The Book of the Die. Luke Rhinehart

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       One & Two SERIOUSNESS

      ‘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. A few novels or poems or plays or even works of philosophy may deal with the problems of living, but the sciences, including most psychologies, do not.

      And the worst sin of education is that it teaches taking life seriously.

      There is nothing intrinsically serious about life. In fact, there is a great deal of the obviously comic about human life. But almost all cultures teach seriousness because it is a society’s way of ensuring that its social glue sticks. Once someone begins to consider life as a game, or a play, or a Dumb and Dumber farce, then the social glue loses its adhesiveness. Laughter is the great enemy of society. Armed revolution against a society is a blessing; it lets the society clamp down harder. But laughter – how can a society deal with that? Uneasily, to say the least.

      ‘But if we don’t take life seriously, then we might as well kill each other!’

      Sure. But when was the last time you read of someone killing someone else out of playfulness?

      Murder, it is said, is a serious business. It certainly is. And murderers are always intensely serious. And always right.

      Seriousness is sickness. A child may be intense, but is at first rarely serious. He becomes serious only after consistent lessons from the adult world. A child’s natural mode is play; random, unserious, only sporadically competitive play. He loves games of pretend, whether he is the pretender or the adult. A daddy СКАЧАТЬ