This entry has been abandoned, as I no longer consider myself a diceliver, and hence have no desire to finish the entry. Perhaps some other researcher will turn this entry into a finished product, but that researcher isn't me!

The dicelife is the name given to the process of living your life according to rolls of a dice, as described in various of Luke Rhinehart's books. People who follow the dicelife are generally referred to as dicepeople, dicemen, diceladies, dicechildren, and so forth. They have much fun. You can too!

Following the Cube

The concept of diceliving is simple to explain. Start by grabbing a sheet of blank paper and putting the number 1 through 6 down the left hand side. Then, next to them, write six things that part of you wants to do. Not necessarily all of you - but for whatever reason, some portion of you feels that doing this would be fun, cool, worthwhile - whatever.

Now, make it quite clear to yourself that whatever you roll, you will do that option. This is the time to change your mind and put down something more sensible. Check and make sure that all the options are legal, moral, and safe - and check one more time that, should the dice roll an option, you'll be ok with doing it. Then roll the dice, read off the answer, and go and do it. That's it!

Most people don't initially believe that anyone could seriously suggest that they do this for important, life-altering decisions - It just goes against too much of the grain of what society says. This initial stage of pants-peeing is the largest obstacle for new dicers - let me be quite clear that this is a serious suggestion, and yes, many people, myself included, live their lives to a greater or lesser extent by the rule of the die.

Chuck out one, two, or all six of the options below, and replace them with your own - then throw a dice to choose.

1. Don't read any more of this entry. Find something better to do with your time.
2. Finish reading this entry - and do not stop for any reason, including phone, doorbell, whatever.
3. Read this entry and try to fervently agree with everything said, even if normally you'd think it was garbage.
4. Read this entry, and try to fervently disagree with everything said, even if normally you might think it made some sense.
5. Make six options, roll a dice, and do what the die commands. Now - right this moment.
6. Take up diceliving. How will you know if you like it unless you try it?

Types of options

To start off, it's generally best to put down a number of easy options - you might choose which of a number of books you've always wanted to read you'll go and rent from the library, or which tie of a number of acceptable ones you might put on for a dinner. Keep it small, keep it simple. Most of all, keep it fun - laughter IS dicing.

Putting options down which are too difficult at the start often causes the novice dicer to disobey the dice. This is refered to as choking, and is very dangerous. Without the certainty that the dice must be obeyed, they lose their power, and the dicer is effectively back at square one - but now slightly more smug - further away than ever from enlightenment.

Often people wander through life quite unaware of the extent to which they are ruled by habit and unconscious thought. For them, there is the method of veto. The idea of this is simple - before doing any large thing - roll a dice. If it comes up a six, the dice has vetoed this - you'll have to find some other way of doing it. An alternative version has the veto occuring only on a double six, but the dice are rolled more frequently.

Later on, and generally in a perfectly natural process, slightly more risky options start to enter the list - ones which bring up both excitement and fear. This generally continues until some comfortable level of risk is attained, and decisions are usually limited to some area which is acceptable to the dicer - where this is varies from person to person, with some people stopping earlier than others. Some people pause here briefly to enjoy the surroundings before moving on, but many stay here for a long time, before something shakes them up and they move on. This is known as constipation.

To try and reduce the risk of constipation, two standard methods have been developed - the first is 'Russian Roulette' - out of each six options, one must be something decidedly unpleasant. For example, out of a choice of 6 things to go and do in the evening, one of them might be to go to a Karaoke bar. Hopefully, the dicer will do something that is 'unpleasant', and realise that actually it's not so bad after all. The world went on, and the following morning the sun still rose.

The second method is that suggested by Dr. Rhinehart - and I will let him take over the explanation here:

... we use mostly the method of scare. We tell the patient to cast the dice concerning his biggest problem: 'Give the dice the option of your getting into bed with your mother and feeling her up.' 'Let the dice decide whether you say: "Up yours, Dad".' 'Cast a die to see whether you're going to destroy your diaries.'

The patient generally craps or faints, but when he revives we suggest something a little less threatening, but still outside his previous diceliving area. In utter gratefulness he goes along.

Log off h2g2, and don't come back for a week. When you come back, write an entry in your journal making up some wild story about how you had to leave h2g2 because you'd been called up to perform some vital task for the FBI, or somesuch flight of fantasy.

Purpose

Everyone wants to find a reason to justify their actions - and even something as patently absurd as dicing can be accepted if you can come up with an appropriate justification. So here are a few, all of which are equally meaningless and untrue.

For fun!

There's nothing like surrendering your will to an inanimate object and claiming that, sorry, you have to go out and party because the dice told you to. You'd love to be sensible and think about the following morning, but the dice have spoken. I guess it's kind of like being the submissive person in an S&M relationship. Kind of.

Get out of jail free

A recurring theme in Luke's books is the difficulty of prosecuting people using the dice as their defence, particularly as the dicelife can be claimed as a religion (see below). The other problem is that pretty much all the evidence given will be unreliable because it is tainted with the unpredictability of the dice. Whether this is true in reality is unknown.

A closer relationship with God

This varies from religion to religion, but God is generally pictured as all-powerful, and all-seeing. If this God can see every bird that falls from the sky, can he not also see every dice that falls from a hand?

So if you really want to ask God what you want to do with your life, the dice are a foolproof way of doing so, and the beauty of the system is that you can't ignore what He says to you - because it's there on the table in a number of dots.

Chance is good

Simply put, chance is good. The life of an average person is too structured, too conformist, and the dice helps people to break out of that shell. Diceliving breeds eccentricity, and it breaks down barriers and both of these things are definately things to be aimed at.

People in general just aren't spontaneous enough - they calculate too heavily before moving, they worry, they fret. They think their friends will view them in a bad light. And it's all unneeded - a roll of the dice can take it away.

The deeper meaning

Everyone has urges which they refuse. Everyone has ideas which they stamp on. And what causes them to refuse it or stamp on it? The ego. The self. The little man in the top of the brain, pulling the levers.

Luke argued that those unanswered urges and unfulfilled dreams were actually dormant personalities. He claimed that everyone is effected by multiple personality 'disorder', but that in most people one self had become dominant, and seized control of the body for day to day activity. The tyranny of the ego.

Further, this is a bad thing. The act of suppressing all these alternate personalities makes people's lives hard. Come to think of it, for modern life, you need all those personalities. A single personality trying to live with everything life throws at it would rapidly go insane.

So, allowing your minority personalities to express themselves is a good thing - and the best way to do this is with the dice. Because each option has only a 1 in 6 chance of happening, the dominant personality doesn't feel the need to control each option so heavily, and freedom and democracy can be let into your mind.