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TESTEMONAIL:  Right and Discordianism allows room for personal interpretation. You have your theories and I have mine. Unlike Christianity, Discordia allows room for ideas and opinions, and mine is well-informed and based on ancient philosophy and theology, so, my neo-Discordian friends, open your minds to my interpretation and I will open my mind to yours. That's fair enough, right? Just claiming to be discordian should mean that your mind is open and willing to learn and share ideas. You guys are fucking bashing me and your laughing at my theologies and my friends know what's up and are laughing at you and honestly this is my last shot at putting a label on my belief structure and your making me lose all hope of ever finding a ideological group I can relate to because you don't even know what the fuck I'm talking about and everything I have said is based on the founding principals of real Discordianism. Expand your mind.

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The Secret Histories, #1

Started by Doktor Howl, July 27, 2010, 03:42:43 PM

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Doktor Howl

Well, not SO secret, just that nobody pays attention to it.

Many Americans know that the founding fathers were mostly Deists.  A Deist is one who believes in "God as watchmaker"...IE, God set the universe up, and let it run without further interference.

So it's obviously no surprise that the founders set our government up the same way (With the notable exceptions of Patrick Henry and Alexander Hamilton, who objected for very different reasons.).  In fact, given article V, it's even arguable that they set up a social program, designed to make the citizens of the union more free and more happy as time went on.

And it worked.  Slavery was abolished (though not without cost), women got the right to vote, the average life of the common man became better and better, for about 190 years.

Problem is, the program was based on a model, and the model was - as all models are - flawed to some degree.  This caused errors to appear, errors which grew with every iteration (or generation, in this case), until the system began to break down. 

For example, World War I was predictable at the time of the founding, and was probably taken into account.  World War II, on the other hand, was an error caused by errors made in 1918, and probably couldn't have been imagined by the founders.  Recessions were undoubtably taken into account.  The dustbowl and the depression, probably not so much.

We've now been cycling monstrous errors for 60 years, and the effects became noticeable about 40 years ago, serious 30 years ago, and untenable 10 years ago.  We exist in a broken Machine in a horrible reality that Machine built for us, not out of malice, but out of bad data...Small errors magnified over decades, until there are a million small problems, and a few huge ones, that the system simply can't cope with anymore. 

You can't really fix it, or hit the "reset button", as the Ron Paul crowd would like to do, because you can't change the past, and you can't make history go away without creating a worse monster than you started with.

The idea of "E-Democracy" won't help, either, because changing the controls on a broken machine doesn't fix the machine, it just adds further complexity and makes the problems worse.

If allowed to continue, the end result will be either an autocracy or an oligarchy (something guaranteed by Ron Paul's ideas, and those of the "E-Democracy" crowd, incidentally).  The founders probably knew this would eventually happen...They were nothing if not students of history.

You have to wonder if they saw this coming, and wondered if we'd be smart enough when the time came to develop something completely different, a new social program that would be able to carry on where theirs finally failed. 

And, well, if not, we had 220 years.  Not a bad run.

Okay for now,
Dok
Molon Lube

Adios


Doktor Howl

Quote from: Doktor Charley Brown on July 27, 2010, 03:48:57 PM
Sadly, I agree with you.

Why is what I wrote sad?  It's not an epitaph unless you/we want it to be.
Molon Lube

Adios

Quote from: Doktor Howl on July 27, 2010, 03:49:34 PM
Quote from: Doktor Charley Brown on July 27, 2010, 03:48:57 PM
Sadly, I agree with you.

Why is what I wrote sad?  It's not an epitaph unless you/we want it to be.

You don't think it's too late to fix it? If our system collapses I can see a repeat of the former Soviet Union. There will be many states who will remain independent and refuse to join a new union.

Freeky

Quote from: Doktor Charley Brown on July 27, 2010, 03:52:39 PM
Quote from: Doktor Howl on July 27, 2010, 03:49:34 PM
Quote from: Doktor Charley Brown on July 27, 2010, 03:48:57 PM
Sadly, I agree with you.

Why is what I wrote sad?  It's not an epitaph unless you/we want it to be.

You don't think it's too late to fix it? If our system collapses I can see a repeat of the former Soviet Union. There will be many states who will remain independent and refuse to join a new union.

That's not such a terrible thing, or at least I don't see it being a terrible thing.

