Principia Discordia

Principia Discordia => Or Kill Me => Topic started by: Cramulus on May 30, 2008, 06:28:17 PM

Title: Go OM:F Yourself
Post by: Cramulus on May 30, 2008, 06:28:17 PM
Found at the Cyberspace Masquerade (http://we.dontexist.net/index.php?topic=118.0). Probably written by Hoopla or the Concordia guy. This is a followup to Part Five: The Golden Secret (http://principiadiscordia.com/book/81.php)


Be the Trouble You Want to See in the World

or

Go O:MF Yourself

QuoteCeline reared back as if I had waved offal under his nose. "Objectivists?" he pronounced the word as if I had accused him of being a child-molester. "We're anarchists and outlaws, goddam it. Didn't you understand that much? We've got nothing to do with right-wing, left-wing or any other half-assed political category. If you work within the system, you come to one of the either/or choices that were implicit in the system from the beginning. You're talking like a medieval serf, asking the first agnostic whether he worships God or the Devil. We're outside the system's categories. You'll never get the hang of our game if you keep thinking in flat-earth imagery of right and left, good and evil, up and down. If you need a group label for us, we're political non-Euclideans. But even that's not true. Sink me, nobody of this tub agrees with anybody else about anything, except maybe what the fellow with the horns told the old man in the clouds: Non serviam."

Robert Anton Wilson, Illuminatus!



Eris loves activists.

Here in the Strange Times, there's a million billion crawly little critters trying to ride you down the river. See, you're floating through chaotic, shrapnel filled rapids. The foamy waters are brimming with symbols and images and squiggles and good causes. It's easy to cling to one like a life preserver and ride it for all its worth. You're clinging to some right now. You are a sticky meme, and you're trying to stay afloat. It's only human. 

The first part of the Golden Secret is to Let Go.

You grabbed onto that that symbol and that in-joke and that good cause because they were at the right place at the right time. When you're receptive, it's convenient to get on a raft made of religion or politics or some other made-up ideology. It's easy to assemble an identity out of tastes and values and shrapnel floating by. Over time, some of that stuff stops supporting your weight. Right when you're about to go under, you reach out and grab onto some other piece of shrapnel. You cling to it and use it to hold your head above the waters. At some point, you saw some stuff and met some people, and their shtick appealed to you, and you internalized it, and now you think that stuff is a part of you. 

Fast forward to the present: you're riding down the river in a barrel, your knuckles white as they grip your life preservers. Your pockets are stuffed with photographs, and there's cultural water in your ears. Let GO already. You don't need that crap. That's somebody else's crap. Learn to swim on your own.

The second part of the Golden Secret is to Ignite Yourself, While There's Still Time.

I'm advocating activism. I don't reccommend you go find a cause (or some other bullshit) to serve, I'm reccommending you get up, get out, and DO something. They've got you trained like a circus lion to watch the world and then react to it. They want you to be a passive observer. The face on the money has you trained like Pavlov's dog. That's how the Machine works. It's made of perfectly predictable parts. 

You could get bored. You could get numb. You could be alone in a sea of people. These are the dangers of modern living.

There's something out there which will make you excited just to wake up in the morning, and it's not spending your hard earned money on the latest You've-Gotta-See-This blockbuster. That shrapnel is just a distraction. The voices of the cultural chorus are a distraction too, because really, you're not one of Them.

You're a freak. You're weird in ways not even your best friends can understand. This is the Strange Times, and there are no groups of people, only individuals standing next to each other. 

There's somebody in your life who you look to for direction. The one with the plan. The one who has great ideas. The one who seems to know what's going on. Kill him. Take his job. Become him. Quit waiting for somebody else to come up with something fun to do. Quit waiting for rock bottom or some other excuse to change what you don't like about yourself. Cough up all the water in your lungs and BREATHE you'll drown if you don't BREATHE for the first time ever BREATHE.

This isn't a lesson you can learn once and internalize. This is an ongoing challenge to constantly reinvent yourself. This is a neverending battle you must wage against your comfort and your identity. If you think you've learned this lesson, then you stink of complacency. Initiation never ends. 

