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So Just Exactly What ARE We Doing, Anyway?

Started by The Good Reverend Roger, January 26, 2011, 06:51:03 PM

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Cuddlefish

I think the point is being missed.

I didn't see this as an attempt to create an agenda. I saw it more as an attempt to share with each other what our individual agendas are and see where they overlap. In the case that they do overlap with someone elses, you have at least found a like-minded individual, if not a potential project partner, for whatever type "project" you got cooking, or whatever it is your doing in the first place. Though, I'm not surprised things got derailed. It's a Discordian forum, after all.

But, then again, what the hell do I know...
A fisher of men, or a manner of fish?

Scribbly

I've been thinking about this subject a lot, lately. When I was younger, I hoped that I would enter politics, campaign to turn back the oppressive and authoritarian aspects I saw in the world at that time, and generally help people have the freedom to think for themselves. I even wrote an essay about it shortly after I got turned on to Discordianism. It was for a competition hosted on POEE, 'What is a Discordian?' And I concluded with the idealistic notion that a discordian is someone who thinks for themselves, and hopes to make others think for themselves too. I found the book I won for that the other day, it made me smile. I really wish I still had a copy of that essay around somewhere.

I'm suffering from some low self-esteem these days, I guess. The more I learn, the more I realize how little I know, and the less comfortable I feel writing anything at all. I'm constantly surprised by how quick I am to leap to conclusions and buy into my preconceived notions of things, though. Which leads me to wonder how much I actually 'think for myself'. If I can't even be sure I think for myself half the time, how can I hope to make others think for themselves?

What I want to do, Roger, is still the same as it was those years ago. I still WANT to think for myself, and help others think for themselves. I've got no idea how to go about doing this, though. I tried for a while, I never really accomplished anything, and I have this awful, gnawing feeling that I never will.
I had an existential crisis and all I got was this stupid gender.

the last yatto

Goals...
Short term: finish my. Anarchy intermitten issue
Long term: wompheads thread and starting a local social club
Look, asshole:  Your 'incomprehensible' act, your word-salad, your pinealism...It BORES ME.  I've been incomprehensible for so long, I TEACH IT TO MBA CANDIDATES.  So if you simply MUST talk about your pineal gland or happy children dancing in the wildflowers, go talk to Roger, because he digs that kind of shit

The Good Reverend Roger

Quote from: Bella on January 26, 2011, 11:15:40 PM
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on January 26, 2011, 11:01:51 PM
Quote from: Bella on January 26, 2011, 10:31:07 PM
Going back to Rog's original post:


I find myself diametrically opposed to the idea of getting on board any organized, deliberate, common agenda. Don't care if other people do so, as long as they respect that I can't do it.

However, I like the idea of a framework to help board members with their individual ideas and projects...provided there's no pressure either way.  


As for my own agenda...Liam and I plan to take over the world.



Edited to add:  Oops! I spoke too soon. I plan to take over the world.

Liam, on the other hand, just informed me that all he is wants to blow up huge chunks of it and have the rest of it closely monitored by closed tv circuits and robot drones. He also says he agrees with Nigel. Everyone getting together for a common agenda is how lynch mobs start.


Except that we aren't getting together for a common agenda, necessarily.  I'm thinking of this as more of a co-op.  And I doubt we'll be running off to lynch anyone.

I can see myself in a cooperative venture. :)


Sometimes.


If I feel like it and no one expects it of me.




At least until I'm running the world.

I suppose that will do.   :lulz:

Dibs on "sneezing into the basket" when you take over.
" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

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

Phox

Quote from: Ratatosk on January 26, 2011, 08:59:37 PM
I came into Discordia after a 25 year prison sentence... or 25 years of being one of Jehovah's Witnesses... I don't exactly recall which ;-)

I was convinced that humans were 6000ish years old, that evolution was a crock of shit, that Jehovah was God, that about 6 million or so of us were gonna survive the End and that I would never die and instead live forever perfectly. I proselytized, I taught people The Truth (no kidding, that's what JW's call their belief system) I converted whole families to a religion that I now find completely useless... and sadly those families are still involved, their lives are still affected while I've moved on.

