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HIMEOBS of course does not exist, but that does not mean the mere mortals who make up our citizenry should get off on that technicality alone.

Therefore I'm suggesting a postergasm spinoff using the most posterlike H-propaganda, to be put in public places and documented over the web.

Below I'll document the ones I think are most useful, get feedback and additional propaganda, then pdf them and put up links on the Wiki/advertise.

Havent had a chance to listen yet, but I will do very soon

http://www.radicalchangegroup.com/blog/

Taken from Rush, Fascism and Newspeak, An Exegesis, by David Neiwert


Fascist rhetoric and memes check-list and signs



Umberto Eco with American examples


The cult of tradition.
[Who are the folks who beat their breasts (and ours) incessantly over the primacy of
'traditional Judaeo-Christian culture'?]

The rejection of modernism.
[Think 'feminazis.' Think attacks on the NEA. Think attacks on multiculturalism.]

Irrationalism.
[G.W. Bush's anti-intellectualism and illogical, skewed speech are positively celebrated
by the right.]

Action for action's sake.
[Exactly why are we making war on Iraq, anyway?]

Disagreement is treason.
["Liberals are anti-American."]

Fear of difference.
[Again, think of the attacks on multiculturalism, as well as the attacks on Muslims and
Islam generically.]

Appeal to a frustrated middle class.
[See the Red states — you know, the ones who voted for Bush. The ones where
Limbaugh is on the air incessantly.]

Obsession with a plot.
[limbaugh and conservatives have been obsessed with various "plots" by liberals for the
past decade — see, e.g., the Clinton impeachment, and current claims of a "fifth column"
among liberals.]

Humiliated by the ostentatious wealth and force of their enemies.
[Think Blue states vs. Red states.]

Pacifism is trafficking with the enemy.
[The very essence of the attacks led by talk-radio hosts against antiwar protesters.]

Life is eternal warfare.
[This perfectly describes the War on Terror.]

Contempt for the weak.
[Think both of conservatives' characterization of liberals as "weak spined," as well as the
verbal attacks on Muslims and immigrants from the likes of Limbaugh and Michael
Savage.]

Against 'rotten' parliamentary governments.
[Remember all those rants against 'big government'?]

Ur-Fascism speaks Newspeak.
[Perhaps the most noticeable trait in the current environment. The destruction of
meaning by creating "empty phrases" combining opposite ideas has, as we have seen,
become a prominent strategy deployed by the conservative movement.]


John McKay on Fascism

"Defining Fascism is a very slippery business. I spent most of a graduate seminar a decade ago studying and dissecting this question. There is no agreed upon and authoritative one sentence definition for Fascism. In fact, fighting over one is a still-healthy cottage industry that provides employment for plenty of historians and political scientists. My own take on it is to emphasize two points that lead to this slipperiness.

The first is a point you already made: Fascism is mostly reactive in nature. It is more defined by what it is against than by what it is. First and foremost, it is anti-liberal. This is not necessarily the same thing as being conservative. We too often define political positions as a scale between two polar opposites, when reality is broader and sloppier than that. So, while Fascism is a thing of the right, it is not just extremism beyond normal conservatism. Next, it is anti-pluralist, which usually means nationalist, racist, and/or unilateralist. Fascists don't like to share.

Second, it is not just one thing. There have been many forms of Fascism. The popular image of Fascism is simply Nazism. Some scholars debate whether Nazism is one variety of Fascism or a separate (though related) phenomenon. I lean toward the variety school. During its heyday in the thirties, there were scores of Fascist parties in over a dozen countries. These evolved from earlier political movements and some survive in successor movements. The use of pronouns like proto-, post-, and neo- helps a little in sorting them out, but only a little. One reason for its persistence is its mutability. Most political societies can produce a fascism."


Stanley Payne on Fascism

A. The Fascist Negations:

• Antiliberalism
• Anticommunism
• Anticonservatism (though with the understanding that fascist groups were willing to undertake temporary alliances with groups from any other sector, most commonly with the right)

B. Ideology and Goals:

• Creation of a new nationalist authoritarian state based not merely on traditional principles or models
• Organization of some new kind of regulated, multiclass, integrated national economic
structure, whether called national corporatist, national socialist, or national syndicalist
• The goal of empire or a radical change in the nation's relationship with other powers
• Specific espousal of an idealist, voluntarist creed, normally involving the attempt to realize a new form of modern, self-determined, secular culture

C. Style and Organization:

• Emphasis on esthetic structure of meetings, symbols, and political choreography, stressing romantic and mystical aspects
• Attempted mass mobilization with militarization of political relationships and style and with the goal of a mass party militia
• Positive evaluation and use of, or willingness to use, violence
• Extreme stress on the masculine principle and male dominance, while espousing the organic view of society
• Exaltation of youth above other phases of life, emphasizing the conflict of generations, at least in effecting the initial political transformation
• Specific tendency toward an authoritarian, charismatic, personal style of command, whether or not the command is to some degree initially elective


Roger Griffin on Fascism

Fascism: modern political ideology that seeks to regenerate the social, economic, and cultural life of a country by basing it on a heightened sense of national belonging or ethnic identity. Fascism rejects liberal ideas such as freedom and individual rights, and often presses for the destruction of elections, legislatures, and other elements of democracy. Despite the idealistic goals of fascism, attempts to build fascist societies have led to wars and persecutions that caused millions of deaths. As a result, fascism is strongly associated with right-wing fanaticism, racism, totalitarianism, and violence.



Robert Paxton

• ne can not identify a fascist regime by its plumage. George Orwell understood at once that fascism is not defined by its clothing. If, some day, an authentic fascism were to succeed in England, Orwell wrote as early as 1936, it would be more soberly clad than in Germany. The exotic black shirts of Sir Oswald Mosley are one explanation for the failure of the principal fascist movement in England, the British Union of Fascists. What if they had worn bowler hats and carried well-furled umbrellas. The adolescent skinheads who flaunt the swastika today in parts of Europe seem so alien and marginal that they constitute a law-and-order problem (serious though that may be) rather than a recurrence of authentic mass-based fascism, astutely decked out in the patriotic emblems of their own countries. Focusing on external symbols, which are subject to superficial imitation, adds to confusion about what may legitimately be considered fascist.
  
  ...[E]ach national variant of fascism draws its legitimacy, as we shall see, not from some universal scripture but from what it considers the most authentic elements of its own community identity. Religion, for example, would certainly play a much larger role in an authentic fascism in the United States than in the first European fascisms, which were pagan for contingent historical reasons.
  
  ... The great "isms" of nineteenth-century Europe — conservatism, liberalism, socialism — were associated with notable rule, characterized by deference to educated leaders, learned debates, and (even in some forms of socialism) limited popular authority. Fascism is a political practice appropriate to the mass politics of the twentieth century. Moreover, it bears a different relationship to thought than do the nineteenth-century "isms." Unlike them, fascism does not rest on formal philosophical positions with claims to universal validity. There was no "Fascist Manifesto," no founding fascist thinker. Although one can deduce from fascist language implicit Social Darwinist assumptions about human nature, the need for community and authority in human society, and the destiny of nations in history, fascism does not base its claims to validity on their truth. Fascists despise thought and reason, abandon intellectual positions casually, and cast aside many intellectual fellow-travelers. They subordinate thought and reason not to faith, as did the traditional Right, but to the promptings of the blood and the historic destiny of the group. Their only moral yardstick is the prowess of the race, of the nation, of the community. They claim legitimacy by no universal standard except a Darwinian triumph of the strongest community. [Emphasis mine]
  
  ....
  
  ... Feelings propel fascism more than thought does. We might call them mobilizing passions, since they function in fascist movements to recruit followers in fascist movements to recruit followers and in fascist regimes to "weld" the fascist "tribe" to its leader. The following mobilizing passions are present in fascisms, though they may sometimes be articulated only implicitly:
  
  1. The primacy of the group, toward which one has duties superior to every right, whether universal or individual.
  2. The belief that one's group is a victim, a sentiment which justifies any action against the group's enemies, internal as well as external.
  3. Dread of the group's decadence under the corrosive effect of individualistic and cosmopolitan liberalism.
  4. Closer integration of the community within a brotherhood (fascio) whose unity and purity are forged by common conviction, if possible, or by exclusionary violence if necessary.
  5. An enhanced sense of identity and belonging, in which the grandeur of the group reinforces individual self-esteem.
  6. Authority of natural leaders (always male) throughout society, culminating in a national chieftain who alone is capable of incarnating the group's destiny.
  7. The beauty of violence and of will, when they are devoted to the group's success in a Darwinian struggle.
  
  
  Orcinus examples of Paxton model of fascism
  
  1. [Group primacy]: See, again, the Bush Doctrine. An extension of this sentiment is at play among those jingoes who argue that Americans may need to sacrifice some of their civil rights — say, free speech — during wartime.
  2. [Victim mentality]: This meme is clearly present in all the appeals to the victims of Sept. 11 as justifications for the war. It is present at nearly all levels of the debate: from the White House, from the media, even from the jingoist entertainment industry (see, e.g., the lyric of Darryl Worley's extraordinarily popular country-western hit, "Have You Forgotten?": "Some say this country's just out looking for a fight / Well after 9/11 man I'd have to say that's right.").
  3. [Dread of liberal decadence]: This meme has been stock in trade of the talk-radio crowd since at least 1994 — at one time it focused primarily on the person of Bill Clinton — and has reached ferocious levels during the runup to the war and after it, during which antiwar leftists have regularly and remorselessly been accused of treason.
  4. [Group integration] and 5. [Group identity as personal validation] are, of course, among the primary purposes of the campaign to demonize liberals — to simultaneously build a cohesive brotherhood of like-minded "conservatives" who might not agree on the details but are united in their loathing of all things liberal. It plays out in such localized manifestations as the KVI Radio 570th On-Air Cavalry, which has made a habit of deliberately invading antiwar protests with the express purpose of disrupting them and breaking them up. Sometimes, as they did recently in Bellingham, this is done with caravans of big trucks blaring their horns; and they are also accompanied by threatening rhetoric and acts of physical intimidation. They haven't
  yet bonded in violence — someone did phone in a threat to sniper-shoot protesters — but they are rapidly headed in that direction.
  6. [Authority of leaders]: This needs hardly any further explanation, except to note that George W. Bush is actually surprisingly uncharismatic for someone who inspires as much rabid loyalty as he does. But then, that is part of the purpose of Bush's PR campaign stressing that he receives "divine guidance" — it assures in his supporters' mind the notion that he is carrying out God's destiny for the nation, and for the conservative movement in particular.
  7. [An aesthetic of violence]: One again needs only turn to the voluminous jingoes of Fox News or the jubilant warbloggers to find abundant examples of celebrations of the virtues — many of them evidently aesthetic — of the evidently just-completed war.
  
  
  Dick Anthony and Thomas Robbins – Millennialism and Violence
  
  Nine characteristics which appear to us to be shared by authoritarian personalities, fundamentalists and authoritarian cults such as Hare Krishna, the Unification Church, etc.:
  
  1. Separatism or the heightened sensitivity and tension regarding group boundaries. This usually includes 'Authoritarian Aggression' which entails rejecting and punitive attitudes toward deviants, minorities and outsiders.
  2. Theocratic leanings or willingness to see the state expanded so as to enforce the group's particular moral and ideological preferences at the expense of pluralism or church-state separation.
  3. Authoritarian submission entailing dependency on strong leaders and deferential attitudes toward authorities and hierarchical superiors.
  4. Some form of conventionalism in terms of both belief and practice. Apparent exceptions such as antinomian groups, for example, the Bhagwan movement of Rajneesh or the quasi-Marxist Peoples Temple of Jim Jones ...
  5. Apocalypticism.
  6. Evangelism or a focus on proselytization and conversion.
  7. Coercive tendencies in terms of either punitive reactions toward internal dissidence and nonconformity (for example, exile from fellowship, shunning, harsh 'self-criticism,' confessional sessions) or willingness to have non-conformists suppressed or discouraged by the state.
  8. Consequentialism or a tendency to see moral or ideological virtue producing tangible rewards to believers. This may entail belief in a 'just world' in which the good are tangibly rewarded and the wicked undone on the human plane.
  9. Finally, groups whose members tend to score high in authoritarianism or dogmatism tend to have strong beliefs and tend to make doctrinal acceptance a membership criterion. As with 'Moonies' studied by Galanter (among whom strong belief was correlated with feelings of group solidarity and the 'relief effect'), authoritarians and fundamentalists appear to have a strong 'investment' in their beliefs.

I suspect like many people on the forum around my age, my first real generational experience of politics was during the Clinton and Blair years in power.  Naturally, I'm not an American and Blair came in towards the end of the Clinton years (and lasted long beyond, more the shame), but in an increasingly American dominated media, culture and political environment, almost all our news not centered on the UK was American, so I feel I can speak with some sort of authority on the period.

While looking back now, the time seemed marked with general econonic prosperity and stability, hilarious attempts at unseating Clinton aside, and the tediousness of the "culture wars" that now seem almost quaint when compared to the Bush years, there is one element that has strangely been forgotten and overlooked, one that had a very real impact on American society and continues to do so today.

I mean, of course, the 'Patriot' movement, better known as the militias and various pseudo-constiutionalist Christian organizations, that abounded in the 90s.  Ah, those were the days....with guys like the Michigan Milita, the Montana Freemen, the Republic of Texas and so on, all peddling their insane conspiracy theories, openly advocating anti-government dissidence, stockpiling their guns and waiting for the invasion of the United Nations, proclaiming the End Times were upon us and that President Clinton and the Federal Government et al were agents of Satan.  They were almost an inverse version of Discordians, like what happened if someone read the first half of Illuminatus! and took the book seriously.

Don't you ever wonder, what happened to those guys?

Well, as it turns out, unsurprisingly, they weren't so much enemies of Government per se as they were enemies of secular neoliberal government.  With Clinton out of the picture, it turned less into an antigovernment movement into an antiliberal movement.

But where did all these guys end up, you ask?  After all, its not like they're marching around in their compounds talking about blowing up Congress, are they?  That's because their guys are in Congress.  They became an official part of the Republican party, and one of its most vocal elements.  Its a sordid and twisted tale, but I feel I should tell it.  After all, Americans have the right to know why their government is so blatantly crazy, and not to mention what they can expect should Obama (or maybe even McCain) becomes the next President.  Because these guys are nowhere near dead, oh no.  They're just far less visible now, and that makes them all the more dangerous.

The story starts, as so many of our current ones do, in the craziness that led up to the Presidential elections of 2000.  For a number of years now, right-wing commentators like Limbaugh. Coulter, the Fox News Crowd, Andrew Sullivan etc had been helping propogate these militia memes into more standard right-wing discourse.  There is nothing sinister about it, no conspiracy, its just an easy way of playing to both the more staid normal Republican crowd, as well as the batshit Patriot element that seemed to be growing in the face of economic depression in the midwest.

They did all the usual things, talked about government taxes being a form of illegal oppression, spread conspiracy theories about Clinton's doings, bashed the UN, attacked secular culture and tried to replace it with a Judeo-Christian one...all the things a Republican like Lincoln or even Eisenhower would abhor but now make up modern day Republican talking points.  Like I said, these memes are overwhelmingly Militia/Patriot/Christian Identity ones, but they were spread by a media intent on gaining as large as an audience as possible.

And the thing was...the less crazy corpratist core of the Republican party was in trouble.  Despite their hold on Congress and the Judiciary, they had failed twice now to stop Clinton.  1996 wasn't as important, Bob Dole was never going to win, regardless of how many people the Republicans appealed to, but 1992...well, that was a real kick in the teeth.  Ross Perot's gang had totally undermined Bush senior and handed Clinton the victory he needed.  And boy did that hurt.  As it turns out, many of what would later turn out to be supporters and sympathizers of the Patriot movement were in fact Perot and Reform party supporters as well.  Dissident Republicans such as Pat Buchanan and other paleoconservatives (who today like to pretend they are Really Real Libertarians) flocked to the Party and this movement had seriously weakened the base support the Republicans could have.  It also included far right elements from racist and aggressively nationalist organizations.

As it turned out, in 2000, Buchanan won their leadership competition to become Presidential candidate.  However, he massively upset the party base when he chose a black and female running partner.  I'm not sure which upset them more, but with Christian Identity theories prevalent, as well as more traditional ideas about the role of women in society, the base split off from the Reform Party....and found a willing host in the Republican party.  The ground had been prepared for them by the right-wing media, and the party needed the support to defeat Al Gore.

It was support Bush willingly accepted.  As the problems with the Florida election became more apparent, thugs from Don Black's Stormfront were taking part in pro-Bush protests and harassing Democratic party supporters, something Don Black himself was only too proud to boast about.  Equally, FreeRepublic goons helped shut down recounts and staged aggressive protests outside Gore's Florida residence throughout the debacle.  Neo-Nazi organizations spread fliers speaking in glowing terms about Bush, as their 'commander in chief'.  Bush also sought, and got support from Neoconfederates with his speech at Bob Jones University.  These Neoconfederates would go on to support such well known Republicans as Trent Lott.  Republicans in the mid-west made open alliances with such Patriot-esque groups.

Their support was further backed up by such figures as Jerry Falwell and the members of the Council for National Policy, who helped spread such ideas of Satanic government and the right of God's elect to rule America through evangelical circles, who had a long-standing tacit alliance with the Patriots.  So the circle was complete.  Corporatism, pseudo-Fascistic thuggery masquerading as anti-government sentiment and apocalyptic religious insanity were now combined under a single banner, that of the Grand Old Party.

And we can see that effect on government policy and political discourse today.  The barely fought against spread of these Patriot memes, which suggest liberals are the enemy and unworthy of having any power at all, have begun to influence the rhetoric of the party and the actions of its supporters.  On the ground, we have very limited but real political violence, often directed against anti-war and environmental protesters.  Intimidation is a fact of life for many of these people, and it is backed up by a network of 'Republican' blogs, run by people who have accepted their quasi-Patriot party as their own, and have no compunction about giving out names and addresses of activits, along with badly coded hints of violence to be directed against them.

The violent ones, the actual Patriots, are themselves a minority.  They probably make up no more than 4% of the total population, and even less are probably active Republican party members, let alone thuggish ones.  But they do not exist in a vaccuum, oh no.  They have support from the entire machinery of the GOP, who is terribly afraid of letting go of this solid base of voters, and they exist in the material and moral support many Republicans and rural areas give them.

So you want to know where the Patriots are now, those 'brave' and 'principled' if somewhat kooky and paranoid antigovernment organizations  They're the people calling for anti-war protestors to be hung, for liberals to exiled for treason, for Christian rulership and unending war in the Middle East.  Oh yes, they really, really hate government, those guys.

[- Thomas Hardy]

"Once victim, always victim -- that's the law!"
- Thomas Hardy

"Danger lies in the writer becoming the victim of his own exaggeration, losing the exact notion of sincerity, and in the end coming to despise truth itself as something too cold, too blunt for his purpose -- as, in fact, not good enough for his insistent emotion."
- Joseph Conrad


The victim mentality is a curious thing. 

Oh, I don't mean, as do the various proto-racist idiots do, talk about legitimate grievances experienced by a group of people.  For example, Jews or blacks in the USA.  There is both legitimate and ongoing discrimination against those groups, for starters.  Furthermore, their victim status is a matter of how other's treat them, it is not a label they generally accept willingly, and furthermore they try to rid themselves of the label as much as possible.

No, I'm interested in people who want to be victims, who identify themselves as such, who wish to be seen as oppressed and living in a world that is out to get them.  And most often, these people have actually experienced very little to actually warrant that status.  In many cases, it seems to be a one-off event that then colours their vision for the rest of their lives.

The most obvious example of this would be Emo 'culture'.  Once upon a time, as I'm sure you are all aware, emo was about music and, to a degree, a certain style of clothing.  However that is long gone and dead, replaced with music by middle-class white suburbanites whining about how bad their life is.  Its so very cliché, yet at the same time almost hilarious.  You may think I'm joking, but some deluded emo kids have seen fit to compare themselves to black slaves, or the persecution homosexuals suffer, and yet at the same time consider themselves part of 'social movement' based entirely on this shared, faked identity.

That's the most obvious example, but I believe this is just trickle down from another source – the body politic.  For quite a while now, the adoption of victimhood status has been a tool, one used by unscrupulous political organizations in order to promote and further their causes, as well as give their members a sense of grievance and anger any anyone not in their 'in-group'.  Hell, it even works on atheists, who you think would be more open to reasoning and trying to understand what makes people operate than most others.  The ethnocentric nature of it is useful for any aspiring leader.

Victimhood is a powerful tool, because it draws a group together and creates for them a collective experience which they interpret reality through.  Its even more powerful in this modern day and age because of the media, and especially the bottom up media that has been invented by the internet, blogging and Youtube in particular.  An individual can pick their media inputs based on their belonging to one social group or another, and if several of those inputs are spreading a victim discourse and memes, then the idea and acceptance of it will spread throughout that particular group. 

What is especially dangerous and worrying, however, is when a victim discourse becomes intertwined with a sense of humiliation.  Three prime examples of this are the three most powerful countries in the world right now, and their nationalist rhetoric.  China believes it has been humiliated by the western powers throughout its modern contact with them, and not without reason.  It has been invaded, had its people addicted to opium by Western dealers backed by huge national armies, had foreign powers support civil wars and has been ignored by the international system at large.  However, that has very little to do with why it is being criticized now, although most Chinese people would not believe that.

Equally, we have Russia.  After the inglorious end to the Cold War, they suffered the chaos of the Yeltsin years, where the government was run by gangsters and thugs of all colours, the assets of the nation were looted, and Russians were left to die in the streets or freeze to death at home – all while Western pundits lauded Boris Yeltsin and took advantage of Russia's weakness to humiliate them in the international sphere.  And now they have a stronger leader, one who evokes their Imperial and Soviet past, they again see him being villainized by the West.  As far as they are concerned, the West wants them weak and humiliated forever.

And finally, we have America.  American popular nationalism has been built very strongly on the events of 9/11, an event stronger than say the Chinese experience, as almost everyone saw the events of that day repeatedly, shared by cable news networks on repeat all day.  America had long believed its superpower status had somehow conferred invincibility upon it, and to be shown up by Arabs wielding box-cutters, who nonetheless inflicted incredible levels of damage on the country, was a humiliation unseen since Clinton's retreat from Somalia.

And the mix of victim and humiliation is a very bad one.  Because one identifies as the victim, yet at the same time, this identity only serves to remind you of what caused one to think of oneself this way, which brings rise to the feeling of humiliation.  Using this kind of victim status as a tool is a very, very dangerous one indeed.  Its like wearing a mail shirt to defend yourself from criticism of your actions, only to find that there are spikes on the inside of the amour.  It does defend, and help explain the action, but at the same time, it serves as a painful reminder, which only drives those who accept it to even more extreme actions to try and reverse that humiliation.

