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Discord.pdf

Started by Trollax, June 23, 2004, 08:11:13 AM

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Trollax

Well as I said in the theology thread I'm planning to start up a discordian E-zine to deal with all things discordian, the plan being to output a 20-30 page PDF documentroughly every 6-8 weeks with articles on discordian philosophy interviews with discordian peoples (from forum denziens to anyone famous with leanings willing to return an E-mail.) What I'm after is submissions and people who'd be willing to leave a few hardcopy, copies around in libraries used bookshops and bus stations.

The following is an article I am working on for the first issue to do with discordianism and society, it's still in the drafting phase and will probably go through significant changes but anything you have to add would be helpful. Bewr in mind that when properly formatted it will be in a nice, two column format with little pictures and quote boxes.

QuoteErisianism in a Post-modern World

Society, the damnfool thing that gets in the way of civilisation; with its morality, ethics, standards and beliefs, cocking up what could otherwise be a healthy and vibrant global community. It is everywhere, it adapts to new and strange things just as fast as the neophobes reject them. Society is that quixotic organism which is both much more and also far, far, far, far, FAR less than the sum of its parts. So what is this thing we are calling ,Äúsociety,Äù? What does it mean in this case? Suprisingly, the Oxford Dictionary,Äôs definition will suffice for the purposes of this essay:
Society n. (pl ,Äìies) 1 the sum of human conditions and activity regarded as a whole functioning interdependently,Ķ 3 a a social mode of life. b The customs and organization of an ordered community,Ķ
Society is the system which exists between any large group of people who congregate together under the one system of values and in so doing function (more or less) as a whole. The problem however is not here in the definition, but in terms of how society adapts and evolves.
Society is something that exists independent of civilisation; it is a Meme of epic proportions, containing everyone within its defined boundaries and subjecting them to social pressures: trends and fads, do,Äôs and don,Äôts,Ķ It,Äôs undeniable that in any circle in which we exist we are subject to pressure from the general attitudes of that group. It,Äôs just the way people are; we gravitate towards people with similar viewpoints to our own because we want to be well-received, and we want to be confident of what we think before we broadcast it to the world at large. That,Äôs a society, a large group of perhaps millions of people existing together sharing common goals and interests and similar beliefs and attitudes.

(Random Paragraphs)


There are however, groups of people existing within any society who do not share all the beliefs and ideas of that system, people for whom certain traditions and unwritten laws are an anathema; many of who actually exist peacefully within that system, and have little problem with existing just so.


There is however something about the ,Äúus versus them,Äù mindset that tends to creep in when we have two large societies interacting. This is where the counterproductive side of society takes over.


It,Äôs almost as if the society is invaded by a virus, a virus that inevitably takes hold and sets up root in some small part of the social organism, either slowly altering it, or just wasting away.


The most insidious thing occurs however when an idea is taken up on the large scale by our (modern-day) social organism: it gets sent around the world so many times and reiterated by so many so-called experts that the spirit is lost and everyone mistakes the finger for the moon. As Colin Wilson said in The Outsider: ,ÄúThere is no danger to self-knowledge so great as being universally accepted as a spiritual leader.,Äù The icon of what the ideal represents to the masses becomes the substitute for its reality. Society doesn,Äôt need a voice; it needs a brain. The problem is that society doesn,Äôt have a disclaimer. We shunt away unpopular or unfamiliar ideas and only extol what we know those around us will approve of. We stick to our own special-interest groups, rarely stepping outside the common boundaries of our particular set of interests. We shorten our horizons to ones which do little challenge either our knowledge or our beliefs. The result is poisonous pedagogy: intellectual and spiritual stagnation. A system of values that is perishingly shortsighted and extremely intolerant of any form of innovation.
There should be a sign at every single airport, seaport, train-station, and bus station everywhere in the world that reads:
,ÄúNOTICE:
Visitors please note that the views and opinions expressed by individual citizens of this community do not necessarily reflect the views of this society as a whole.,Äù


What we are talking about here is not written in a line of a book, but between the words. When talking about the law you may have heard some people talking about the letter and the spirit of the law. The spirit of any statement or preposition is not the letter (i.e. what is written down), but what is intended by those words.


Mal was right, we Discordians should stick apart. Not far, far away from each other on separate mountaintops all over the world, but ideologically. Discordianism is not something that can or even should be popularised, but don,Äôt keep it to yourself, the point is: how can you even hope to maintain those valueless values if the written word of Discordianism becomes some Eristic cannon of law? We are encouraged to reiterate and adulterate our own holy books for one purpose: tipping the sacred cow; and if the sacred cow becomes to tip the sacred cow then we must not tip it. If the sacred cow then becomes to not tip the sacred cow then we must tip it.
The chao is not about order and chaos being necessary opposites; the chao is about metastability, two forces acting in constant opposition to each other to maintain a normal range of constructive chaos. Change is inevitable, but if you know what change and when, and if you can embrace that change and reap more benefits from it and suffer fewer losses.


