Moral cohesion and the Discordian Society

[Cain]

Ladies and gentleman, we have a problem.  It is one that almost 100% of us, myself especially included, are guilty of.  It is one that, if it is not overcome, will likely mean we end up getting killed or imprisoned in the bad times that are coming, or at the very best, will leave us in our current situation that we are now in, with minimal influence and held captive to the workings of others.

Our morale sucks.

Really badly sucks.

Now, to be fair, there are a number of reasons for this.  We were caught off guard in the 90s and the opening years of the Bush administration.  With all the advances that were being made, with an ever more assertive media, 'progressive' governments in charge of the western world, the internet, lack of nuclear terror, the threat of nationalist terrorism receding, we had reason to believe things were, in fact, getting better.  Not totally better, to be sure.  There was still a lot of injustice, secrecy, casually created violence and poverty in the world.  But trends of awareness, the various grass root movements that had arisen and flourished (specifically without the level of government intimidation that had existed during the Cold War) were all good indicators for the future.

In short, we got lazy, and therefore sucker punched, big time.

The current wave of authoritarianism has infected pretty much the whole of the western world.  It came fast and unexpectedly.  Torture is back on the agenda, secret wire taps, gulags, suspension of haebus corpus etc all came out of nowhere and has dominated the political debate of the last decade, nearly, and will likely continue.

But more importantly, we ourselves have not helped.

We could have.  Setbacks can be overcome.  Hell, in the 60s they had COINTELPRO, which is even worse than what we have now.  At least civil rights leaders are not being assassinated by ,Äúlone gunmen,Äù anymore, though certainly the tarring and feathering they receive in the press is a non-violent equivalent.  Things are not yet that bad, so a comeback should have been in the making, probably around 4 years ago or so.  But it has not.

Thats because the second problem is not related to external events, but is inside of our heads.

Virtually everyone who becomes a Discordian does so because they chose to, not because they were forced into it.  That gives them a peculiar disposition, that is not found among many other groups.  Because they signed up freely, and usually have the presence of mind to deal with absurdity, contradiction and multiple conflicting belief systems, they are very hard headed.

And wont back down very easily.  To anyone, including other Discordians.

So long as Discordians are willing to stick it to each other as much as they would to a Greyface, then nothing can be solved.

Lets face it, we are numerically weak.  We do not use violence (except in exceptional circumstances), command any sort of control over the media or have a ton of cash.  Our only chance is a variant of guerrilla warfare, fought on terms of our choosing.

And the key to winning guerrilla wars is moral cohesion.  The entire idea is whoever survives the longest without imploding invariably wins.  An example is in order: as you recall, in the film of V for Vendetta, it is not Codename V who kills Adam Susan.  He plays Norsefire and Finch like fiddles, pitting them against each other until the very top of the government implodes under its own suspicious nature.  Susan cannot trust Creedy, Creedy feels threatened by Susan, and Finch suspects both were involved in the terrorist attacks that bought them to power.  V sets all this in motion, of course, and eventually topples the fascist government, but they need not have played along.  Not if they had trusted their own people.

And because of this, of how we have been for the last several years, we will lose any and every encounter we take part in, except against the weakest of enemies, who are already factionalized or limited in other ways.  Right now, we are just about able to hold our own against some fluffy pagans and their sexually deviant webmaster.  How can we ever expect to change the international system, or undermine the various governments that we despise, if we cannot even destroy an insignificant twit like this without major planning and grief?

Now, I am not saying we should become consensus city, or that there will not be disagreements of any sort.  Nor is this some exceptionally Byzantine and laborious way of telling people to go easy on the n00bs.  However, once someone is in, and considered in, that should afford them a certain level of respect and leeway.  It is a mark of honour, to be among us, and we should recognize it as such.  Furthermore, we will make it known that to battle with any single Discordian would mean to battle not a single faction, while the rest stood by and waited for a final result, but to deal with the entire Discordian society. 

To take us on would mean dealing with at least 60 or 70 vicious, smart, free-thinking and amazingly competent individuals (perhaps thousands more, as our networked numbers grow and more recruits are bought into the fold).  A single Discordian can be a very formidable opponent, as people like Hunter, TGRR, LMNO, ECH, Silly etc prove.  But what of these backed up by the entire weight of several forums worth of people?  This is the secret of power, that it resides in relationships and networks, not isolation and individual ability.  In short, to take on the Discordians will be to lose.

To that effect, I have buried all axes and vendettas I am carrying.  Even those most recent or longest standing ones.  I have signed up  to EB&G again, with peace in my heart.  I will not raise a hand against another Discordian at all, unless it is absolutely necessary, in circumstances I see as being next to impossible.  All I expect is similar leeway in return.  It need not be perfect, or even chummy, but so long as the fact I am a Discordian and that we have bigger fish to fry is remembered, then I will be fine.

