Tag Archives: Shrapnel

Paths: Finding the ‘Z’ in the ‘A to B’

Discordianism, philosophy,

You’re born, you live, and you die.

We all do, (although, sometimes a lot of people seem to be barely living at all).

Some philosophies may tell you that the journey is more important than the destination, or that the the journey is itself life.

Personally, I think that may be bullshit. The journey is the journey, no more, but no less.

Let us break this down. You are at home (you’re born) and you have to go somewhere (death). Your entire “life” will be spent making your way there.

Do you go there as fast as possible, limit your exposure to pain and uncomfortable ideas?

Do you go there in a sweet car, drinking, on drugs and surrounded by women, living fast and ignoring more intellectual pursuits?

Do you instead take a scenic route, walk by the canal, looking at the beautiful scenery, trying to absorb as much of the “good things” in life before you die?

Or do you stay at home, waiting for it to come to you?

There is no correct answer, and you could do any combination of these, and (almost) infinitely more.

What’s interesting is when you look at how this applies to your entire “real” life, and you superimpose the paths that others of our species take. Our (almost) infinite choice is reduced to a nebulous collection of people doing exactly the same thing, taking the same routes to death.

Why is this? Do you WANT to be a sheep?

Me neither.

Break out the map and compass kiddos, it’s time to explore the badlands. Let us see what lies off the well beaten paths that lead to our anonymous deaths…

Some thoughts on Shrapnel

philosophy,

Once upon a time, a little baby was born. There is nothing remarkable about this- I’m told it happens every day- and there was nothing remarkable about this baby, except that it was you, or me, or them.

This baby was pristine, a sponge for information and experience. Little though it was, it was growing rapidly, learning every thing it could as fast as it could. It had to, you see, because it’s a big bad old world out there.

Everything it learned chipped a little bit of its personality away, or added a bit to it, every packet of information, every experience. Much like that saying about sculptors “freeing the statue” from the crude stone its encased in. Except that the sculptor is blind, like that woman in the Lionel Richie video (hah! “Hello, is it me you’re looking for?!” except she’s blind…), but I digress.

The tools that are used to “sculpt” this baby into the badass human that will stride the earth on two hind legs, using it’s opposable thumbs like it just doesn’t care, is what I call shrapnel.

It’s when you are told about God, it’s when you fall in love for the first time, it’s when you realise, as a baby, that bawling your head off will have your mother come running.

It’s the “ripples” of things that happened long ago, still affecting us today. The shrapnel thrown out by history, causing us to throw out our own shrapnel into the future. It blows your mind, it really does.

Shrapnel is necessary, and vital, to who we are, to what we do. And for Discordians, it can be a tool. It’s another medium for spreading a little bit of chaos. It’s not “good” or “bad”, though you may want to assess which bits of it you have sticking in you that aren’t really needed. Unwatched, that shit can fuck you up.

In conclusion, Shrapnel is an idea that has yet to find its time. In the right hands, it can be a kick ass suit of armour AND a big-fuck-off flamethrower. For me, being aware of it is enough until some wiser heads can show us how it works.

Okay, I’m done preaching at you for now, I’m back off to my ivory tower, where I’ll probably look for that Lionel Richie video and laugh about it all night.

~~~Payne