Doktor Howl

Quote from: Doktor Charley Brown on July 27, 2010, 03:52:39 PM
Quote from: Doktor Howl on July 27, 2010, 03:49:34 PM
Quote from: Doktor Charley Brown on July 27, 2010, 03:48:57 PM
Sadly, I agree with you.

Why is what I wrote sad?  It's not an epitaph unless you/we want it to be.

You don't think it's too late to fix it? If our system collapses I can see a repeat of the former Soviet Union. There will be many states who will remain independent and refuse to join a new union.

1.  It's too late to fix it. 

2.  And so?
Molon Lube

Adios

Have you thought this out and did I stumble on to the point that quickly?

Doktor Howl

I'm just puzzled.  Did you read the second half of my essay?
Molon Lube

Adios

Quote from: Doktor Howl on July 27, 2010, 04:06:27 PM
I'm just puzzled.  Did you read the second half of my essay?

Yes I did. Did I miss something, again?

Adios

I guess I have no faith that we will do anything about it.

Richter

I see a problem like this, and I get caught up in it almost by default.  Can't be helped, I am, as one good ol' italian fellow I knew in college dubbed me, a fixer.  

I don't have a good elegant fix for it, either.  I have an idea of running through the pages of laws, regulations and policies with a rubber stamp. "BULLSHIT: REMOVE"  This is falling into the trap of trying to fix the machine though, a labor of the Gordian sort, with a case of Sisiphus of undiagnosed serverity.  Given the rate at which the BS perpetuates and multiplies, the elected rabid STD host monkies hammer away at their typewriters banging down drugs with booze when they're not outright shitting everywhere.  At what point did we sign our overarching servies to these mangy creatures?  We did it because it was easy, because we didn't want to worry.  

There had been an earning, and entitlement, a decision that it would be OK to expect everything the dream of America promised, sit behind out picket fence pallisades and expect everything to go on OK outside of us.  We grew fat and big and forgot what "Community" was, though we're rediscovering "Tribe" in a REAL hurry.  

Fire?  Better call someone and expect them to stop it.  It's THEIR job.
Bleeding out?  Phone the lazy ambulance fuckers.  Weren't they wathcing your webcam stream?
Robbed?  Clear out, let the robbers have their way, and wait for the police to show up and stop them.  You are not allowed to defend your self or your property.  Jump in and YOU are LIABLE if any of it goes wrong.  We do have to protect everyone form overzealous amateur participation.

How do you untangle that kind of self-  fucking logic?  Alexander the Great knew how to cut through bullshit.  He may have jsut been a frag - happy frat boy who was good with horses, but the example: fuck the minutia, go out an accomplish SOMETHING: it's one that works.  Can we cut our mess of a system apart and go on?  

Primarily, there's this sneering hipster, teenage angst concept of the "system".  There is no "system", (that's my runnign slash with Occam's razor for the day).  Assuming their is any centralized intention behind it all dedicated to (apparently) inconveniencing, frustrating, monitoring, and driving you into slavedom is a delusion of your own self importance.  Saying there is a "system" doing anything like this is like accusing space aliens of fuckign with the fabric of the unvierse to give us all cancer with Hawkian Radiation.  It's a side effect, a leaking, a sidestream of every little injustice, inconsistency and bureaocratic trip - up in interacting with anythign bigger than a 7 person small business.  In short; you're delusion of persecution is backed and powered by the sinister fuck of idiot human nature.  

Feel cold yet?   (more to come.)

     
Quote from: Eater of Clowns on May 22, 2015, 03:00:53 AM
Anyone ever think about how Richter inhabits the same reality as you and just scream and scream and scream, but in a good way?   :lulz:

Friendly Neighborhood Mentat

Doktor Howl

Molon Lube

Adios


The Wizard

Nice work, Dok. I liked it. So, if I've got you right, you think that the current system if dying off, so what should hopefully happen is that a new system be designed to replace it. Any thoughts on what this system might be like?

QuoteWaiting for the rest...

As am I.
Insanity we trust.

Adios

Quote from: Dr. James Semaj on July 27, 2010, 04:27:05 PM
Nice work, Dok. I liked it. So, if I've got you right, you think that the current system if dying off, so what should hopefully happen is that a new system be designed to replace it. Any thoughts on what this system might be like?

QuoteWaiting for the rest...

As am I.

About 40 separate countries with the common bonds of proximity, commerce and currency.