1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
|
\chapter{Mock Risk Games}
Suppose you stand in front of a swinging door with a nail sticking out of it
pointing at your face; and suppose you are prepared to jump back if the
door suddenly opens in your face. You are deliberately taking a risk on the
assumption that you can protect yourself. Let us call such a situation a "risk
game." Then a mock risk game is a risk game such that the misfortune which
you risk is contrary to the course of nature, a freak misfortune; and thus
your preparation to evade it is correspondingly superficial.
If the direction of gravity reverses and you fall on the ceiling, that is a
freak misfortune. If you don't want to risk this misfortune, then you will
anchor yourself to the floor in some way. But if you stand free so that you
can fall, and yet try to prepare so that if you do fall, you will fall in such a
way that you won't be hurt, then that is a mock risk game. if technicians
could actually effect or simulate gravity reversal in the room, then the risk
game would be a real one. But I am not concerned with real risk games. I am
interested in dealing with gravity reversal in an everyday environment, where
everything tells you it can't possibly happen. Your 'preparation' for the fall
is thus superficial, because you still have the involuntary conviction that it
can't possibly happen.
Mock risk games constitute a new area of human behavior, because they
aren't something people have done before, you don't know what they will be
like until you try them, and it took a very special effort to devise them.
They have a tremendous advantage over other activities of comparable
significance, because they can be produced in the privacy of your own room
without special equipment. Let us explore this new psychological effect; and
let us not ask what use it has until we are more familiar with it.
Instructions for a variety of mock risk games follow. (I have played
each game many times in developing it, to ensure that the experience of
playing it will be compelling.) For each game, there is a physical action to be
performed in a physical setting. Then there is a list of freak misfortunes
which you risk by performing the action, and which you must be prepared
to evade. The point is not to hallucinate the misfortunes, or even to fear
them, but rather to be prepared to evade them. First you work with each
misfortune separately. For example, you walk across a room, prepared to
react self-protectingly if you are suddenly upside down, resting on the top of
your head on the floor. In preparing for this risk, you should clear the path
of objects that might hurt you if you fell on them; you should wear clothes
suitable for falling; and you should try standing on your head, taking your
hands off the floor and falling, to get a feeling for how to fail without
getting hurt. After you have mastered the preparation for each misfortune
separately, you perform the action prepared to evade the first misfortune
and the second (but not both at once). You must prepare to determine
instantly which of the two misfortunes befalls you, and to react
appropriately. After you have mastered pairs of misfortunes, you go on to
triples of misfortunes, and so forth.
The principal games are for a large room with no animals or distracting
sounds present.
\textbf{A.}Walk across the lighted room from one corner to the diagonally
opposite one, breathing normally, with your eyes open.
\begin{enumerate}
\item You are suddenly upside down, resting on the top of your head on the
floor. You must get down without breaking your neck.
\item Although the floor looks unbroken and solid, beyond a certain point
nothing is there. If you step onto that area, you will take a fatal fall. Thus, as
you walk, you must not shift your weight to your forward foot until you are
sure it will hold. Put the ball of the forward foot down before the heel.
\item Something happens to the cohesive forces in your neck so that if your
head tips in any direction, it will come right off your body, killing you
immediately. Otherwise everything remains normal. Thus, as you walk, you
must "balance" your head on your neck. When you reach the other side of
the room, your neck will be restored to normal. (Prepare beforehand by
walking with a book balanced on your head.)
\item Invisible conical weights fall around you with their points down, each
whistling as it falls. You must evade them by ear in order not to be stabbed.
Walk softly and fast.
\item The room is suddenly filled with water. You have to control your lungs
and swim to the top. Wear clothes suitable for swimming.
\end{enumerate}
\textbf{A'.} Play game A while on a long walk on an uncrowded street. The floor
is replaced by the sidewalk. The fifth misfortune becomes for space suddenly
to be filled with water to a height of fifteen feet above the street.
\textbf{B.} Lie on your back on a pallet in the dimly lit room, hands at your
sides, with a pillow on your face so that it is slightly difficult to breathe, for
thirty seconds at a time.
\begin{enumerate}
\item The pillow suddenly hardens and becomes hundreds of pounds heavier. It
remains suspended on your face for a split second and then "falls," bears
down with full weight. You must jerk your head out from under it in that
split second.
\item The pillow adheres to your skin with a force greater than your skin's
cohesion, and begins to rise. You must rise with it in such a way that your
skin is not torn.
\end{enumerate}
\textbf{C.} Lie on your back on the pallet in the dimly lit room.
\begin{enumerate}
\item Gravity suddenly disappears completely, so that nothing is held down by
it; and the ceiling becomes red-hot. You must avoid drifting up against the
ceiling.
\item The surface you are lying on becomes a vast lighted open plane. From the
distance, giant steel spheres come rolling in your direction. You must evade
them.
