Discordian Evangelism

[Cain]

Evangelism will require having or getting certain sort of skills, skills I'm not sure we individually, or as a group, have developed much.

I'm pretty sure the getting more Discordians/more people doing weird things is pretty vitally important to how we want to go about this.  Each one will impact on how the attempts to get people involved will be carried out, and so ultimately what approach to use. With Discordianism, you have the references to certain symbols and concepts which make stating your case and motivating easier, but might put more people off.  On the other hand, you potentially widen your selection with the weird stuff angle, but have a less clear way to motivate people and sell it to them.

One thing I might suggest is involving people, whether they want to be involved or not.  The Dadaists, for example, did a kind of street theatre...but not one where you could merely passively observe, like with the sort of thing Improv Everywhere does (incidentally, one of the things I dislike about their otherwise quite tight approach to pranking etc).  Once you saw it, the "actors" would involve you, in one way or another.  You'd be a prop on their very ill-defined and messy stage, and you'd be part of the action.

Another is, as we've talked about here before, identifying groups and individuals who might be sympathetic to our aims or methods, and constantly badgering them until we can get them involved.  Again with the avant-garde, the ranks of the Dadaists and the Situationists were filled from early and co-current movements and groups.

Intermittens definitely needs to be used.  Some Dadaist publications had shorter runs than Intermittens (and, don't forget, our magazine is still more interesting than Al-Qaeda in Yemen's).  I intend to upload all of Intermittens onto Demonoid and TPB, but only once the site is back up, so people can get involved while their enthusiasm is at its highest (presumably just after they have read it).

Enemies.  We need individualized enemies to rail against.  Polarization is a wonderful tactic, and if we start hating on someone, other people who hate on them will take notice.  Also, their allies will take notice and hate on us, further spreading our ideas.

Just some quick thoughts.

[Payne]

Yes, good stuff and thought provking.

This in particular:

One thing I might suggest is involving people, whether they want to be involved or not.  The Dadaists, for example, did a kind of street theatre...but not one where you could merely passively observe, like with the sort of thing Improv Everywhere does (incidentally, one of the things I dislike about their otherwise quite tight approach to pranking etc).  Once you saw it, the "actors" would involve you, in one way or another.  You'd be a prop on their very ill-defined and messy stage, and you'd be part of the action.

Is something that I've been thinking about arranging for the next Edinburgh DoD. The problem of course with the DoD being that you're never certain if the people who want to come can make it making something like this difficult to properly plan in advance, let alone implement. This seems to be, in other areas, a somewhat common theme and something that I'm personally guilty of on a fairly regular basis.

[Kaienne]

Enemies.  We need individualized enemies to rail against.  Polarization is a wonderful tactic, and if we start hating on someone, other people who hate on them will take notice.  Also, their allies will take notice and hate on us, further spreading our ideas.

I would think this to be counterproductive to the 'choosing creative order and disorder over ordered creation and destruction' bit, although the book is of course by no means law. I'd personally like to see the spirit of the Principia be captured; a good-natured call out to people to take their lives into their own hands and discover the power within them. Overt manipulation- which is ultimately a form of control- strikes me as a tactic which can only damage the cause of trying to free people. Utilizing political tactics which have been used time and time again would be kind of disruptive to the notion of utilizing novelty and creativity to overcome the mindless repetition of historical events [unless given some sort of twist people haven't seen before].

I think the greatest weapon we have at our disposal is art. We can rant and rave or distribute flyer after flyer, but these are the same tactics advertisers have been throwing at people for the past century, and they're becoming less and less impactful. Flash someone a high-res poster (or, if you're really lucky, the real thing) of, say, Raul Casillas' Entanglement (caution: large file) or Alex Grey's New Man/New Woman or Mark Henson's Illusions of Reality, however, and you can't not be struck by it. (See Metagallery for more random shit.)

