The Double-Bind Game

A double-bind game is a game with self-contradictory rules, a game doomed to perpetual self-frustration… The social double-bind game can be phrased in several ways:

    The first rule of this game is that it is not a game.
    Everyone must play.
    You must love us.
    You must go on living.
    Be yourself, but play a consistent and acceptable role.
    Control yourself and be natural.
    Try to be sincere.

 The Book

How to be a Genuine Fake

Alan Watts

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What kinds of double-binds have I accepted in my affairs and demanded of myself: all of the above for sure? Still, don’t we admire actors, speakers and public figures that have created an air about them that seems so natural and sincere? The greatest contribution of our best American writer’s; from Melville, Whitman, Mark Twain on to Jack Kerouac and beyond, has been to write the way people actually speak. However we accept, sometimes with a smirk, the fact that the actor is reading lines from a script, the speaker is reading from a prompter and that the game the politician is playing is not a game at all… dead serious business! In order to break away from this charade the first matter of business is to get honest with myself… to recognize that I am playing a game… a deadly game for some of us that have a weakness for escape into drugs and alcohol. How many beliefs have I wrapped around myself like the scoundrel does the flag? Sogyal Rinpoche suggests in today’s reflection: “When you re-enter everyday life, let the wisdom, insight, compassion, humor, fluidity, spaciousness that meditation brought you pervade your day-to-day experience.” This isn’t as simple as it seems because, again, I am trying to create the illusion that I must take lightly the deadly serious business of the day ahead. Then again, to be as authentic as a child is a simple thing because a child doesn’t have to think about letting go. A child just simply does it.

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