And therein lies the danger.  All the processes are internal, or take place at a vague sociological level where identity and discourse are more tangible than fact or action, yet it is precisely by action that this humiliated victim seeks to redress what they see as those who wronged them.  And should they fail even slightly, they go to ever more extreme and bloody ends in search of a cure they can never find.

Apparently, if you are a man, you cannot be a feminist.

Now, while normally I wouldn't find this tidbit of information any more interesting than any other tedious political infighting, it raises an interesting question.

What if someone, with a gender neutral username, were to start posting on the internet and posting feminist viewpoints, only later to be revealed to be a man?  Or what if they refused to answer any question on their gender at all?  Can someone simultaneously be a feminist and not a feminist?

I found this amusing, because it totally undermines essentialism in some schools of feminist thought.  Essentialism being "because you have not got a vagina and have not suffered discrimination due to your gender, you are not a feminist" (ignoring of course feminists who have sex changes, either way, as well).  Even if one were to fight ideas of patriarchy and be in favour of gender equality, one could not actually be a feminist, despite doing the exact same things all the women feminists do.

I think this illustrates that sometimes, making the divide between what someone is and what someone does, is essentially futile.  You are what you do, and when you try to divide those spheres apart and enter preconditions on identity which do not apply to the actions, then you create contraditions within your own philosophical viewpoint and worldview.

[Terry Pratchett, Night Watch]

"We've just heard. Lord Winder is dead. Um. Lord Snapcase is Patrician."
A cheer began among the nearby defenders, and was taken up below. Vimes felt the relief rise. But he wouldn't be Vimes if he just let things lie.
He called out: "So would you like to change ends?"
"Er...sorry?"
"I mean, would your chaps like to have a go at defending the barricade and we can try attacking it?"
Vimes heard laughter from the defenders.
There was a pause. Then the young man said: "Um...why?"
"Because, correct me if I am wrong, we are now the loyal supporters of the official government and you are the rebellious rump of a discredited administration. Am I right?"
- Terry Pratchett, Night Watch



Something rather odd happened about 30 years ago.  So odd, in fact, that it has taken about 25 years for most politically savvy people to catch up on what actually happened.  And the public, well...the public have failed to even realize at all, for the most part.

What event am I speaking of, you wonder?  I'm glad you asked.  I'm talking about the ideal of revolution moving from the left of politics to the right.  Utopian, revolutionary sentiment ceased to be a major factor in mainstream left-wing politics since the 70s, but has been a facet of right-wing politics in America, the UK and (to a much lesser extent) Europe since the 80s.

It was quite amusing, really, when you look at it.  Before, the right was mostly associated with social values, especially political ones.  Then, suddenly, all these capitalist raiders appeared, upsetting the system, declaring they wanted to break down the last vestiges of a stale, old society that did not serve the market.

And that is, in part, what I want to talk about.  This shift in sentiment, especially in relation to us here.

I think it would be fair to say most Discordians are either left-leaning anarchists or liberal/socialists who score highly on anti-authoritarianism.  In general, though there are a few exceptions.  In short, it would be no great distortion of reality to consider most Discordians as belonging to the left wing of political thought.

Now, I know some people here are of the opinion that the USA, the UK and the political systems of the recent, generally decent past, are ones that can be saved or resurrected.  I am, however, not of that opinion.  In fact, I am not sure that saving them is even desirable.  Going by the trends I see, I can fathom much more freedom and opportunity in the near future....but more of that later.  As I was saying, I think the rot is too deep for even the best surgeons to save the patient.  And the best surgeons were long run out of town by cowboys and faith healers.

In such a situation, I believe the best course of action is to precipitate a crisis within the current political climate, one towards which it is heading anyway, and seize the advantages provided by that to carve out one's own fortune and freedom's before anyone else realizes what is happening.  I am not talking of revolution, or even counter-revolution.  I am talking about using the chaos of a revolution to seize one's own future by the throat.  Using currently existing forces and helping them along to their eventual conclusion, where they negate themselves, and then using that void to further yourself in the world.

Of course, the minor problem is that any successful revolution is going to be caused by forces that are ascendant in the right...especially the Neolibertarian and Neoconservative schools of thought.

Some of you undoubtedly will disagree with my assessment, even if not on the grounds of the politics of the western nations being beyond saving.  For example, I can imagine a few people saying "hang on a minute, how can a political philosophy that has brought us unlimited war and an ever increasing government be revolutionary, except by ineptitude?"  Well, I'm glad you asked, since it brings me to one of my key ideas in this, which is capital.

Capital is the key component of the right-wing revolution.  By lifting the restrictions on the flow of capital, the market reaches every corner of the world, affects every interaction.  And as Marx predicts, in doing so, it breaks down ties.  Ties to the state, ties to the family, ties to religion and ties to ideology.

Furthermore, while governments under such political philosophies do grow larger, they also hollow themselves out.  The government eats more than ever, but is weaker too, outsourcing everything it can to private companies.  The government is nothing more than a huge, ravenous husk at this point, with the corporations acting as infesting lifeforms, feeding off their host's apparent and former strength.

The usual right-wing retards often talk about smashing the government, making it as small as possible...and I've decided to help things along somewhat, I think.  I'm no right-winger, not in any sense of the word, but I have no problem with playing one to suit my own, longer term goals.

The world is changing, reverting.  The effect of capital, that I have described above is accurate...but only up to a point. It dissolves loyalty to the state and ideology, but in return brings the promise of holy warriors, neo-mediaevalism, private armies, modern tribes and new pirates.  The concept of the state, with us legally since the Treaty of Westphalia, is being broken on the tide of international finance, and in its place is leaving us with a world that a 10th century European would recognize.  I don't believe such a process is reversible, though it may be cyclical and a new conception of the state will arise in a few hundred years.  But we have to live in the times we are in, not those we wish were now.  And that means seizing a chance among the upheaval that will accompany any transition.

And the right, of course, has its own mirror images of people like us.  That is, to say, people who want to be able to ingest any damn chemical they want, to not have to live by religious dogma and to not have a tyrannical government breathing down their necks every five minutes.  It just so happens these are a small number, who are vastly outnumbered by religious and nationalistic tards, who are hardly original or sophisticated thinkers.  The latter have signed up to the program of the former (which includes this capitalist revolutionary program) mostly without understanding it, and being used merely for their value in creating noise and creating electoral support, but there is always a fear among the revolutionaries that the religious nutters in particular will turn on them, and drown them in a sea of decidedly anti-capitalist and tedious dogma.

And that, I believe, is where we come in. As a group, we are certainly small, but we hit above our own weight.  We already have certain Beltway Libertarian magazines fawning over our irreligion and our knowledge of social interactions, memes, the internet and viral marketing would undoubtedly be useful.  Plus, we are not religious fanatics, or at least not in the Christian sense.  In short, we are people this small, hopelessly outnumbered faction of the right can do business with.

And probably would.  I very much doubt they would give a shit if we wanted to drink, smoke pot and shoot guns all day long, as long as we delivered.  We have the discipline only a shared ethos can provide, but with none of the downsides of normal religious nuttery.  Not only can we do business with them, we would be considered natural allies, able to help keep the religious right at arms length, all the while manipulating them into doing our bidding.  The right may not have many original thinkers, but it has plenty of mindless followers who are far less factional than the left's mindless followers.

In other words, we could have our cake and eat it.  Help bring down the system by forcing it along its current self-destructive course at an ever faster pace.  Mingle with the rich and influential, and possibly even get paid for our devotion towards destroying government.  Be in a position to exercise a level of control over the religious right, while maintaining our antipathy to them, and best of all, securing the necessary resources that will come in useful once the system starts to collapse under its own inconsistencies.  Plus, there is always the fun of playing the role of revolutionary, even if you're doing so with the financial backing of a PAC.

I don't know about anyone else, but the idea at least sounds intriguing to me.

http://docquan.com/lib_dead.html

Topics cover:  NLP, Hypnosis, Persuasion *** Occult and Esoteric *** Drugs, Psychedelics *** Military, Gov Documents, Warfare *** UFOlogy and the Paranormal *** Political Science, History, Social Control *** Science - Physics, Biology, Astronomy, etc *** DIY, How-To, Home Projects ***

Obviously, some books of dubious scholarship and utility, but a few that seem interesting.

Similar to before, but thankfully less long.



OPEN YOUR EYES!

"You must choose:

Do you wish to see (perceive) nothing, or do you want to see things as they really are?

It is not hard to see things as they really are, it is simply a matter of tearing down walls, ridding oneself of defenses and presumption, rendering oneself vulnerable, an idiot, a fool.

But it is not easy to see things as they really are, because it is painful, it is real, it requires response, it's an incredible commitment.

To go nine-tenths of the way is to suffer at every moment utter madness.

To go all the way is to become sane.

     Most people prefer blindness.

But most people are a dying race."

— Paul Williams



THE MAN IN THE ARENA

"It is not the critic who counts, not the one who points out how the strong man stumbled or how the doer of deeds might have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred with sweat and dust and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spens himself in a worthy cause; who, if he wins, knows the triumph of high achievement; and who, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with these cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat."

— Theodore Roosevelt



THE WARRIOR PATH

"Our culture must not omit the arming of the man. Let him hear in season that he is born into the state of war, and that the commonwealth and his own well-being require that he should not go dancing in the weeds of peace, but warned, self-collected and neither defying nor dreading the thunder, let him take both reputation and life in his hand, and with perfect urbanity dare the gibbet and the mob by the absolute truth of his speech and the rectitude of his behavior."

— Ralph Waldo Emerson



THE MASSES ARE LIKE MACHINES

"What do you expect? People are machines. Machines have to be blind and unconscious; they cannot be otherwise, and all their actions have to correspond to their nature. Everything happens. No-one does anything. 'Progress' and 'civilization', in the real meaning of these words, can appear only as a result of conscious efforts. They cannot appear as a result of unconscious mechanical actions. And what conscious effort can there be in machines? And if one machine is unconscious, and so are a thousand machines, or a hundred thousand, or a million. And the unconscious activity of a million machines must necessarily result in destruction and extermination. It is precisely in unconscious involuntary manifestations that all evil lies. You do not yet understand and cannot imagine all the results of this evil. But the time will come when you will understand."

— G. I. Gurdjieff



THE MASSES ARE LIKE INSECTS

"Cities are like hives in which humans scuttle frantically about like insects. Nearly identical housing projects, condominiums, and high-rises form the shell of the hives, with congested streets and tracks being like the chemical trails. The metaphorical 'insects' of the hive, unlike true insects, lack a hive mind; in fact, they seem to lack any willingness to co-operate or help one another in the absence of threats or rewards. The drones and workers dredge through tedious and demeaning jobs, usually spending their non-working time entranced in front of their televisions, partaking of mind-numbing intoxicants, sleeping fitfully and dreamlessly, or mindlessly reproducing to ensure the cycle of despair continues. The pathetic denizens of the hive cannot leave, as they have become too dependant upon it; bound to their jobs by invisible chains and unable to conceive of a world without the conveniences of mass-transit and free delivery."

— anonymous (RWT)



THE COMPUTER IS WATCHING YOU

"When technology reaches a certain level, people begin to feel like criminals. Someone is after you, the computers maybe, the machine-police. You can't escape investigation. The facts about you and your whole existence have been collected or are being collected. Banks, insurance companies, credit organizations, tax examiners, passport offices, reporting services, police agencies, intelligence gatherers. Devices make us pliant. If they issue a print-out saying we're guilty, then we're guilty. But it goes even deeper, doesn't it? It's the presence alone, the very fact, the superabundance of technology, that makes us feel we're committing crimes. Just the fact that these things exist at this widespread level. The processing machines, the scanners, the sorters. That's enough to make us feel like criminals. What enormous weight. What complex programs. And there's no-one to explain it to us."

— unknown



SOCIETY DOESN'T TOLERATE DISRUPTION

"Let us pretend that you are an ape, and that you have been born into an unusually large group of, say, a hundred or more of your kind . . . this is your society. In most societies, everyone has their place; if you do not know your place, you will soon be put where society feels you belong — usually near the bottom. In this society, there is one maximum leader, the 'Alpha'; and several of his assistants, the 'Betas'; and everyone else is subservient to the leaders and one another based on a sort of 'pecking order.' It is a society of bullies. Whomever is strongest and most feared rules, and whomever is not quite as strong is permitted to harass and attack those weaker than himself. Whatever apes are too passive, weak, or ill to defend themselves will be at the bottom of the pecking order.

     Now let us pretend that your ape, for whatever reason, is at the lower end of the pecking order. However, not only is he resentful of his mistreatment by others, but he is significantly more intelligent than most of them. Using his intelligence, he crafts a sort of long dagger from a discarded broken animal bone. Now when the dominant greyback Alpha no longer receives homage in the form of submissive and fearful gesticulation (averting the eyes, exposing the buttocks for mounting, ect.), he flies into a murderous rage and lunges, only to have the needle point of the sharp bone tool plunged through his eye and into his brain. As the Alpha drops dead, is your ape the new king? No. Even if he is able to fend off, or even kill, the attacking Betas with his magic sword, he will not sway the masses. Why? Because he was once like them and still is, in many ways. He is not inclined to rule as a tyrant, and if he sets down his weapon his strength will be gone. Aren't the apes happy with their newfound freedom? On the contrary, they will be fearful and confused, and as soon as your ape falls asleep, as he eventually must, they will take up the weapon and kill him with it. Then, the strongest and most aggressive survivor will take over as king, and society will return to normal. In most societies, there is no place for one such as your ape. If he cannot be rendered powerless in some way, he must be exiled, imprisoned, or killed. He will never be accepted or assimilated unless be changes into that which he despises. Society does not tolerate disruption."

— anonymous (RWT)



MAD DOG SHRIVER

"Mad Dog Shriver was twenty-eight years old and, according to one SOG veteran, 'the quintessential warrior loner, antisocial, possessed by what he was doing, leading the best team, always training, constantly training.'

     Shriver rarely spoke and walked around camp for days wearing the same clothes. In his sleep he cradled a loaded rifle, and in the NCO club he'd buy a case of beer, open every can, then go alone to a corner and drink them all. Although he could not care less about decorations, he'd been awarded a Silver Star, five Bronze Stars, and the Soldier's Medal.

     Shriver was devoted to the Montagnards. He spent all his money on them and collected food, clothes, whatever people would give, to distribute in Yard villages. He taught the Yards how to play an accordion, the most sophisticated musical instrument they'd ever had. Mad Dog even built his own room in the Montagnard barracks so he could live with them. 'He was almost revered by the Montagnards,' O'Rourke says.

     Shriver's closest companion was a German Shepherd he'd brought back from Taiwan and named Klaus. One night Klaus got sick on beer some recon men fed him and crapped on the NCO club floor; the men rubbed his nose in it and threw him out. Shriver arrived, drank a beer, removed his blue velvet smoking jacket and derby hat, put his .38 revolver on a table, then dropped his pants and defecated on the floor. 'If you want to rub my nose in this,' he dared, 'come on over.' Everyone pretended not to hear him, except one man who'd fed Klaus beer and who urged the recon company commander to intervene. The captain laughed in his face, saying, 'Hey, fuck you, pal.'"

— excerpted from SOG by John L. Plaster (p. 247)



DISPOSABLE HEROES

"If the truth be known, the Army went out of its way to find guys like me — ass-kicking 'Nam vets who ran the woods and lived on the edge — and systematically weeded them out of the service.

Why?

Because we were misfits.

We didn't fit the mold. We just didn't fit in. We were renegades used to operating independently, with few people pulling our strings. We disregarded the established rules and created our own. I take that back — there were no rules for us . . . But that attitude surely was out of place in a peacetime environment, and the thought of keeping guys around who were distainful of authority and might not toe the line was a little too much for the Army to deal with. So the hard-core guys were sent packing. Fortunately for me I had the medal, which gave me too much visibility to be fucked with completely, so I was spared the axe, though not the hassles.

A noncombat lifestyle was everything I'd feared. It was very boring. It was unbelievably slow-paced. And worst of all, my free-wheeling, do-as-I-damn-well-please lifestyle had come to an end . . .

I felt like I'd been put on a leash. The Army had taken a high-performance engine and drastically untuned it. Not only had my activities been severely curtailed, but the special status that I Once enjoyed quickly evaporated. I was no longer that unique individual who did the dangerous job most others were reluctant to do. Since cunning, sharpshooting, and bravery were no longer required in my new environment, I had nothing to set me apart from the crowd. I quickly found that the Medal of Honor was more a novelty than anything else to most noncombat soldiers, and really had no place in a peacetime Army. My extensive combat skills and ass-kicking abilities were no longer needed, appreciated, or even wanted."

— Franklin D. Miller, from Reflections of a Warrior (pp. 198-199)



DON'T BE A DUMBASS

"Never leave a potentially deadly weapon where unauthorized hands may find it. Never insert your finger into the trigger guard until the actual use of a weapon seems imminent; a fall, or the muscle-tightening reaction to a sudden noise, can result in an accidental discharge . . . Never touch a firearm while under the influence of alcohol, or display one at an occasion when liquor is flowing. Never allow yourself to become embroiled in a squabble while you are carrying a gun, be it caused by an insult to your wife, an argument in traffic, or any similar situation. Never let it be known to anyone outside your immediate household . . . that you carry a gun. Never make remarks to the effect that you will "kill any sonofabitch who breaks into my house/hooks my kid on drugs/tries to steal from my store," etc. If such a killing situation ever occurs, testimony in court will show that you seemed pre-occupied with the idea of killing real or imaginary criminals, especially if you've made such remarks frequently. If circumstances were such that your reactions could be considered to have been too hasty, such testimony would imply that you were excessively pre-disposed toward using your gun."

— Massad Ayoob, from In The Gravest Extreme (p. 121)



BULLET WOUNDS: TV VERSUS REALITY

"In TV and motion pictures, the bullet is often portrayed as a very discreet piece of metal. When it strikes a bad gut, it produces a round, red polka dot approximately the diameter of a pencil. There is usually very little blood and never an exit wound. Good guys are regularly shot in the arm, shoulder or leg and are up and around in no time . . . Bullets aren't sharp. They don't drill neat holes in flesh. Bullets rip and tear. When they hit bone, lead slugs don't produce neat fractures. Bones are burst and splintered. No longer able to support body weight, the jagged end of a bone is sometimes jabbed up and out through the skin as gravity pulls the flesh down. Flattened into an irregular shape by the impact, but unspent, the bullet tumbles off and away through the body, often bursting out with a fist-sized ball of meat at an odd angle and a remarkable distance from where it entered . . . If the heart does not stop right away, that organ can pump most of the blood the body contains through the wound and out onto the ground in a matter of minutes."

— Mark Baker, from Cops (pp. 168-169)

Warning: lots of writing upcoming.  Also, the first few segments will be very...martially orientated, because of the source, but it will diversify further in.



WARRIORSHIP



"Wherever I go,

Everyone is a little bit safer,

Because I am there."

— from "The Warrior Creed" by Robert L. Humphrey



"New-Age America produces books and workshops on the 'New Warrior,' a man or woman who lives impeccably — austere, protecting the weak, willing, perhaps, to stand his or her ground and fight, but more important, calm and graceful — the warrior as metaphor. We imagine the warrior in bed, in the boardroom, in marriage, the warrior on the golf-course. But these writers seem to forget that the warrior's values, as admirable as they may be, are won at terrible cost. The warrior as metaphor often offends me, because the battlefield stinks of blood and shit, and sings of screams and flies. Certainly the values that writers such as Dan Millman extol are admirable, but I would hesitate to call anyone a warrior unless we are not talking about a fellow ubermenschen, but instead a deeply flawed and guilty human being, who strives at the risk of the loss of comfort, of home, of even his or her own soul to protect what must be protected, to maintain a moral sense in a place where no morality can conceivably exist."

— Ellis Amdur, from Dueling with O-sensei (p. 121)



"Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. . . . He is the hero, he is everything. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor, by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be the best man in his world and a good enough man for any world."

— Raymond Chandler, from The Second Chandler Omnibus (pp. 14-15)



"Warriorship is a profession of courage, a calling to valor — not just on the battlefield, but in all of life's conflicts."

— Forrest E. Morgan



"The warrior preserves and protects but does not conquer, dominate, or subjugate. Only the enemy will have to fear a warrior's skills."

— Richard Heckler



"The warrior's role in society is to protect life and social order by placing himself between that which would endanger both."

— Greg Walker



"If there is any hope for the future, it surely must rest upon the ability to stare unflinchingly into the heart of darkness."

— unknown



"To practice Zen or the Martial Arts, you must live intensely, wholeheartedly, without reserve — as if you might die in the next instant."

— Taisen Deshimaru



"A complete warrior is one who can act appropriately. Such an individual can kill if that is necessary to preserve other's lives, or he can die for others. But such an individual also possesses the power to find a way through conflicts to a non-combative resolution. This power can create a real peace between people. Such a person's presence, rather than intimidating, calms and gives strength to others."

— Ellis Amdur, from Old School (p. 37)



"A warrior's strategy is designed to bring his commitment into action, develop his being, and enhance his knowledge. Living strategically requires the warrior to eliminate impulsive, whimsical actions and cease being a slave to his likes and dislikes. Actions and decisions are to be based on the warrior's strategy and have a well-considered quality to them, even when undertaken with lightning speed. To abandon one's strategy is to abandon the path itself."

— Robert L. Spencer, from The Craft of the Warrior (p. 33)



"The quest of a true martial artist, in any culture or society, is to preserve life — not destroy it."

— Dan Inosanto, from The Filipino Martial Arts (p. 170)



"Only one who devotes himself to a cause with his whole body and soul can be a true master. For this reason, mastery demands all of a person."

— unknown



"Warriors use their intent and will to shape their lives. All of their actions are conscious, intentional, and complete."

— Kerr Cuhulain



"They don't join cliques — more times than not, they stand alone — but they recognize and gravitate towards one another. Only warriors understand other warriors."

— Forrest E. Morgan



"A kung fu man lives without being dependant on the opinions of others, and a master, unlike the beginner, holds himself in reserve. He is quiet and unassuming, with no desire to show off."

— Bruce Lee



"It has always been my ideal in war to eliminate all feelings of hatred and to treat my enemy as an enemy only in battle and to honour him as a man according to his courage."

— Ernst Junger



"Beholding them with pity there came an old soldier who asked me if there was any means of curing them. I told him no. At once he approached them and cut their throats gently and, seeing this great cruelty, I shouted at him that he was a villain. He answered me that he prayed to God that should he be in such a state he might find someone who would do the same for him, to the end that he might not languish miserably."

