April 25, 2020
A VISION
And Behold! Purely in my mind and with my powers of design, without the assistance of any mortifications, marathon meditations, sojourns in a desert or on a mountain top, hallucinogenic substances or visitations, there comes to me a vision of what a gathering of people who follow the way of LUCKISM® might look like. [My vision may have explanatory comments in brackets like this.]
A LUCKISM® gathering is the equivalent of the sort of gathering which takes place in churches, mosques, synagogues, etc. There will be no equivalent of minister, rabbi or mullah. [At least, not until I have figured out how it is possible to set up an organization which will avoid the problems I see in such organizations. Much more on that later.] The senior Luckist present makes such procedural decisions as are needed, e.g., when to start and end each section of the proceeding. Or, that role, or even the minutiae of procedure, can be decided by chance at each meeting.
I see them entering a gathering place and sitting in comfortable chairs in a circular pattern. I hear them greeting each other with such ejaculations as "Luck You!" or "Luckeleujah!" or just "Good Luck." They are all adults, past the minimum age required by the state for entering into a contract. [LUCKISM® can only be formally joined by adults above the legal age. Below that age, for those who want to join, a special procedure will have to be designed to insure the decision is a mature one.]
The program will be divided into three main parts, 1. personal accounts and discussion of chance events which the participants have experienced, 2. sublimated gambling and 3. aleatory attempts to answer questions of public importance. [If artistic works, such as music, poetry or painting are to be used they will be inserted between the three sections.]
In the first part I see one person describing how, on an isolated beach, minutes after he read a poem to his wife about cremation ("Cremation" by Robinson Jeffers) a crowd of people arrived to deposit the ashes of a friend in the water. Another one tells how he noticed he had started holding on to the banister when coming down stairs in his house and then read an article in which the late, great scientist Linus Pauling, when asked his secret of longevity (he lived to 93) said, "Always hold on to the banister." And I hear much more from daily life about unexpected encounters, accidents and other examples of luck, good, bad and indeterminate. This is much more interesting than the ossified liturgy used in some religious gatherings. It's about real encounters by real people, big and small, with a fundamental power in the universe. Each session will generate fresh interest and involvement.
The second part of the gathering, "sublimated gambling," requires more explanation. It is the most "sacred" part of the proceedings because it involves actual experience of, and contact with, the force which is at the core of the religion. I suppose it can be considered the equivalent, in physical concreteness, of the sacraments of Christianity or the reading of the torah scroll in Judaism or circumambulating the Ka’aba in Islam. "Sublimated gambling" means participating in games of chance in order to experience the reality of the unknowable, not to profit monetarily. The exact procedures remains to be worked out, i.e., what games will be appropriate for various situations and how they will be played. It will give each participant the genuine, indisputable experience of the central fact on which the religion is focused, a fact which is paradoxically absolutely verifiable yet profoundly mysterious. As will be explained later, this will also be designed to provide a means of financial support for the religion, much more in tune with its spiritual core than selling the right to participate in various ceremonies or paying to advance in religious "status" or simply soliciting donations. [The latter are common practices in existing religions.]
I will soon devote a full ramble to sublimated gambling because there are many considerations going into its development.
The third part of the gathering will most likely arouse skepticism. I call it "aleatory guidance." In it, participants use a traditional chance method to explore the answers to questions which are of importance to the community. I prefer that my magnetic I-Ching be used, not for selfish reasons, but because I believe it is demonstrably the most perfect method of this type. I will go into the details later. For the moment, I see the participants agreeing on one or more questions to be submitted to the aleatory method. Then comes a discussion of the meaning of the results. The idea of using chance to resolve important questions is an area which will arouse criticism. I will deal with those objections later in more detail. For the moment, let me simply say that, as embodied in the I-Ching system, chance is better than any so-called scientific or logical method for helping resolve the deepest questions people have about life decisions.
Please keep in mind that the gatherings are not the main purpose of LUCKISM®. They are primarily a means for confirming and strengthening a person's belief in the existence and correctness of the fundamental principles. They lay the groundwork for the application of the principles to life in the world as it is lived by each individual. They generate the behavior which serves as an example to the rest of society. After attending a gathering, participants know, for example, why they do not want synthetic potato chips or Coca Cola, why they prefer face-to-face transactions over virtual transactions and why they deem the restoration of natural balances on Earth vastly more important than the exploration of space. They have a true religious underpinning for their conduct in life. [The life rules which emerge from LUCKISM® are the biggest topic of all. They will be the subject of much future elaboration.]
Here, for the moment, endeth the vision.
END
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