And this goes back to what Payne said about quality over quantity; you can spend four years writing and editing and distributing and rebuffing and trying to convince person after person, one by one, that you know what you're talking about, or you can paint Entanglement and show them that you know what you're talking about. The conceptual notion of going into seclusion for four years and not proselytizing to anyone except maybe your close circle is bound to conjure up feelings of wasted time; it's only when you actually see the finished product in front of you, and have it to show to people and can see the immediate profound impact it has on them that the entire episode actually starts to pay off. So, there's this aspect of having faith to it.

But yeah. Art. Everywhere. All kinds. As much as possible. Rock balances, street performance, graffiti, music, even something so simple as dancing like an idiot while listening to your .mp3 player at the bus stop; when people see other people acting like they're having fun and not giving a shit if they're being judged, it gives them the idea that it might actually be okay to have fun and not give a shit if they're being judged.

I've witnessed the transformative power of art first-hand; in Toronto here there is an agency called Sketch, which is a working arts studio for homeless and street involved youth. The number of people who I have seen in the past two years go there, discover theirself, and change and grow by bounds as a human being has been staggering. Hell, I was one of them. Sketch has been by far the most important contributer to my recovery. There's inspiration hanging on every wall and tucked into every nook, and the people who've been there for awhile become leaders and inspirations unto theirselves. There are so many different kinds of art on the walls that appeal to so many different kinds of people that 'good' and 'bad' lose their objectivity, and when that happens, people feel free to express theirself without fear of inadequacy. I've heard numerous people refer to it as heaven-on-Earth. People have gotten off the streets, out of prisons and shelters and into stable housing, into college and university, and into meaningful employment because of this agency, which is explicitly art-oriented.

Global News did a cover of them recently, the video can be found here.

So, creation. Ordered creation, disordered creation, doesn't matter. Just create.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I would think this to be counterproductive to the 'choosing creative order and disorder over ordered creation and destruction' bit,

Why would we do it the other way?

So, creation. Ordered creation, disordered creation, doesn't matter. Just create.

Balls.  Creative, destructive, ordered, "creative", is all crap.  All is Chaos.

Also, "ordered" is not the opposite of "creative".

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Just read the rest of that.  A summarization:  "You're all doing it wrong.  Do it my way.  My "art" is superior to your "art"."

 

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Evangelism will require having or getting certain sort of skills, skills I'm not sure we individually, or as a group, have developed much.

I have well practiced evangelical skills... just not sure if I'm comfortable touching them again. I'm not very happy with how I've used them in the past.

[Dimocritus]

When it comes down to simply getting the word out, I think polarization is a great way to get attention. There's no such thing as bad press.

And I have to disagree when you say that flyering is becoming less effective. It's just as effective as it ever was, there are just fewer people doing it now  ().  I've gotten pretty good results with only flyers.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

When it comes down to simply getting the word out, I think polarization is a great way to get attention. There's no such thing as bad press.

And I have to disagree when you say that flyering is becoming less effective. It's just as effective as it ever was, there are just fewer people doing it now  ().  I've gotten pretty good results with only flyers.

I'd be interested in how effective "Rock balances, street performance, graffiti, music, even something so simple as dancing like an idiot while listening to your .mp3 player at the bus stop;" is.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

When it comes down to simply getting the word out, I think polarization is a great way to get attention. There's no such thing as bad press.

And I have to disagree when you say that flyering is becoming less effective. It's just as effective as it ever was, there are just fewer people doing it now  ().  I've gotten pretty good results with only flyers.

I'd be interested in how effective "Rock balances, street performance, graffiti, music, even something so simple as dancing like an idiot while listening to your .mp3 player at the bus stop;" is.

Poetic Terrorism FTW.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

When it comes down to simply getting the word out, I think polarization is a great way to get attention. There's no such thing as bad press.

And I have to disagree when you say that flyering is becoming less effective. It's just as effective as it ever was, there are just fewer people doing it now  ().  I've gotten pretty good results with only flyers.