— Ambroise Pare', speaking of three badly-burnt soldiers, 1536



". . . he was placed in charge of a unit which had suffered extremely heavy casualties, during which time he felt compelled to shoot an American pilot who had been disemboweled in a crash. This act was necessary according to the code of the warrior (an honorable fighting man puts his comrades out of their misery) but resulted in his rejection by a primarily enlisted brotherhood who held a more 'civilian' concept of the warrior ethos."

— Joanna Bourke, from An Intimate History of Killing (p. 38)



"People who really study the arts of war are almost without exception nonviolent individuals. The achievement of real skill requires considerable discipline and self control, two traits which eradicate violent behavior."

— Richard Ryan, from Master of the Blade (p. 21)



"Every man is responsible for defending every woman and every child. When the male no longer takes this role, when he no longer has the courage or feels the moral responsibility, then that society will no longer be a society where honor and virtue are esteemed. Laws and government cannot replace this personal caring and commitment. In the absence of the Warrior protector, the only way that a government can protect a society is to remove the freedom of the people. And the sons and daughters of lions become sheep."

— James Williams



"Do every act of your life as if it were your last."

— Marcus Aurelis



"In ourselves our safety must be sought,

By our own right hand it must be wrought."

— William Wordsworth



"It is better to deserve honours and not have them, than to have them and not to deserve them."

— Mark Twain



"The strength of our beliefs and our loyalty to each other has transformed our ideals into the strongest of brotherhoods. We exist, we are the warrior in you, and our message is dangerous to the existing order."

— excerpted from the introduction of Hell's Angels Forever



"I tell you this. As war becomes dishonored and its nobility called into question those honorable men who recognize the sanctity of blood will become excluded from the dance, which is the warrior's right, and thereby will the dance become a false dance and the dancers false dancers."

— Cormac McCarthy, from Blood Meridian (p. 331)



"Warriorship . . . does not refer to making war on others. Aggression is the source of our problems, not the solution. . . . Warriorship . . . is the tradition of human bravery, or the tradition of fearlessness."

— Chogyam Trungpa



"Assurance, superior judgement, the ability to impose discipline, the capacity to inspire fear: these are the qualities of an authority."

— Richard Sennett, from Authority (pp. 17-18)



"The gentleman desires to be halting in speech but quick in action."

— Confucius



"The frightening nature of knowledge leaves one no alternative but to become a warrior."

— "don Juan," from Casteneda's A Separate Reality (p. 150)



". . .the development of a warrior rests upon stopping the internal dialogue. Unnecessary talking is related to other unnecessary physical movements and bodily tensions, twitches, fidgeting, finger drumming, foot tapping, grimacing, and so on, which serve to drain the daily ration of energy. . ."

— Kathleen Riordan Speeth, from The Gurdjieff Work (p. 44)



"He who has great power should use it lightly."

— Seneca



"Adventure is just a romantic name for trouble. It sounds swell when you write about it, but it's hell when you meet it face-to-face in a dark and lonely place."

— Louis L'Amour



"If I had a formula for bypassing trouble, I would not pass it round. Trouble creates a capacity to handle it. I don't embrace trouble; that's as bad as treating it as an enemy. But I do say meet it as a friend, for you'll see a lot of it and had better be on speaking terms with it."

— Oliver Wendell Holmes



"Nothing to laugh at in the ugliness of crime, the grimness of poverty, the tragedy of death; not a smile's worth of fun in the weeping wives and the sad and sometimes savage face of humanity? No, it isn't funny; and that is why laughter has to break through, probably more than in other jobs."

— Keith Simpson, from Forty Years of Murder (p. 10)



"The true spirit of the warrior is found in the desire to defend the weaker against the aggression of the stronger. In this way an essential balance is kept in the world. The warrior trains so that he will be prepared and will thus not fail in his role."

— Peyton Quinn, from A Bouncer's Guide to Barroom Brawling (p. 147)



"Evil has no physical reality, but it is still a force. . . . We cannot destroy it, but we can learn to keep ourselves safe from it."

— Anderson Reed, from Shouting at the Wolf (pp. 56-57)



"The warrior is not the master, he is not the sifu nor the sensei. These are just physical words that we put upon ourselves to make us seem important or better than those whom we guide. The warrior is a friend to his students, and so cannot be their master. He does not wish to gather students, as they will search him out. And those who need to have a master or a sensei will not stay; they will keep searching until they realize that what they seek is within them, and who they seek can only be their guide."

— Erle Montaigue



"With the conviction came a store of assurance. He felt a quiet manhood, non-assertive but of sturdy and strong blood. He knew that he would no more quail before his guides wherever they should point. He had been to touch the great death, and found that, after all, it was but the great death. He was a man."

— Stephen Crane, from The Red Badge of Courage (p. 156)



"Act the way you'd like to be, and soon you'll be the way you act."

— Kerr Cuhulain, from Full Contact Magick (p. 107)



"Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit."

— Aristotle



"The White Knight uses his sword in innocence, unaware of the harm he causes. The Red Knight lifts his sword in outraged self-righteousness, uncaring about the damage he leaves in the trail behind him. The Black Knight wields his sword reluctantly and only when he has reached the sober realization that it is necessary."

— Robert Moore & Douglas Gillette, from The Warrior Within (p. 165)



"When all peaceful means to resolve a crucial problem fail, it is justifiable to wield the sword."

— Guru Gobind Singh



"At a glance, every individual's own measure of dignity is manifested just as it is. There is dignity in personal appearance. There is dignity in a calm aspect. There is dignity in a paucity of words. There is dignity in flawlessness of manners. There is dignity in solemn behavior. And there is dignity in deep insight and a clear perspective. These are all reflected on the surface. But in the end, their foundation is simplicity of thought and tautness of spirit."

— from Hagakure, by Yamamoto Tsunetomo (Wilson translation)



"They all had dignity, a certain serenity and pride that was theirs completely. . . . They knew where they had been and what they had seen and done, and were content. Something was theirs, something within themselves that neither time passing nor man nor hard times could take from them."

— Louis L'Amour, from Education of a Wandering Man (p. 38)



"If there is one thing that always sticks in my mind about how Delta Force goes about a mission, it is the utterly businesslike attitude of the men. There is none of that Hollywood crap. No posturing, no sloganeering, no high fives, no posing, no bluster, and no bombast. Just a quiet determination to get on with the job."

— Eric L. Haney, from Inside Delta Force (p. 191)



"In a critical situation, where even the slightest hesitation may prove fatal, the warrior counts on his readiness to improvise, survive, and win. The warrior shapes his own destiny. He defines the limits of his own possibilities. He creates his own luck."

— from The Warrior's Edge, by Col. John B. Alexander, Major Richard Groller, and Janet Morris (p. 106)



"It's not our weaknesses that frighten us. It's our strengths."

— Nelson Mandela

Srsly. 

http://www.reason.com/news/show/28779.html

http://www.reason.com/blog/show/125934.html

http://www.reason.com/news/show/29229.html

There are probably more, as well.

This is building off the idea proposed in this thread that Discordianism may be a little too American-centric (hey, we came to a similar conclusion, only related to the time it was created not so long ago, so I'll go with this) and that a good idea to help spread it may be to study subversive mythology, stories, folk heroes and ideas from other cultures, then try to fix them into a Discordian context.

A few things on culture before I start.  If we want to work from the most basic level, I would say Discordianism, as it is now, works best in a postmodern, Western culture.  Principally the USA, but also to a lesser extent Europe, Australia, Canada, Israel and New Zealand.  We can homogenize these as a "Western culture" for now, although there are significant differences we should explore later.

Following on from that, if we use Samuel Huntingdon's somewhat flawed macro-cultural model, we can divide the world up into several zones of related cultures, like this:


# Western civilization, centered on Western Europe (particularly the European Union) and North America, but also including other European-derived countries such as Australia and New Zealand. Huntington also includes the Pacific Islands, East Timor, Suriname,[citations needed] French Guiana, and northern and central Philippines.

# The Orthodox world of Armenia, Belarus, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Georgia, Greece, Moldova, Montenegro, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Romania, Russia, Serbia and Ukraine.

# Latin America. It's a hybrid of the western world and the local indigenous people. May be considered a part of Western civilization, though it has slightly distinct social and political structures from Europe and North America. Many people of the Southern Cone, however, regard themselves as full members of the Western civilization.

# The Muslim world of Central Asia, North Africa, Southwest Asia, Afghanistan, Albania, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia, Maldives, Pakistan, Somalia, Mindanao, and parts of India.

# Hindu civilization, located chiefly in India, Nepal, and culturally adhered to by the global Non-resident Indians and People of Indian Origin, the diaspora.

# The Sinic civilization of China, Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, and Vietnam. This group also includes the Chinese diaspora, especially in relation to Southeast Asia.

# Japan, considered a hybrid of Chinese civilization and older Altaic patterns.

# The civilization of Sub-Saharan Africa is considered as a possible 8th civilization by Huntington.

# The Buddhist areas of Bhutan, Cambodia, Laos, Mongolia, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Arunachal Pradesh, Kalmykia, parts of Nepal, parts of Siberia, and the Tibetan government-in-exile are identified as separate from other civilizations, but Huntington believes that they do not constitute a major civilization in the sense of international affairs.

# Instead of belonging to one of the "major" civilizations, Ethiopia, Haiti, and Turkey are labeled as "Lone" countries. Israel could be considered a unique state with its own civilization, Huntington writes, but one which is extremely similar to the West. Huntington also believes that former British colonies in the Caribbean constitute a distinct entity.

# In some cases, the Sinic, Hindu, Buddhist and Japonic civilizations are merged into a single civilization called Eastern World.


While this is a flawed thesis, it may give us regional areas to concentrate on, and hopefully build around.  Say we cant find many trickster/rebel ideas located in South Korea, we could hopefully build from others in the region to make something that could express those ideas in an intelligible and familiar way - even if its not from the actual country involved.

This is taken from North's Unholy Spirits - Occultism and New Age Humanism, and I thought had some interesting implications, if taken from an unusual source.  I've cropped various passages for the tl;dr crowd, but it is still going to take a while to read.



The Reformation of the early sixteenth century and the Renaissance of the fifteenth century through the sixteenth century paralleled each other in certain areas, but diverged in two fundamental respects: the attitude toward the Christian religion, and the attitude toward time. This is not the place to go into great detail, but on the whole, we can accurately summarize the differences between the two rival civilizations as the difference between the idea of a world governed by God (a providential universe) and one governed by fate or chance or political power (an impersonal universe).

[Cain: Chance.  Another, nicer term for chaotic, or unpredictable systems]

...

Equally important for subsequent Western history was the fact that the Reformation was based on a linear view of history, while the Renaissance was based on a cyclical view of history. It was the linear view rather than the cyclical view which produced Western science and applied technology. 18 Modern science was the product originally
of a providential, orderly world view, one which affirmed man's place in the universe as a subordinate to God whose task is to subdue the earth by means of biblical law. The hermetic or Renaissance view of man was based on a fusion of magic and power, especially political power. Man would be saved by knowledge, including occult knowledge, and by the application of this knowledge to political affairs. Salvation by knowledge, especially secret or elitist knowledge, is
the ancient heresy of Gnosticism.

[Cain: would a paradigm shift a la Kuhn come more under the heading of a cyclical view of history?  Progress is not linear, it is held back by an old guard of scientists who have ossified their knowledge, and the process of how knowledge is formalized, then broken down by youngster scientists coming in while the old guard die off, could be seen as a cyclical process, despite its unpredictability and changes in advances of knowledge]

Blinded by the dazzling success of Newton in physics and astronomy, a success which was vastly greater than the crude measuring devices of his era could record, men hesitated to inquire into the apparent absurdity of Newtonian science. Why should mathematical reasoning, an abstract mental skill and even art, be found to correspond to the mechanical processes of the observed world? Why should such a mind-matter link exist? As the Nobel-prize winning physicist Eugene Wigner has put it, such a finding is utterly unreasonable.  But the correlation exists.

The Christian knows why the correlation exists. It exists because man is made in the image of God. Man has been assigned the task of exercising dominion over the earth as God's lawful subordinate (Genesis 1:27-28). Because God exhaustively and perfectly understands His creation, men are able analogously (though not perfectly and exhaustively) to understand the creation. The creation is not lawless, for it was created by an orderly Creator who sustains it by
His providential sovereignty. In short, ours is a personal universe. We are persons made in God's image, so we can understand our world. The world was not a product of random events, nor are our minds the product of random evolution. The world was created by God.

Mathematics, too, is God-given, and can be understood and defended only as a product of a Creator God.  Thus, there can be and is a correspondence between the logic of mathematics and the operations of the external world.

[Can: paging Triple Zero and LMNO, Triple Zero and LMNO, please come to the mathematics thread...]

The atheist rejects this explanation. Thus, the correlation between mathematics and the natural world is unexplainable and ultimately unreasonable for him. Nevertheless, without faith in this correlation, modern science becomes impossible.

[Cain: this becomes important later, as you will see]

The ancient Greek philosophers struggled with these dualisms — structure vs. change, law vs chaos, determinism vs. freedom — in terms of the so-called form/matter framework.  The world was understood as the product of eternal conflict: abstract (but real) metaphysical forms partially subduing raw, chaotic matter.  Another variation of this approach had matter imitating form. The ultimate form was understood as monistic in nature, the ultimate One. Out of one came many, that is, diversity. (This is a basic theme of the New Age movement today. It is also the basic theme of Eastern mysticism and ancient pagan occultism. )

As to which had priority, abstract fixed form or fluctuating matter, Greek philosophers differed. How the two were linked together, or how one or the other was not swallowed up by the other, or how it is possible to compare infinite quantities of raw matter or the necessarily infinite number of abstract forms, no one was sure. The inability of classical philosophers to reconcile this fundamental dualism led to the disintegration of classical culture. Eastern mystery
cults spread over the Hellenistic and Roman worlds.

Total impersonal Fate battled with total impersonal Chance for control of the universe. Astrology flourished, was banned, and still flourished; chaos cults were everywhere. Men could no longer make sense out of their world. Christianity replaced classicism's fragmented culture.

But the lure of Greek philosophical speculation – the logic of the hypothetically autonomous human mind — was nearly irresistible to Christian philosophical apologists. They incorporated aspects of Greek wisdom, and therefore Greek dualism, into their defenses of the orthodox faith. The result was intellectual schizophrenia — philosophical
syncretism. Christian philosophers attempted to combine irreconcilable systems: Greek philosophy and biblical revelation.

[Cain: A couple of interesting things here to note.  The Greek conception of the world as conflict, strife, chaos...very in line with our own thinking and very much the opposite of what the writer would like to believe.  The One and the Many = chaos and the multiplying possibilities created by the varying levels of order and disorder within?  I also noted and smiled at the reference to 'chaos cults', that amused me.  I also found the infection of Greek philosophy into Christian thought an interesting concept, if not necessarily related to the main body of this topic.  Like a virus, it infected Christianity and made it intellectually schizophrenic – that is to say, open to multiple interpretation.  How...Discordian o it]

Ockham's system led to this conclusion: the Bible, or theology based on the Bible, cannot challenge the "facts" and speculations of philosophy (and science). Bradwardine's response was that philosophy therefore cannot challenge the truths of theology. The problem for society is this: men appear to be able to live without theology, but they cannot live without logic, meaning an understanding of cause and effect in the world around them. So theology went from the
queen of the sciences to second best. This "treaty" between Ockham and Bradwardine spelled the doom of medieval philosophy. Unless it can be shown that theology does govern both the form (operating principles) of philosophy and the content (details and issues) of philosophy, theology becomes progressively irrelevant.

[Cain: a fine argument for the atheists in the crowd, that I wanted to point out.  You way want to consider using this against Christians on Facebook, for example]

The rationalist's hostility to supernaturalism led, understandably, to a reformulation of the old Greek formimatter dualism. Ockham and the nominalist denied any reality to overarching metaphysical forms. Such forms were understood as simply being linguistic conventions. Reality inheres in the particulars. But there were problems
with this perspective. What about nature itself? What binds nature's actions into a coherent unity? Is nature lawless? Is nature a capricious threat to man, a whirling mass of particulars that strikes out randomly to thwart the plans of men? How can men control nature if they have no access to hypothetical forms that themselves impose structure on matter? Man is a slave to nature unless he can find a means of binding down nature to serve his purposes. Nature stands
as a threat to man's power and therefore man's freedom and autonomy. How, then, can man take dominion over nature in order to regain his freedom and power?

[Cain: clearly someone has a little problem with games of chance, let alone a chaotic Universe.]

David Hume, in the middle of the eighteenth century, provided the classic answer of the skeptic: natural law really does not exist as a force independent of man's 'mind. Natural law is-nothing more than the agreement among men that certain actions follow necessarily from prior actions. Cause-and-effect relationships, in other words, are nothing but conventions. The sensation of pain when I thrust my finger into boiling water may have no relation to that water. I may
experience pain each time, but experience is not the same as rigorous mechanical law. We simply call certain events effects of prior events (the causes).

Nominalism, that is, the denial of the existence of metaphysical forms which order nature, had grown to maturity in
the philosophy of Hume. Whirl once again became king, despite the fact that men naively think that the laws or conventions of their minds relate in some way to a hypothetically lawful universe out there beyond our senses. Law becomes convention. As a result, confidence turns into skepticism.

Men do not norm-ally choose universal skepticism, but Hume's arguments seemed to make it impossible to avoid such a choice. Hume's arguments were useful in refuting dogmatic theology, so his skepticism could be used against eighteenth-century Christianity, but the price paid for this anti-Christian weapon soon proved to be too high.

[Cain: for those 18th century sissies, maybe.  I say its high time we brought Hume back into the spotlight, and worried some people who deserve to worry about things]

Van Til makes it clear that the epistemological dualism of modern philosophy — rationalism vs. irrationalism — is inherent in all forms of autonomous philosophical speculation. From the day that Adam tried to test the word of God concerning his destiny, man has attempted to find some voice of authority other than God. By locating their preferred voice of authority outside of God's revelation, both verbal and natural, men thereby create for themselves a series
of unsolvable intellectual dilemmas. The most important principle of apostate man is therefore the principle of his own -autonomy. Wherever his preferred voice of authority may be located, it is not supposed to violate the principle of human autonomy.

Inescapably, man must have some principle of authority. Van Til's arguments in this regard are vitally important for any consideration of the rules of scientific evidence. We come now to the longest quotation in this book, and by far the most important one. It boils down to this: we need a sovereign authority independent of ourselves in order to know anything truly, since we can never know everything exhaustively. In short, we need the God of the Bible. If we reject
Him, we shall drown in an ocean of "chance" facts. Chance and endless~ moving time will swallow up meaning and law. Eternal randomness will become king of the universe. The Christian asserts, "Better God's eternal plan and ultimate sovereignty than chance ," while the humanist asserts, "Better ultimate randomness and meaninglessness
than the God of the Bible ."

This has been humanism's answer to the God of the Bible since Adam and Eve, and surely since the Greek
philosophers. But as Van Til points out, an acceleration of irrationalism has taken place in Western philosophy, especially since Kant. As "autonomous" man has become more consistent with his own presuppositions, he has become more irrational.

[Cain: oh teh noes!] 

First there is the need for authority that grows out of the existence of the endless multiplicity of factual material. Time rolls its ceaseless course. It pours out upon us an endless stream of facts. And the stream is really endless on the non-Christian basis.

For those who do not believe that all that happens in time happens because of the plan of God, the activity of time is like to that, or rather is identical with that, of Chance. Thus the ocean of facts has no bottom and no shore.

It is this conception of the ultimacy of time and of pure factuality on which modern philosophy, particularly since the days of Kant, has laid such great stress. And it is because of the general recognition of the ultimacy of chance that the rationalism of the sort that Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz represented, is out of date. It has become customary to speak of post- Kantian philosophy as irrationalistic.

It has been said that Kant limited reason so as to make room for faith.  Hence there are those who are willing to grant that man's emotions or his will can get in touch with such aspects of reality as are not accessible to the intellect. The intellect, it is said, is not the only, and in religious matters not even the primary, instrument with which men come into contact with what is ultimate in human experience. There is the world of the moral imperative, of aesthetic appreciation, of the religious a priori as well as the world of science. There is in short the world of 'mystery" into which the prophet
or genius of feeling or of will may lead us.

It is of the greatest import to note that the natural man need not in the least object to the kind of authority that is involved in the idea of irrationalism.  And that chiefly for two reasons. In the first place, the irrationalism of our day is the direct lineal descendant of the rationalism of previous days.

The idea of pure chance has been inherent in every form of non-Christian thought in the past. It is the only logical alternative to the position of C'wistianity, according to which the plan of God is back of all. Both Plato and Aristotle were compelled to make room for it in their maturest thought.  The pure "non-being" of the earliest rationalism of Greece was but the suppressed "otherness" of the final philosophy of Plato, So too the idea of pure factuality or pure chance as ultimate is but the idea of "otherness" made explicit.

Given the non-Christian assumption with respect to man's autonomy, the idea of chance has equal rights with the idea of logic. In the second place, modern irrationalism has not in the least encroached upon the domain of the intellect as the natural man thinks of it. Irrationalism has merely taken possession of that which the intellect, by its own admission,
cannot in any case control. Irrationalism has a secret treaty with rationalism by which the former cedes to the latter so much of its territory as the latter can at any given time find the forces to control. Kant?s realm of the noumenal has, as it were, agreed to yield so much of its area to the phenomenal, as the intellect by its newest weapons can manage to keep in control.

Moreover, by the same treaty irrationalism has promised to keep out of its own territory any form of authority that might be objectionable to the autonomous intellect.

The very idea of pure factuality or chance is the best guarantee that no true authority, such as that of God as the Creator and .Judge of men, will ever confront man. If we compare the realm of the phenomenal as it has been ordered by the autonomous intellect to a clearing in a large forest, we may compare the realm of the noumenal to that part of the same forest which has not yet been laid under cultivation by the intellect. The realm of mystery is on this basis simply the realm of that which is not yet known.

[Cain: did you just see that?  A Christian philosopher basically just said that Chaos "is the only logical alternative" to a Christian worldview.  Fuck yeah!  Mad props for us!]

This "secret treaty" between the scientific phenomenal realm and the personalistic noumenal realm has one major purpose: to shove God out of the universe.

[Cain: yeah God, fuck off!]