Keep moving. Stay kinetic. 
   Be the trouble you want to see in the world. 

Go O:MF yourself.

Hail Eris

(http://www.principiadiscordia.com/book/images/Tai.gif)
Title: Re: Go OM:F Yourself
Post by: LMNO on May 30, 2008, 07:15:50 PM
that is excellent.
Title: Re: Go OM:F Yourself
Post by: Bebek Sincap Ratatosk on May 30, 2008, 07:21:12 PM
Very nice!

Title: Re: Go OM:F Yourself
Post by: Mesozoic Mister Nigel on May 30, 2008, 07:44:24 PM
Well done, Cramulus!
Title: Re: Go OM:F Yourself
Post by: Anch on May 30, 2008, 10:29:20 PM
 :mittens:

It's almost ridiculous how much this piece fits my current situation.
Title: Re: Go OM:F Yourself
Post by: Requia ☣ on May 31, 2008, 08:44:28 PM
These are tears of absolute fucking Joy.  Because this is the most fucking beautiful thing I've ever seen.
Title: Re: Go OM:F Yourself
Post by: Adios on May 31, 2008, 09:58:08 PM
Cram, genius.

Are you kopyleft?
Title: Re: Go OM:F Yourself
Post by: Cramulus on June 01, 2008, 02:02:26 AM
 :digtbk:

jah, tis (K)

Title: Re: Go OM:F Yourself
Post by: Kurt Christ on June 01, 2008, 02:13:48 AM
 :jebus:  :fap:

Very good.
Title: Re: Go OM:F Yourself
Post by: Iason Ouabache on June 01, 2008, 06:58:49 AM
:mittens:

I wish I could write something half as good as this.
Title: Re: Go OM:F Yourself
Post by: NWC on June 01, 2008, 07:25:42 AM
 :mittens:

This is excellent. I will make sure this gets read elsewhere.
Title: Re: Go OM:F Yourself
Post by: Reginald Ret on June 09, 2008, 02:34:04 AM
wow.
Title: Re: Go OM:F Yourself
Post by: Epimetheus on June 09, 2008, 04:56:29 AM
blog'd. amazing.  :mittens:
Title: Re: Go OM:F Yourself
Post by: Chairman Risus on June 09, 2008, 07:10:46 AM
Can someone turn this into a fancy looking pdf?
Would be much appreciated.
Title: Re: Go OM:F Yourself
Post by: Chairman Risus on July 07, 2008, 07:54:48 AM
Bumpity.

I've managed to make this a print friendly form, but my previous request still stands.
Title: Re: Go OM:F Yourself
Post by: Valerie - Gone on July 10, 2008, 05:58:46 AM
Wow. Excellent post. It helps a bit with the uncertainty. I gotta work on the first part loads, which is where I run into problems, I think. But thank you for directing me to this thread. I think I'm going to go through and find posts like this to print off so that I can stick them on my wall. O:MF myself in a true, physical sense.
Title: Re: Go OM:F Yourself
Post by: BootyBay on July 10, 2008, 06:33:56 AM
This is my new favorite motto:  Keep getting ahead of yourself - don't get ahead of anyone "better, smarter, stronger, wiser, or riskier"  (because then you'll be just like them).
Title: Re: Go OM:F Yourself
Post by: Chelagoras The Boulder on July 10, 2008, 11:36:36 PM
this is a really great piece, I think i have some thinking to do.  :wink:
Title: Re: Go OM:F Yourself
Post by: A.N. Other on July 19, 2008, 03:28:40 AM
Holy fucking crap, this is amazing. Question is, will anyone listen?
Title: Re: Go OM:F Yourself
Post by: Triple Zero on July 19, 2008, 01:05:24 PM
Quote from: Chelagoras The Boulder on July 10, 2008, 11:36:36 PM
this is a really great piece, I think i have some thinking to do.  :wink:

Quote from: K-Scar on July 19, 2008, 03:28:40 AM
Holy fucking crap, this is amazing. Question is, will anyone listen?

not thinking, not listening, doing!

