I know I am ahead of both the curve and my time in these meanderings, but what occurred this morning was either just an example of serendipity or the curve catching up with me. I’ve been thinking about writing about “ The Dice Man “ for quite a while. It was a book that came out in 1971 ( wow, nearly fifty years ago, now I think of it ) and was written by an Professor of English, George Cockcroft, under the pseudonym of Luke Rhinehart. I suspect many of you read it at the time because it was quite sensational and a bit lurid, if I am being perfectly honest.
The lead character, you can’t really call him a hero, decides to live his life by the roll of the dice. Tea or coffee this morning ? Anything below a certain number on the dice and it’s tea and anything above then it’s coffee. A bit weird maybe, but hardly harmful. Until…. it’s when it gets to the big decisions that it gets dangerous. Do I let this man walking by live or die? Hold on a moment whilst I stop to roll the dice. Well, it wasn’t quite like that and it’s a long time since I had read it, but you get the picture.
So, I was thinking over the weekend that the reason that until now The Big V has been bearable is that we have no choices. Shall we go out for a meal, or to the cinema or see if we can grab any last minute tickets at the theatre? None of those options are open to us so we have an early home-cooked supper ( or in my case have it cooked for me as I am still working on making that elusive virtual meal… maybe I should also be rolling the dice ) and then sit down to watch the telly with a whisky or a cocktail or a glass of wine. I hear a shaking of the head and an intake of a disapproving breath. Have they turned into alcoholics at the Stein house ? Come on, admit it, unless you are tee-total you are all drinking more as well. It’s become part of our daily routine and once you get into that routine, rise, exercise, shower, breakfast, write or work, coffee, lunch, write or work ( maybe in the garden if weather is fine ) tea, bit of family time on face-time or zoom and then it’s supper ( or dinner or tea depending upon where you live Steve and Jo ) and then it’s the wine out of the fridge or the whisky out of the drinks cabinet and a slump onto the sofa and tv binge.
And the point that I am making is that once we settle down into that routine we removes our choices. Try to break it, I dare you. The little man or woman at NHS who told me I couldn’t leave the house until end of June removed my choices in that directions. And I suppose made my life easier. We are all children now. If Big Brother Bojo tells us not to mingle with others we stay apart ( or we should) Took my car around the block as can get into it without going into the street ( don’t want to tempt fate ) and there was a log jam at the entrance to the park, so I suppose that there are some people still making their own decisions even if they are foolish ones and potentially suicidal
So, back to “ The Dice Man” who some fifty years later has resurfaced in the guise of Professor Steven Levitt ( could be the same bloke who wrote the book under a third name I suppose because none of the other nine books he wrote between 1971 and 2000 exactly set the literary world on fire. He probably should have flipped a coin after the first success. Heads I write a follow up and tails I don’t. It clearly came up heads ,but he would have been better off if it had landed tails and enabled him to remain a one book writer like Anna Sewell ( “Black Beauty “…. “Black Books” is back on the screen by the way. Another brilliant British sit-com I’d forgotten about where the man who owns the bookshop refuses to sell books to people he doesn’t like… love that concept ) Or whoever wrote “ Gone With the Wind “
Anyway, Levitt created a website to which people who couldn’t decide what choice to make on some life decision came to and ….. he simply tossed a coin for them, Amazingly some 22,000 people allowed him to make their life-style decisions for them. Some of the decisions were biggies. Shall I quit my job? Shall I propose ? ( as a spouse you’d be pretty miffed if you ever discovered that your partner of twenty-five years chose you through the toss of a coin and couldn ‘t even be bothered to chuck the coin up in the air himself) Shall I adopt a child? ( that method is going to scare the child for life as well ) Or some lesser ones like , shall I get a tattoo? Or try on line-dating ? Nobody it seemed wanted to be guided as to whether or not they went out onto the street and blew away the first person they saw walking towards them wearing green! Or if they did Levitt wasn’t saying.
So, I hear you ask, what was to stop the toss-the-coin-for-me supplicant ignoring the decision or saying best out of three which my grandson, Sam would have said and then best out of five, or best out of some infinite number until the faces of the coin were quite worn away as were your tossing fingers and until he won? Professor Levitt had thought of that possibility. Well, I mean he is a Professor and doubtless, unlike me, a real one. Before he was asked to toss the coin his punters had to identify a third party who would verify they were being honest and then both the applicant and the adjudicator had to fill in surveys every couple of months to confirm there had been no turning back.
But, here’s the thing. It seems that those who followed where the coin landed, whether it was to leave a relationship or start their own business, were noticeably and substantially happier. So, as I said at the start as long as we can keep on having our decisions made for us we can keep on smiling through .
Me, I am keeping a note of his website, because sometime after the end of June when the NHS man or woman has ceased to tell me what to do . I am going to need someone to make the decision for me as to whether or not I start going out again. Professor Levitt, be warned. I am coming for you.
If he says I can go out there is the next big problem for him to help me with . Do I use cash or a credit card? We won a zoom quiz last night with an excellent team . Gerry and Jo who I’d not met before , but he was a whizz on space questions about planets and the like though my wife did know the number of times that Yuri Gagarin had circled the earth. Once actually. He was Rushin ( Russian ) to get home I think. And yes, Anthony I am turning into Alan Mitchell. Mind you my pal Colin who, with his wife Angela ,was also on the team is also a bit of a punster as well as my pre-Big V supplier of news titbits when he sat next to me in synagogue and mistook me for somebody who was even vaguely interested in what was going on in the world.
However, last night he tried to make up for it when we went into our “ break-out “ room to huddle over the questions. He told me that the country will need billions to get the economy going again. He did tell me how many billions, but by then I’d passed my boredom threshold about current affairs so I can’t tell you the exact number. But, I am confident that the twelve-year old who is the Chancellor of The Exchequer will find a way to produce it. We lost one Little Richard, but we still have Little Rishi Sunak. He keeps finding all this cash and I reckon he is beavering away in his bedroom amongst all his model trains and meccano ( he looks like that sort of boy ) with his John Bull Printing Set producing all this money. I think that’s why we are being encouraged to turn into a cashless society so that when Little Rishi floods the market with his freshly made notes all the old currency will have gone out of circulation and we’ll have nothing with which to compare it.
So, with that thought I leave you for the day ( or at least I hope just a day ) and see you all tomorrow, Stay safe.