This treaty is breaking down in our era. The "not yet known" – pure randomness – has today reasserted itself with a vengeance in modern science and philosophy. Heisenberg's scientific principle of indeterminacy in physics is first cousin to psychological and philosophical existentialism. German physicist Werner Heisenberg in 1927 announced an important finding of modern physics, the Uncertainty Principle. 'This principle, which is derivable from wave mechanics, says that, irrespective of technical errors of measurement, it is fundamentally impossible to describe the motion of a particle with unlimited precision. We may specify the position of a particle with increasing precision, but in so doing we introduce uncertainty into its motion, in particular into its momentum. Conversely, we may observe the momentum with increasing precision, but then we introduce uncertainties into its position.  This observation about the
limits of observation in the world of subatomic physics led to another disconcerting discovery: the light wave which enables the scientist to observe phenomena itself upsets the observation (or makes observation impossible) at the level of subatomic physics. The positions between electrons are far smaller than the smallest light wave, so the light serves as a kind of blanket which covers up what is going on. If smaller gamma rays could ever be employed in a "microscope ," these would strike the electrons and "kick" them, thereby changing their momentum. In short, the observer interferes with the observed. "A quantitative analysis of this argument shows that beyond any instrumental errors there is, as stated by the uncertainty principle, a residual uncertainty in these observations."

....

The random event in nature, by way of quantum mechanics, is presently intruding into every nook and cranny of man's formerly trustworthy Newtonian universe. The physicists have begun to teach their fellow physical scientists of the wonders of the irrational.  And with indeterminacy has come relativism and the loss of faith in wholly objective, totally neutral scientific observation.  The rational clearing in the irrational forest, once thought to be almost entirely devoid of trees —just a few unexplained (but unquestionably somehow explainable in principle) chance facts — has been found to be covered with a thick underbrush of the scientifically unexplained and the innately unexplainable. The underbrush of the unexplained is now so tall in places that it threatens to cover up rationalism's clearing. Worse: this underbrush, unlike the more conventional trees, keeps breaking rationalism's sharpest tools. Nothing can cut this underbrush away. It has gotten completely out of hand.

~Link Dead.

http://greylodge.org/torrents/drgrey/TheArtOfMemetics_PirateEdition.pdf

Might be worth a read.  This is by Wes Unruh, one of the main contributers to Grey Lodge and Alterati.

In Russia they have a word, sovok, which described the craven, chickenshit mindset that over the course of decades became hard-wired into the increasingly silly brains of Soviet subjects. It's a hard word to define, but once you get it -- and all Russians get it -- it's like riding a bicycle, you've got it. Sovok is the word that described a society where for decades silence and a thoughtful demeanor might be construed as evidence of a dangerous dissidence lurking underneath; the sovok therefore protected himself from suspicion by babbling meaningless nonsense at all times, so that no one would accuse him of harboring smart ideas.

A sovok talked tough, and cheered Khruschev for banging a shoe at America, but at the same time a sovok would have sold his own children for a pair of American jeans. The sovok talked like a romantic and lavished women with compliments, but preferred long fishing trips and nights spent in the garage tinkering with his shitty car to actual sex. It's hard to explain, but over there, they know what the word means. More than anything, sovok described a society that spent seventy years in mortal terror of new ideas, and tended to drape itself in a paper-thin patriotism whenever it felt threatened, and worshipped mediocrities as a matter of course, elevating to positions of responsibility only those who showed an utter absence not only of objectionable qualities, but any qualities at all.

We're getting to be the same kind of people. We can't focus for more than ten seconds on anything at all and we're constantly exercised about stupid media-generated non-scandals, guilt-by-association raps, accidental dumb utterances of various campaign aides and other nonsense -- while at the same time we have no energy at all left to wonder about the mass burgling of the national budget for phony military contracts, the war, the billion dollars or so in campaign contributions to be spent this year that will be buying a small mountain of favors for the next four years. And we... shit, I don't even know what I'm saying anymore.

I'm just tired of this tone that's always out there when these scandals break, like we can't fucking stand the existence of this Wright fellow for even a minute longer, not a minute longer! -- when we all know that come Monday, or Tuesday at the latest, Jeremiah Wright will be forgotten and we'll be jumping en masse in a panic away from the next media-offered shadow to fall across our bow. What a bunch of turds we all are, seriously. God help us if we ever had to deal with a real problem.

- Matt Tiabi

Part 1.

This is the first selection of quotes taken from the book on authoritarianism that Requiem linked to yesterday.

I think the two broad themes that interest me are "how does an authoritarian personality think" and "how do you change their minds" and I think the quotes reflect that.



Authoritarianism is something authoritarian followers and authoritarian leaders cook up between themselves. It happens when the followers submit too much to the leaders, trust them too much, and give them too much leeway to do whatever they want--which often is something undemocratic, tyrannical and brutal.

Psychologically these followers have personalities featuring:

1) a high degree of submission to the established, legitimate authorities in
their society;
2) high levels of aggression in the name of their authorities; and
3) a high level of conventionalism.

A right-wing authoritarian follower doesn't necessarily have conservative political views. Instead he's someone who readily submits to the
established authorities in society, attacks others in their name, and is highly conventional. It's an aspect of his personality, not a description of his politics.

Authoritarian followers seem to have a "Daddy and mommy know best" attitude toward the government. They do not see laws as social standards that apply to all. Instead, they appear to think that authorities are above the law, and can decide which laws apply to them and which do not--just as parents can when one is young.

The last string of studies I want to lay before you regarding authoritarian submission concerns authoritarians' willingness to hold officials accountable for their misdeeds. Or rather, their lack of willingness--which catches your eye because high
RWAs generally favor punishing the bejabbers out of misdoers...

The "Milgram experiment," which we shall discuss at the end of this book, offers another example of authoritarian followers "going easy" on authorities. In his famous study Stanley Milgram maneuvered subjects into a situation in which they were ordered by an Experimenter to inflict painful, and possibly lethal, electric shocks on another person (who in fact was not hurt at all). The subjects clearly did not want to deliver the shocks, but the Experimenter told them they had to. The Experimenter even said, if pressed, that he would accept responsibility for whatever happened. Yet Tom Blass of the University of Maryland at Baltimore found that high RWA students
tended to blame the Experimenter less for what happened to the victim than most students did.  Whom did they blame instead? I found, when I replicated the study, they blamed the poor devil who was ordered to deliver the shocks, and the victim,
more than most others did.

It's striking how often authoritarian aggression happens in dark and cowardly ways, in the dark, by cowards who later will do everything they possibly can to avoid responsibility for what they did. Women, children, and others unable to defend themselves are typical victims. Even more striking, the attackers typically feel morally superior to the people they are assaulting in an unfair fight.

They get off smiting the sinner; they relish being "the arm of the Lord." Similarly, high RWA university students say that classmates
in high school who misbehaved and got into trouble, experienced "bad trips" on drugs, became pregnant, and so on "got exactly what they deserved" and that they felt a secret pleasure when they found out about the others' misfortune.... Which suggests authoritarian followers have a little volcano of hostility bubbling away inside them looking for a (safe, approved) way to erupt.

If that shocks you, remember that the premise behind "Posse" runs right down Main Street in the authoritarian aggression mind-set. When the authorities say, "Go get 'em," the high RWAs saddle up.

Who can 'em be? Nearly everybody, it turns out. I started with a proposition to outlaw Communists and found authoritarian followers would be relatively likely to join that posse. Ditto for persecuting homosexuals, and ditto for religious cults, "radicals" and journalists the government did not like. So I tried to organize a posse that liberals would join, to go after the Ku Klux Klan. But high RWAs crowded out
everyone else for that job too. Then I offered as targets the very right-wing Canadian Social Credit Party, the Confederation of Regions Party, and the mainstream Progressive Conservative Party of Canada. These were the parties of choice for most authoritarian followers at the time, yet high RWAs proved more willing to persecute even the movements they liked than did others.

Finally, just to take this to its ludicrous extreme, I asked for reactions to a "law to eliminate right-wing authoritarians." (I told the subjects that right-wing authoritarians are people who are so submissive to authority, so aggressive in the name of authority, and so conventional that they may pose a threat to democratic rule.)  RWA scale scores did not connect as solidly with joining this posse as they had in the other cases. Surely some of the high RWAs realized that if they supported this law, they were being the very people whom the law would persecute, and the posse should therefore put itself in jail. But not all of them realized this, for authoritarian followers still favored, more than others did, a law to persecute themselves. You can almost hear the circuits clanking shut in their brains: "If the government says these people are dangerous, then they've got to be stopped."

High RWAs tend to feel more endangered in a potentially threatening situation than most people do, and often respond aggressively.

We found that in both countries the high RWAs believed their government's version of the Cold War more than most people did. Their officials wore the white hats, the authoritarian followers believed, and the other guys were dirty rotten warmongers. And that's most interesting, because it means the most cock-sure belligerents in the populations on each side of the Cold War, the ones who hated and
blamed each other the most, were in fact the same people, psychologically. If they had grown up on the other side of the Iron Curtain, they probably would have believed the leaders they presently despised, and despised the leaders they now trusted. They'd
have been certain the side they presently thought was in the right was in the wrong, and instead embraced the beliefs they currently held in contempt

If you ask subjects to rank the importance of various values in life, authoritarian followers place "being normal" substantially
higher than most people do. It's almost as though they want to disappear as individuals into the vast vat of Ordinaries.... Once again, however, I should temper our natural tendency to overgeneralize. High RWAs would like to be rich as much as the next person would,
they'd like to be smarter than average, and so on. It's "good" to be different in some ways, it seems. And I found they would not change their opinions about abortion an inch by showing them how different they were from most others. They are quite
capable of adhering to the beliefs emphasized by their in-groups when these conflict with what is held by society as a whole. Nevertheless, they do get tugged by what they think everybody else is saying and doing.

But more importantly, the high RWAs proved incredibly ethnocentric. There they were, in a big room full of people just like
themselves, and they all turned their backs on each other and paid attention only to their own group. They too were all reading from the same page, but writ large on their page was, "Care About Your Own; We Are NOT All In This Together."

But just as the data from the NATO simulation indicate high RWAs tend to make an ambiguous situation dangerous, the Golan Heights experiment indicates that high RWAs are likely to turn a secure situation into a dangerous one.

Authoritarian followers score highly on the Dangerous World scale, and it's not just because some of the items have a religious context. High RWAs are, in general, more afraid than most people are. They got a "2 for 1 Special Deal" on fear somehow. Maybe they've inherited genes that incline them to fret and tremble. Maybe not. But we do know that they were raised by their parents to be afraid of others, because both the parents and their children tell us so.

Sometimes it's all rather predictable: authoritarians' parents taught fear of homosexuals, radicals, atheists and pornographers. But they also warned their children, more than most parents did, about kidnappers, reckless drivers, bullies and drunks--bad guys who would seem to threaten everyone's children. So authoritarian followers, when growing up, probably lived in a scarier world than most kids do, with
a lot more boogeymen hiding in dark places, and they're still scared as adults. For them, gay marriage is not just unthinkable on religious grounds, and unnerving because it means making the "abnormal" acceptable. It's yet one more sign that perversion is corrupting society from the inside-out, leading to total chaos. Many things, from stem cell research to right-to-die legislation, say to them, "This is the last
straw; soon we'll be plunged into the abyss." So probably did, in earlier times, women's suffrage, the civil rights movement, sex education and Sunday shopping.

How good, how moral are you, compared to other people? (You get to say what is "good" and "moral.") As I mentioned in chapter 1, if you're an average human being, you'll think you're a better than average human being. Almost everybody thinks she's more moral than most. But high RWAs typically think they're way, way better. They are the Holy Ones. They are the Chosen. They are the Righteous. They somehow got a three-for-one special on self-righteousness. And self-righteousness appears to release authoritarian aggression more than anything else.

Before leaving this topic, we should also realize that fear can increase submission as well as aggression. This was illustrated by a series of studies in which I asked people to answer the RWA scale while imagining their country was undergoing some internal crisis. A violent left-wing threat featuring a general strike and urban guerrilla warfare understandably caused RWA scale scores to soar. But so
also did violent right-wing threats, such as a military-aided coup in the halls of power, or "brownshirt" violence in the streets. Most people seem spring-loaded to become more right-wing authoritarian during crises. The only situation I found in which a
crisis lowered RWA scores involved a repressive government that assaulted nonviolent protestors (which I have termed "the Gandhi trap"). Otherwise, when there's trouble, people generally look to the authorities to fix things. And some authorities will gladly amass greater power in times of peril, whether they have any intention of fixing the problem or not.

By and large the students were probably pretty authoritarian as children, submitting to authority, learning whom to fear and dislike, and usually doing what they were supposed to do. But when adolescence struck with all its hormones, urges, and desires
for autonomy, some of them began to have new experiences that could have shaken up their early learnings. If the experiences reinforced the parents', teachers', and clergies' teachings (e.g. that wrecked car), authoritarian attitudes would likely remain
high. But if the experiences indicated the teachings were wrong (e.g. "Sex isn't bad. It's great!"), the teen is likely to become less authoritarian.

I have discovered in my investigations that, by and large, high RWA students had simply missed many of the experiences that might have lowered their authoritarianism. Take that first item on page 59 about fathers being the head of the family. Authoritarian followers often said they didn't know any other kind of families. And they hadn't known any unpatriotic people, nor had they broken many rules. They
simply had not met many different kinds of people or done their share of wild and crazy things. Instead they had grown up in an enclosed, rather homogeneous environment--with their friends, their schools, their readings, their amusements all
controlled to keep them out of harm's way and Satan's evil clutches. They had contentedly traveled around on short leashes in relatively small, tight, safe circles all their lives.

Interestingly enough, authoritarian followers show a remarkable capacity for change IF they have some of the important experiences. For example, they are far less likely to have known a homosexual (or realized an acquaintance was homosexual) than most people. But if you look at the high RWAs who do know someone gay or lesbian, they are much less hostile toward homosexuals in general than most
authoritarians are. Getting to know a homosexual usually makes one more accepting of homosexuals as a group. Personal experiences can make a lot of difference, which is a truly hopeful discovery. The problem is, most right-wing authoritarians won't willingly exit their small world and try to meet a gay. They're too afraid.

If authoritarian followers like the conclusion, the logic involved is pretty irrelevant. The reasoning should justify the conclusion, but for
a lot of high RWAs, the conclusion validates the reasoning. Such is the basis of many a prejudice, and many a Big Lie that comes to be accepted. Now one can easily overstate this finding. A lot of people have trouble with syllogistic reasoning, and high RWAs are only slightly more likely to make such mistakes than low RWAs are. But in general high RWAs seem to have more trouble than most people do realizing that a conclusion is false.

Deductive logic aside, authoritarians also have trouble deciding whether empirical evidence proves, or does not prove, something. They will often think some thoroughly ambiguous fact verifies something they already believe in. So if you tell them that archaeologists have discovered a fallen wall at ancient Jericho, they are more likely than most people to infer that this proves the Biblical story of Joshua and
the horns is true--when the wall could have been knocked over by lots of other groups, or an earthquake, and be from an entirely different era (which it is).

As I said earlier, authoritarians' ideas are poorly integrated with one another. It's as if each idea is stored in a file that can be called up and used when the authoritarian wishes, even though another of his ideas--stored in a different file-- basically contradicts it. We all have some inconsistencies in our thinking, but authoritarians can stupify you with the inconsistency of their ideas. Thus they may say
they are proud to live in a country that guarantees freedom of speech, but another file holds, "My country, love it or leave it." The ideas were copied from trusted sources, often as sayings, but the authoritarian has never "merged files" to see how well they
all fit together.

In fact, despite their own belief that they are quite honest with themselves, authoritarians tend to be highly defensive, and run away from unpleasant truths about themselves more than most people do.

High RWAs were quite interested in finding out the test was valid IF they thought they had done well on the scale. But if they had been told they had low selfesteem, most right-wing authoritarians did not want to see evidence that the test was valid. Well, wouldn't everyone do this? No.

High RWAs show little self-awareness when making these comparisons. Sometimes they glimpse themselves through a glass, darkly. For example they agree more than most people do with, "I like to associate with people who have the same beliefs and opinions I do." But they have no idea how much they differ from others in that way. And most of the time they get it quite wrong, thinking they are not
different from others, and even that they are different in the opposite way from how they actually are.


As natural as this is, authoritarians see the world more sharply in terms of their in-groups and their out-groups than most people do. They are so ethnocentric that you find them making statements such as, "If you're not with us, then you're against us."  There's no neutral in the highly ethnocentric mind. This dizzying "Us versus Everyone Else" outlook usually develops from traveling in those "tight circles" we talked about in the last chapter, and whirling round in those circles reinforces the ethnocentrism as the authoritarian follower uses his friends to validate his opinions.

Because authoritarians depend so much on their in-group to support their beliefs (whereas other people depend more on independent evidence and logic), high RWAs place a high premium on group loyalty and cohesiveness.

You sometimes hear that paranoia runs at a gallop in "right-wingers". But maybe you can see how that's an oversimplification. Authoritarian followers are highly suspicious of their many out-groups; but they are credulous to the point of selfdelusion
when it comes to their in-groups.

This might be one for the UK audiences more, since it involves contact with the UK authorities, and a fair amount of maliciousness with the law.

Anyway, for those of you unfamiliar with UK law, and ASBO is basically a law to annoy and attack poor people.  They are given out without a trial taking place and often criminalize behaviour such as:

- carrying condoms (for a prostitute)
- criminalizing swearing (for a kid with Tourette's Syndome)
- making staring into someone's garden illegal (for a kid with Autism)


The most hilarious ASBO however, is the one given out to a toddler who was apparently terrorizing a council estate - but had yet to be born.  The mother was the victim of a malicious prank.

Given this complete lack of oversight, I think it could be fun to prank the UK ASBO system, and turn its evil powers to good.  Flooding the system with crazy complaints and scenarios, or turning them onto MPs, council members and other scum.  Or both.  Get your MP banned from shouting "cucumbers!" at old people.  Ban BNP members from setting foot in their own homes.  Abuse the aneristic delusion for all its worth.

Next post:  how to go about abusing the system without getting caught.

Article by John Dolan (a favourite of many of the forum), posted today on Alternet.  May show some of the perceptual bars among the right wing that have to be overcome.


I'd like to suggest a very simple strategy for American liberals: Get mean. Stop policing the language and start using it to hurt our enemies. American liberals are so busy purging their speech of any words that might offend anyone that they have no notion of using language to cause some salutary pain.

Why, for example, not popularize slogans that mock the Bush loyalists as "suckers"? Something like, "There are two kinds of Republicans: millionaires and suckers." Put that on a few bumper stickers and I guarantee a lot of "South Park Republicans" will quit the GOP. They just smirk when you tsk-tsk at them for being disrespectful. They want to be disrespectful; every normal young male wants to be.

And this, of course, brings up a big issue: At some point liberal writers are going to have to decide if it's OK to be young and male at all. For better or for worse, millions of American men hold on to playground ethics long after they leave elementary school. For most of them, the 2004 election came down to a classic playground scene: Would John Kerry defend himself when attacked by bullies? Liberals, still stunned by the way a legitimate combat vet like Kerry was beaten by a combat-dodging spoiled brat like Bush, never understood that for millions of voters, the question wasn't how well Kerry fought in Vietnam but whether he would fight in 2004.

Would he defend himself when called out by the gang of disgusting bullies Bush had gathered around himself? It would have been so simple, so glorious, if he'd just turned on his accusers and reacted like a human being: "You're questioning my record on behalf of a skunk like Bush who spent the war with the Alabama National Guard, and then went AWOL from the Guard?"

Millions of American voters were waiting, hoping Kerry would react like any sane person would have. He never did. I don't know why not; I assume he was in the hands of some Clinton gurus who babbled about "rising above the fray." Well, that sure worked well.

And please, don't tell me you're above such gross playground considerations. The American people are the beneficiaries of centuries of serious Leftist violence, starting with the American Revolution and climaxing in the Civil War. Without brave Leftist warriors slaughtering British and Confederate soldiers in large numbers, the whole tradition of American liberalism would not exist.

And we are the sufferers from the most disastrous wimp-out in recent American history: Carter's debacle in response to the taking of American hostages in Iran in 1979. That refusal to use punitive force to free his country's diplomats may have made pacifists feel nice, but it was an expensive treat; it got Reagan elected, showed a host of evil right-wing PR staffers that all they had to do was talk tough to win, and convinced a huge number of disgusted American male voters that the liberals would not fight back.

Kerry could have turned that around in 2004; it was almost as if a Hollywood scriptwriter had arranged the perfect confrontation, in which the liberal champion could flatten his orc-like tormentors and show the voters that one can be a progressive without being a wimp. Instead, he confirmed a prevalent myth that liberals are "soft" on terrorism and the military -- in other words, like illustrator Gary Larson's Wimpodites: "Though skilled with their pillow arsenal, the Wimpodites were frequent targets of Viking attacks."

And so far, the liberal response, the liberal attempt to reach out to the guys in the big trucks is embarrassing "populist" essays using bad imitations of American slang. Let's be blunt here: "populism" is condescension. If you want male voters' respect, stop patronizing them. (It just creeps them out.) Far better to insult them -- to their face, in their face, telling them bluntly that the talk radio nonsense they parrot is pure crap. They know that themselves. Half of what they say is designed simply to reassure themselves and their friends that they're not the same sort of wimps their social studies teachers tried to make them into. So they're not afraid of being called cruel or insensitive; they're afraid of being suckers.

The minute we start calling them on their suckerdom, they'll change sides -- and we'll finally have some decent troops on our side. But as long as liberals speak in the language of Beavis and Butthead's Mister van Driessen, they'll despise you, even when they know you're right (which they do). We may not be the most systematically intellectual tribe on earth, but Americans are very verbally sensitive. They will not heed Mister van Driessen, even if he's telling them to evacuate a burning classroom. They'd sooner die. You may find this irrational, but when I think back to the progressive mindset I became familiar with UC Berkeley, I understand this reaction very well. I don't condone it, but damn! I sure do understand it.

Liberals aren't generally perceived as fighting the robber barons -- they appear as a secular clergy far more obsessed with cleaning up our gloriously obscene language than fighting back.

Note that I've used the word "fighting." Americans are a violent people -- and I mean that as a compliment. We are a magnificently violent people who value courage above all else. In this, the ordinary American is in total agreement with George Patton, John Paul Jones and John Brown. They were all violent leaders, who sent a lot of Redcoats, Nazis and secessionist slaveholders to an early grave. I consider that glorious; so do most Americans.

John Paul Jones said, "I intend to go in harm's way" and coined a boast that generations of Americans, and even Bugs Bunny himself, repeated with pride: "I have not yet begun to fight." John Brown killed and died to provoke a final conflict over slavery. When American liberals can appreciate, encourage and manipulate the violence of such people, maybe you can talk to your fellow Americans again.

