LIVE by the DIE: valid concept? (The Dice Man - Luke Rhinehart)

Name: davidso_99

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Product:	The Dice Man - Luke Rhinehart
Date:	05/07/02 (296 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: mind opening, exciting read, greatly written

Disadvantages: dangerously radical , loaded with contradictions, overly cynical

Tired of his daily nine to five getup-gotowork-comehome-maybebonkthewife-thenoffto bedtostartthewholethingalloverag aintomorrow routine,Luke Rhinehart, a well to do, very succesful psychiatrist and player of the stock market becomes increasingly bored with the tediously repetative course his life is taking.

Until one evening by CHANCE he realises the power of THE DIE whereby he assigns different options to each of the sides. One of which prompts him to rape his best friend's wife Arlene. This, he does and his dice practice just escalates from here. Luke follows the die regardless of the huge consequences his actions may incur. rape, infidelity, drug abuse are but to mention a few of his dice dictated actions. This way, his actions would be totally random and he would thus destroy the notion of 'personality' with regards to himself. His theorem spreads to influence vast amounts of 'dice people.

' The slogan upon the sleeve of the novel reads 'This book will change your life.' Well i'm sorry but i'm not that gullable. However i would like to take this opportunity to describe a minor instance where 'The Dice-man' did provide me with some inspiration:

Today on the way home from work I was faced with a minor dilemma. Such a dilemma I encounter every day to which I'm thus (reluctantly) forced to make a decision. Should I get the bus home or the train? Such an issue you would understandably dismiss as being too minor to be considered a problem. However, consider this: If I got the bus it would be forty minutes before i reached home, the bus stop being situated directly outside my house. If I took the train it would take me twenty minutes to get to my destination, from which I would have to make the tediously repetative pilgrimage to my house usually consuming 20 minutes.Regardless of which i chose i would be likely to be home in around forty minutes.

'Take the bus' I hear you say, &#

39;for it will save you the long tedious walk home.' Correct! It would indeed. However, the bus costs twice as much and is a greatly stressful experience, with traffic jams and overpopulation etc. What you'll see is that there are pros and cons in each case, which serve only to trivialise what in fact is a simple matter. Thus it is difficult for me to make a rational, justified, and unanimous decision. What do I do? I hand the problem to chance as inspired by 'The Diceman,' although I didn't actually use a pair of dice. 1 Because I hadn't a pair of dice and 2 Because I had only two variables in mind (bus or train) and not six. What better, I thought, than a coin? I thus produced a coin from by wallet and assigned each side to a variable. 'Heads?' I go by train and 'Tails?' I go by bus. I then flipped the coin.

Tails. I returned home by bus.

Now I wasn't left wondering whether I made the wrong decision as I myself didn't make the decision and thus despite being subject to 40 minutes of stress I was content and I wasn't cursing the decision- "I knew I should have gone by train. Its quieter and more relaxed," but instead was glad I wouldn't be walking up a grand hill for twenty minutes.

The concept of a total dicelife is, although outstandingly interesting, frankly ridiculous. The dice theory is loaded with contradictions. Take the game of 'emotional roulette' for example whereby participators allow the die to dictate the emotion they must feel for the next five minutes or so. Now, as humans we are unable to control our actual emotions. This is generally accepted in the novel as 'Luke Rinehart' does acknowledge that it is only pretence. Yet he states that dice living aims to manifest our suppressed feelings. I'm sorry but when you are happy, you are happy and trying to act depressed in such a state is in fact trying to suppress your feelings of joy whi
ch as
previously stated is condemned in dice theory.

However, what I am saying, as represented by my example is that it is ok to allow chance to dictate your course in harmless, meaningless situations for it is greatly advantageous and admittedly quite fun. But the dice should definitely not be followed as obsessively as depicted in the book to a point where rape and murder are every day, ordinary options. Although the author is very convincing in trying to justify such a radical theory it is definitely unjustifiable. Killing a man is WRONG.

The Diceman: Great book

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