Life's a Game

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I read Luke Rinehart's The Dice Man as a child, probably pre teen. I consumed huge numbers of books as a child. You do that when everyone's telling you to sleep and you have a wonky circadian rhythm, no torch, and you know how batteries and bulbs and wires work. At least until you get an old valve radio or big black and white television and start listening to the world service or watching open university on BBC 2.

The Dice Man was an influential book along with Stephen King's IT, James Herbert's Rats, and a bunch of other adult drama and horror.

The Dice Man isn't a way of doing something, it's a way of thinking about something.

We make decisions all the time. We apparently make all of them subconsciously long before we make them consciously. I see this in effect all the time.

Two times recently in my life I saw two different people act out an identical act for similar reasons and goals. The resemblance was uncanny. In both cases both seemed confident that they were making the decision at the time they were with me. In both cases they had made the decision long before. In neither case do I believe that they had consciously made the decision. In both cases their conscious was genuinely trying to decide between two courses of action.

Most days as I go through life I see discussions that have an obvious outcome. The decision has already been made.

When we think we're rolling the dice has nothing to do with when the dice were rolled. This is an element of The Dice Man. A friend of mine uses a coin toss to expose her subconscious. Her approach to ambivalent decisions is to toss a coin. If you agree with the coin's outcome you go ahead with the coin's "decision", it either means you didn't care or you agree. If you disagree you'll tell the coin to fuck off. This exposes the unconscious decision. It forces you to accept the choice you have already made.

This is how we travel through life. We make decisions. The decisions we make have consequences.

We roll the dice to deal with those consequences.