Plato's Cave for Domesticated Primates

[Q. G. Pennyworth]

I might need to replace the body text with bold for better legibility, but I want to make sure the background is still visible.

[LMNO]

CotSG?

Church of the SubGenius

[The Good Reverend Roger]

All I see is an endless ocean of dumb. It's scarier than any conspiracy. At least with a conspiracy shit is happening for a reason. It might not be one you agree with but at least it makes sense.

This is where you run into the CotSG definition of "conspiracy".  A conspiracy of dunces that doesn't even know it's a conspiracy.

It's worth mentioning that the legal definition of conspiracy does not require that the participants know they are involved in a conspiracy.

CotSG?

Church of the Subgenius.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I might need to replace the body text with bold for better legibility, but I want to make sure the background is still visible.

Either way, it's awesome.

[Q. G. Pennyworth]

Bolder body text with more spacing for better legibility, share whatever version you like.

[Cramulus]

This reminds me of that awesome fight scene from They Live. Rowdy Roddy Piper has the glasses that show the truth, and he tries to force them onto Keith Davis. And they slug it out until they're both fucked up.

It's not enough to show somebody the truth - they will fight you and resist you every step of the way. Nobody gets the Holy from an instruction book, they have to find it themselves or get it beaten into them.

Forgive the Zizek link, but he says it up better than I can: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVwKjGbz60k

[Cramulus]

The violent rejection of truth is the part of the Plato's Cave allegory that speaks most to me.

Its something I've wrestled with as a larp writer. After you go check out the big european larps, and you sample the different styles and game types out there, you realize how deficient and diseased some parts of US Larp culture are. Like, larp games in New England (and most of the USA, actually) are very rules-heavy, don't allow alcohol, and have a lot of narration (ie, somebody tells you "You see an orc" and its just a kid with green grease on his face). In a lot of larps, you have to call out a number every time you swing, which makes combat sound like an argument about algebra rather than, say, a battle.

But you try to tell people around here about The Better Way of Doing Things, how when you drop a lot of the baggage we're carrying around, the experience itself feels different - more direct, more attention-grabbing, more engaging... and they will argue with you until the sun comes up. People have rationalized crappy stuff, and that's a wall they're chained to.

WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH THAT, IF IT IS WHAT THEY WANT TO DO?

        "But nobody wants it! Everybody hates it."

  OH. WELL, THEN STOP.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

The violent rejection of truth is the part of the Plato's Cave allegory that speaks most to me.

Its something I've wrestled with as a larp writer. After you go check out the big european larps, and you sample the different styles and game types out there, you realize how deficient and diseased some parts of US Larp culture are. Like, larp games in New England (and most of the USA, actually) are very rules-heavy, don't allow alcohol, and have a lot of narration (ie, somebody tells you "You see an orc" and its just a kid with green grease on his face). In a lot of larps, you have to call out a number every time you swing, which makes combat sound like an argument about algebra rather than, say, a battle.

But you try to tell people around here about The Better Way of Doing Things, how when you drop a lot of the baggage we're carrying around, the experience itself feels different - more direct, more attention-grabbing, more engaging... and they will argue with you until the sun comes up. People have rationalized crappy stuff, and that's a wall they're chained to.

WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH THAT, IF IT IS WHAT THEY WANT TO DO?

        "But nobody wants it! Everybody hates it."

  OH. WELL, THEN STOP.

What's great about this from a national level is that everyone WANTS to stop, they just can't remember HOW.  Mass incarceration, militarization of police, weirdness in state legislatures, etc.  Everyone (just about) hates it, but we've forgotten what a non-police state looks like.

[Cramulus]

as I get older, I find myself apologizing on behalf of the world as-is.

I used to get really upset about stuff like "all our choices are the lesser-of-two-evils", our endless consumer obsessions, our meager mental lives

I used to get upset that so much of the world felt like a flat gray monotone.

Now I'm 34 and I've had the daily news and the 9-5 lifestyle beaten into me by a guy that looks like Rowdy Roddy Piper. I can see why it makes sense.



Deep inside, there's a 16 year old kid who is pointing outside and saying listen: there's a hell
of a good universe next door; let's go and I'm saying "shhhh, I've gotta get up for work in the morning"

so I feel it too






'pity this busy monster, manunkind'
      ee cummings

Code Select Expand


pity this busy monster, manunkind,

not. Progress is a comfortable disease:
your victim (death and life safely beyond)

plays with the bigness of his littleness
--- electrons deify one razorblade
into a mountainrange; lenses extend
unwish through curving wherewhen till unwish
returns on its unself.
                          A world of made
is not a world of born --- pity poor flesh

and trees, poor stars and stones, but never this
fine specimen of hypermagical

ultraomnipotence. We doctors know

a hopeless case if --- listen: there's a hell
of a good universe next door; let's go


[The Wizard Joseph]

as I get older, I find myself apologizing on behalf of the world as-is.

I used to get really upset about stuff like "all our choices are the lesser-of-two-evils", our endless consumer obsessions, our meager mental lives

I used to get upset that so much of the world felt like a flat gray monotone.

Now I'm 34 and I've had the daily news and the 9-5 lifestyle beaten into me by a guy that looks like Rowdy Roddy Piper. I can see why it makes sense.



Deep inside, there's a 16 year old kid who is pointing outside and saying listen: there's a hell
of a good universe next door; let's go and I'm saying "shhhh, I've gotta get up for work in the morning"

so I feel it too






'pity this busy monster, manunkind'
      ee cummings

Code Select Expand


pity this busy monster, manunkind,

not. Progress is a comfortable disease:
your victim (death and life safely beyond)

plays with the bigness of his littleness
--- electrons deify one razorblade
into a mountainrange; lenses extend
unwish through curving wherewhen till unwish
returns on its unself.
                          A world of made
is not a world of born --- pity poor flesh

and trees, poor stars and stones, but never this
fine specimen of hypermagical

ultraomnipotence. We doctors know

a hopeless case if --- listen: there's a hell
of a good universe next door; let's go


They Live..

...We Sleep

That's the second part of the message in the old church. We sleep. The fragments of Hericlitus mention this sad state of affairs. It's been known for a long time that truly "waking up" is a rare achievement or sometimes circumstantial condition. It's almost never the product of a pleasant process. In fact it is our suffering and strife that are our best evidence of wakefulness, the litmus test of reality. Now the system even feeds you synth suffering and provides dreams of convincing "strife" in the daily grind, but truly you never even stirred.