What is The Machine™

[LMNO, PhD (life continues)]

LOL, thread ruined.

[Misery's Feed Trough]

RWHN,
should leave well enough alone.

[LHX]

seriously, davy, you should review this thread and give us your thoughts on The Machine.  drop the schtick and join the discussions. 

kk ..... i don't see the machine though i know what it is you speak of ..... i look at it instead as the Illuminati and i see it as a war on the consciousness from all sides ..... the age old battle of good vs. evil ..... i think they use old magics derived from strange 4th & 5th dimensional beings that they can summon and allow to enter their bodies ..... they have been training and raiseing each generation of children in this family(s) to believe they are destined to rule the world yadda yadda etc. the interbreed with each other and they rule everything from some huge mansion in the alps or someplace like that ..... they infiltrate everything and control everything and they build this illusion before us ..... and some of us just pull the wool over our own eyes instead .....

the illuminati are this family that are soooooo old, tracing their roots to egypt (or furthur) ..... some of us are a wake and a ware too so we see through the illusion that has been cast over the world by this very old family using very darkside powers, we see through it and start making conscious decions to change it by just about any means we can .....

the machine is an illusion and you are your own prisoner within it

i really think that everything can be fixed with just a thought ..... it's just that we all have to think it at the same time

dave is not here

possibly stuck in 1999

[P3nT4gR4m]

Cheers for drawing my attention to this thread LMNO. Here's my 2 cents:

When I first head you discordian guys talking of The Machine^TM I figured I knew the thing you were referring to. I think I was right, after a fashion. I refer to this entity as Demiurge. It's the entity that produces reality for you. There are two positions you can be in - a slave to the machine (creature of the wheel) or it's master (a bhoddivista) by whom the machine is seen as servant.

The majority of the human race belong to the former category. There is much common ground between the two - both are part of and rely on the machine to provide their experiential reality but only the latter group are aware of this. Unfortunately there is, at point of apex, only one machine and the operations of majority ignorance have made it what it is. It should be noted that the difference between bhoddivista and COTW are akin to the driver and passenger of a vehicle. The fact that you are the driver does not detract from the fact that the vehicle is still an inneficient, pollutant spewing leviathan with dodgy steering and no fucking brakes.

There are two keys to 'fixing' or improving the machine.

1) create more bhoddivista's

2) change the 'faulty' or unwanted operating components

I don't think going head to head with the machine is the answer. Destroying the fundamental structure of reality is tantamount to mutually assured destruction. What we need is an overhaul and that's going to take a lot more mechanics. I have a great deal of repect for the discordian movement,alongside many others which I view as generally positive influences in this respect. I do have concerns about the conception that some of the recently released prisoners of the BIP may form regarding the notion that the machine must be destroyed.

This said I still think waking the sleepers is likely to do more good than harm. I hope that I don't turn out to be wrong in this assumtion.

[LMNO, PhD (life continues)]

in keeping with Descordian theories, every person's interpretation of the BIP, The Machine‚Ѣ, and the System¬Ć is inherently different than the others.

I like your buddhist-tinged interpretation, though.

The Boddhisatva idea is a nice one, but how do you go about creating them?  Its' a lot of hard work.

I feel that if you can at least get people to see the Machine‚Ѣ, and what's behind it (BIP), they might not be able to "steer" it (here, I think the metaphor begins to drift, btw), but at least they can see what leads people to the Machine‚Ѣ.

[Misery's Feed Trough]

Actually, I would say The Machine(tm) IS The Master.  To say otherwise would entail some lone entity or collective controlling The Machine(tm)  I do not believe this to be so, or at least, not anymore.  I see it to be completely autonomous and to employ its own subservients (e.g. The Con, The System, etc.)

[LMNO, PhD (life continues)]

I see The Machine‚Ѣ as mindless, in the sense that (to me) it represents human behavior when they can no longer see the cell that they exist in.

[Cain]

I always had the Machine as smaller - the incestuous crossover of the media, government, military, academia and corporations who make up the top of society.  The CoN is the overall thing, the attitude of pinkness and fear of change that fuels the Machine.