I'd be interested in how effective "Rock balances, street performance, graffiti, music, even something so simple as dancing like an idiot while listening to your .mp3 player at the bus stop;" is.

Poetic Terrorism FTW.

Sounds great, what's the actual payoff?  How many people are actually somehow magickqually influenced?

[Dimocritus]

When it comes down to simply getting the word out, I think polarization is a great way to get attention. There's no such thing as bad press.

And I have to disagree when you say that flyering is becoming less effective. It's just as effective as it ever was, there are just fewer people doing it now  ().  I've gotten pretty good results with only flyers.

I'd be interested in how effective "Rock balances, street performance, graffiti, music, even something so simple as dancing like an idiot while listening to your .mp3 player at the bus stop;" is.

:horrormirth:Wow.
I just skimmed it, I didn't even realize that was there. Fucking loosing it...

[Captain Utopia]

I think the greatest weapon we have at our disposal is art. We can rant and rave or distribute flyer after flyer, but these are the same tactics advertisers have been throwing at people for the past century, and they're becoming less and less impactful. Flash someone a high-res poster (or, if you're really lucky, the real thing) of, say, Raul Casillas' Entanglement (caution: large file) or Alex Grey's New Man/New Woman or Mark Henson's Illusions of Reality, however, and you can't not be struck by it. (See Metagallery for more random shit.)

And this goes back to what Payne said about quality over quantity; you can spend four years writing and editing and distributing and rebuffing and trying to convince person after person, one by one, that you know what you're talking about, or you can paint Entanglement and show them that you know what you're talking about. The conceptual notion of going into seclusion for four years and not proselytizing to anyone except maybe your close circle is bound to conjure up feelings of wasted time; it's only when you actually see the finished product in front of you, and have it to show to people and can see the immediate profound impact it has on them that the entire episode actually starts to pay off. So, there's this aspect of having faith to it.

But yeah. Art. Everywhere. All kinds. As much as possible. Rock balances, street performance, graffiti, music, even something so simple as dancing like an idiot while listening to your .mp3 player at the bus stop; when people see other people acting like they're having fun and not giving a shit if they're being judged, it gives them the idea that it might actually be okay to have fun and not give a shit if they're being judged.

Are rants and raves and flyers, not also a creation of art? Or are you saying that some forms of art are more successful than others? I agree that works of "great art" are more likely to bend minds, but how to create an environment more conducive to and supportive of this, other than having a healthy eco-system of smaller art statements of all different types and genres?

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

When it comes down to simply getting the word out, I think polarization is a great way to get attention. There's no such thing as bad press.

And I have to disagree when you say that flyering is becoming less effective. It's just as effective as it ever was, there are just fewer people doing it now  ().  I've gotten pretty good results with only flyers.

I'd be interested in how effective "Rock balances, street performance, graffiti, music, even something so simple as dancing like an idiot while listening to your .mp3 player at the bus stop;" is.

Poetic Terrorism FTW.

Sounds great, what's the actual payoff?  How many people are actually somehow magickqually influenced?

Well, I think the payoff depends. Poetic Terrorism, is just the label that Hikem Bey gave to the sort of actions you're discussing.

One act of poetic terrorism that we've often played with in Columbus is soap bubbles. It's amazing wwhat happens to people in traffic when simple soap bubbles start appearing in the intersection at a red light. We've seen dull looking nearly comatose drivers perk up, laugh and clap... we've seen other drivers freak out and wind up their windows or cuss at us for blowing bubbles... we get a reaction, but I have no idea if that action is long lasting or merely for a second.

[hooplala]

I think the greatest weapon we have at our disposal is art. We can rant and rave or distribute flyer after flyer, but these are the same tactics advertisers have been throwing at people for the past century, and they're becoming less and less impactful. Flash someone a high-res poster (or, if you're really lucky, the real thing) of, say, Raul Casillas' Entanglement (caution: large file) or Alex Grey's New Man/New Woman or Mark Henson's Illusions of Reality, however, and you can't not be struck by it. (See Metagallery for more random shit.)