I suggest others do the same, though I do understand it is a bitter pill to swallow, in many cases.  Long ago I made the case for not bothering with ideological purity in achieving our goals.  Right now, I feel the same applies with personality clashes.  We are not numerous enough to pick and choose who we can work with.  Lets bury the personal issues, and get on with the job in hand.  Which incidentally, is part of what is to come next.

[Mangrove]

Wow.

My thought is that the chestnut memes of: 'stick apart' and 'cat herding' are tantamount to 'signing our own novelty death warrants' in terms of provoking any change of thinking in the world at large.

Mrs Mang & I were having a related discussion only this morning. We were laughing at people who make statements like: "I don't forgive or forget. If you cross me, you're finished....because I'm Italian." Yeah...like it's Italy's fault that you're a 4th generation intolerable, narrow-minded dickwad.

By the same token, there's a danger that we're too reliant on certain cliches, that practically justify and guarantee that we'll turn on each other and dissipate any momentum.

After a long period of dormancy, I've been churning over ideas concerning BIP and also the newly emerging 'shrapnel' idea. It seems to me that PD.com is more about the spirit, rather than the letter of Discordianism (if such a statement can be made). It's why we have the 50 post suggestion and a general malaise for excessive LOLFNORDPINEAL23!!11 stuff.

The advantage to the PD as a book, is that it does contain some salient points, secreted between surrealist bollocks and fluff. Because the actual 'meat' of the book is stated rather succintly, it's fairly easy for someone of moderate intelligence and literacy to absorb. That's great.

The downside, is that things that are absorbed easily, may quickly bypass critical functioning. It becomes all too convenient to affect the apparent 'vocabulary' of Discordianism, without observing the underlying principles, which I believe to be the more important part.

We're being hamstrung by our own cliches.

For future projects to succeed (ie: completing an updated PD) it'll have to be as succinct. We do not need to recycle any of the Eris, 5 ton of flax vocabulary, because we're developing our own. The WOMPers and other artistic deviants (liek Silly) have provided us with some really fantastic imagery. We're long past the stamps and cut/paste collages of the original PD.

Right now, the language & imagery that we use is contemporary. If there's people still talking about this shit 30 years from now on internet forums, there will probably be a jaded bunch of people, not unlike ourselves who are slapping n00bs for launching into a cascade of mitten icons and describing things as 'win' or 'fail'.

So...uh..in summary. Agree with Cain. More product, less in-fighting (unless absolutely essential). We have a big resource here, intellectually & creatively speaking. We can not only extract the essentials from the PD for a new audience, we can add something uniquely our own. Just so long as we remember that today's cutting edge is tomorrow's telling someone to shut the fuck up and think for themselves.


Damn...so tempting to end this with 'or kill me'...but out of respect to TGRR, I won't.


PS tl:dr

[Cain]

Cheers dude.  Some very pertinent points in your reply as well, I feel.  I've always been more about the spirit of Discordianism, because I feel if I wasn't, then I would also get hung up on certain cliches and phrases, instead of what it means to me.  It also makes me, to a degree, more respectful of those with whom I have theological/philosophical differences.

But Discordians are, in many ways, social guerrillas.  Therefore, those of us who do want a measure of influence will have to start to adapt those measures, and indeed further them.  Or else we will be, at best, another minor focus group.  (although funnier than most of them).

[Mangrove]

In some ways, it feels like our URL is false advertising. It's not unreasonable that people see it, and go 'Great! I can get all my FNORRD23s out of my system here', not knowing (often when it's too late) that the content of the forum has moved somewhere else.

And yes, I know - 100% guilty of having done that. Though my weak defence is that at the time, the tolerance threshold for it was much higher than it is today and I found my own schtick.

I think that not only do we have to look back on the PD and find what is still relevant, but we should also consider what we have/know that they did not when they first put it together. The world (in some respects) is a very different place than it was when it was written.

[Triple Zero]

great writeup, cain. was this the thing you've had brewing for the past couple of weeks but couldn't post?

now, my reply is going to be a bit on the negative side, but paradoxically enough i still think you brought some very interesting and important points up. it's just that the solutions and conclusions you get from it are--at least for me--not so simple.

i have a few things to say about it, and these are all on personal title, so i'm not speaking for anybody, but you seem to be talking about all discordians on this board, which includes me:

- my morale sucks mostly because of a lot of (rather personal) reasons other than the ones you stated.

Furthermore, we will make it known that to battle with any single Discordian would mean to battle not a single faction, while the rest stood by and waited for a final result, but to deal with the entire Discordian society.

i don't see any way i could ever promise this and stay true to myself.

i can understand how you explain this would be a good thing, but really, some discordians do really stupid shit and if i were to have myself drawn and make enemies from every little war that is started against them .. i find myself disagreeing WAY too often with some of the things discordians in general say, or say to stand for. and in 90% of the cases i keep this to myself, because while the explanations would be interesting, the drama wouldn't be worth it.