\item Your body is split in half just above the waist by an indefinitely long,
rather high, foot-thick wall. Your legs and lower torso are on one side, and
your upper torso, arms, and head are on the other side. Matter normally
exchanged between the two halves of your body continues to be exchanged
through the. wall by telekinesis. It is as if you are a foot longer above the
waist. In order to reunite your body, you must first roll over and get up,
bent way forward. There are depressions in the wall on the same side as your
feet. You have to climb the wall, putting your feet in the depressions and
balancing yourself. You will be reunited when you reach the top and your
waist passes above the wall.
\end{enumerate}
\textbf{D.} Sit in a plain, small, straight chair, on the edge of the seat, hands
hanging at the sides of the seat, feet together in front of the chair, in the
lighted room, for about thirty seconds at a time.
\begin{enumerate}
\item The chair is suddenly out from under you and sitting on you with Its legs
straddling your lap and legs. You have to get your weight over your feet so
you won't take a hard fall.
\item The direction of gravity reverses and the chair remains anchored to the
floor. You have to grab the seat and hold on in order not to fall on the
ceiling.
\item You are suddenly in a contra-terrene universe, in which the atmosphere is
unbreathable and prolonged contact with either the atmosphere or the
ground will disintegrate you. The seat and back of the chair become a
penetrable hyperspatial sheet between the alien universe and your own. As
soon as you feel the alien atmosphere, you must jerk your feet off the
ground and deliberately sink or plunge through the seat and back of the chair
in the best way that you can. You will end up on the floor under the chair in
your universe.
\item You are suddenly in dark empty space in a three-dimensional lattice of
gleaming wires. Segments of the lattice alternately burst into flame and cool
off. You adhere to the chair as if it were part of you. With your hands
holding onto the seat, you can move yourself and the chair forward by
\end{enumerate}
\plainbreak{2}
\textbf{[NOTE: TWO PAGES MISSING HERE IN SCAN]}
\plainbreak{2}
from blundering into a radiation beam, you have to communicate
pre-verbally to the other mind by every means from vocal cries to
pantomine, and get your-body/his-mind out of range of the radiation. When
the body is out, you will both be restored to normal. (The first thing to
anticipate is the basic shift in viewpoint by which you will be looking at
your own body from the other's position. There is no point in tensing your
muscles in preparatiton for the misfortune, because if it occurs, you will be
working with a strange set of muscles anyway. The next thing to prepare to
do is to spot the radiation beams; and then to yell, gesture, or
whatever--anything to get the "other" to avoid the radiation. Note finally
that neither player prepares for the possibility that he will be surrounded by
radiation. Each player prepares for the same role in an asymmetrical pas de
deux.)
\emph{Asymmetry:} The two of you play a given duo game, but each prepares
to evade a different misfortune.
\textbf{AB.} Stay awake with eyes closed for an agreed upon time between one
and fifteen minutes. Use a timer with an alarm.
\begin{enumerate}
\item Each suddenly has the other's entire present consciousness in addition to
his own, from perceptions to memories, ideologies, ambitions, and
everything else---threatening both with psychological shock.
The couple must take up positions such that their sensory perceptions
are as nearly identical as possible. Beforehand, each must discuss with the
other the aspects of the other's attitude to the world which each must fears
having impused on his consciousness. During the game, each must think
about these aspects and try to prepare for them.
\item Each suddenly relives the other's most intense past feelings of depression
and suicidal impulses. In other words, if five years ago the other attempted
suicide because he failed out of college, you suddenly have the consciousness
that "you" have just failed out of college, are totally worthless, and should
destroy yourself. Presumably the other has since learned to live with his past
disasters, but you do not have the defenses he has built up. You are
overwhelmed with a despair which the other felt in the past, and which is
incongruous with the rest of your consciousness. In summary, both of you
risk shock and suicidal impulses. Beforehand, of course, each must tell the
other of his worst past suicidal or depressed episode; and discuss anything
else that may minimize the risk of shock.
\end{enumerate}
\section*{Intrusions in Duo Games}
As before, distractions and modulations can be openly studied by
consent of the players. As for bogies, it is possible in duo games for one
player to create a bogy without warning, in effect acting as a saboteur. As
soon as a game is sabotaged, though, confidence is lost, and each player just
watches out for the other's bogies. Here are some sample intrusions.
\begin{tabular}{ r c c c }
\textsc{Game} & \textsc{Distraction} & \textsc{Bogy} & \textsc{Modulation} \\
AA 1. & cough & shout in other's face & each take a different drug \\
2. & talk and laugh \linebreak get out of step & $\rightarrow$ \linebreak (stomp hard) & \\
3. & spin around & $\rightarrow$ & \\
AB 1. & cough \linebreak talk and laugh & gasp \linebreak silently pass palm back \& forth in front of other's face & \\
2. & & & \\
\end{tabular}
|