A good first step would be accepting the fact that language is a weapon -- and using it effectively. Most liberals affect scorn for mere words, in the way that I affected scorn for mathematics after flunking algebra twice in high schools. And most of the hardcore academic progressives I've known have tin ears. Their sheer awfulness is adaptive within the academic ghetto, in the way that a lack of any olfactory ability is adaptive for carrion eaters; but it's disastrous when they try to talk to people outside their guild.

It's not really that hard, after all. Just stop trying to be "populists," because frankly you sound like North Korean infiltrators trying to pose as surfer dudes. Try smacking your South Park countrymen in their deluded heads with some bumper stickers of our own, just as down and dirty as theirs. Wanna get them out of their gas-guzzling Dodge extended-cab semis? Stop whining at them and try putting these four little words on the back bumper of your hybrid: "Big truck, small dick." Yeah, you might get yelled at at a stoplight; you might even get hit. You might even consider hitting back.

Liberals have always been good fighters, once they get going

http://www.occultofpersonality.com/

Thought that Mangrove and LMNO, among others, might like this site.

Includes podcasts from Lon Milo DuQuette, Bishop T Allen Greenfield and lots of lesser known personalities dealing in that sort of subject area.

Well....it probably is, but PD.com is not.  That's right, we are available even through the Great Firewall of China.

But how can we best use this to our advantage?

via John Robb

==============================

Superempowerment -- an increase in the ability of individuals and small groups to accomplish tasks/work through the combination of rapid improvements in technological tools and access to global networks -- has enabled small groups to radically increase their productivity in conflict. For example, if a small group disrupts a system or a network by attacking systempunkts, it can amplify the results of its attacks to achieve as much as a 1,400,000 percent return on investment.

Open source warfare is an organizational method by which a large collection of small, violent, superempowered groups can work together to take on much larger foes (usually hierarchies). It is also a method of organization that can be applied to non-violent struggles. It enables:

    * High rates of innovation.
    * Increased survivability among the participant groups.
    * More frequent attacks and an ability to swarm targets.

Here are some suggestions (this is but one of many methods based on recent history, I'm sure that over time a better method will emerge) for building an open source insurgency:

A)The plausible promise. The idea that holds the open source insurgency together. The plausible promise is composed of:

* An enemy. The enemy serves as the target of attacks. This enemy can either be either received or manufactured (any group or organization that can be depicted as a threat). The enemy can be any group that currently holds and exerts power: invader, the government, a company, an ethnic group, or a private organization.
   
* A goal. This objective animates the group. Because of the diversity of the groups and individuals that join together in an open source insurgency, the only goal that works is simple and extremely high level. More complex goal setting is impossible, since it will fracture/fork the insurgency.
   
* A demonstration. Viability. An attack that demonstrates that its possible to win against the enemy. It deflates any aura of invincibility that the enemy may currently enjoy. The demonstration serves as a rallying cry for the insurgency.


B)The foco. Every open source insurgency is ignited by a small founding group, a foco in guerrilla parlance. The foco sets the original goal and conducts the operation that provides the insurgency with its demonstration of viability. It's important to understand that in order to grow an open source insurgency, the founding group or individuals must follow a simple path:

* Relinquish. Give up any control over the insurgency gained during its early phases. In practice, this means giving up control of how the goal is achieved, who may participate, how to communicate, etc. The only control that remains is the power of example and respect gained through being effective.
   
* Resist (temptation). Stay small. Don't grow to a size that makes the original group easy for the enemy to target (very few new members). Further, don't establish a formal collection of groups, a hierarchy of control, or set forth a complex agenda. This will only serve to alienate and fragment/fork the insurgency. In some cases, it will make the foco a target of the insurgency itself. It will also slow any advancement on the objective since it limits potential pathways/innovation.
   
* Share. Provide resources, ideas, information, knowledge, recruits, etc. with other groups and individuals that join the insurgency. Share everything possible that doesn't directly compromise the foco's integrity (operational security and viability). Expect sharing in return.

=============================

An explanation of the terms:

Superempowerment:

"A prevailing theme of global guerrilla theory is that personal superempowerment will change the face of warfare. Most of the superempowerment we see today is from rampant globalization (infrastructure/connectivity in travel to economics to communications) which has radically improved the ability of small groups to conduct guerrilla warfare. We see the results of this in Iraq, Afghanistan, Nigeria and other garden spots around the world."

In other words, technology acts as huge force multiplier.  With encryption, world wide communications, targeting systems, more powerful explosives, "off the shelf" hacking software, you can do more damage with less people.


Systempunkt:

In global guerrilla warfare (a combination of open source innovation, bazaar transactions, and low tech weapons), the point of greatest emphasis is called a systempunkt.  It is the point point in a system (either an infrastructure or a market), always identified by autonomous groups within the bazaar, where a swarm of small insults will cause a cascade of collapse in the targeted system.  Within infrastructure, this collapse takes the form of disrupted flows that result in immediate financial loss or ongoing supply shortages.  Within a market, an attack on the systempunkt destabilizes the psychology of the market to induce severe inefficiencies and uncertainties.  The ultimate objective of this activity, in aggregate, is the collapse of the target state and globalization.


Return on Investment:  whatever it costs to carry out the attack, the results cost much, much more.


Foco:  Its central principle is that vanguardism by cadres of small, fast-moving paramilitary groups can provide a focus (in Spanish, foco) for popular discontent against a sitting regime, and thereby lead a general insurrection.



Also note an interesting exchange between John Robb and Anonymous on strategy and tactics against the CoS:  http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/globalguerrillas/2008/03/journal-anonymo.html

[The incomprehensibility of the divine is at the heart of Eastern Christianity, while in Orthodox Judaism practice tends to have priority over doctrine. Buddhism has always recognised that in spiritual matters truth is ineffable, as do Sufi traditions in Islam. Hinduism has never defined itself by anything as simplistic as a creed.]

I moved this from Apple Talk because I decided there were some interesting and knotty philosophical questions raised in this article.

http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2265395,00.html

It starts off as a fairly normal, if well written piece about newer Atheist books.  But it gets much more interesting and complex than your average newspaper article as you continue on, as you would expect from a philosopher of the ability of John Gray.  Here are some of the points I found fascinating:


A curious feature of this kind of atheism is that some of its most fervent missionaries are philosophers. Daniel Dennett's Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon claims to sketch a general theory of religion. In fact, it is mostly a polemic against American Christianity. This parochial focus is reflected in Dennett's view of religion, which for him means the belief that some kind of supernatural agency (whose approval believers seek) is needed to explain the way things are in the world. For Dennett, religions are efforts at doing something science does better - they are rudimentary or abortive theories, or else nonsense. "The proposition that God exists," he writes severely, "is not even a theory." But religions do not consist of propositions struggling to become theories. The incomprehensibility of the divine is at the heart of Eastern Christianity, while in Orthodox Judaism practice tends to have priority over doctrine. Buddhism has always recognised that in spiritual matters truth is ineffable, as do Sufi traditions in Islam. Hinduism has never defined itself by anything as simplistic as a creed. It is only some western Christian traditions, under the influence of Greek philosophy, which have tried to turn religion into an explanatory theory.


In The God Delusion, Dawkins attempts to explain the appeal of religion in terms of the theory of memes, vaguely defined conceptual units that compete with one another in a parody of natural selection. He recognises that, because humans have a universal tendency to religious belief, it must have had some evolutionary advantage, but today, he argues, it is perpetuated mainly through bad education. From a Darwinian standpoint, the crucial role Dawkins gives to education is puzzling. Human biology has not changed greatly over recorded history, and if religion is hardwired in the species, it is difficult to see how a different kind of education could alter this. Yet Dawkins seems convinced that if it were not inculcated in schools and families, religion would die out. This is a view that has more in common with a certain type of fundamentalist theology than with Darwinian theory, and I cannot help being reminded of the evangelical Christian who assured me that children reared in a chaste environment would grow up without illicit sexual impulses.


Contemporary opponents of religion display a marked lack of interest in the historical record of atheist regimes. In The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason, the American writer Sam Harris argues that religion has been the chief source of violence and oppression in history. He recognises that secular despots such as Stalin and Mao inflicted terror on a grand scale, but maintains the oppression they practised had nothing to do with their ideology of "scientific atheism" - what was wrong with their regimes was that they were tyrannies. But might there not be a connection between the attempt to eradicate religion and the loss of freedom? It is unlikely that Mao, who launched his assault on the people and culture of Tibet with the slogan "Religion is poison", would have agreed that his atheist world-view had no bearing on his policies. It is true he was worshipped as a semi-divine figure - as Stalin was in the Soviet Union. But in developing these cults, communist Russia and China were not backsliding from atheism. They were demonstrating what happens when atheism becomes a political project. The invariable result is an ersatz religion that can only be maintained by tyrannical means.


Nowadays most atheists are avowed liberals. What they want - so they will tell you - is not an atheist regime, but a secular state in which religion has no role. They clearly believe that, in a state of this kind, religion will tend to decline. But America's secular constitution has not ensured a secular politics. Christian fundamentalism is more powerful in the US than in any other country, while it has very little influence in Britain, which has an established church. Contemporary critics of religion go much further than demanding disestablishment. It is clear that he wants to eliminate all traces of religion from public institutions. Awkwardly, many of the concepts he deploys - including the idea of religion itself - have been shaped by monotheism. Lying behind secular fundamentalism is a conception of history that derives from religion.


But the belief that history is a directional process is as faith-based as anything in the Christian catechism. Secular thinkers such as Grayling reject the idea of providence, but they continue to think humankind is moving towards a universal goal - a civilisation based on science that will eventually encompass the entire species. In pre-Christian Europe, human life was understood as a series of cycles; history was seen as tragic or comic rather than redemptive. With the arrival of Christianity, it came to be believed that history had a predetermined goal, which was human salvation. Though they suppress their religious content, secular humanists continue to cling to similar beliefs. One does not want to deny anyone the consolations of a faith, but it is obvious that the idea of progress in history is a myth created by the need for meaning.


Belief in progress is a relic of the Christian view of history as a universal narrative, and an intellectually rigorous atheism would start by questioning it. This is what Nietzsche did when he developed his critique of Christianity in the late 19th century, but almost none of today's secular missionaries have followed his example. One need not be a great fan of Nietzsche to wonder why this is so. The reason, no doubt, is that he did not assume any connection between atheism and liberal values - on the contrary, he viewed liberal values as an offspring of Christianity and condemned them partly for that reason. In contrast, evangelical atheists have positioned themselves as defenders of liberal freedoms - rarely inquiring where these freedoms have come from, and never allowing that religion may have had a part in creating them.


Religion has not gone away. Repressing it is like repressing sex, a self-defeating enterprise. In the 20th century, when it commanded powerful states and mass movements, it helped engender totalitarianism. Today, the result is a climate of hysteria. Not everything in religion is precious or deserving of reverence. There is an inheritance of anthropocentrism, the ugly fantasy that the Earth exists to serve humans, which most secular humanists share. There is the claim of religious authorities, also made by atheist regimes, to decide how people can express their sexuality, control their fertility and end their lives, which should be rejected categorically. Nobody should be allowed to curtail freedom in these ways, and no religion has the right to break the peace.

The attempt to eradicate religion, however, only leads to it reappearing in grotesque and degraded forms. A credulous belief in world revolution, universal democracy or the occult powers of mobile phones is more offensive to reason than the mysteries of religion, and less likely to survive in years to come. Victorian poet Matthew Arnold wrote of believers being left bereft as the tide of faith ebbs away. Today secular faith is ebbing, and it is the apostles of unbelief who are left stranded on the beach.

As a Discordian, I often feel it is not only an obligation, but occasionally a duty to undermine, question and, if necessary, personally destroy authoritarian systems of control and coercion.  Sometimes I do it out of deep-seated distaste, sometimes out of boredom and sometimes for profit, but that is another debate. 

Furthermore, I subscribe very much to the views of the noted child psychologist, Jean Piaget, who considered that socio-cognitive conflict was a critical part of the learning process.  While researchers have rushed to note that this does not necessarily mean confrontation or opposition, these are in fact important facets of socio-cognitive conflict.  If we wish to learn and evolve, it is only through disagreement and conflict that we can ever hope to mentally improve ourselves.

Therefore, when I see groups who not only approve of creating an authoritarian system that stifles this dissent, but that it hypocritically takes this position under the mantle of some philosophy or religion, I get somewhat annoyed.  And when I see groups or individuals giving out advice on how to perpetuate this state of affairs...well, that has to be answered.  Especially on the internet, where such advice may be put to immoral use, even if that was not the original intention of the author.  Such an article would be, for example, How to Keep Your Coven from Being Destroyed by David Petterson (aka Eran).  Under the guise of saving covens from villainous trolls, he gives very sound advice on how to maintain systems of control, and his work has been fairly widely disseminated.

I intend here to critically analyze his arguments, both in order to show this is in fact the case, and to highlight the authoritarian strain that it helps legitimize.  A follow-up counter-essay may follow, but for now, this alone will do.

Eran starts off by laying out what he sees as "the problem".  Namely that

We've all seen Covens fall apart, or larger umbrella organizations torn by internal strife. Sometimes, this is simply part of the natural cycle of creation and dissolution, an outworn group dissolving to make room for new growth. But at other times, a group with much promise can be damaged or destroyed while seemingly still young and healthy.

There are a number of problems here, right off the bat.  Firstly, there is the false distinction between a "natural cycle" of strife and the (presumably) unnatural once he dislikes.  What counts as natural, and what does not?  As you'll find out from the rest of his article, what he means by not natural is that it was an intended outcome, or one that arose from purposefully created strife.  However, can we really say that is not natural?  Purposefully created strife may be the product of legitimate grievances that can be resolved in no other way.  Since humans exist in a state of competition as well as cooperation, any conflict resulting from that must be 'natural', if we are using the most widely accepted definition of the word.  A similar vein of thought might conclude that any group that did succumb to internal strife lacked the necessary legitimacy to make it effective anyway.  A group with solid foundations and that has not sought to create grievances should be able to deal with a level of internal dissension.  If it cannot, there is clearly a crisis of legitimacy going on.

Secondly, his comment about groups that seemed to be young and healthy.  Firstly, its an anecdote, which should make anyone suspicious right away.  Secondly, how do we know his perceptions are not faulty?  A coven may have many problems or structural weaknesses they wish to hide from outsiders, in hope of attracting more members, attaining certain goals, etc etc.  Unless one has intimate knowledge of the group in question, how can one come to a conclusion about its actual potential?  It seems very...convenient to lay the blame on some outsider, some scapegoat.

The process by which this happens sometimes seems mysterious and incomprehensible. At times, it's impossible to clearly see what went wrong. Looking at the tragedy after the fact, it seems as if everyone did everything right. There were, perhaps, misunderstandings and miscommunications. But most of the people involved honestly and sincerely tried to understand everyone's point of view, and they did all the correct conflict-management and conflict-resolution kinds of things. But somehow, everything they tried simply made matters worse.

There is an inherent presumption here that the divide or problems are surmountable, that the group can be "perfected".  Sometimes, no matter how sincere a person is in their beliefs, and no matter how much they want to end the conflict, this is impossible due to irreconcilable viewpoints.  You have heard of irreconcilable ideas, yes?

It's almost enough to make you paranoid, and wonder if there's a cowen plot to break the will of our most dedicated and ethical people.

Yes, its the devilish tricksters, the Cowan, out to break those of the old religion!  Ahahahahaha!  Or, possibly, you have a problem with taking responsibility for problems that arise in your community and constantly make references to external agents as being the problem.  I know which I think is more likely.

A while back, Isaac Bonewits published a review of a book which explored this subject. The book is called, Antagonists in the Church: How to Identify and Deal with Destructive Conflict, by Kenneth Haugk...Isaac highly recommended this book, in spite of it being written from a Christian perspective and intended for a Christian audience of ministers and lay leaders....For a modern Witch or Pagan, reading Haugk's book frequently gets tiresome, because Haugk honestly views conflicts within Christian groups as ultimately being the work of the Devil out to destroy the True Church. But putting aside the Christian apologetics, there's an amazing amount in there which is useful and incredibly insightful.

Again, I can see a number of problems here.  You are essentially taking your model for conflict from an absolutist and somewhat paranoid interpretation of Christianity, which lays the blame on the Devil.  The only difference between yourself and Haugk is that he uses the Devil, and you use outsiders.  The form is otherwise exactly the same, an original and totally committed source, external of course, that creates all this conflict and disorder.

Here's a very important insight: Such conflicts don't "just happen." The really destructive ones, the really vicious fights which tear apart Covens or larger groups, conflicts which break the spirit of the most dedicated Elders, these conflicts aren't accidents, and they aren't the consequence of simple misunderstandings or miscommunications. No; they happen because particular individuals made them happen. There is a class of personality traits which makes certain individuals crave conflict.

How convenient.  I suppose blaming it all on a personality type means you can avoid the need for any sort of self-analysis or critical questioning of your own handling.  Also, the conceit that such conflicts are always planned is incredible.  As someone who has experience as a conspirator and instigator in some conflicts, I like to consider myself an actual expert in the area.  And I can tell you this much: there is no such thing as a single, original cause of any fight.  A vicious and destructive fight can be totally sincere and honest, or it can have multiple origins, some legitimate and others done for self-gain, or other reasons entirely.

The personality traits they possess can be identified, and their techniques can be thwarted or rendered ineffective. To handle them properly takes prior knowledge and preparation, however. It also requires a willingness to take firm action, and to freely exercise your legitimate authority as a Coven Leader.

Presumably, any technique that works on such a personality obviously bent towards conflict and destruction would undoubtedly also work on anyone who raised legitimate problems or issues which a Coven leader decided they did not want to address or resolve.  After all, if they are not good enough to work on such "dedicated" individuals, then they are worthless, and if they are good enough, then they have multiple applications.

How useful that it also allows the Coven leader to exercise their "legitimate" authority over others.  How is any sort of authority legitimate, least of all within religious groups?  From whence does such authority derive?  Do you have control with the consent of those you exercise power over, or is it based within your religious structure, your "advanced knowledge" or indeed other factors?  Many covens are susceptible to nepotism, corruption and the Big Fish in a Little Pond Syndrome, all of which don't sound especially good sources for authority at all.

Today, ladies and gentlemen, I want to talk a little about patriotism.

In this modern day and age, for some strange reason, patriotism has become a very important issue indeed.  We are, after all, supposedly engaged in a war of values against a merciless and cunning, yet at the same time, dogmatic and stupid enemy, who will stop at nothing to impose their values on everyone else.  Whether I'm referring to the modern day rulers of the countries we inhabit, or the Jihadists I leave as an exercise for the reader to answer.

In such a situation, a war of values is very important.  Unless you wish to live in a democracy or something.  In recent years, it has been interesting to note the threat used against dissenters is "either you share our values or else...".  Now, I was under the impression that within a democracy, the point is you can have whatever values you want, even if they run contrary to democracy itself, but apparently I was wrong.  I still believe however, that a democracy asserted via threats and blackmail only ends up undermining itself and becoming, instead of a democracy, another form of autocratic rule, even if it keeps the functions of free elections and rule of law.

Now, keeping this in mind, it puts the New Labour project under Commissar-uh, Prime Minister Gordon Brown, of promoting a 'British identity' into a very suspect light.  I would say in fact it was symptomatic of their desire for control over the population, and their awful belief that the purpose of the citizen is to serve the state, not the other way around.  By taking it upon themselves to enforce a view of 'Britishness', top-down as it were, instead of letting such a feeling organically occur, from the bottom up and with the consent of the individuals involved, they are trying to recreate the identity of the nation.

This ridiculousness has become almost painful to watch within the last week in particular, with two particular suggestions from the Krem-uh, Downing Street.  The first is that our soldiers and troops are being told to wear their uniforms in public, so we, the cowed and weak masses, can gratefully fawn over the torturers and killer-uh, Our Brave Lads, who went off to fight the Islamic Horde and in no way were complicit in any crimes that our press frequently accuse the USA of.

Secondly, we have the foolishness of the "oath of allegiance".  It has been suggested by the very politically connected and influential Lord Goldsmith that all school leavers have to swear an oath of loyalty to the Queen and monarchy.  Ignoring for the moment that somehow aping the United States of America will make people here more British....really?  I think this tells us everything we know about the party who "have no objections to people getting filthy rich".  Swearing allegiance to the Queen reinforces the fact there is a social hierarchy in this country and you, the serf, the subject, are at the bottom of it.  Again, we are back at the idea of the subject serving the country, and that this state of affairs can only be maintained by blackmail and sabotage.

One of the greatest things about the UK that I, as a long term outsider, have noticed, is the way the British in general reject overt displays of nationalism and mock those who partake in them.  Putting aside football matches, at least.  Saluting the Union Jack, singing the praises of the stratified social system, serving the state religion...none of these things have anything to do with the current British character, and Eris forbid they ever do.  What is British is irreverence to authority figures, eccentricity on a level only other nations could dream to reach, disgustingly unhealthy food and football riots.

Nonsense like making people swear allegiance to a sponging foreigner who practises waving her hand all day, and her idiotic brood, are laughable and will likely only promote more hostility to the monarchy (which I cannot really complain about), but there is also something rather sinister in this sudden prominence of debates on "Britishness" and emphasis on pathetic nationalism.  It comes at a time where more and more those who do not "fit in" are being told to conform or leave, regardless of if they were born here or not, and often based on their skin colour and religion.  It comes at a time where military-linked think tanks are bemoaning a lack of a firm national character to act as a mirror image to the Jihadists.  It comes at a time where attacking "multiculturalism" and pluralism in general is very much in vogue.

I'm reminded that the system often creates its own enemies.  The more tightly you define something, by definition the more exclusive it becomes.  And when that tight definition of identity pushes out the Muslims, the Jews, the secularists, the republicans, the white working class...well, you're manufacturing the perfect recipe for civil unrest and disturbance.  Normally, this wouldn't disturb me, because I like and thrive among that sort of confusion and chaos...but I have to wonder, whose purposes does such chaos serve?  I am many things, but I refuse to be a useful tool for someone else's designs.

There seem to be two contradictory forces at work within British society right now, the dynamic of which is a cancer eating away at the heart of the country.  The first is obvious, and that is unitary centralization.  One State, under One Tightly Defined Concept (to be named later), Forever and Ever, Praise Tony.  The other is more sinister, the exclusiveness, the drive to division and separation.  Beware the Other.  The Other takes many forms...he is the Muslim who seeks to establish a Caliphate on the burnt shores of this pleasant and green land...he is the Working Class Man who looks to his own self interest instead of seeing the self-evident wisdom of his masters in Whitehall...she is the antiwar protester supposedly spitting on the troops...they are the insane proponents of 'foreign' ideas like human rights and justice.  There are plenty members of the Other's to completely Balkanize society, which is exactly what will happen if the state tries to hard to enforce its current course of centralization.

