The lottery in Babylon

The Argentinian writer Jorge Luis Borges was intensely attracted by certain mathematical ideas, especially those that are most disturbing to common sense. His stories are populated by books with infinite pages, and books between whose pages there are always infinite new pages. Multiple combinatory games animate his narratives, interweaving as labyrinths the action of the characters and the unfolding of the stories.

In one of these stories, Borges fantasises to the extreme with the possibilities inherent in the idea of permutation. The result of a world avid for intense emotions, Borges imagines a Babylon in which every morning there is a lottery that does not distribute prizes – however exorbitant they might be – or punishments – however aberrant they might be – but instead draws lots, for that day alone, for each individual’s place in society. Thus, the story begins with this lapidary statement:

Like all the men of Babylon, I have been proconsul; like all, I have been a slave; I have known omnipotence, ignominy, imprisonment. Look here –my right hand has no index finger.

Donald Trump’s attainment of the presidency of the United States of America may begin to be intelligible if we look at it as the blind result of a random process of social permutation. Perhaps there “the lottery in Babylon” has already begun.

 

“The Lottery in Babylon” is a story contained in the book “The Garden of Forking Paths” written by Jorge Luis Borges in 1941.

(Translation of the fragment by Andrew Hurley)

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