The Book of the Die. Luke Rhinehart
Before casting a die, read through the six options below. Throw out one or two (or, best of all, all six) and create some of your own to replace those you toss out. Then cast a die.
1 Do everything differently for an hour. Preferably do everything the opposite of the way you normally do things. Walk backwards instead of forwards. Drink your coffee black instead of with milk and sugar, or vice versa. Shout at your husband or father. Stand on your head for the sheer fun of it. Walk out in the rain. Don’t go to work. Spend money as if you were rich (or don’t spend it as if you were poor). Do it different.
2 Make a fool of yourself. Slobber coffee down your shirtfront. Fart. Talk nonsense. Tell a long story that you make up as you go along and that makes absolutely no sense. Put on the most ridiculous clothes that you can come up with. Use makeup on your face as if you were a three-year-old using it for the first time. Notice that life still goes on.
3 Tell someone why you are a great person. List for them all the ways you are proud of yourself, from the way you dress to your wonderful sense of humour. Try to list all your achievements, including those from the past that you are particularly proud of. Keep doing this for as long as you can until you burst out laughing.
4 As you are, you are dead. Anything you do differently will be a distinct improvement. Anything you do now should be aimed at breaking out of the narrow cell you have locked yourself in. This demands that you challenge yourself to do the things you’ve always wanted to do but never gotten around to doing. List from three to six important and challenging things that you might do with your life that you’re not doing. Cast a die. Do it. No matter what the obstacles, and the obstacles will loom larger as soon as the die has chosen it, do it. One dicer reported to me that the second time she did this exercise the die chose that she take a trip around the world and write articles about her adventures. She couldn’t actually afford to do this but borrowed money, hustled editors and took off. Two-thirds of the way around the world, in southern India, she met the man that she eventually married and lived … miserably ever after – who knows what happens next – but whatever it is the odds are it beats staying where she was in Hampstead.
5 When someone asks you about yourself, lie. Make up things about yourself, both bad and good. Be especially sure not to tell the truth about those things you are most proud of about yourself. Instead try creating some new things you might be proud of. Make up stories about your friends, your family. Create imaginary friends. So?
6 Tell someone all the worst things about yourself, your weakest traits, your most horrible sins, the silliest and stupidest things you’ve ever done. Notice that they probably like you better after you’ve told them this stuff.
‘I come, O Master, to seek Ultimate Truth,’ announced Whim.
‘Goody goody gumdrop for you,’ said Grain-of-Sand.
ON BEING HUMAN
Most speculation on the fall of man has overlooked the obvious. Man fell the moment he first ceased walking on all four limbs and began walking on two legs erect.
Erections have clearly been a source of trouble for man, but historically we have overlooked this first and most formidable of erections: man going from the flexible droopiness of the usual quadraped to homo erectus, man erect. Why does this seeming advancement constitute a fall?
It is the beginning of man’s tragic separation from the earth. Walking on all four limbs keeps a creature’s head close to the earth; he feels, sees, smells, hears and even tastes the earth. Erect, he loses touch, putting his head, metaphorically at least, in the clouds. And in this state, man has made a consistent habit of tripping over his own feet and falling flat on his face. Or at the very least plopping his feet down on dung.
We humans have the feeling that we are suffering from some sort of low-level sickness but have never been able to be clear on either the symptoms or the cause. Any species that chooses to spend so much more time, money and energy on weapons and wars and killing than on food and housing and health cannot be entirely sane. Any species many of whose wealthy members feel they must spend part of their wealth to discover why they are so dissatisfied with being ‘successful’ clearly is not entirely free from sickness. What, mankind keeps asking itself, is wrong with us? What are the symptoms and problems that manifest our basic sickness?
The problem is unhappiness. Men don’t like being unhappy. Frowns are bad for the complexion.
The problem is death. Death is felt to be a drag. Its silence is suspicious, a bit malevolent maybe. It is considered somewhat too permanent.
The problem is failure. It’s not considered as much fun as success, but seems to arrive more frequently.
The problem is pain. Ingrown toenails, headaches, arthritis – the body always seems to stay one step ahead of Extra-Strength Tylenol.
The problem is love. It doesn’t last, isn’t returned, or is returned too zealously and jealously.
The problem is evil – usually other people’s. Too many bad people are doing it to too few good people. God’s police force is understaffed.
The problem is self. We can never quite figure out who we are or, having figured it out, find it pretty depressing.
The problem is enlightenment. We often want it, but seldom have it. We know there is some better way of life, know we’re currently not living it, and want to get there from here.
And what lies behind these problems? Somehow, somewhere we seem to have built into us an unhappiness-creating mechanism. A few people seem to have escaped the mechanism, either because they never had it or they do something to eliminate it or override it or ignore it. But finding the mechanism isn’t easy. Since the sickness permeates everything we do, it must be inherent – in the very way we think about ourselves and our lives, in the way we make or don’t make decisions, in the way we see or experience life, in the very way we try to cure ourselves. There is something fundamentally wrong with the way we usually live our lives and we’d sort of like to find out what it is.
Seriousness is the sickness that poisons human life. It kills the child in us. It teaches us to hate. It teaches us that war is necessary. It teaches us that we are right and others are wrong. It teaches us to take our beliefs seriously and therefore to be frightened of or angry at people who have different beliefs. It teaches us that our ambitions are important and therefore the blocking of our success is a disaster. It teaches us that ‘winning is everything’ and thus dooms half the population (the losers) to misery. It teaches us that death is a horror to be avoided, and thus dooms the entire population to living with the knowledge that it is headed towards an inevitable horrible end.
The sickness is being serious about right and wrong.
The sickness is in feeling that something has to be done and that there are permanent solutions to life’s problems.
With our sickness, the more seriously we struggle to cure it, the worse it becomes.
The cure lies in a continual letting go of the temptation to fix things, to be serious, to find significance in what we do. It lies in the ability to embrace multiplicity and inconsistency – to say yes to both our yeses and nos.
The cure lies in playfulness – the intense participation in living without any expectation of result. It lies in a constant letting go of our automaton operating out of the past, a constant letting go of our ideas about our selfs, and a continual playful plunging into the possibilities of the future.
A major failure of formal education is that it teaches so little about living life, or making decisions, or dealing with the illusions of oneself and others, or considering what is right and wrong and what those terms might mean.