Have You Ever Had an Epiphany of the Absurd?

[Brotep]

In and of itself, life is meaningless.  We give it meaning.  It's what people do.

Sometimes that causes problems.  Hell, a lot of the time we end up more deluded for it.  Other times it's not a delusion so much as a choice--figuring out what's important to you and building your life around it.

It might sound trite, but you just gotta go with whatever floats your boat.  Insight and creative expression matter a lot to me, so I try to bring them into everything I do.

[Cain]

And here I was thinking that a Discordian board would be flooded with Absurdists.

That'll teach ya to make assumptions.

Well, to be fair, we are flooded with absurdists.

Constantly, in fact.

Fortunately they mostly either don't stick around too long or stop being absurdists.

I'm assuming Trip is being snarky here, but I don't think those people count so much as absurdists as rogue AI/spambots who've read 50,000 badly formatted .txt version of the PD and want to show off how well they've memorised it.

ITT Brotep and Cram have already said everything else I would have.

[LMNO]

All right, LQ.  I'll play.

From what I gather in the Original Post, you are describing a sudden trancendent moment when the underlying Chaos is revealed, and the Illusions of Eristic Disorder and Aneristic Order are silenced; the Absurdism you speak of isn't Python-esque non-sequitor humor, but the existentialist offshoot suggested by Camus and his ilk.

I would suggest that you look deeper into our Chapel Perilous allusions.  A "quick look" around the web-o-sphere isn't enough to grasp what we're talking about, and you seem to understand our references to filter shifting a little too quickly.

To put it in Discordian terms:

1) The fundamentalist Discordian*, the Universe is Chaos, which is perceived as an infinite amount of random events.  Using our Law of Five skills, we create patterns which we call Order, and if we see no pattern, we call it Disorder.  Please note that because these are self-created patterns, they are referred to as "Illusions".

2) The various layers of Order and Disorder that we come up with create a filter through which we percieve the Universe, also known as Reality.  Please note that this means we see Reality as a series of Illusions.

3) Sometimes, through our experiences, these Illusions drop away, and for a moment, we can see a part of the Chaos that underlies everything.  At this momement, we can attempt to create new Illusions that ultimately change the way we see Reality.



From what I gather, your Epiphany of the Absurd relates to Point 3).  And what we have been calling Chapel Perilous also relates to Point 3).


Hope this helps.


LMNO
-helpful in the new year.















*Please note that the Fundamentalist Discordian does not exist, and these theories are not wholly agreed upon; however, the theories do align with the Principia.  Sort of.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Absurdism, to me, is a huge relief. Every single hour of the day, people are trying to cram narratives and meaning down our throats with a funnel. Christ, you can't even buy coffee without someone force feeding you some eco-green story about how your actions as an individual are relevant to the world theater. Fuck that noise! I make up my own holidays, and I vote by die roll.

PD is full of absurdists, they're just pragmatic about it. Sometimes you have to pick up some meaning and run with it. Fully embracing absurdism is kind of like throwing away all your goals. Sure, you'll never be disappointed, you'll never fail at anything, but you'll also never "get anywhere". We wouldn't be able to communicate if we weren't willing to take each other somewhat seriously.


Anyway, I had an event like what you're talking about, I think. It was in 2005 or 2006. I was living in the OBNOXIOUS JERK CABAL cabalhouse, which was like a year long experiment in how to become as insane as possible. I did meet eris, I badly embarrassed myself, and I lost about three weeks of memory. (other guests at the party would recount a story about me emerging from a closet naked, covered in strange glyphs, shouting stuff like "Avert thine eyes! Your plebeian eyes are unfit to view this body of Adonis!") In the end, I did not successfully cast off all meaning and reinvent myself as some kind of psychic superhero. Well I did, but only as long as I stayed inside my apartment. Even after I came down, it was difficult to make reality checks. So I think there are dangers to absurdism - discarding other people's realities can be really disorienting!

In the end, I've found pragmatism to be a bit more effective way to crowbar reality.

What Cram said.

Also there are big-A Absurdists and little-a absurdists.

I had a shared epiphany of absurdity with my friend Pete (who is my permanent fiance... we have plans to run away to Mexico and start an emu farm someday) about eleven years ago. We basically lost our minds together over the course of several weeks (possibly months), had a bunch of shared hallucinations, and were permanently changed. She called me up one day in the middle of doing her calculus homework and informed me that the formula for calculating the volume of a cone proves the absurd nature of the universe, explained why, and then explained why :cone: is actually the fundamental formula for the universe itself. I wish I still had that message because it all made perfect sense.

Yet, like all religious experiences, is completely meaningless and even ridiculous to anyone who did not have that experience.

[hooplala]

LMNO, I love you.

[LMNO]

Sorry buddy, I'm married.  But if it helps, I love you too.

[President Television]

Once, I found neurological proof in my Grade 12 Biology textbook that we cannot ever understand the universe as it really is and that the logic on which our minds work isn't even compatible with the Really Real Troof. I won't go into detail unless you prompt me, because it might take a bit of explaining. Anyway, bricks were shat.

