waywords PDF]
Borges, Jorge Luis. “The Lottery in Babylon” (“La lotería en Babilonia”), (1941). [Internet Archive PDF]
Arendt, Hannah. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963).
Bataille, Georges. On Nietzsche, (1944).
Rawls, John. A Theory of Justice, (1971).

Some Key Terms from this episode:

Capitalist Realism - The internalization of an exploitative system—such as Babylon’s lethal lottery or modern economic structures—so completely that citizens cannot even imagine a viable alternative reality.
Democratic Scapegoat - Definition: The process of sanitizing our guilt by mathematically equalizing the probability of suffering across everyone, masking deliberate, systemic violence as a fair game of chance.
Will to Chance - Radical embrace of the absolute unknown that rejects utilitarian exchange, according to Bataille.

Listener’s Guide Reflection Questions

When you encounter a story of someone else’s “luck,” does your mind look for a pattern of justice, or does it shrug at a meaningless universe?
How does the process of “outsourcing” a decision to an algorithm or a coin toss change the physical sensation of responsibility in your body?
In what ways does the concept of “equal opportunity” prevent us from seeing any actual human extraction suffered?
If the suffering of a victim is determined by a “bad draw,” does that change the moral outrage to demand a change in the system?
What parts of your own daily “certainties” are actually just “bullseyes” you’ve painted around the random bullet holes of your experience?

Complete Resources: https://waywordsstudio.com/project/le-guin-omelas/

CHAPTERS

00:00 Games of Chance
03:01 Intro Theme
03:36 Borges, Assis, Le Guin
07:45 The Failure of Reason: “The Fortune Teller”
14:20 Borges, Rawls, and the Democratic Scapegoat
25:20 Accountability 201
28:18 Institutionalized Chaos
33:08 Narrative Hypnosis
36:12 Closing Credits

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Transcript and Bibliography: https://waywordsstudio.com/general/transcript/6-31-tyranny-chance-assis-borges/

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Literary Nomads is the main program of Waywords Studio (https://waywordsstudio.com). The podcast posts new material each week, with thought-provoking examinations of literature around selected questions or themes and several smaller supplemental episodes in between the larger programs: history, writing, and contemporary applications of ideas.

Visit us for expanded resources for guests and the Waywords community, for other programs and writing, and for opportunities to support our goal to expand reading. Resources available can include full bibliographies of material referenced, full and partial texts, annotated editions, supplemental and expanded episodes, fictional explorations, teaching and learning resources, additional essays, and online courses.

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CREDITS:

Original music by Randon Myles (https://randonmyles.com/)

Chapter headings by Natalie Harrison and Sarah Skaleski

USING THIS WORK:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. It is open to be used and adapted for all not-for-profit uses with proper attribution.

MLA CITATION:

Chisnell, Steve. “6.31: The Tyranny of Chance: Assis, Borges, and the Randomized Bargain,” Literary Nomads. Waywords Studio, 13 April 2026, https://waywordsstudio.com/project/le-guin-omelas/.