And I cant help but think this plays into the hands of the elite of society.  "Leave the fanatical sub-human Muslims and puerile working classes and the antiwar idiots and everyone else to fight it out among themselves, while we can exist in our own little British versions of Green Zones."  I may be wrong, but its a hypothesis I am willing to put out there.  It may not even be a conscious drive by our own political and economic movers and shakers, but a far deeper, symptomatic drive buried within our own brand of late-stage disaster 'capitalism'.  I don't know, and I freely admit it.

All I know is this: imposition of order = escalation of disorder.  The drive for purity, be it of thought, action, political system or identity always, sooner or later, involves the "elimination" of dirt.  But what happens when the dirt organizes itself and attacks the cleaning implements?

Information removed

I'm currently working on creating a compilation of tracks which I think either reflect and mirror the general ethos of this board, or that I think people here will like.

Of course, putting aside nonsense like the legality of uploading all these tracks for you to listen to, I have to say my music collection or knowledge is lacking in some areas, and so would appreciate any help in terms of recommendations or uploads of tracks you think should be included.  Dont worry about the number of tracks, this is likely to be a multi-part collection of songs anyway, so we can always create a new "album" if someone remembers some really good songs down the line.

So far, the list of songs I have goes a little like this:

Dans le Sac vs Scroobius Pip - Thou Shalt Always Kill
KMFDM - Dogma
subQtaneous - Transit of Venus
subQtaneous - Out of Control
PiKANTiK - SUiCiDE CHUMP
Brokedowns - Circular Reasoning
Electric Six - Danger! High Voltage
The Hellsing Theme Tune
KLF - 3am Eternal
KLF - What Time is Love?
MC Untzalot - No Vocoder
PiKANTiK - THE SACRED CHAO
QOTSA - No One Knows
Subhumans - Religious Wars
Alan Moore etc - This Vicious Cabaret
William Shatner - I Wanna Sex You Up
Tool - Hush
Avenged Sevenfold - Bat Country
Guns N Roses - Welcome to the Jungle
Avalanches - Frontier Psychiatrist
Biffy Clyro - Saturday Superhouse
Beautiful South - A Little Time
Bloodhound Gang - Mope
Mr Bungle - None of them Knew they were Robots
Cop Shoot Cop - Any day now
The Dandy Warhols - All the money or the simple life honey
Desert Sessions - Who Shit on the Cake
Desert Sessions - Sugar Rush
Desert Sessions - Punk Rock Caveman
Desert Sessions - Subcutaneous Phat
Devo - Some Things Never Change
Devo - Plain Truth
Devo - Gotta serve somebody (live)
Devo - Somewhere with DEVO
Devo - Smart Patrol/Mr DNA
Dire Straits - Heavy Fuel
Dire Straits - Industrial Disease
Raped by Food - Raped by Food
Earfatigue Productions - The Revolution
Ear Fatigue - Keep It
Electric Six - Dance Commander
Electric Six - Gay Bar
Electric Six - Slices of You
El-P feat Trent Reznor - Flyentology
International Noise Conspiracy - New Empire Blues
Jedi Mind Tricks - The Age of Sacred Terror
Jedi Mind Tricks - Saviorself
Kasabian - Empire
KLF - Hey Hey We're Not the Monkees
KMFDM - Free Your Hate
Kyuss - Demon Cleaner
Kyuss - Hurricane
The Clash - Train in Vain (live)
Louis XIV - Louis XIV
Louis XIV - Finding out true love is blind
Louis XIV - God Killed the Queen
TISM - Greg!  The Stop Sign!
TISM - All homeboys are dickheads
Modest Mouse - The Good Times Are Killing Me
Modest Mouse - The View
Modest Mouse - Bukowski
Modest Mouse - Doin' the Cockroach
Muse - Feeling Good
NIN/Saul Williams - Guns by computer
NIN - The Beginning of the End
NIN - Meet Your Master
Jane's Addiction - Pigs in Zen
Jane's Addiction - Idiots rule
Oasis - The Importance of Being Idle
Outkast - Gasoline Dreams
Outkast - Southernplayalistic
Black Sabbath - Paranoid
Pink Floyd - The happiest days of our lives/another brick in the wall
Pink Floyd - The Fletcher Memorial Home


That's as far as I have got, but I still have well over 3/4 of my collection left to go.  And of course, any of the above are up for debate as well.

So...suggestions?

Thanks to Rev Smeg the Kilted on POEE for bringing this to my attention:

6. It's a fool-proof escape plan.

"Modern life is often a mechanical oppression and liquor is the only mechanical relief."

—Ernest Hemingway



Your life is a prison. You, sir, live in a cage.

Hold on, you say. I love my life. I have a swell time! I wouldn't trade it for anything!

Well, sure. I'm not saying it's not a gilded cage with amenities galore, and I'm certain you've learned to play all sorts of delightful tunes when you artfully rattle the bars.

What I am saying is you are trapped in a prison of conformity and routine: you must go to work, you must pay your bills, you must feed your pets, you must be at certain places at certain times and if you aren't then you're going to have to find a new cage to live in.

The first thing getting drunk does is make you aware that you are in a cage. Fuck that job, you'll think. It's a fucking drag. And fuck going to your in-laws' for Christmas, like you do every goddamn year. And you sure as hell don't want to go to church tomorrow.  Suddenly you can see the bars, and I don't mean the ones you're drinking in.

The second thing it does is make you forget the cage exists. You get so wrapped up in the good times everything else seems a distant blur, a vague childhood memory where nothing much happened. Drink enough and you'll have a hard time telling the cab driver on which street your cage is situated. Whoever said alcohol won't drown your worries didn't fill up the bathtub with enough booze.

Of course, employing alcohol to escape reality is vilified these days. Somehow it's a terrible thing. The bars of the cage are there to protect you, they'll tell you. What they don't understand is that the thing you're trying most to escape is right there in the cage with you. Namely, you.

From Modern Drunkard Magazine's "10 best thing about alcohol" article

HONOLULU (AP) — Military officials are investigating an Internet video that purports to show a Marine throwing a puppy off a rocky cliff.

Maj. Chris Perrine of the Marine Corps Base Hawaii says it appears the man is based with a unit in the islands.

Marine officials are calling the YouTube video "shocking and deplorable" and say it violates "the high standard we expect of every Marine."

The low-quality video shows two Marines joking as one holds up what appears to be a motionless black and white puppy, which he then hurls into a rocky gully.

A yelping sound is heard as it flies through the air.


http://rapidshare.com/files/96880705/us_soldier.avi - ACTUAL FOOTAGE

His Bebo http://www.bebo.com/DavidMotari

David Motari
24419 Florence Acres Rd
Monroe, WA 98272-9662
Phone: (360) 794-7191
(714) 330-0418

DAVID MOTARI FACTS:
1) He is now in Iraq, or Hawaii (in Kaneohe Bay)
2) He is the soldier in the video (see the pics of Iraq on his Bebo site for confirmation)
3) He married Jessica Thatcher in January 2008 (google: david motari heraldnet)
4) His wife moved to Hawaii on Feb 24, 2008 (google: david motari jessica myspace, choose "nathen - 20", her friend)
5) He signed Ipetitions:
152 David Motari I am a Marine currently serving in Iraq. I would hate to see our team move out of Seattle...

http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=59107328

========================

I think you all know what to do....

http://www.kiltedfox.com/

Unlulzy "factual" post, hilarious declarations of war to come later.

----------------------------------------------------
Nearly everybody hates cockroaches. But apparently none more so than Turkmenistan's post-Turkmenbashi (Saparmurat Niyazov) president, Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov. The Guardian reports:

   

For the viewers of Turkmenistan's popular nightly news programme, Vatan, it was another routine bulletin. But as the newsreader began the 9pm broadcast, viewers across the central Asian country spotted something unusual crawling across the studio table: a large brown cockroach.

    The cockroach managed to complete a whole lap of the desk, apparently undetected, before disappearing. The programme, complete with cockroach, was repeated at 11pm that night. ...

    [T]he consequences of this particular cockroach's impromptu five minutes of fame were immediate and severe.

    The country's president, Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, took news of the insect so badly that he responded by firing no fewer than 30 workers from the main state TV channel, the news website Kronika Turkmenistan reported yesterday.

Those fired included journalists, directors, camera operators, and technical staff.

President Berdymukhamedov has been praised for his efforts at ending Turkmenistan's isolation from the international community, and for reversing a number of Turkmenbashi's quirky laws, which include banning opera performances and disallowing foreign languages in school curriculum.

But cockroaches, it seems, warrant special measures. "Berdymukhamedov's apparent dislike of cockroaches may have something to do with his previous career as a dentist," the Guardian's Luke Harding speculates. Even so, Berdymukhamedov's extreme reaction suggests that Turkmenistan's days of mercurial leadership may not be over just yet.

----------------------------

Yes, that is Luke Harding of "copying articles directly from The eXile" infamy.

As we all know, Turkmenistan's last ruler was a Discordian Saint in the truest sense of the word.  Saparmurat Niyazov named towns, libraries, schools, the days of the week and month and even a meteorite after himself or members of his family, banned ballet and opera, tried to build an ice palace, banned dogs from the capital, required all drivers to pass morality tests and made his biography part of the national cirriculum.  Among many other things.

However, his successor is clearly not blessed by Eris, so she dispatched her Loyal Servant and Messenger, St Gulik, to rectify the situation.  His reaction is clearly blasphemous, refusing the blessings of Eris Discordia, and so he must punished.

Seven signs of impending revolution, according to Sara Robinson.  Ignore the tedious "liberal/conservative" dichotomy and take note of the events and sociopolitical trends instead.


1.  Soaring, then crashing. 

Revolutions don't happen in traditional societies that are stable and static -- where people have their place, things are as they've always been, and nobody expects any of that to change. Rather, modern revolutions -- particularly the progressive-minded ones in which people emerge from the fray with greater rights and equality -- happen in economically advancing societies, always at the point where a long period of rising living standards and high, hopeful expectations comes to a crashing end, leaving the citizens in an ugly and disgruntled mood.

2.  They call it a class war

Progressive modern democracies run on mutual trust between classes and a shared vision of the common good that binds widely disparate groups together. Now, we're also about to re-learn the historical lesson that liberals like flat hierarchies, racial and religious tolerance, and easy class mobility not because we're soft-headed and soft-hearted -- but because, unlike short-sighted conservatives, we understand that tight social cohesion is our most reliable and powerful bulwark against the kinds of revolutions that bring down great economies, nations and cultures.

In all the historical examples Davies and Brinton cite, the stage for revolution was set when the upper classes broke faith with society's other groups, and began to openly prey on them in ways that threatened their very future. Not surprisingly, the other groups soon united, took up arms, and rebelled.

3. Deserted Intellectuals

Mere unrest among the working and middle classes, all by itself, isn't enough. Revolutions require leaders -- and those always come from the professional and intellectual classes. In most times and places, these groups (which also include military officers) usually enjoy comfortable ties to the upper classes, and access to a certain level of power. But if those connections become frayed and weak, and the disaffected intellectuals make common cause with the lower classes, revolution becomes almost inevitable.

Davies notes that, compared to both the upper and lower classes, the members of America's upper-middle class were relatively untouched by Great Depression. Because of this, their allegiances to the existing social structure largely remained intact; and he argues that their continued engagement was probably the main factor that allowed America to avert an all-out revolution in the 1930s.

4. Incompetent Government

It turns out there's never been a modern revolution that didn't start against a backdrop of atrocious government malfeasance in the face of precipitously declining fortunes. From George III's onerous taxes to Marie Antoinette's "Let them eat cake," revolutions begin when stubborn aristocrats heap fuel on the fire by blithely disregarding the falling fortunes of their once-prosperous citizens. And America is getting dangerously close to that point now. Between our corporate-owned Congress and the spectacularly bad judgment of Bush's executive branch, there's never been a government in American history more inept, corrupt, and criminally negligent than this one -- or more shockingly out of touch with what the average American is going through. Just ask anyone from New Orleans -- or anyone who has a relative in the military.

5. Gutless Wonders in the Ruling Class

Revolution becomes necessary when the ruling classes fail in their duty to lead. Most of the major modern political revolutions occurred at moments when the world was changing rapidly -- and the country's leaders dealt with it by dropping back into denial and clinging defiantly to the old, profitable, and familiar status quo. New technologies, new ideas, and new economic opportunities were emerging; and there came a time when ignoring them was no longer an option. When the leaders failed to step forward boldly to lead their people through the looming and necessary transformations, the people rebelled.

And, in the teeth of this restless drift toward inevitable change, America has been governed by a bunch of conservative dinosaurs who can't even bring themselves to acknowledge that the 20th century is over. (Some of them, in fact, are still trying to turn back the Enlightenment.) Liberal governments manage this kind of shift by training and subsidizing scientists and planners, funding research, and setting policies that help their nations navigate these transitions with some grace. Conservative ones -- being conservative -- will reflexively try to deny that change is occurring at all, and then brutally suppress anyone with evidence to the contrary.

6. Fiscal Irresponsibility

As we've seen, revolutions follow in the wake of national economic reversals. Almost always, these reversals occur when inept and corrupt governments mismanage the national economy to the point of indebtedness, bankruptcy, and currency collapse.

There's a growing consensus on both the left and right that America is now heading into the biggest financial contraction since the Great Depression. And it's one that liberal critics have seen coming for years, as conservatives systematically dismantled the economic foundations of the entire country. Good-paying jobs went offshore. Domestic investments in infrastructure and education were diverted to the war machine. Government oversight of banks and securities was blinded. Vast sections of the economy were sold off to the Saudis for oil, or to the Chinese for cheap consumer goods and money to finance tax cuts for the wealthy.

7. Inept and Inconsistent Use of Force

The final criterion for revolution is this: The government no longer exercises force in a way that people find fair or consistent. And this can happen in all kinds of ways.

Domestically, there's uneven sentencing, where some people get the maximum and others get cut loose without penalty -- and neither outcome has any connection to the actual circumstances of the crime (though it often correlates all too closely with race, class, and the ability to afford a good lawyer). Unchecked police brutality (tasers, for example) that hardens public perception against the constabulary. Unwarranted police surveillance and legal harassment of law-abiding citizens going about their business. Different kinds of law enforcement for different neighborhoods. The use of government force to silence critics. And let's not forget the unconstitutional restriction of free speech and free assembly rights.

Abroad, there's the misuse of military force, which forces the country to pour its blood and treasure into misadventures that offer no clear advantage for the nation. These misadventures not only reduce the country's international prestige and contribute to economic declines; they often create a class of displaced soldiers who return home with both the skills and the motivation to turn political unrest into a full-fledged shooting war.

BASIC CONCEPTS


1.  YOU ARE WHAT YOU DO. If you want to be something else, do something else.

2.  Belief follows action.

3.  You are NOT a Beautiful and Unique Snowflake. Nor are you the Chosen One.

6.  Politics, magick, psychology, advertising, propaganda are ALL THE SAME THING – attempts to describe and alter consciousness.

10.  Destroy your own icons and enabling narratives. They will keep you safe and neutered. Most people would rather destroy life, limb or property than do this.


THE ENEMY IS LIFESTYLISM

21.  If you're entirely hung up on your own "lifestyle", so determined to surround yourself with a fortress of The Right Kind of Stuff that you're incapable of thinking beyond your own self-image, then you're part of the problem.

22.  Consumer culture is the opium of the 21st century masses.

23.  "I am the Chosen One" is the opium of 21st century niche markets.


CHAOS MARXISM IS MATERIALIST

34.  You can stay in your ivory tower and change your own reality infinitely. Until, of course, you need to go to work or deal with anyone but your immediate friends. That's the point where nasty reality cuts in. And nasty reality cuts in more and more the less money and internet access you have.


CHAOS MARXISM IS COLLECTIVIST

47.  The more I looked at the mystics and the psychonauts, the more I realised that for them "Question everything" meant "Question everything except the idea that individual consciousness is a thing unto itself which can be worked on in isolation".

48.  If you start saying that people are not individuals - that they are created by their upbringing and the role they play in real, nasty, going-to-work-in-traffic society - then you open the door to the idea that only a social revolution can actually solve the real problems with humanity.

51.  If the subconscious, unseen and cultural levels of the world are the ocean, then magick is all about being able to dive, swim, and get back on dry land safely. Eventually, we should be able to become psychic and cultural surf-lifesavers – a role that will be integral to a new society.


THE NECESSITY OF ACTION

54.  Since you are what you do, you will have to DO to BE. There is no substitute for doing.


THE PAINKILLER OF THE MASSES

65.  Religion, like any other painkiller or hallucinogenic, can be used for good or evil purposes. It can encourage you to lie around and stare at the ceiling, or kill your family, or it might take the edge off enough to allow you to accomplish something in the real world.

69.  Most people do not base their actions on rational thought related to material reality. They base their action on stories which they partly pick up from their culture and partly make up themselves.

70.  People who base their lives in images and narratives expect those images or narratives to be "morally true" – or "truthy" - not physically true or even logical.

71.  Even if I know on an intellectual level that X is bullshit, if I act like it's real it becomes real for me at least.

72.  People will happily swallow lies if it enables them to maintain the narratives that they live by.

74.  Basing your life on images and narratives rather than the hard facts of material existence is much, much, much easier. And it will virtually ensure that you don't ever change anything.


CULTURAL REVOLUTION – A DO IT YOURSELF GUIDE

75.  To put it in magical jargon, we start with the memes and thoughtforms which arise spontaneously from anti-corporate activity, transmute them magically to give them the best chance of survival and replication, and then release them back into the infosphere of the activity where they were born.

76.  Metaphorical, narrative language can help people understand real although intangible forces better than intellectual jargon.

77.  An effective political or advertising slogan has all the same characteristics of a meditative mantra.

78.  The most effective advertising does not say "Brand X has qualities Y and Z"; instead, it presents a meme which associates X with Y and Z and leaves it up to the recipients to connect the dots. All the most virally infective memes require that the readers/viewers/listeners do some work to make some sense of what they are given – they are "pull" rather than "push" marketing.

79.  Make your memes open-ended in possible meaning.

80.  If you're not being misunderstood, you haven't been properly understood.

81.  If you're not being attacked, you won't be supported.

83.  If you don't have a party, a mystic order or a scene, you have to start one.

84.  A meme will spread if it fills a niche in the materially existing noosphere.

85.  A successful memetic operation will work backwards in time - in other words, pick a possible future, and attempt to make it a real present.


HACK YOUR OWN PERSONALITY

87.  The rationality you were taught to survive in this world is often diametrically opposed to the rationality you will need to change it. Drugs or religion may create the "altered state" necessary to build an alternative rationality. Or they may screw you up.

92.  Arguments over what is 'good' rest on arguments about reality, even if they seem not too. 'Ought' does rely on arguments about what 'is'.


THE WORLD AS IT IS

101.  The "Green Zone" in Baghdad is the most effective microcosm of the World-As-Is.

102.  Less bread means more circuses – the less food and shiny consumer items there are to hand out, the more lies and spectacles must be provided.

103.  Corporate politics and management are memetics combined with brute force. Memetics are generally cheaper and have less unpleasant side effects than brute force, but need to be continually updated to remain effective.

104.  Corporate (or Black, or brute-force) Memetics works through a barrage of constant mutually reinforcing impressions.


DON'T CONFUSE THE LEVELS


111.  The map is not the territory - that symbols are only useful in so far as they serve the actual purpose on the ground. Ideology is an imaginary solution to a real problem – an attempt to "live in the map".

112.  If you try to live in the metaphor you constructed, rather than using it as a guide to action, you will at best create just another religion, and at worst, create an internet subculture that people will laugh at.


THE FUTURE


117.  Revolutions are not predictable. People don't wear nice colour coded symbols in a real revolution. They get drunk and smash shit up and in all other ways go over the top.

121.  Culture-from-below is always free, and often illegal – mainly because it subverts the intellectual property laws. The new world will have different definitions of property and reward.

The nuts and bolts of Psychological Operations

http://www.psywarrior.com/links.html

The comments by Dr Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury and de facto head of the Church of England, that Sharia Law in the UK is "inevitable" have sparked waves of predictably tedious righteous indignation.

While the most fanatical members of the right wing press, such as Melanie Phillips, have seen fit to frame this in the context of "dhimmitude", "abject religious and cultural surrender to Islam" and other code words of the Eurabia conspiracy theorists, even the mainstream press have run scare stories about sharia law being used in Britain, should the Archbishop get his way.

But lets examine his comments in context. 

He wanted parts of Sharia Law to be adopted by communities who already consider themselves Islamic, with the consent of all parties involved, to try and reach decisions on some court rulings, such as those covering marriage, divorce and property after death in the family.  To quote him, he said "The whole idea that there are perfectly proper ways the law of the land pays respect to custom and community, that's already there."

The question is therefore not the introduction of Sharia Law into the UK, but the realization of the fact many people already try to use these laws in their everyday lives, often without any transparency, oversight or courts of appeal.  By integrating it into UK law, it not only helps prevent abuses, but also helps soften the opinion of many Muslims towards the current government and UK society, who feel that there is an "us and them" dynamic at work, which forces them to chose between loyalty to the state and loyalty to their religion.

There is also the fact that Orthodox Jews already operate under this system in UK law.  You'd think someone like Melanie Phillips, who proclaims her Jewishness at every opening that is offered, would realize that, and accept that this is a natural extension of the rights already afforded to some citizens. 

Notably, the Times and Telegraph newspapers have tried to make arguments on the basis that the UK is a Christian nation (a claim more plausible than similar ones made in the USA) and that UK laws are based on Christianity, with its history of tolerance and respect for the individual.  This second claim is not only theoretically dubious, given statements in the Bible about the role of women, but historically inaccurate and misleading as well.  In the past, the state has sanctioned both the persecution of Jews and Catholics using Christian rhetoric, and the most exemplary laws of our modern society are derived from the Danes, not Christianity.  There is no haebus corpus or presumption of innocence in the Bible, after all.

Finally, there is the argument that Muslims when over here should put up with "our" laws or leave.  This is the most pathetic and rhetoric based of all the arguments given so far, for two reasons.  Firstly, many of the Muslims who identify as such ARE British Muslims, and live here.  Secondly, the idea that you cannot criticize or attempt to change the policy of the state is about the single most anti-democratic statement I have heard.  I most certainly do not agree with our government aiding "extraordinary rendition", should I move to Switzerland?  Most interestingly, this argument has been put forward by conservative critics who....wait for it.....mostly disagree with the Labour government's policy in many areas!  Why don't they move to somewhere like America or France, where a conservative government holds power?  Because they're hypocrites, that's why.

