Tenet 0: Besides this rule, no rule is fixed
Static text can never comprehensively define the intangible human spirit. Certainly not the type of spirit that Dice Theory seeks to cultivate. Everything is up for debate, especially the rules.
As children, we insatiably consume the world. With every breath, our lungs expand with the Universe. We experiment, we react, we learn, we iterate, we radically grow. We’re dynamic, ever-evolving, as fluid as the environment around us.
And then, the self-consciousness of young adolescence combines with a flood of classroom rules designed for order. Momentum is abruptly halted. A young identity emerges. It’s the nexus our newfound sense of self can use to relate to the world, and our attention shifts to protecting it at all costs. We feel pressure for this identity to be recognizable and consistent, and we seek experiences that reinforce it. Instincts fade with new habits. Habits form new instincts. Our entropic childhood curiosity is displaced by fear-driven attempts to maintain a stable sense of self. We abandon our questions and experimentation in an attempt to avoid relational threats like judgment, loneliness, and rejection. These behaviors are carved from survival instincts, but evolution paints with a broad, imprecise brushstroke. Not everything we are inclined to do is in our best interest.
Conformist rituals of daily societal life induce a deeply hypnotic trance, creating a status quo of status quo and further disabling us from natural experimentation.
Slowly, our trajectory of growth loses tailwind, declines, stalls. The parabolic curve regresses.
Meanwhile, every instance of the present has always been a moving target. The Universe has never stopped evolving. It grows with greater purpose than ours, unshackled without an underlying narrative driven by the inevitability of death. There’s a growing tension borne from the delta of deltas, an ever-expanding wedge between ourselves and our world.
We have the choice to shield ourselves from this reality with echo chambers and willful disillusionment. Or we can choose to fight for lost ground. We can find clues in the patterned waves of change that the Universe leaves in its wake and surf their rip currents towards radical growth. Our conscious efforts will be critical but insufficient given that the vast majority of waking time is spent unaware. We need methods to illuminate our blind spots.
Between identity-centered insecurities, evolved resistance, social conformity, and a mind that is largely on autopilot, we’re faced with several barriers to achieving radical growth.
Dice Theory is a tactical methodology designed to tear down these barricades and consistently expand the boundaries of our freedom zones.
Dice Theory posits there is more to life than the default settings of humanity. To reprogram the code we’ll need to hack our own operating system and deeply understand the biases built into our instincts. For radical growth, there must be radical change. The type of change that leads us to question all assumptions. To dig up the roots. To systematically face and overcome our fears.
This journey will involve literal dice (included in your pamphlet). A small, inanimate object with six sides. In the wild, dice is a symbol of random chance. A gambler’s muse as well as her curse. A gamer’s portal to imaginative play. Tamed with the principles of Dice Theory, it takes on new meaning. It thrusts the lantern into the dark and guides us towards radical growth.
Over the course of the next six chapters, we will cover how and why to use this simple cube to transform your life. Each chapter unravels a principle of Dice Theory, blending tactical implementation with its theoretical underpinnings. Tenets 1 - 3 establish the ground rules and tactics of how to roll the dice. Tenets 4 - 6 will more deeply explore when to roll the dice to accelerate our radical growth.
By the end, my hope is that you feel inspired to enlist in the path towards radical growth and armed with a tactical guide to carry out the steps.
I have been rolling dice as part of my own personal growth journey for over a dozen years. I have rolled on thousands of decisions and been witness to hundreds of people transforming their lives using the power of controlled randomness. The principles of Dice Theory have emerged and evolved over the years, and they’ve been updated dozens of times along the way. Dice Theory is not a religion and it is not a constitution. It is not a moral compass nor a manifesto. Core to the philosophy is an acknowledgement of constant environmental change, and the resulting behavioral change that must go hand in hand. It would be foolish hypocrisy to demarcate any part of Dice Theory as a no-fly zone for upheaval. Blind faith will never be requested; only sincerity, trial, and feedback.
Everything is up for debate, especially the rules.
Tenet 0: Besides this rule, no rule is fixed
Read Tenet 1