Is anyone in the UK interested in forming some sort of dice-living communtiy or group? Have you read "The Dice Man" by Luke Rhinehart? Do you use dice?
i've read it, its not a bad book certainly kept me hooked. But, given that dice-living essentially means deliberately trying to induce schizophrenia in oneself, i'm not sure if i could see it as a viable lifestyle choice. besides, while it might be possible (if you really wanted to) to live the dicelife on your own, a group would have to be VERY carefully organised and planned (at first). otherwise it would just fall apart and/or just become a kinky sex thing. (which....would probably be okay, tbh) i often carry a dice and use it to inject a little randomness into my decision-making to make things more spontaneous or interesting, but i've never done it to the extent that cockroft describes, nor used any of the excersises, i'd rather reserve moments of completely losing my sense of self for allocated time periods has a close association with robert anton wilson, i believe. nice guy he was, had a very interesting outlook on life
What the hell is "Dice Living"...Is it like where you throw dice to make individual or group decision as to what's your next move?...Sounds interesting...My life is dicey enough however...
as far as i can remember ( its been a while since i read the book) the central ethos of the dicelife is that, given that the modern world recquires us to use several different identities on a regular basis, and most of the individuals problems stem from trying to conform to only one, and have a rigid sense of identity, the only logical recourse is to try and destroy your sense of identity and become "a random man". to this end, there are several excersises which help you achieve this. for example, spending a month doing the exact opposite of what you would normally do, writing down six completely different characters and inhabiting a different one completely every ten minutes, decided by a roll of the dice. the main character of the book is a psychiatrist who decides that a lot of our problems come from supressing our impulses, so we should assign a probability to them based on how strong they are (you can roll the dice unlimited times to dilute the odds) actually, thats the bit i don't get, if half the excersizes are designed to essentially stop you having a personality/set of desires, how come you get to choose the odds? anyway, he ends up setting up dicecentres or "centres for the study of activity in tottally random environments" or somesuch, in these centres people live the dicelife, inhabiting multiple personalities, the interesting thing is that, at first, there are instructors, but after a while the instructors can leave or just roll a dice and become not instructors anymore, or newcomers might roll the dice and be the instructors and others might do what they say, or not, depending on how the dice has instructed them to act. after their "course" finishes, they go to a halfway house hotel to get re-acclimatised to the normal world, but here they realise that they will never be able to tell if their fellow guests are staff members, or other dicepeople pretending to be staff, or pretending to be guests or pretending to be fucking napoleon lol once they realise that, no matter where you are, you can never really have this certainty of the veracity of the identities of those around you, they're well on the way to being dicepeople. if this all sounds rather fun, i should also tell you that the first thing "luke reinhart" does in the book, according to the dice, is rape his best friends wife and at one point kills a man (he says that he would not be being tottally honest with himself as a modern day american if he didnt admit that he had a desire to murder- one of the options for his potential victims was his infant son) there isn't any room for morality in the dicelife, your sense of right and wrong is entirely dependant on whichever mindset the dice tels you to be inhabiting that particular day/ hour. its a good book, although i've not read the sequel, would you reccomend it, seventy?
I'm a Londoner too. Plenty of scope here for dice-related activity. The sequel is good, features Rhinehart's son, now grown up, searching for his father, who's been missing for some years. There's lots on the dice centres.
Been rolling the dice to find out whether or not I should go and have a poo. The spirit of the dice just isn't on my side lately. I've been constipated for 3 days now It doesn't help that the "shall I eat now?" rolls are coming up positive, so it's buttered croissants (as decided by the number 3) every half hour (interval decided by the number 6 3 times in a row). I rolled to ask if I should change the timing but it came up as a no.:smash:
I've been trying to post in this thread for three weeks, but the dice said no. Shit, got to go, have to stab another orphan
Everyone who posts in this thread is part of my new "Dice Gang", unless they specifically say here that they are leaving the Dice Gang. and yes, my dice chose that method of forming a dice gang.
I think Rhinehart was probably trying to avoid creating something that could be followed dogmatically, not that he was advocating a rejection of morality. Knowing he connected up to RAW, I'm even more inclined to suspect so.
