life by the 8 ball

Here is Mattel’s ONLINE VERSION of its popular 8 Ball novelty toy, which tells fortunes in response to yes/no questions. (Incidentally, only now did I realize that the responses aren’t equally distributed: affirmative responses are far more frequent than neutral or negative ones.)

While clicking it a few times, I was wondering what life would be like if everyone made major decisions according to the 8 Ball. It seemed at first like a Borgesian scenario of sorts.

But then I realized: it might not change much at all. After all, none of us ever face the same yes/no decisions, and the ones we do face are deeply revealing about or own character. For instance, I would never have occasion to ask the 8 Ball: “Should I go deer hunting this weekend?” It simply wouldn’t ever occur to me to go shoot animals for sport as a recreational option, and thus I would never find myself doing it.

In short, we are probably more defined not by the choices we make, but the choices we face. Once we face a conscious decision about something, that’s really what shows who we are, and at that point perhaps the actual option we choose is just about as random as an 8 Ball response would be.

Maybe I’ll try it one day as an experiment: guide my entire day according to the edicts of the 8 Ball, and see how unusual that day ends up being compared with one of my normal days. But the key lies in knowing how long to wait before consulting it on any given issue… On any given day, any of us will have a number of crazy, fleeting thoughts that we know better than to act or decide on. It generally takes at least a few minutes of considering something seriously before we begin to consider it as a genuine question, and perhaps only at that point would we dare to ask the 8 Ball its advice.

For example, you might wake up cranky one morning and ask yourself the fleeting question: “Should I quit my job and go set up a café in Cambodia?”, or whatever. And it may sound good for ten or so minutes, but ultimately is so ridiculous an idea that you don’t even remember it an hour later. One wouldn’t want to submit to the 8 Ball quite that early.

One of the most charming aspects of the little work of Tacitus on the ancient Germans is his discussion of their ironclad submission to the laws of chance. Sometimes a German would make a bet under the penalty that he would become a slave if he lost the bet, and his sense of honor was such that he would actually deliver himself to slavery after losing. I’m not recommending any questions that extreme to the 8 Ball, however.