[Brotep]

Once, I found neurological proof in my Grade 12 Biology textbook that we cannot ever understand the universe as it really is and that the logic on which our minds work isn't even compatible with the Really Real Troof. I won't go into detail unless you prompt me, because it might take a bit of explaining. Anyway, bricks were shat.

Hahaha, go for it.

[President Television]

Once, I found neurological proof in my Grade 12 Biology textbook that we cannot ever understand the universe as it really is and that the logic on which our minds work isn't even compatible with the Really Real Troof. I won't go into detail unless you prompt me, because it might take a bit of explaining. Anyway, bricks were shat.

Heh, let's hear it.

Ok, I was studying neurons. Neurons have a threshold for stimuli. If the stimuli falls below the threshold, no impulse is produced by the neuron. If the stimuli is above it, an impulse is produced. The textbook refers to it as an all-or-none principle. Of course, what this means is that our neurons create a false dichotomy where there's really this whole range of intensity. Scale it up, and our entire consciousness, though unfathomably more complex than a single neuron, is based on this false dichotomy at its most fundamental level. We have no way of knowing how much stimulation a single neuron is receiving, and that isn't really essential information for our survival, but it still means there's this whole dimension of information that we can't even comprehend.

Of course, I might be wrong about this whole theory. It was jarring when I figured it out, though.

[Brotep]

Ok.  Yeah, it's kind of a stretch to go from neurons to thoughts.

Still, that must have been a beautiful moment.

[President Television]

Ok.  Yeah, it's kind of a stretch to go from neurons to thoughts.

Yeah, I don't think I should call it proof so much as evidence.

Still, that must have been a beautiful moment.

It was.

[rong]

reminds me of the time i "discovered" that there has to be infinitely many dimensions.  took me about a week to get over it and at least a year to figure out why nobody else thought it was as awesome as i did.

[the last yatto]

And here I was thinking that a Discordian board would be flooded with Absurdists.

we put the hamsters to work in the mines

[LMNO]

Once, I found neurological proof in my Grade 12 Biology textbook that we cannot ever understand the universe as it really is and that the logic on which our minds work isn't even compatible with the Really Real Troof. I won't go into detail unless you prompt me, because it might take a bit of explaining. Anyway, bricks were shat.

Heh, let's hear it.

Ok, I was studying neurons. Neurons have a threshold for stimuli. If the stimuli falls below the threshold, no impulse is produced by the neuron. If the stimuli is above it, an impulse is produced. The textbook refers to it as an all-or-none principle. Of course, what this means is that our neurons create a false dichotomy where there's really this whole range of intensity. Scale it up, and our entire consciousness, though unfathomably more complex than a single neuron, is based on this false dichotomy at its most fundamental level. We have no way of knowing how much stimulation a single neuron is receiving, and that isn't really essential information for our survival, but it still means there's this whole dimension of information that we can't even comprehend.

Of course, I might be wrong about this whole theory. It was jarring when I figured it out, though.

I can't remember if you've read Godel Escher Bach... But if you haven't, the above makes me think you'd really dig it.

[Kai]

Once, I found neurological proof in my Grade 12 Biology textbook that we cannot ever understand the universe as it really is and that the logic on which our minds work isn't even compatible with the Really Real Troof. I won't go into detail unless you prompt me, because it might take a bit of explaining. Anyway, bricks were shat.

Heh, let's hear it.

Ok, I was studying neurons. Neurons have a threshold for stimuli. If the stimuli falls below the threshold, no impulse is produced by the neuron. If the stimuli is above it, an impulse is produced. The textbook refers to it as an all-or-none principle. Of course, what this means is that our neurons create a false dichotomy where there's really this whole range of intensity. Scale it up, and our entire consciousness, though unfathomably more complex than a single neuron, is based on this false dichotomy at its most fundamental level. We have no way of knowing how much stimulation a single neuron is receiving, and that isn't really essential information for our survival, but it still means there's this whole dimension of information that we can't even comprehend.

Of course, I might be wrong about this whole theory. It was jarring when I figured it out, though.

Now expand that a bit.

Consider that the neuron isn't just connected in a line, dendrites hooking up to the last axon and axon hooking up to the next dendrites. Consider that the dendrites are receiving neurotransmitters from hundreds, maybe thousands of other axons. Those neurotransmitters are interacting with ion channels in the dendrites releasing different ions into the cell, some inhibitory some excitatory, such that theres not only a threshold of stimulus that must be reached to fire the action potential, but theres also a battle of charge between the positive and negative ions to decide whether the charge at the hillock will be positive or negative and if the charge will break the  threshold.

Now expand THAT a bit. Consider the axion does fire, but its not connected to only one neuron, but hundreds, and its synapses are all sending varied neurotransmitters instituting inhibitory or excitatory responses in the other neurons.

And on and on and on. Get the picture?