Title: Re: Go OM:F Yourself
Post by: Cramulus on July 19, 2008, 02:12:01 PM
This piece, by the way, and the following followup will be printed in the Et Cetera Discordia

to centralize, I'm posting this piece's appendix below:




Bung Fu the Fool stood buck naked before the monk Nopants. Eventually, Nopants looked up over his morning newspaper. Surprised to see a peen at eye level before him, he spit coffee everywhere.

"Somehow," said the monk, who himself was naked from the waist down, "I was not prepared for that."

"Good morning Wise Master Nopants!" said Bung Fu cheerfully. "I did what you advised: I Let Go of everything so I could learn to swim on my own."

"That's bullshit," said Nopants, pointing at bung-fu with a spoon. "You're just parading around naked because you think it'll somehow enlighten you."

"But master, that's what you do!" cried Bung Fu, embarrassed.

"No," said Nopants. "I do it for me. You're doing like me. You haven't let go of anything. You just grabbed my shrapnel and made it your own."


Bung Fu thought about this. "Mise Waster Nopants, what am I supposed to do after I let go? I can't just let go of everything, that's not a good survival strategy."

"You're right," said Nopants. "But it's not really about letting go. It's about being able to let go. It's about realizing that all that stuff you're carrying around is mostly dead weight. So learn to live without that dross."

"And then what?"

Nopants leaned forward as if he was about to whisper a lesson or a great secret. Bung Fu leaned in, eager for instruction. Nopants reached out and slapped right in his goddamn monkey face.

"Think for yourself, shmuck!"
Title: Re: Go OM:F Yourself
Post by: Shadowdaemon on October 16, 2008, 02:23:51 AM
Cram this is fucking amazing. :mittens:
Title: Re: Go OM:F Yourself
Post by: LMNO on October 16, 2008, 02:41:23 PM
I really like the conversational style.  I get whiffs of Pratchett.
Title: Re: Go OM:F Yourself
Post by: Honey on October 17, 2008, 11:48:59 AM
Quote from: Cramulus on May 30, 2008, 06:28:17 PM
Found at the Cyberspace Masquerade (http://we.dontexist.net/index.php?topic=118.0). Probably written by Hoopla or the Concordia guy. This is a followup to Part Five: The Golden Secret (http://principiadiscordia.com/book/81.php)


Be the Trouble You Want to See in the World

or

Go O:MF Yourself

QuoteCeline reared back as if I had waved offal under his nose. "Objectivists?" he pronounced the word as if I had accused him of being a child-molester. "We're anarchists and outlaws, goddam it. Didn't you understand that much? We've got nothing to do with right-wing, left-wing or any other half-assed political category. If you work within the system, you come to one of the either/or choices that were implicit in the system from the beginning. You're talking like a medieval serf, asking the first agnostic whether he worships God or the Devil. We're outside the system's categories. You'll never get the hang of our game if you keep thinking in flat-earth imagery of right and left, good and evil, up and down. If you need a group label for us, we're political non-Euclideans. But even that's not true. Sink me, nobody of this tub agrees with anybody else about anything, except maybe what the fellow with the horns told the old man in the clouds: Non serviam."

Robert Anton Wilson, Illuminatus!



Eris loves activists.

Here in the Strange Times, there's a million billion crawly little critters trying to ride you down the river. See, you're floating through chaotic, shrapnel filled rapids. The foamy waters are brimming with symbols and images and squiggles and good causes. It's easy to cling to one like a life preserver and ride it for all its worth. You're clinging to some right now. You are a sticky meme, and you're trying to stay afloat. It's only human. 

The first part of the Golden Secret is to Let Go.

You grabbed onto that that symbol and that in-joke and that good cause because they were at the right place at the right time. When you're receptive, it's convenient to get on a raft made of religion or politics or some other made-up ideology. It's easy to assemble an identity out of tastes and values and shrapnel floating by. Over time, some of that stuff stops supporting your weight. Right when you're about to go under, you reach out and grab onto some other piece of shrapnel. You cling to it and use it to hold your head above the waters. At some point, you saw some stuff and met some people, and their shtick appealed to you, and you internalized it, and now you think that stuff is a part of you. 