When I stumbled into Eris it was like an explosion in my head, I know it sounds corny and trite but my first read of the PD changed my perceptions more than any single thing I have ever encountered. When I later ran into all the other 'Discordianish' books (the ones I occasionally rant about), I began to process data about me. I mean seriously, the first 25 years of my life and I had never really been at all self-reflective. I never needed to... I knew the Truth, that was all there was to it.

Its taken nearly a decade to decide that for me, Discordianism isn't about what I am gonna do to the world... but about what I am gonna do to me. I do pranks, I pull off jokes and jakes and stage silly events... but I do them entirely for me. If someone else is inspired by what I'm doing that's cool... if someone engages me in something philosophical I'll share my ideas... but I write for me, I prank for me, I'm a Discordian for me.

I hang out here for me, because when I hang out in other "Discordian" forums, its an echo chamber. Here I have to reflect on my interactions with you asshats  :D

Even though I sometimes violently disagree with TGRR or RWHN or any of you other freaks... I find that I tend to reflect later on how I acted, how I screwed up the conversation... or how I made some assumption that was unwarranted.

I don't think Discordia will change the world, I doubt she'd want to anyway. The whole fucking place seem like her kind of party. I don't think memes and jakes and trolling Tea Party sites will make any difference whatsoever... except maybe give a couple of the real foaming mouths a better chance of heart attack.  :lulz:

Its taken me awhile to come to this conclusion... when I first started with Discordianism I simply replaced the old JW lines with the new PD lines and acted just as I had in the past. If the search function worked, you could find evidence of that here, even years after Eris blessed me.

It would be awesome if mankind were free, but I'm still trying to free myself.

QuoteAnd when men become free then mankind will be free.
May you be free of The Curse of Greyface.
May the Goddess put twinkles in your eyes.
May you have the knowledge of a sage,
    and the wisdom of a child. Hail Eris.



Wow. I didn't expect that I would come into this discussion finding a post I completely agreed with. I was wrong.

Of course, my only goal, such as it is, is and always has been a selfish one. I simply want to learn anything and everything I can from this place.

Juana

1. Learn. I learn a hell of a lot from you spags, and I love it.
2. Entertain myself and others.
3. Same sentiment regarding freedom as Roger
4. I'm still a bit of a revolutionary monkey. I want to leave things a bit better than I found them, which, imo, includes helping other people learn to think. I'm trying for it now as a tutor, and I *think* I may have found one way to do it when I'm actually teaching.
"I dispose of obsolete meat machines.  Not because I hate them (I do) and not because they deserve it (they do), but because they are in the way and those older ones don't meet emissions codes.  They emit too much.  You don't like them and I don't like them, so spare me the hysteria."

Don Coyote

What am I doing?

I am here because some of you fucks seemed like smart fucks from whom I could converse with. I am just here and learning about this discowhatsit crap because it seems fun and life with out fun is fucking pointless.

The Good Reverend Roger

I'm liking these responses.  I'll scrub them into a list tonight, and present it back at everyone, so they can see if I missed or misrepresented anyone.
" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

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

LMNO

I'd like steal from HoverCat and add 'Learning' to my list, because that's an awesome answer.

hooplala

Quote from: LMNO, PhD on January 27, 2011, 02:16:36 PM
I'd like steal from HoverCat and add 'Learning' to my list, because that's an awesome answer.

Ditto.
"Soon all of us will have special names" — Professor Brian O'Blivion

"Now's not the time to get silly, so wear your big boots and jump on the garbage clowns." — Bob Dylan?

"Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)"
— Walt Whitman

P3nT4gR4m

I'm in it for the art. Art for art's sake. I made Videos a while back, BJ and scareyface and stuff with the mission to entertain. BJ wasn't intended to bring about the end of the christian church (although it would have made me laugh if it had) or even to deprogram one or two. It was me laughing at the situation and trying to spread that chuckle through art.