The question is not one of "dhimmitude", or "cultural surrender", its about should religion at all have a right to make and in part shape how laws are executed in this country?

People should remember the CoE is a dying religion, one that while on paper is impressive in its status as the religion on the state, has little official following or real political clout.  By opening up a debate on religiously influenced execution of law, they are engaging in nothing more than a shameless power grab, while using the UK Muslim community as a "human shield" for the press to rip apart.

That is what this is really about.

I myself do not really care one way or another, so long as the law is applied consistently.  I would prefer a totally secular country, in terms of law, but we don't even have that now, so all the atheists out there should turn their attentions away from frothing denunciations of the excesses of the Saudi courts and perhaps consider why we allow Bishops to still sit in the House of Lords, why our official Head of State also is the head of the State religion, and is ordained in both roles by God, without question.

Secondly, some of these people should perhaps be questioning the totally idiotic and repressive secular laws that are being passed by our government currently.  For all their crying about the (very real) plight of women under fundamentalist Islamic regimes, I see little criticism from our media over the proposed reintroduction of stop and search laws, which are proven to target ethnic minorities massively, nor the use of ASBOs by police officers to punish people for being assholes (which, contrary to popular belief, is not a crime).

All of these people would have us believe that UK law is something special, a near perfect being, pure in its conception, which is being brutally mixed with a nasty, foreign, alien legal system.  WAKE THE FUCK UP ASSHOLES, UK LAW AIN'T ANYTHING SPECIAL EITHER!  By placing UK law on a pedastel, the media are subconsciously reinforcing culture and the state as the supreme arbiter of how we should live our lives in the UK.  If there are elements of sharia law that seem more "fair" and useful in their pursuit of Justice, then by all means they should be adopted.  Equally, all laws that are not useful in that respect should be disregarded, regardless of where they came from.  Otherwise, the law isn't worth the paper its written on.  Unjust laws don't become any more just simply because they're rooted in our own culture and history.

I mean, seriously, are some of you people pulling our legs here?

My copy of this finally arrived.  Stand by for transcripts and useful concepts sometime in the near future.

Just Because You're Smart, Doesn't Mean You're Not Stupid
By Neal Pollock

     

    I. Background

    A. People are mostly unconscious or subconscious, not conscious

         1. Levels of Consciousness: rational, irrational, non-rational
              a. personal unconscious or subconscious (Freud/Jung)
              b. collective unconscious (Jung)
              c. conscious mind--a new development

         2. The Johari window:
              a. what you know you know
              b. what you know you don't know
              c. what you don't know you know
              d. what you don't know you don't know

         3. Basic character set in childhood (mostly unconscious)
              a. lots of trial and error
              b. learn from examples (how parents act)
              c. conscience is a non-rational process

    B. People like to believe they are in control (i.e. conscious)

         1. simple observation belies this belief
         2. belief differs from knowledge; few study epistemology
         3. people ascribe expertise to college degrees and job titles
              a. most scientists have never studied the Philosophy of Science
              b. understanding a specialty does not imply understanding per se

    C. Our society supports a belief in causation--a bottoms-up approach--past drives the present

         1. Jung developed synchronicity--meaningful coincidence
         2. Jung spoke of a top-down approach, a teleological approach
              a. the desired goal, for instance, drives the present from the future
         3. when planning a journey you need both the start point and the end point
              a. as the Mad Hatter told Alice, if you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there.
         4. inductive vs. deductive reasoning; Yin vs. Yang; the play of opposites

    D. Knowledge (relationships & symbols) vs. Convention (definitions & signs)

         1. VA Standards of Learning in History for instance--memorization
         2. mostly we are taught conventions, not knowledge
         3. understanding comes through knowledge, not convention
         4. knowledge can be experiential vs. intellectual
         5. convention is only intellectual, surface oriented
         6. people filter/color/screen percepts -- e.g. via Myers-Briggs preferences

    E. Individuals are not constant, they are dynamic

         1. bi-directional communications are dyadic, interactive
         2. roles: "where you stand depends on where you sit."
         3. society/group effects: (paraphrasing Jung) when a group of people put their heads together you get one big fathead.


    II. Ethics and People (based on the above observations and conclusions)

    A. Traditional morality is not based on individual conscious discrimination/thinking:

    (Jung, C. G. Civilization in Transition CW10, Princeton U. Press, Princeton, NJ 1964 p. 357) - "The mere observance of a codified 'Thou shalt not' is not in any sense an ethical decision, but merely an act of obedience and, in certain circumstances, a convenient loophole that has nothing to do with ethics."

    1. Group psychological effects:

    (Jung, The Symbolic Life CW18, p. 571) - "Thus a hundred intelligent people together make one hydrocephalus. The psychology of masses is always inferior, even in their most idealistic enterprises. The whole of a nation never reacts like a normal modern individual, but always like a primitive group being...Man in the group is always unreasonable, irresponsible, emotional, erratic, and unreliable. Crimes the individual alone could never stand are freely committed by the group being...The larger an organization the lower its morality."

    (Jung, Psychological Types: p. 449) - "The more a man's life is shaped by the collective norm, the greater is his individual immorality."

    (Jung, Civilization in Transition: p. 228) - "Any large company composed of wholly admirable persons has the morality and intelligence of an unwieldy, stupid, and violent animal."

    B. Ethics (as work) based on individual conscious discrimination/thinking:

    (Creativity and Work by Elliott Jaques: p.332) - "what is experienced as psychic effort in work--the intensity or weight of responsibility--is entirely concerned with the discretionary content of work. To conform to rules and regulations and other prescribed aspects of work requires knowledge; you either know or you do not; but it does not require the psychic effort of discretion and decision, with its attendant stirring of anxiety. I was able to demonstrate that weight or level of responsibility is objectively measurable in terms of the maximum spans of time during which discretion must be exercised by a person on his own account. The longer the span of time, the more the unconscious material that must be made conscious, and the longer must uncertainty about the final outcome and the anxiety about one's judgement and discretion be tolerated. In short, the longer the (p. 333) path toward gratification chosen...the greater is the experience of psychic effort or work."

    C. Ethics as a dynamic vs. static process:

    (Freud and Psychoanalysis p. 288) - "We should never forget that what today seems to us a moral commandment will tomorrow be cast into the (p.289) melting-pot and transformed, so that in the near or distant future it may serve as a basis for new ethical formations. This much we ought to have learnt from the history of civilization, that the forms of morality belong to the category of transitory things."

    III. Practical Considerations

    A. standard and traditional methods often fail us at the worst possible times

         1. intellectual understanding of the principles of ethics are totally insufficient/ineffective under those circumstances where stressful, unprecedented, emotional choice must be made.
         2. group action results in projection of group psychotic/irrational behaviors--mobs
         3. people do NOT know themselves well at all; they cannot predict how they would act

    B. Ethical decisions are work and require conscious discrimination. Nevertheless, they can be practiced so as to make them part of an individual (i.e. introjected) and an automatic process

         1. individuals need to identify their true values and beliefs--not group beliefs (cop-out)
         2. actions resulting from these values must be role-played under trying circumstances
              a. similar to management in-box exercises and supervisory counseling role-plays
              b. war games are exercises should be tailored to realistic ethical decision making
         3. individual inconsistencies/hypocrisy need be identified and worked through/resolved
              a. cognitive dissonance corrections, behavioral modification, therapy as necessary, employed to correct situation
              b. leadership role selection must reflect the ethical level of the candidates
                   1) leaders must avoid seagull management (leave alone-zap)-Blanchard
              c. individuals must accept responsibility for their actions and decisions
              d. competence is transitive and task specific:

Chaoticians and Agents of Strife

This is another arbitrary division of the Discordian society into two basic philosophical camps.  In fact, its very similar to the LDD/ELF distinction that has been made before, only I intend to look at it just a little more deeply.  I want to look at basic attitudes to Chaos and how that shapes a person's perception and thinking as a Discordian.  Although I'm looking at them as two separate topics, no-one is really only one or the other.  Rather, people tend towards one way of thinking or the other, even if they show many of the traits of the 'opposing' system.

So first, I'm talking about Chaoticians.  As the name suggests, a Chaotician has an interest in chaos that comes primarily from a metaphysical or scientific mathematical background.  They may still agree that Chaos is the ultimate, the overarching descriptive term for the mix of order and disorder, but when they are required to think about the effect of chaos in the world, or use metaphors to describe it, they will almost certainly turn to ideas taken from Chaos Theory, non-linear mathematics and occasionally a nod to Nietzsche, Heraclitus, Taoism and Postmodernism.  Eris is essentially "She Who Has Done it All", either the real goddess or metaphor lurking behind the nature of reality, a personification of the Ultimate.

Hence their view of Chaos comes from an understanding of the natural world and the way in which its processes are done.  As far as they are concerned, the truth of the role of chaos is both self-evident, and undeniable for anyone with the intellectual ability to understand the formula's behind it and the honesty to admit it.  This view of chaos, as being an ongoing and current state of the world, where the parameters are defined but within those parameters the eventual outcome cannot be measured, occasionally breeds a certain level of passivity, although this is not always the case.  The thinking is since chaos is both self-evident and ongoing, there is no need to "expose" people to it, they are exposed to it every day.

This is not always the case, based on personal inclination and sense of humour, however.  The Chaotician often acts as the R&D specialist within the Discordian society, their scientific discipline allowing them to pursue new avenues of investigation, grasp new technology and understand the weaknesses of various systems.  However, Operation MindFuck is not a necessary thing for them – it is something they do because they enjoy it or find it a challenge to pull off more and more intricate pranks.  They may also show a high amount of interest in the occult, if not the sciences, submerging themselves into studies of Crowley, Hine, Carrol and the like.

Agents of Strife, on the other hand, concentrate on the human aspects of chaos.  For them, Eris is the goddess who caused the Trojan War by rolling the golden apple, something they seek to emulate, regardless of if she is a metaphor of a real being.  They see chaos in terms of wars, conflicts, disagreements and confusion, and generally work towards those ends for their own sake.  A typical ploy of an Agent of Strife is "lets you and him fight", sitting back to reap the rewards of such an encounter. 

Agent's of Strife rarely openly declare who they are or their intentions, however.  It is not because they fear conflict heading their way, indeed many are (somewhat perversely) more than capable of dealing with it when it arises, or carrying on a campaign of disorder on their own, but often because they understand that as a person they can only have so much individual influence, it is better to work within and against other groups, to bring about situations where their interests collide and conflict becomes an actuality.

As one would expect of people more focused on human elements of chaos, Agents of Strife more normally take an interest in political, religious and military matters (these being areas ripe for conflict) and see Operation Mindfuck as more of a duty than a Chaotician.  Because they care little for the metaphysical or scientific considerations of chaos, unless they can cause mayhem among humanity, they consider exposing people to chaos as a sacred duty.  They are the front line troops of the Discordian Society, as well as its spies, saboteurs and criminals.  Chaos for them relies on being active within the world, and they work towards that goal always.  As facilitators of chaos, they usually have a strong sense of irony.

As previously stated, I don't think anyone is purely one of these, either an Agent of Strife or a Chaotician.  But it does help us understand a certain philosophical divide that does exist, between those who take that metaphysical view of chaos, and those whose view is more mayhem-centred, focusing on the human element.  I think the basis of this difference is what tends to create this difference, this almost invisible dividing line in the Discordian society.  I'm sure a synthesis can and does exist, its just a natural inclination towards one or the other that causes it to exist.

Earlier this year, I was privileged to go "on tour" with Jimmy "Jimbo" Wales, the founder and public face of Wikipedia, as we crisscrossed the nation, talking to educators in Adelaide, Perth, Sydney and Melbourne. Everywhere we went, people asked the same question: why is Wikipedia such a success, while my wiki languishes? What do you need to achieve critical mass? The answer, Jimmy said, is five people. Five individuals dedicated to an altruistic sharing of collective intelligence should be enough to produce a flowering similar to Wikipedia. Jimbo has learned, through experience, that the "minor" language versions of Wikipedia (languages with less than 10 million native speakers), need at least five steady contributors to become self-sustaining. In the many wikis Jimbo oversees through his commercial arm, Wikia, he's noted the same phenomenon time and again. Five people mark the tipping point between a hobby and a nascent hyperintelligence.

http://blog.futurestreetconsulting.com/?p=41

[1. "I'm just sick of it. Every time I come to MW there's a new issue with you and a select group of Discordians. So you worship chaos, big fuging deal. Give it a rest already."]

Hard work, getting all these, but it gives me a warm glow.  My comments in italics.

1. "I'm just sick of it. Every time I come to MW there's a new issue with you and a select group of Discordians. So you worship chaos, big fuging deal. Give it a rest already."

Try replacing Discordians with Wiccans and Chaos with Triple Goddess and let the accusations of persecution flood in. Also, hilariously, this was in reply to a post by TGGR parodying the views of select forum members, to a degree.

2. "Yeah, I have seen alot of it popping up on the boards. I also noticed that every time I see one [a Discordian], it seems to be laden with arguments and negativity. Something as simple as an introduction, turns into mayhem!! I'll pass on those threads and posts thank you, they take the enjoyment out of conversation. I have never seen as many arguments on the boards as I have since those posts have started. "

3. "We didn't set out to hurt Discordianism. We set out to rid our community of trolls. We hope our community will be a better place as a result."

90% of those "trolls" 'just happened' to be Discordians.

4. "Someone hacked into my ebay account. Loverly. Very mature. Guard your butt Ssanf, you've just painted a big old target on it."

Incidentally, none of us were behind the hacking.

5. "I think a couple of bad apples came in here, calling themselves Discordians (and I don't have any way to judge whether they really were or not) and they started baiting people and trying to cause more chaos than is strictly natural, and when the shit hit the fan they rallied some of the other Discordians around them because they were "being persecuted."

6. "Congratulations. This isn't the forum for Chaos. This is a sanctuary, not a factory."

Because Discordians...like factories? I don't get it.

7. "The most fatuous, manipulative, and venomous people to be found here are all of the discordian genre."

8. "A successful and a good discordian, is one who gets others angry, upset, and is skilled at mocking and belittling them.The better they are at it, the more they are respected by thier peers."

Partially true, but hardly the whole story (also, fixed for spelling and grammatical errors).

9. "A True Discordian does not spend all their time making sarcastic posts on internet forums. In fact, a majority of "Discordians" you see online are not really true Discordians, but nothing more than attention seekers."

Apparently reading the Principia once makes you an expert on what other people really believe too, at least going by the above poster.

10. "I've always, always regarded the Discordians as being people who chose to be Discordians because they can't be arsed to actually do any work to develop a relationship with a specific deity, they were too wishy-washy to choose just one path, and they just want to be a mishmash of everything and not have to work at learning about rituals or traditions or any such thing as that. "Oooh, I'm a Discordian! I can do whatever I want! Which means I can just SAY I'm a pagan but I never bother doing rituals or studying any kind of sacred texts or developing a relationship with deity, etc! I can go around and not be Christian, but I won't quite be anything else either because I just can't commit and I can't be ARSED to commit!"

Spoiled brats of the pagan world, I thought. I really don't have a lot of respect for Discordians. They just strike me as spiritually lazy."

Too hilarious to comment on.

11. "Just out of curiosity are any of you discordians raising or will raise your children in your beleif system?...I know silly question, of course you would, but with my experiences with Discordians and Chaos Mages lately I would be concerned for the child."

12. "mmm, it's like a troll breeding facility isn't it. Maybe there's an undergound complex like Area 51 where the genetically engineer them?"

Said in reference to EB&G forums

13. "In other words, Discordianism, like postmodernism, means never having to say your sorry."

14. "I'm starting to think discordian is just another word for annoying. It certainly doesn't seem to have any hallmarks of a consistent or coherent belief system."

15. "At least Satanists HAVE a worldview. After reading this thread, I'm convinced that discordians not only don't, but will actively mock anyone who does."

16. "Followers of Eris...I will not allow you to spread 'discord' in my forum just like I won't let Christians proselytize."

Because its practically the same thing, right?

Boredom is getting to me


I can see your eyes from here
You come up to me
OK everybody, lie down on the floor and keep calm
I'd appreciate your input

Huffman don't take no nonsense,
we know everything
We passed along the stairs
Everyone seems to be singing for Satan

He who hears in the vast silence
close to my skin,
I go to Colorado to unload my head
Help me because I can't understand

Are you looking for the truth or another fight
All my lazy teenage boasts
When the routine bites hard
I like pleasure spiked with pain and

I became for you what you had asked
I cant say what I want to
All we want is a headrush
I was in heaven, I was in hell

I don't believe in unity
Everything about you is how I'd wanna be
Till I reach the highest ground
He said you're just as boring as everyone else

That's not a rhetorical question, by the way, its an honest enquiry.

For those who don't know, Levenda was the man behind the Simon Necronomicon, the first faked version of the book bearing Lovecraft's name.  He naturally denies it (and more interestingly, denies it is the same Necronomicon Lovecraft wrote about, but is the book he took the name from), and has spun an interesting tale about spies and monks and international theft which is currently being made into a book, which will probably be entertaining reading once it is done.

But he also wrote some apparently serious books, such as the Unholy Alliance series, which documents the role of the occult in Nazi Germany, the German transplants from Operation Paperclip who went to work for the CIA and the role of the occult in the history of America.  I was reading an interview he did with Tracy Twyman, and he certainly seemd to know his stuff.  And then he ruined it by mentioning a Nazi-Voodoo-ism (possibly Obeah or Hoodoo) mix going on in Chile, which, while theoretically possible, is stretching credibility a lot.

So, has anyone read the guy, or have any knowledge of him?  How seriously should he be taken?  He clearly does impressive amounts of research, but he's got a fair bit of mischief in him as well, so I wonder...

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/116

A short video for you to watch.

http://rs105.rapidshare.com/files/70166861/Quantum_theory.rar

I don't know whats in it, but its about 40MB on the topic.

I'm putting this in here because the main theme of this military paper is that of overcoming boundaries and creating an unrestricted form of warfare - which could be seen as a sort of sinister BIP variant.

Also, I condensed it from roughly 250 pages of badly translated Chinese text, so while the length is a little longer than some things on here, it is fairly reasonable, all considered.  The paper was published in 1999, if anyone was wondering, hence why it talks about the Gulf War more than the war on terror.

==========================

Warfare has not decreased or left society.  Instead, it has become more pervasive, but at the same time, more complex and more concealed.  A relative reduction in military violence has only led to an increase in political, economic and social violence.  Regardless, all of these various types of violence should be considered forms of war and a change in external appearance does not mean a change in intention or principles

The new principle of war is to use every means at ones disposal to compel an enemy to accept one's own interests.

Our conception of what is considered a war must change, as must our understanding of the weapons of modern war.  Traditional non-war actions, such as hacking, currency speculation or media coverage can be considered part of the new war, which raises questions about where the battlefield is, and how one understands the new war.

Warfare now transcends all boundaries and limits, making everywhere a battlefield and everything used to compel the enemy a weapon.  The boundary between military and non-military action has been destroyed. 

Computerized warfare and information warfare should not be mixed up.  The former is traditional warfare that is enhanced by computers and other hi-tech solutions, whereas the latter is where information itself is suppressed or obtained by information technology.  People mistake the former for the latter, which may eventually prove to be fatal.  Information warfare will be a synthesis of other branches of technology and military thought, and unlike computerized warfare, no-one leads in this field, leaving it wide open for the taking.

Two different approaches to weaponry.  Make the fight fit the weapons one has, or make the weapons fit the fight one faces.  This is the demarcation line between present and future warfare.  The former is a passive and inflexible relation between humanity and technology.  Naturally constrains tactics and ideas.  Adding new technology to old may make old weapons technology relevant again.  Problem with creating weapons to fit the fight is the problem of foresight.  Also worth noting is that a technological gap makes defeating an enemy more difficult.  If the gap is too large, it may resolve into a battle where neither can wipe the other out.

New weapons will transcend the usual understanding of the word and incorporate elements weapons as anything which can harm the enemy.  Apart from more usual methods of inflicting material and psychological damage on troops, it will involve financial attacks on stock markets, computer virus invasions and exposing rumours or scandals in various manners.  Anything that can aid mankind can harm it as well.

Weapons will be created which most closely linked to the lives of common people, as an element of surprise as well as based on pragmatism. 

The trend to "kinder" weaponry is testament both to a cultural change in mankind and a change within warfare.  It is no longer necessary to kill, only to control.  However, this does not mean kinder weapons will be any less lethal.  Lasers may be used to permanently blind troops, for example.  Also, wounding creates more problems for a military force, as the dead require few resources be expended on them, whereas mass wounding will require much care for the troops, and cause panic and loss of morale.  Non-lethal weaponry should take into account the psychology of those they face as well, especially if they are devoutly religious.

The focus must be on paralyzation and undermining, not casualties.

However, war will not become a near bloodless game of electronic rivalry.  Powerful enemies will not be deterred without actual casualties as well, the path of destruction and survival, and we should have no romantic illusions about that.

Alliances will be temporary, since the only absolute is self-interest.  Everything else is in flux, and a friend today may be an enemy tomorrow, or vice-versa.

There will be a difference between overt and covert causes in modern war. 

The modern battlefield is virtually limitless.  From the physical geography of the seas and mountains and plains, to outer-space, to the inner-space of psychological warfare, everywhere is where the modern war is waged.  There is no escape, the modern battlefield, thanks to technology, is stretched to its ultimate limits.

Conventional and technological battle space will eventually converge to the point where they are co-dependent.  This will break down the military/non-military application of technology and so the entire military/non-military boundary.

If that young lad setting out with his orders should ask today: "Where is the battlefield?" The answer would be: "Everywhere."

The most likely protagonists of modern warfare are as follows:
The Hacker: no military training, yet able to impair national security.  Have too many varieties of motivation to name.  Mainly however, they do not feel bound to the rules of society at large and are willing to break them to get ahead. 
Terrorists: a certain military flavour, but non-state organizations with a fanatical ideology.  Virtually insane, very likely to be the cause of future wars, very hard for conventional militaries to beat due to their willingness not to be bound by conventional rules of warfare.
The non-professional ideologue: these are a variety of warrior, though many in the category differ from each other.  They may be international financiers, or media moguls, who have their own unshakeable beliefs and willing to use their resources to get their way.

The Americans have summed up the four main forms that warfighting will take in the future as: 1)Information warfare;  2) Precision warfare;  3) Joint operations; and 4) Military operations other than war (MOOTW)

Information warfare will be the basis of future wars.  It will typically involve information processing and stealthy, long range attacks.

Precision warfare allows soldiers to do away with the nightmare of attrition warfare by use of concealment, speed, accuracy, high effectiveness and few collateral damages. 