Conclusions? The spirit of Discordianism is a highly esoteric thing, more so than many other spiritual organizations, it revolves around finding a personal identity, and also prodding other people toward that finding a personal identity. Because everyone is different, because similarity rarely extends so far for any two people to think of even a noun in exactly the same way, there is no way that you can effectively hope to codify it. You can have you Discordian groupings, online forums, E-zines, churches, temples, and whatever. But what is written down is not the spirit. Spirit is brought out of those words by the way you explain them, not by parroting what someone else told you it meant, but by discovering what it means to you, and more than that. Discovering that it means something wholly different to everyone else.

Irreverend Hugh, KSC

Aha! You KNOW the meaning of "We Discordians must stick apart."

I am impressed. Let me know if you need some writings/scrawlings/bird-cage liner for your journal. I can print some for distribution around Chicago.
"Time for the tin-foil hats, girls and boys!"

archPope Rocket P Llama

Tokeval, Rocket P Llama, Magna Cum Stupido, and Daniel P are all at your service as well. As shown by my DA site I am a BRILLIANT writer. :D
His Empirical Majesty archPope Rocket P. Llama, King of the Jews, GTKoRO, aka RevRev. Tokeval D. Kroenik KHG
-Bastard Children of Andy Warhol Cabal-(BCOAW)
"Buck buck buck BCOAW"

DJRubberducky

I work on a college campus.  You plan to announce these newsletters here when they're done?  I might be able to print some out and leave them lying around.
- DJRubberducky
Quote from: LMNODJ's post is sort of like those pills you drop into a glass of water, and they expand into a dinosaur, or something.

Black sheep are still sheep.

The Good Reverend Roger

Quote from: St. Trollax, ODDWell as I said in the theology thread I'm planning to start up a discordian E-zine to deal with all things discordian,

Hehe...I could do some "ads" for you.
" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."
- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

Bella

I wanna see you do some "ads" for Trollax. :twisted:
just like in a dream
you'll open your mouth to scream
and you won't make a sound

you can't believe your eyes
you can't believe your ears
you can't believe your friends
you can't believe you're here

The Good Reverend Roger

Quote from: SssBella, Oracle of DoomI wanna see you do some "ads" for Trollax. :twisted:

K.

I will post the first one here tonight.
" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."
- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

Bella

just like in a dream
you'll open your mouth to scream
and you won't make a sound

you can't believe your eyes
you can't believe your ears
you can't believe your friends
you can't believe you're here

archPope Rocket P Llama

His Empirical Majesty archPope Rocket P. Llama, King of the Jews, GTKoRO, aka RevRev. Tokeval D. Kroenik KHG
-Bastard Children of Andy Warhol Cabal-(BCOAW)
"Buck buck buck BCOAW"

Trollax

Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger
Quote from: St. Trollax, ODDWell as I said in the theology thread I'm planning to start up a discordian E-zine to deal with all things discordian,

Hehe...I could do some "ads" for you.

I'm sure you could. Like the Subgenius style or some Greyface Inc stuff?

The Good Reverend Roger

Quote from: St. Trollax, ODD
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger
Quote from: St. Trollax, ODDWell as I said in the theology thread I'm planning to start up a discordian E-zine to deal with all things discordian,

Hehe...I could do some "ads" for you.

I'm sure you could. Like the Subgenius style or some Greyface Inc stuff?

Kinda.
" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."
- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

Lister

Just as a general warning:
There are a lot of difficult words in the above exerpt...
Kind of a block when trying to make it readable to the general public...

Only people that actually went through college won't skip these bits when browsing through a pamphlet at a busstation...

Incidentilly, I'm pretty sure I can print a copy at the office, and photocopy it a few times after hours at no charge...
But our big stapler is broken, and now I can only staple about 15 pages at a time...  20 max...
Plus I travel 113 km twice each day by train to get to work...
So make it a double edition of 15 pages each, and you can consider the belgian trains/trainstations partly covered...
With effort, I may be able to staple 23 pages with a normal stapler...
When I was a little man
Playdough came in a little can
I was Star Wars' biggest fan
Now I'm stuck without a plan
GI Joe was an action man
Shaggy drove the mystery van
Devo was my favorite band
Take me back to my happy land

CannedLizard

Post-Modern? I prefer the Snow Crash assertation that we're in a Post-Rational era. Except for the fact there never was a Rational era persay.

But yes, this seems like a good idea, if you could actually keep it going, Will it all be serious (or semi-serious) essays?
POEE Pre-Chaplain Neon Irwin of the Bahumbug Pre-Cabal, CG, UE, KoBaSN

Guido Finucci

Quote from: CannedLizardExcept for the fact there never was a Rational era persay.

Sure there was. Sadly, the Americans were too busy trying to convince each other that they were free to notice.

Trollax

Quote from: CannedLizardPost-Modern? I prefer the Snow Crash assertation that we're in a Post-Rational era. Except for the fact there never was a Rational era persay.

But yes, this seems like a good idea, if you could actually keep it going, Will it all be serious (or semi-serious) essays?

I chose the word piostmodern because it is an adaptive and ever-changing concept... Just like the id which tends to rule most people and society. Like I said above I will be doing some editing, and hopefully some of the less serious articles would be enough to have the less-erudite members of the population do a little reading.

As for semiserious articles, It's a discordian magazine, of course there's going to be silliness. I would like to add jakery and mindfuck ideas as well as general good humor and stupidity.

Speaking of which. Lister, Will we have to do translations?