How can we ever expect to change the international system, or undermine the various governments that we despise, if we cannot even destroy an insignificant twit like this without major planning and grief?

it would probably help if the people actually carrying out the attempt believed it was necessary
and/or the people believing it was necessary actually carrying it out.

i know i learned one thing, and that's that i can't justify that sort of stuff to myself.
it's like being somebody else's soldier, which made me think at some point "what the fuck am i actually doing here?"

yeah, you can pretty much call that a morale problem, if you like.

(and even then, i'm really bad at this hate thing. even if it was my own. i try it from time to time, and it simply never works out for me)



now apart from that you speak about personal issues with other discordians. i have none. never had, and probably never will, and definitely not for any prolongued time, because if there's anything i can't stand, it's having personal issues with people. and i'm very good at forgiving and making compromises. so from that part, i'm all with you.

but from the part where you suggest we should all side with eachother, stand blindly behind eachother when one of us is "wronged". how do we know who is wrong?
no it's this right, and this ability to think for myself and decide on a case-by-case basis whether i want to support something or not, is one of the big reasons why i find myself so well in discordianism.

i'm not one to blindly follow a cause. because i know causes, and causes aren't people. just like nations, corporations and religions. just like them, causes can suddenly change and turn against you. because what you seem to be suggesting is that we fight for "something bigger than people" .. remember what Pratchett wrote about that in "Interesting Times" ?

(edit: little fixes of really horrible sentences straightened out a bit)

[Cain]

That is true.  The problem of freeloaders is a valid one, as it effects any grouping beyond a reasonable side.

Perhaps I should adjust: with correct cause, to attack a single Discordian is to attack them all.  If you mouth off and expect backup, you should be left to your own devices, but otherwise, we should be there for our co-religionists.  Regardless of what we may think of them personally.

000 reminds me of the worth of checking what I write and then editing, ITT.

[Triple Zero]

huh i'm not really sure how this is a reply to my concerns raised, but:

> If you mouth off and expect backup, you should be left to your own devices

ok makes sense.

> but otherwise, we should be there for our co-religionists.  Regardless of what we may think of them personally.

is this just about the personal issues/drama thing? because in that case, as i said i wholeheartedly agree with you and i have not much more to add, except general advice on being forgiving and making compromises (got lots of experience )

what would such an "otherwise" situation be and what sort of "be there" would be expected?

just a general lack of backstabbing or something more proactive?

btw i wasn't talking about freeloaders. freeloading implies in a way that people are aware that they are freeloading. like "ok i'm gonna be a discordian so they'll back me in my war against XXXX". the situations i was thinking of were more of the kind where the discordian would be completely 169% convinced of his/her own right, but still fighting a battle i'd rather have nothing to do with.

[Cain]

I use freeloading regardless of the intent.

And yes, this is about all the infighting.  I wrote it about 3 weeks back, maybe 2, and since then, have been unable to post it.  It should most certainly be regarded in the context of recent infighting.

[Triple Zero]

ok, in that case i can't say much more about it, cause it isn't really about me. but it sounds like a good idea

which leaves me to say that i think it's really cool and "showing of good character" of you, that you have decided to put all the personal issues aside. i really mean this, cheers to you!

[Scribbly]

Well said, Cain. You've managed to hit upon one of the reasons I decided to take a step back from posting in general after the last time you left EB&G. I felt that, to a great extent, Discordianism spent a lot more time tearing itself to shreds than it did doing anything else.

Spending a fair amount of time lurking here, though, and reading over what has been produced, I've been pretty impressed with what I've seen, and the message is still very much something that I agree with.

So, with that in mind, if I'm wanted, I'll stick around and help where I can.

[Cain]

Good to have you back, KW.

And 000, really, I dont deserve it.  It took me nearly 3 years to come to this conclusion, after all, so I didn't exactly rush in coming to it or anything.

[hunter s.durden]

Nice piece.

Some in-fighting is needed.
It's like sparring. It hones our skills and keeps our ideas fresh.

However, like in sparring, we must avoid injury. Once the spar is done, remember that we are basically on the same side.

[Cain]

True.  Since we've ripped the shit out of each other, we should have no problem disembowling a cabbage.

[hunter s.durden]

Also to weed out and reform the dumb shit.

Bhodes 11/12 idea and Lamenites "Free Range Earth" had to be put down, as they were simply awful ideas. I like to think that we are working toward something useful.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

Cain - some obstacles:

Discordians tend to be people who have been burned or have seen others burned by the status-quo.

In one way or another, most of us are "aligned" in this thing only inasmuch as we are all disillusioned by the way larger things seem to be going.  The PD says that a Discordian is as likely to be carrying a flag of the establishment as one of the anti-establishment, but I haven't seen a whole lot of truth to that.

Discordians seem to be so anti-establishment, in fact, that we strongly oppose any kind of establishment.  At its root, our disdain for the FNORD23 stuff stems from the fear that what we are a part of will become established as a self-perpetuating mythos, and once established will become corruptible, since it is no longer a moving target.

And so, being that this is a movement borne of distrust for movements, our ideological differences are in some ways even harder to overcome than they would be if we were in a less enlightened group.  It's hard to trust any consensus when groups based on consensus are hardly ever trustworthy.