Joint operations are those that combine various strategic approaches, such as the join Air-force and Special Forces attacks in Afghanistan. 

MOOTW is the most interesting, since the variety of measures needed in the next century will come under this heading.  This will deal with war in its broader conception, including peace keeping, border controls, dealing with riots, military aid, arms control and counter-terrorism, among others.

Types of modern war:
Trade war.  The use of domestic laws on the international stage, arbitrary use of tariffs, embargoes on technology exports etc etc...The UN embargo on Iraq is the text-book case of this.
Financial war.  Carried out by international financiers, for a profit.  The destruction of national economies can collapse governments and bring social chaos as nasty as any war could.  The textbook example is the Asian financial crisis of 1998.  Another would be the German strategy in ending the Cold War, through loans and a strong currency. 
New Terror War.  Unlike traditional terror, this relies on highly unconventional attacks, using high technology and extremely unexpected weaponry.  9/11 and the Tokyo Sarin attack are two examples of this.  Classic terrorist models may also be employed in information warfare along with this. 
Ecological warfare.  This is the use of technology to effect the natural state of rivers, the earth's crust, polar ice sheeting, the ozone layer etc in war.  Man-made El Nino's or earthquakes may become new weapons within a few generations.  Most likely to be employed by terrorists, given their disregard for rules and life, especially when one considers the dangers of an ecological holocaust. 
Other methods.  Could include:  psychological warfare (spreading rumors to
intimidate the enemy and break down his will); smuggling warfare (throwing markets into confusion and attacking economic order); media warfare (manipulating what people see and hear in order to lead public opinion along); drug warfare (obtaining sudden and huge illicit profits by spreading disaster in other countries); network warfare (venturing out in secret and concealing one's identity in a type of warfare that is virtually impossible to guard against); technological warfare (creating monopolies by setting standards independently); fabrication warfare (presenting a counterfeit appearance of real strength before the eyes of the enemy); resources warfare (grabbing riches by plundering stores of resources); economic aid warfare (bestowing favor in the open and contriving to control matters in secret); cultural warfare (leading cultural trends along in order to assimilate those with different views); and international law warfare (seizing the earliest opportunity to set up regulations), etc., etc

Methods not involving military force seem just as likely to facilitate the goals of the war, if not being more successful.  There is a fundamental mistake in seeing war as politics with bloodshed, instead, war IS politics.  Confining yourself to only military models with make it very difficult to regain a foothold, and will make one vulnerable to a cocktail method of mixed military and non-military attacks.

Overnight temporary and tacit alliances will be the method of future alliance building. 

Because news has become real-time reporting from the battlefield, the media has itself become a tool or part of warfare.  It no longer merely provides information coming from the battlefield, but has become a tool for waging conflict.

The western media and US military were allies in the Gulf War, joining hands to tie a noose around Saddam's neck.  The media denied Iraq a right to defend itself, the military the ability.  The lopsided media force morally undermined Saddam's perceived right to defence and, along with military one-sidedness, sealed his fate.

Psychological warfare is not new, but creative psychological warfare is.  In the Iraq war, the psychological campaign was the second most effective weapon after the bombs themselves. 

Consider the cost of modern war.  Should we not consider building weapons that are less costly than their targets, instead of more expensive?

If you have no way of defeating an enemy force, engage in mass killing of its rank and file soldiers. 

Warfare reliant on high technology, high investment, high expenditure and high payback is pointless and restrictive in the extreme.  Technological performance is rated above military and strategic application and creates stagnant forces unable to seize new opportunities. 

Small scale expeditionary forces able to carry out non-war combat have become 'institutional mace', making the chances of violent confrontation more likely.  The lower the barriers to using force, the more likely the chance of it happening becomes.

Only through the addition of non-military combat operations alongside traditional military ones can the true nature of unrestricted warfare be understood.

Observing, considering and solving problems from a technological viewpoint has both very obvious advantages and many disadvantages as well.

The revolution in military thought will at last be a revolution in forms and methods of conflict.  Only the completion of changes bought on by technology can be sufficient for this.

Old reasons for waging war are territorial disputes, nationality conflicts, religious violence and control of spheres of power, and while these still exist, it must be understood that there are modern reasons for waging war as well, which include grabbing resources, contending markets, controlling capital, trade sanctions and other economic factors, which are quickly becoming primary factors in going to war.  The new reasons are social, political and economic, not just purely military.

The diffuse nature of modern warfare makes it impossible to rely purely on military power to secure oneself.  Composite forces are necessary to national security and the means for such forces to launch operations as well.

There may be no bloodshed or dead bodies, but you will be able to tell what is a war by this definition: it is any action undertaken to force the enemy to satisfy one's own interests.

Rules are only followed when beneficial to oneself.  Small nations follow rules to protect them from larger ones, who make rules in order to control others.  Large states also break rules when it is in their interest to ignore them, which form an interesting contrast to non-state organizations, terrorists and hackers, who equally disregard the rules when they see fit.

The destruction of rules results in the breaking down of international norms.  All agents who employ non-military warfare actions to declare war against the international community use all means possible to go beyond nations, laws and measures.  Visible boundaries, or invisible ones, international law, internet space, ethical principals and behavioural norms have no limiting effect.  Being responsible to no-one, nor limited by rules, there is no disgrace in the selection of targets or the methods employed. 

Terrorists are not dangerous because of their numbers, but because of their unwillingness to be bound by the rules.  A terrorist group with a nuclear weapon is far more dangerous than a nation with one.

In times when the old order is about to be torn down, those who first destroy the rules are the first to adapt to the new situation.  Hence the rise of terrorism.

People define themselves in terms of labels.  They use labels such as Communist, Muslim, businessman, woman or AIDS sufferer in order to define their own sense of being and place in the world, how they understand their relations with other people.

Usually, one of these identities is a Totality, that is to say, it is an idea which defines their entire relationship with everything they come into contact with, it defines their purpose and gives them a teleological view of reality.  They filter not only their own personality and identity through this label, but everyone else as well.  Some labels with built in teleological assumptions, like Christianity or Communism, are more conducive to this than others.

The problem is in challenging a person's label is not that you are challenging the label in and of itself.  People acquire labels rather easily, even passively.  Consumerism, as a meta-label, creates many labels from which an individual person can buy into with very little in the way of barriers, for example.  The problem comes with challenging the root assumption which shapes the way they think about the world.

If you do this, the person in question will get angry.  Not because the label, in and of itself, has any worth.  It has meaning, to be sure, but labels have meaning only in how they shape our perceptions of ourselves and others.  It is because it removes a model of reality that has been built up around the philosophical assumptions within that label.  By challenging a long held assumption or model, you are removing their understanding of reality.  In a very real sense, you are throwing them into the metaphysical chaos of reality, without any filters or safeguards to protect the defenceless mind.

The reaction therefore is one of denial, backed by an emotional response.  The best way to avoid dealing with the above situation is to deny the accusations of the person involved.  Because their attack is against the label that defines the world-view, so the logic goes, the attacker feels threatened by the label.  The desire to disprove the label is taken from within the world-view built on the basis of it, according to the person who holds it.  To them, it is impossible to move outside the system  because of its totality, and therefore any contrary evidence must be a plot by the enemies of that system to undermine it.  The system of identity politics therefore creates its own enemies.

The problem therefore comes in direct attack.  While very satisfying and, when done with a neutral audience, educational, it cannot deal with the problem of identity politics on its own.  As I see it, there are only three possible solutions

1  Actions instead of words.  Don't tell a person their world-view is wrong, show them.  Problems are Law of Fives/perception allowing the event to be built into their world-view, denial, rationalizations.
2  Create the conditions of metaphysical chaos in their entirety.  Bypass their denial and rationalizations by creating the mindset and conditions they wish to avoid in their external environment.
3  Consumerism.  Reduce their label to nothing more than another consumer choice within a marketplace of ideas and identities.

Thoughts and comments?

Pretty much every book or text file I thought it might be useful for a Discordian to have.  Covers philosophy, history, religion, tricks, cons, conspiracy theories, strategy, psychology....and a bunch of other stuff besides.

Its about 590 MB in total, so I've had to split the download.

http://www.mediafire.com/?d91iceg91xj
http://www.mediafire.com/?2h9gffyy9rd
http://www.mediafire.com/?0jxyb9cbwr3
http://www.mediafire.com/?03cxm12cbsd
http://www.mediafire.com/?7lty993cww2
http://www.mediafire.com/?c2ggnxwswfy

I'll add mirror download links tomorrow.

I've been considering the feasaibility of HIMEOBS a raid on these guys for a while now.

1) They're conspiratards, like Reptilian crowd.  When you raid them, they immediately assume you are paid shills of the New World Order/Zionists/internationalists/bankers/reptilians/Illuminati/sodomite aliens from Zeta Reticuli etc  This is amusing to me.

2) The mods don't seem to do much.  Plus, while the forum is relatively fast moving, it is shittily coded.  I very much doubt flood control exists, and we can see the effects of our flood attacks far more easily.

3) Those of us already over there can, once the assault has finished, come up with all sort of outlandish conspiracy theories to feed the membership there about HIMEOBS' aim.  If we say something like they are anti-Ron Paul activists, it'll likely generate a few PaulBots interest, and maybe some attention from that area.

The only problems I can see are organizing things this end, and that pictures are not allowed.  We could just use text, but I'd rather we had some HIMEOBS ASCII artwork to hit the place with, along with more usual ones you can get via Encyclopedia Dramatica etc

Questions & comments?

Lets put em here:

It was all very well going on about pure logic and how the universe was ruled by logic and the harmony of numbers, but the plain fact of the matter was that the Disc was manifestly traversing space on the back of a giant turtle and the gods had a habit of going round to atheists' houses and smashing their windows.

'We don't have gods where I come from,' said Twoflower.
'You do, you know,' said the Lady. 'Everyone has gods. You just don't think they're gods.'

The only reason for walking into the jaws of Death is so's you can steal his gold teeth.

Some pirates achieved immortality by great deeds of cruelty or derring-do. Some achieved immortality by amassing great wealth. But the captain had long ago decided that he would, on the whole, prefer to achieve immortality by not dying.

The pen is mightier than the sword if the sword is very short, and the pen is very sharp.

She was already learning that if you ignore the rules people will, half the time, quietly rewrite them so that they don't apply to you.

It is well known that a vital ingredient of success is not knowing that what you're attempting can't be done.

The only things known to go faster than ordinary light is monarchy, according to the philosopher Ly Tin Weedle. He reasoned like this: you can't have more than one king, and tradition demands that there is no gap between kings, so when a king dies the succession must therefore pass to the heir instantaneously. Presumably, he said, there must be some elementary particles — kingons, or possibly queons — that do this job, but of course succession sometimes fails if, in mid-flight, they strike an anti-particle, or republicon. His ambitious plans to use his discovery to send messages, involving the careful torturing of a small king in order to modulate the signal, were never fully expanded because, at that point, the bar closed.

"You won't get away with this," said Cutwell. He thought for a bit and added, "Well, you will probably get away with it, but you'll feel bad about it on your deathbed and you'll wish — " He stopped talking.

'And what would humans be without love?'
RARE, said Death.

The Hashishim, who derived their name from the vast quantities of hashish they consumed, were unique among vicious killers in being both deadly and, at the same time, inclined to giggle, groove to interesting patterns of light and shade on their terrible knife blades and, in extreme cases, fall over.

They suffered from the terrible delusion that something could be done. They seemed prepared to make the world the way they wanted or die in the attempt, and the trouble with dying in the attempt was that you died in the attempt.

Take it from me, there's nothing more terrible than someone out to do the world a favour.

Wizards don't like philosophy very much. As far as they are concerned, one hand clapping makes a sound like 'cl'.

No gods anywhere play chess. They prefer simple, vicious games, where you Do Not Achieve Transcendence but Go Straight to Oblivion; A key to the understanding of all religion is that a god's idea of amusement is Snakes and Ladders with greased rungs.

Demons were like genies or philosophy professors — if you didn't word things exactly right, they delighted in giving you absolutely accurate and completely misleading answers.

Seeing, contrary to popular wisdom, isn't believing. It's where belief stops, because it isn't needed any more.

Nature abhors dimensional abnormalities, and seals them neatly away so that they don't upset people. Nature, in fact, abhors a lot of things, including vacuums, ships called the "Marie Celeste", and the chuck keys for electric drills.

It was amazing, this mystic business. You tell them a lie, and then when you don't need it any more you tell them another lie and tell them they're progressing along the road to wisdom. Then instead of laughing they follow you even more, hoping that at the heart of all the lies they'll find the truth. And bit by bit they accept the unacceptable.

Just erotic, nothing kinky. It's the difference between using a feather and using a chicken.

Demons have existed on the Discworld for at least as long as the gods, who in many ways they closely resemble. The difference is basically the same as that between terrorists and freedom fighters.

Astfgl had achieved in Hell a particularly high brand of boredom which is like the boredom you get which is a) costing you money, and b) is taking place while you should be having a nice time.

Intellectually, Ridcully maintained his position for two reasons. One was that he never, ever, changed his mind about anything. The other was that it took him several minutes to understand any new idea put to him, and this is a very valuable trait in a leader, because anything anyone is still trying to explain to you after two minutes is probably important and anything they give up after a mere minute or so is almost certainly something they shouldn't have been bothering you with in the first place.

No naked little men sat on the summit dispensing wisdom, because the first thing the truly wise man works out is that sitting around on mountaintops gives you not only haemorrhoids but frostbitten haemorrhoids.

All witches are very conscious of stories. They can feel stories, in the same way that a bather in a little pool can feel the unexpected trout. Knowing how stories work is almost all the battle. For example, when an obvious innocent sits down with three experienced card sharpers and says 'How do you play this game, then?', someone is about to be shaken down until their teeth fall out.

Granny Weatherwax didn't like maps. She felt instinctively that they sold the landscape short.

"Listen, happy endings is fine if they turn out happy," said Granny, glaring at the sky. "But you can't make 'em for other people. Like the only way you could make a happy marriage is by cuttin' their heads off as soon as they say "I do", yes? You can't make happiness..."

The memory stole over him: a desert is what you think it is. And now, you can think clearly...
There were no lies here. All fancies fled away. That's what happened in all deserts. It was just you, and what you believed.
What have I always believed?
That, on the whole, and by and large, if a man lived properly, not according to what any priests said, but according to what seemed decent and honest inside, then it would, in the end, more or less, turn out all right.
You couldn't get that on a banner. But the desert looked better already.
Fri'it set out.

It is a popular fact that nine-tenths of the brain is not used and, like most popular facts, it is wrong... It is used. And one of its functions is to make the miraculous seem ordinary and turn the unusual into the usual.
Because if this was not the case, then human beings, faced with the daily wondrousness of everything, would go around wearing big stupid grins, similar to those worn by certain remote tribesmen who occasionally get raided by the authorities and have the contents of their plastic greenhouses very seriously inspected.

Gods don't like people not doing much work. People who aren't busy all the time might start to think.

And it all meant this: that there are hardly any excesses of the most crazed psychopath that cannot easily be duplicated by a normal, kindly family man who just comes in to work every day and has a job to do.

'Did not the Great God declare, through the Prophet Abbys, that there is no greater and more honourable sacrifice than one's own life for the God?'
'Indeed he did,' said Fri'it. He couldn't help recalling that Abbys had been a bishop in the Citadel for fifty years before the Great God has chosen him. Screaming enemies had never come at him with a sword. He'd never looked in to the eyes of someone who wished him dead.

'I know about sureness,' said Didactylos. Now the light irascible tone had drained out of his voice. 'I remember before I was blind, I went to Omnia once. This was before the borders were closed, when you still let people travel. And in your Citadel I saw a crowd stoning a man to death in a pit. Ever seen that?'
'It has to be done,' Brutha mumbled. 'So the soul can be shriven and — '
'Don't know about soul. Never been that kind of a philosopher,' said Didactylos. 'All I know is, it was a horrible sight.'
'The state of the body is not — '
'Oh, I'm not talking about the poor bugger in the pit,' said the philosopher. 'I'm talking about the people throwing the stones. They were sure all right. They were sure it wasn't them in the pit. You could see it in their faces. So glad that it wasn't them that they were throwing just as hard as they could.'

His philosophy was a mixture of three famous school — the Cynics, the Stoics and the Epicureans — and summed up all three of them in his famous phrase, 'You can't trust any bugger further you can throw him, and there's nothing you can do about it, so let's have a drink. Mine's double, if you are buying. Thank you. And a packet of nuts. Her left bosom is nearly uncovered, eh? Two more packets, then!'

"That's why it's always worth having a few philosophers around the place. One minute it's all Is Truth Beauty and Is Beauty Truth, and Does A Falling Tree in the Forest Make A Sound if There's No one There to Hear It, and then just when you think they're going to start dribbling one of 'em says, Incidentally, putting a thirty-foot parabolic reflector on a high place to shoot the rays of the sun at an enemy's ships would be a very interesting demonstration of optical principles."

"Chain letters," said the Tyrant. "The Chain Letter to the Ephebians. Forget Your Gods. Be Subjugated. Learn to Fear. Do not break the chain — the last people who did woke up one morning to find fifty thousand armed men on their lawn."

"Slave is an Ephebian word. In Om we have no word for slave," said Vorbis. "So I understand," said the Tyrant. "I imagine that fish have no word for water."

'But all them things exist,' said Nanny Ogg.
'That's no call to go around believing in them. It only encourages 'em.'

Nanny Ogg had a pragmatic attitude to the truth; she told it if it was convenient and she couldn't be bothered to make up something more interesting.

The Monks of Cool, whose tiny and exclusive monastery is hidden in a really cool and laid-back valley in the lower Ramtops, have a passing-out test for a novice. He is taken into a room full of all types of clothing and asked: Yo†, my son, which of these is the most stylish thing to wear? And the correct answer is: Hey, whatever I select.

† Cool, but not necessarily up to date

Sometimes it's better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness.

There is a curse. They say: may you live in interesting times.

'But there are causes worth dying for,' said Butterfly.
'No, there aren't! Because you've only got one life but you can pick up another five causes on any street corner!'
'Good grief, how can you live with a philosophy like that?'
Rincewind took a deep breath.
'Continuously!'

When someone is saved from certain death by a strange concatenation of circumstances, they say that's a miracle. But of course, if someone is killed by a freak chain of events — the oil spill just there, the safety fence broken just there — that must also be a miracle. Just because it's not nice doesn't mean it's not miraculous.

His progress through life was hampered by his tremendous sense of his own ignorance, a disability which affects all too few people.

And, while it was regarded as pretty good evidence of criminality to be living in a slum, for some reason owning a whole street of them merely got you invited to the very best social occasions.

I Suggest You Take Me And Smash Me And Grind The Bits Into Fragments And Pound The Fragments Into Powder And Mill Them Again To The Finest Dust There Can Be, And I Believe You Will Not Find A Single Atom Of Life-'
'True! Let's do it!'
'However, In Order To Test This Fully, One Of You Must Volunteer To Undergo The Same Process.'
There was silence.
'That's not fair,' said a priest, after a while. 'All anyone has to do is bake up your dust again and you'll be alive...'
There was more silence.

'You Say To People "Throw Off Your Chains" And They Make New Chains For Themselves?'
'Seems to be a major human activity, yes.'
Dorfl rumbled as he thought about this. 'Yes,' he said eventually. 'I Can See Why. Freedom Is Like Having The Top Of Your Head Opened Up.'
'I'll have to take your word for that, Constable.'

'No it's not! said Constable Visit. 'Atheism is a denial of a god.'
'Therefore It Is A Religious Position,' said Dorfl. 'Indeed, A True Atheist Thinks Of The Gods Constantly, Albeit In Terms of Denial. Therefore, Atheism Is A Form Of Belief. If The Atheist Truly Did Not Believe, He Or She Would Not Bother To Deny.'

"Just because someone's a member of an ethnic minority doesn't mean they're not a nasty small-minded little jerk ..."

You never ever volunteered. Not even if a sergant stood there and said, "We need someone to drink alcohol, bottles of, and make love, passionate, to women, for the use of." There was always a snag. If a choir of angels asked for volunteers for Paradise to step forward, Nobby knew enough to take one smart pace to the rear.

What a mess the world was in, reflected Vimes. Constable Visit had told him that the meek would inherit it, and what had the poor devils done to deserve that?

'And there's the sign, Ridcully,' said the Dean. You have read it, I assume. You know? The sign which says "Do not, under any circumstances, open this door"?'
'Of course I've read it,' said Ridcully. 'Why d'yer think I want it opened?'
'Er...why?' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
'To see why they wanted it shut, of course.'†

† This exchange contains almost all you need to know about human civilisation. At least, those bits of it that are now under the sea, fenced off or still smoking.

Taken from The 33 Strategies of War (Robert Greene)

The Ojibwa tribe of the North American plains contained a warrior society known as the Windigokan (No-flight contraries).  Only the bravest men, who had demonstrated their courage by utter disregard for danger on the battlefield, could be admitted.  In fact, because they had no fear of death, they were no longer considered among the living: they slept and ate seperately and were not held to the usual codes of behaviour.  As creatures who were both alive and dead, they spoke and acted contrarily: they called a young person an old man and when one of the others told the rest to stand still, he meant charge forward.  They were glum in times of prosperity, happy in the depths of winter.  Although there was a clownish side to their behaviour, the Windigokan could inspire great terror.  No-one ever knew what they would do next.

The Windigokan were believed to be inhabited by terrifying spirits called Thunderers, which appeared in the form of giant birds [SWEET MERCIFUL FUCK, PTERODACTYLS! - Cain].  That made them somewhat inhuman.  On the battlefield they were disruptive and unpredictable, and in raiding parties downright terrifying.  In one such raid, witnessed by an outsider, they gathered first in front of the Ojibwa chief's lodge and yelled "we are not going to war!  We shall not kill the Sioux!  We shall not scalp four of them and let the rest escape!  We shall go in daytime!"  They left the camp that night, wearing customes of rags and scraps, their bodies plastered with mud and painted with splotches of wierd colour, their faces covered by frightening masks with giant, beak like noses.  They made their way through the darkness, stumbling over themselves - it was hard to see through the masks - until they came upon a large Sioux war party.  Although outnumbered, they did not flee, but danced into the enemies centre.  The grotesqueness of their dance made them seem to be possessed by demons.  Some of the Sioux backed away; others drew closer, curious and confused.  The leader of the Windigokan shouted "Don't shoot!"  The Ojibwa warriors then pulled out guns hidden under their rags, killed four of the Sioux and scalped them.  Then they danced away, the enemy too terrified by this apparition to pursue them.

After such an action, the mere appearance of the Windigokan was enough for the enemy to give them a wide berth and not risk any kind of encounter.