Fast forward to the present: you're riding down the river in a barrel, your knuckles white as they grip your life preservers. Your pockets are stuffed with photographs, and there's cultural water in your ears. Let GO already. You don't need that crap. That's somebody else's crap. Learn to swim on your own.

The second part of the Golden Secret is to Ignite Yourself, While There's Still Time.

I'm advocating activism. I don't reccommend you go find a cause (or some other bullshit) to serve, I'm reccommending you get up, get out, and DO something. They've got you trained like a circus lion to watch the world and then react to it. They want you to be a passive observer. The face on the money has you trained like Pavlov's dog. That's how the Machine works. It's made of perfectly predictable parts. 

You could get bored. You could get numb. You could be alone in a sea of people. These are the dangers of modern living.

There's something out there which will make you excited just to wake up in the morning, and it's not spending your hard earned money on the latest You've-Gotta-See-This blockbuster. That shrapnel is just a distraction. The voices of the cultural chorus are a distraction too, because really, you're not one of Them.

You're a freak. You're weird in ways not even your best friends can understand. This is the Strange Times, and there are no groups of people, only individuals standing next to each other. 

There's somebody in your life who you look to for direction. The one with the plan. The one who has great ideas. The one who seems to know what's going on. Kill him. Take his job. Become him. Quit waiting for somebody else to come up with something fun to do. Quit waiting for rock bottom or some other excuse to change what you don't like about yourself. Cough up all the water in your lungs and BREATHE you'll drown if you don't BREATHE for the first time ever BREATHE.

This isn't a lesson you can learn once and internalize. This is an ongoing challenge to constantly reinvent yourself. This is a neverending battle you must wage against your comfort and your identity. If you think you've learned this lesson, then you stink of complacency. Initiation never ends. 

Keep moving. Stay kinetic. 
   Be the trouble you want to see in the world. 

Go O:MF yourself.

Hail Eris

(http://www.principiadiscordia.com/book/images/Tai.gif)

I friggin' love this!  :D  (& missed it or wasn't here yet 1st time 'round   :sad: )

Many thanks for the bump & much respect for the original thoughts!  YaY!

(Sorry to quote the whole thing but I just couldn't help myself.)

Life is a Performance Art.  Non serviam.

•´¯`•.. ><((((º> •´¯`•... ><((((º> •´¯`•.. ><((((º>

Title: Re: Go OM:F Yourself
Post by: Eater of Clowns on October 19, 2008, 08:49:57 PM
This is not why I joined up yesterday, but it's definitely a reason to stay.
Title: Re: Go OM:F Yourself
Post by: navkat on October 24, 2008, 06:59:43 AM
That was fucking excellent...And now I'm gonna fuck your shit up:

I've always felt like my life has been a series of costumes.
Goth chick
Beatnik
Raver
Hippie
whatever...it's all been playtime in romper room for me.

We, as sentient beings, feel compelled to define things--to place things into categories. To colour-sort stuff and group shit together so we can deal with it. We even feel the need to define ourselves.

I believe the need to "belong to something bigger than yourself" is less about grandiose ideals and more about the need to slap a pink label on this jar of crap and a blue label on that jar...etc.

It's also about validation.

What you did by writing that most excellent essay was validate a group of a non-group of people. I'm not just saying you were "preaching to the chior," (although, I'm pretty sure that if you'd posted this on the McCain/Obama/Paul/Barr website, you'd get zero converts) what I'm saying is more fucked up than that: Your essay validated a bunch of people in the tide and thus: became another piece of shrapnel for them to cling to. The fact that it's validating and so cling-worthy is exactly what makes it so great.

Divide by zero, mutherfucker.
Title: Re: Go OM:F Yourself
Post by: Ari on October 24, 2008, 02:22:26 PM
:mittens::mittens:
Title: Re: Go OM:F Yourself
Post by: Bu🤠ns on August 15, 2012, 03:35:11 AM
I can't believe I missed this thread. damn.
Title: Re: Go OM:F Yourself
Post by: AFK on August 15, 2012, 01:53:40 PM
I miss all of the posters in this thread who don't post anymore.


Also, we need another Masquerade.  I've been thinking this might be a good use of EB&G.