[LMNO, PhD (life continues)]

Interesting.

I have as the heirarchy:

Black Iron Prison --> Machine‚Ѣ --> System¬Ć --> CoN.

That is, we are in the BIP, failing to see that creates the Machine‚Ѣ, and then the System¬Ć is subconciously created to rationalize the horrific things the Machine‚Ѣ does.  The CoN is then used to manipulate the System¬Ć.

[Cain]

I would have gone

BiP  - Imperfect perception leads to
CoN - attitude of fear of difference, which leads to
The Machine - attempts to control perception and what people do, which leads to
The System - which rationalizes such actions (but is also a part of the Machine, media and academics, mostly)

[P3nT4gR4m]

The Boddhisatva idea is a nice one, but how do you go about creating them?  Its' a lot of hard work.

I called the plan Operation Mass Enlightenment. We gave up after a while - couldn't figure out a way to pull it off. I do my bit, whenever I can, on a very small scale. Eventually, with enough of us doing it, maybe it'll happen just like that new age wanker described in the Celestine Prophesy - a 'Critical Mass' of enlightened individuals will be reached.

It's what the bible describes as the apocalypse (the metaphor hods true on a global as well as an individual scale) Wishful thinking at best but when faced with the choice I'll go optimism every time. Knowing the universe the way I do the machine cannot destroy us in the same sense that we cannot destroy it but it can make our reality pretty loathsome if it functions imperfectly. Even the machine cannot fuck with the principle of karma - it has to spit out as many white things as it does black.

[LMNO, PhD (life continues)]

I would have gone

BiP  - Imperfect perception leads to
CoN - attitude of fear of difference, which leads to
The Machine - attempts to control perception and what people do, which leads to
The System - which rationalizes such actions (but is also a part of the Machine, media and academics, mostly)

I'd like to read more about your theories, Cain.  I see a lot of wisodom in there.

[P3nT4gR4m]

(here, I think the metaphor begins to drift, btw)

Metaphors are a bastard that way but I trust it served the purpose it was intended to illustrate.

[Cain]

I would have gone

BiP  - Imperfect perception leads to
CoN - attitude of fear of difference, which leads to
The Machine - attempts to control perception and what people do, which leads to
The System - which rationalizes such actions (but is also a part of the Machine, media and academics, mostly)

I'd like to read more about your theories, Cain.  I see a lot of wisodom in there.

Thanks.  I'll develop it more.  Gimme time to flesh it out....

[Cain]

As I see it, the BIP is a problem of perception as much as anything else.  Perception is imperfect, but humans fear chaos and entropy and what that would entail, the dark terrors of Eris, Deimos and Phobos and the Kakodaimones.   So with imperfect information, a structure of how the world works is built, a theoretical framework which by its nature of its a prioir assumptions is limiting in the extreme.

However, no matter how smart you are, mistakes will be made and these will be noticed over time. Fear of entropy and chaos returns tenfold.  The CoN becomes apparent again, much more so then at the first stage, the fear of change undermining the system.  Those at the top become fearful.  But a clever observer will realize this is of little consequence so long as the current framework is widely believed.

In that way the Machine comes into existence.  The Machine takes the elite of the society it exists in and welds them into a super-class at the very top.  Their job is to enforce the worldview that has been decided on, be it neo-liberalism or Islam or Christianity.  Because the political elite are part of the machine, they benefit from keeping the status quo in place.  Businesses only profit from certain types of disruption, far away from centres of capital, so they bankroll said parties to keep the stability and do them favours.  The military turns from national defence to a tool to break open foreign markets and disrupt foreign monopolies.

The System is comprised of academics and journalists within the media, for the most part.  Their job is to create a compelling ideological and narrative to explain the actions of the Machine, which if were shown via their own records would lead most people to believe they were simply cynical reactionaries.  However, there is much crossover, with academics often informing policy and belonging to the same corporations that bankroll political parties, as well as working within the areas of the shadow government of the Pentagon and intelligence services.

Throughout all the Aneristic Delusion reigns supreme.