Art is reciprocal for me - I've always seen it that way. If it wasn't for people like me there'd be nothing beautiful or funny or awesome in the world and if that happened I'd feel compelled to burn it to the ground. It's pure self-indulgence. I want to be entertained and the price is to entertain back.

So this place? It entertains me. You guys entertain me. You're a bunch of smart motherfuckers and twisted funny with it. There's a serious side to the place too, that comes up from time to time, where a bunch of you might seem to take the world and the people in it a lot more seriously than I ever could and I tend to sit on the sidelines and watch the flames and sometimes it's funny and sometimes it depressing.

So here's my plan - I'ma keep doing what I'm doing which may be video one day, music the next and pictures the day after that. Or I might even find some new medium to explore. You think there's something cool I could help you with then ask me - worst I can do is say no.

Just because I don't feel compelled to change the world doesn't mean I wouldn't enjoy doing it anyway, given the right set of circumstances. Just do me one favour - never demand that I take anything even remotely seriously and I'll return the favour by never demanding that you don't.

I'm up to my arse in Brexit Numpties, but I want more.  Target-rich environments are the new sexy.
Not actually a meat product.
Ass-Kicking & Foot-Stomping Ancient Master of SHIT FUCK FUCK FUCK
Awful and Bent Behemothic Results of Last Night's Painful Squat.
High Altitude Haggis-Filled Sex Bucket From Beyond Time and Space.
Internet Monkey Person of Filthy and Immoral Pygmy-Porn Wart Contagion
Octomom Auxillary Heat Exchanger Repairman
walking the fine line line between genius and batshit fucking crazy

"computation is a pattern in the spacetime arrangement of particles, and it's not the particles but the pattern that really matters! Matter doesn't matter." -- Max Tegmark

The Good Reverend Roger

Quote from: P3nT4gR4m on January 27, 2011, 02:53:19 PM
I'm in it for the art. Art for art's sake. I made Videos a while back, BJ and scareyface and stuff with the mission to entertain. BJ wasn't intended to bring about the end of the christian church (although it would have made me laugh if it had) or even to deprogram one or two. It was me laughing at the situation and trying to spread that chuckle through art.

Art is reciprocal for me - I've always seen it that way. If it wasn't for people like me there'd be nothing beautiful or funny or awesome in the world and if that happened I'd feel compelled to burn it to the ground. It's pure self-indulgence. I want to be entertained and the price is to entertain back.

So this place? It entertains me. You guys entertain me. You're a bunch of smart motherfuckers and twisted funny with it. There's a serious side to the place too, that comes up from time to time, where a bunch of you might seem to take the world and the people in it a lot more seriously than I ever could and I tend to sit on the sidelines and watch the flames and sometimes it's funny and sometimes it depressing.

So here's my plan - I'ma keep doing what I'm doing which may be video one day, music the next and pictures the day after that. Or I might even find some new medium to explore. You think there's something cool I could help you with then ask me - worst I can do is say no.

Just because I don't feel compelled to change the world doesn't mean I wouldn't enjoy doing it anyway, given the right set of circumstances. Just do me one favour - never demand that I take anything even remotely seriously and I'll return the favour by never demanding that you don't.

The whole idea is supposed to be fun.  After all, nobody's getting paid for this.
" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

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

Ari

I find a lot in this thread that reflects my thoughts in some form, only put into better words.

Still, I want to add my own...

Personally, why am I still lurking around here after what could well be three something years by now?
Discordianism and the words and actions of you all had a major and positive influence on the way I engaged in that ongoing project of self-development.
So point number one: knowledge / learning
I'm here for me, to add more perspectives to the ones I can come up with on various subjects, to gain perspectives on my perspectives. It's an ongoing learning process, an ongoing remodelling process.
At times I will fall flat on my face because I didn't watch where I put my feet, it will hurt but I always get up again. You are very good at making sure I notice when I lost focus or just did something outright stupid. I like that.
Change is the fuel which drives my life-engine. I wouldn't want it any other way.