And this goes back to what Payne said about quality over quantity; you can spend four years writing and editing and distributing and rebuffing and trying to convince person after person, one by one, that you know what you're talking about, or you can paint Entanglement and show them that you know what you're talking about. The conceptual notion of going into seclusion for four years and not proselytizing to anyone except maybe your close circle is bound to conjure up feelings of wasted time; it's only when you actually see the finished product in front of you, and have it to show to people and can see the immediate profound impact it has on them that the entire episode actually starts to pay off. So, there's this aspect of having faith to it.

But yeah. Art. Everywhere. All kinds. As much as possible. Rock balances, street performance, graffiti, music, even something so simple as dancing like an idiot while listening to your .mp3 player at the bus stop; when people see other people acting like they're having fun and not giving a shit if they're being judged, it gives them the idea that it might actually be okay to have fun and not give a shit if they're being judged.

Are rants and raves and flyers, not also a creation of art? Or are you saying that some forms of art are more successful than others? I agree that works of "great art" are more likely to bend minds, but how to create an environment more conducive to and supportive of this, other than having a healthy eco-system of smaller art statements of all different types and genres?

A lot of people ignore art, as surprising as some people may find that.

Personally I can't stand the Toronto art scene, and avoid it at all costs.  However, that's not to say your approach wouldn't work... but you would only get people who pay attention to art.  Just like flyers only get the attention of those who pay attention to flyers, which is also only a segment of the population.

All ideas should be considered viable until proven otherwise.  If each of us actually took our ideas and ran with them we could inundate the population from all sides. 

[Kaienne]

One act of poetic terrorism that we've often played with in Columbus is soap bubbles. It's amazing wwhat happens to people in traffic when simple soap bubbles start appearing in the intersection at a red light. We've seen dull looking nearly comatose drivers perk up, laugh and clap... we've seen other drivers freak out and wind up their windows or cuss at us for blowing bubbles... we get a reaction, but I have no idea if that action is long lasting or merely for a second.

This is precisely the kind of stuff I'm taking about.

Personally I can't stand the Toronto art scene, and avoid it at all costs.  However, that's not to say your approach wouldn't work... but you would only get people who pay attention to art.  Just like flyers only get the attention of those who pay attention to flyers, which is also only a segment of the population.

All ideas should be considered viable until proven otherwise.  If each of us actually took our ideas and ran with them we could inundate the population from all sides. 

Very true. Thank you.

Just read the rest of that.  A summarization:  "You're all doing it wrong.  Do it my way.  My "art" is superior to your "art"."

Hm. Perhaps I have misrepresented myself. I do not wish to express that any art is better than any other art. I only wanted to suggest avenues I thought perhaps weren't being explored as deeply. I apologize if I came off as commanding.

Are rants and raves and flyers, not also a creation of art? Or are you saying that some forms of art are more successful than others? I agree that works of "great art" are more likely to bend minds, but how to create an environment more conducive to and supportive of this, other than having a healthy eco-system of smaller art statements of all different types and genres?

You're absolutely right, and I respectfully retract my assertion otherwise. This is the direction I was trying to go in by bringing up Sketch, and the sorts of 'non-arts' such as rock balancing and whatnot. Yes; the concept I was trying to communicate was one of creating an eco-system of openness and nurturing to all types of self-expression. To answer the Good Reverend Roger, I have seen an enormous number of people influenced by these things. There is a man named Sunjay who does rock balancing- and like, towers of boulders and cinderblocks that don't seem like they are physically possible- on Queen St. for change; his sign: "May the proceeds from these sculptures go into the benefit of all living things". It's a powerful statement, and it shows people that there are people out there who are fighting for the well-being of everyone, instead of only the well-being of some.

We can't get people to be theirselves if they are afraid that they will receive negative attention for being theirselves. If we make it cold, unsafe, and hostile for people to come out of their shells, they will not come out of their shells.