Adaptation vs. Substitution

Liverpool Rummy is a meld-based card game, similar to other rummy games in that you try to match sets (cards of the same value) or runs (sequential cards in a single suit), but different in that each hand has a different goal — instead of matching any combination of sets and runs, each hand is ruled by a single combination: three sets of three; a run of four and a set of four; two runs of fives.

If you have ever played Phase 10, this sounds familiar — Liverpool Rummy is the base game that Phase 10 is built on top of. But, if you grew up in Teton Valley on the east side of the Tetons, you might call it something different. We always just called it “Grandma’s Rummy.”

Liverpool Rummy, by nature of its different-goal-per-hand structure, is ripe for customization, and so Grandma’s Rummy is a wholly unique game from any other version I’ve ever seen — for example, you can take cards out of turn by “buying” them, at the cost of an extra random card you now have to get rid of. You can’t forage through the discard pile, and you can’t discard your final card on the final hand — it MUST PLAY. And if the hand goes long and no one goes out before the deck runs out, you reshuffle and play it again.

That last rule can be a real killer. A full game of Grandma’s Rummy takes about an hour with four players firing on all cylinders, but we often play at night with two teens and two adults who are on the edge of being able to function after whatever happened during the day. Often, someone’s mind is drifting, so a game might run an hour and a half, or longer. The idea of replaying a hand can be devastating when everyone’s ready to retire to their quarters.

So we dropped it. If the deck runs out, you count what you have remaining. No one goes out.

It works because it changes very little — if the cards are gone, nearly everyone is waiting for one or two discards anyway — and it makes the game better for everyone at the table. It’s a win-win-win-win-win rule change, because it protects the exhausted and costs no one anything they actually needed.

This is good change. By questioning the accepted structure and weighing against the needs of the group, we are able to critically ask who the rule actually serves — who it helps, and what it costs, and whether it’s still doing the thing it was designed to do. We made a small change that protects everyone’s late-night free-time without sacrificing the spirit of the game. Nobody lost anything they needed, while the people suffering most get relief.

This is what we might call empathetic adaptation — the idea that we can critically assess and thoughtfully adjust — and we’re seeing a lot less of it. The more common pattern is substitution, and while I call this a pattern I might as well also say policy. Someone decides the current rules (or expectations, or societal norms!) aren’t working well enough for them, and instead of understanding the original purpose of the rules they just … swap it with something that benefits THEM. And then they call that improvement! There is no consultation with those who will absorb the costs; when we talk about substitution, the adjustment is not expected to be a universal load. This is how you get change that’s presented as bold when in fact it is cruel.

If you have ever stumbled into the reviews on any online recipe, you know what substitution looks like up close — it’s a one-star review based solely on a totally irresponsible interpretation of the recipe itself. It’s asking for a trigger warning because “I couldn’t substitute heavy cream for mayonnaise” in a cupcake icing. It’s “I don’t like peaches so I substituted carrots”. The commenter didn’t understand why the peaches were there — beyond the flavor and the moisture levels, peaches are kind of THE ENTIRE POINT TO PEACH ICE CREAM. They only knew they didn’t like peaches and so something had to change.

I’d like to think that this idea of substitution as solution is unintentional in its selfishness — that this all feels like problem solving from the inside, that the people rewriting the rules really do believe they’re improving things. Yet an absence of empathy and a total lack of regard for the ways each of us are vulnerable is its own kind of cruelty — a cartoonishly evil cruelty that can not be reframed as “Well, they thought they were doing the right thing.” There is no right thing in extending tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans while letting health insurance subsidies expire for everyone else. There is no right thing in complicating food assistance to the level that eligible people just give up. There’s no right thing in closing the largest job training and housing program for at-risk youth without a single replacement in place.

These substitutions don’t get the benefit of reframing, because they are done for no one but those in power.

Good change is made by people who understand how others will live with the consequences. Good change asks what the system needs to work for the whole table, not just the person who’s already got their cards down, or the person who doesn’t like peaches, or the person who will never have to file paperwork to prove they deserve to eat. It protects the ones who can’t protect themselves, and passes the cost onto those who can comfortably absorb the cost.

That’s probably where we need to land — a VERY simple question: who will absorb the cost of this change, and will they be able to afford it. If you can’t answer that question, you shouldn’t be a part of the solution. And if you can’t answer it with empathy toward those already vulnerable, you’re only substituting carrots to make your ice cream taste like shit.