As to what I am doing right now?
I can't sit idly by while I see the giant shitwave that humanity as a whole seems to become more and more, engulfing the entire planet. It may be too late, it may never work, but I don't like to look back and see that I didn't even gave it a shot. So I try to connect on- and offline with the remaining humans who like to think for themselves, and who realise how much outside tampering is being done on this through various mechanisms... and who might dare to do something about it.
Anyone with half a brain can create a cosy space within the system, only a few dare to throw sticks into the cogwheels though.

So point number two: creation
I'm here to bounce ideas back and forth. Take them apart, put them back together. Get involved in bigger things, for bigger impact or just plain more fun. Currently I'm preparing for a sailing trip to Iceland in summer. Details will emerge when the concept is ready for general tearing apart (and hopefully the core will be stable enough to survive it). When I have spare time I like to create music, which hopefully results in something I feel satisfied with soon. Creating alone is only have as fun as creating as a group though.

Which leads me to point number three: fun times
My taste in fun is often perceived as freaky and perverted by the average cabbage. Which kinda seems like an accurate description. A lot of people here are also into freaky fun things. So I come back for more.


So much for that. I have a few days off and will hitch-hike to another town now, see what and who I run into, then return.
Because I can. Whatever the fuck I want. =)
パンクビッチ

Cramulus

I had to wait a day before I posted ITT or I would have come in white hot. In the future, if you want my participation (as your PMs indicate), don't launch it with an insulting critique of my character.

More on topic....

I do most of my work in Kopyleft. This is because I want to share resources with others, (free ideas evolve faster than protected ideas) and I don't give a shit if the "wrong people" are inspired by it. You say that it's a big flaw in the Kopyleft method, that bad people (and maybe even one the Aryan Brotherhood!) will use my work. They'll transform it until it's unrecognizable. Well that's not happening, and even if it did, I don't care. I still want to share things with people. That's my creative process.

I do this way specifically because it divorces me of any ego attached to the piece. It makes it purely about the idea and not about my presentation of self. Take a flip through the Et Cetera, my real name isn't in it, and my internet handle is only in it once or twice. If the ideas are any good, somebody will build on them. Maybe they'll even improve them. This is more likely because I'm not demanding that you track me down and beg for my permission or approval. Once I've transmitted an idea into your head, the ball's in your park.

These days I generally only build on other Kopyleft work because I hate the territory games attached to copyright. I mean, look at the amazing posters that Net created out of your rants. Those are now gone from the Internet because of ego. If you weren't trying to protect them from being used by the wrong people, those posters would be still be getting stapled to telephone poles. But hey, maybe I'm wrong and it's for the best that people like Net are too intimidated to build on them. Keeps 'em more pure that way, and you can maintain control.

ANYWAY

In the interest of posting "to an actual end", and not "posting as a form of ego", my thoughts on this matter are here and here and I tried here and a little here too.

After being exhausted by the drama in the above threads, my emotions are best captured by the immortal words of Roger Himself:

Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on April 01, 2009, 05:14:21 AM
I'm interested, mostly to watch people herd cats.



:pax:

The Good Reverend Roger

Quote from: Cramulus on January 27, 2011, 04:21:43 PM
These days I generally only build on other Kopyleft work because I hate the territory games attached to copyright. I mean, look at the amazing posters that Net created out of your rants. Those are now gone from the Internet because of ego. If you weren't trying to protect them from being used by the wrong people, those posters would be still be getting stapled to telephone poles.

Actually, no, he deleted them all and demanded that everyone else do the same, because he and I got in a fight over the way he was talking to Nigel.

But let's not let what actually happened get in the way.

Also, that wasn't an insulting critique on your character, it was pretty much your own words, taken from one of the times that it was explained to me what a shit I am for driving off a troll.  And in this thread, I was pretty much agreeing with you.

Sorry I bothered trying to explain.
" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

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