Cain contra Robert Anton Wilson

[BADGE OF HONOR]

Hey, I'll freely admit that I can't finish anything I write and I still criticize him for the same thing. The difference is he somehow managed to get published by some miracle or other.  Maybe he impregnated the pages of his manuscript with LSD.  Like in Name of the Rose except with less death and God.

[Messier Undertree]

Can I have that on a teeshirt please? It'd save on so many stupid conversations.

http://www.spreadshirt.net/shop.php?sid=155587&product_id=772122&affiliate=321975

[P3nT4gR4m]

Like in Name of the Rose except with less death and God.

Holy shit you just summed up my entire life!

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Really good stuff.

11/9.

[Dr. Cow Ass]

Robert Anton Wilson isn't the problem, it's the people that take him seriosuly or think he's a figure head in this thing of ours(which he is, but that's cuz people made him that way.) I first came across Prinicipia Discordia after reading the Illuminatus, and I really can't say it's completely changed my life(either books) but I'm still growing and expirienceing things with an added discordian perspective, so I have to thank RAW. As far as I can tell, RAW was only trying to get a point across in Illuminatus, but he did it in a very confusing, entertaining, and downright ridiculous way(which I love, but not everyone does.) When I read the part where George first discovers the "truth" of the robot when he was being illuminated by Hagbard, I took it to heart. There's SO many authors, philosophers, socioligist, etc. that talk about conformity and all the limitations and problems it could bestow on a person or group, but reading Hagbard talk about the robot presented it in totally original and oddily understandable fashion.



Second, if your pissed about RAW giving a definintion to Discordianism, then create one that's completely opposite. When it comes to Discordianism, there is no Dogma or law except for the ones people impose on it. Keep the people guessing. When asking someone what Discordianism is, they may say...

"There a religion that believes Humor is the key to salvation"

"They believe that all religions, miricles, and phenomina can be explianed through quantum physics"

"I think they believe aliens run the planet and will return in like 400 years or something"

"They have these really weird sex rituals which consist of massive orgies and artificial straw berries"

"Oh, they beileve farting alot will guarentee them safe passage to the next world."

"There just crazy"

And the best...
"I have no fucking clue."

You see, all these answers are true, but technically none of them are true. HA, isn't that beautiful.

Isn't somthing with no name, the same as somthing with many names that are all valid AND invalid.

BTW, wtf does it matter what thornley and hill believed or practiced. They created this monster with the intent of letting in run loose, they're in the same boat as the rest of us now.


In summation, RAW didn't do anything. As a matter of fact he did the only thing a discordian could do and came up with his own theory of how people work and/or should work, but not once, did he ever claim his theory was right or absolute. The fault lies with the dogmatic student, not the sage.


EDIT: Nothing I just wrote is true, but all of it is. Dig?

[Messier Undertree]

I never read past page 10 myself. No offense or anything, but it looked like bullshit to me.

[Cain]

You just totally glossed over one of my main points, didn't you?  The problem is that Illumaintus! came out long before any other Discordian works and is still the only Discordian fiction in print.  If there had been six or seven people with different ideas on Discordianism at the time who had released books, that would have been much better.

You gotta factor in the time line here.  Now if any books are released, they are going to be seen as opposing RAW, trying to undermine or oppose RAW....basically bringing it back to RAW instead of Discordianism.

Illuminatus! is too well defined, too indepth and precise in its thoughts and what it says.  Which is very bad.  It limits creativity.  The good thing about the Principia Discordia is that it is vague and short.  It also purports only to be the holy book of the Joshua Norton Cabal and not a book for all Discordians.  Illuminatus! doesn't do that and because it came out when there was nothing else, it defined Discordianism in a way thats going to take a long time to fade.

[Dr. Cow Ass]

True, but this isn't RAW's fault. He got lucky when his book hit it big in the seventies. You can't blaim him for that. I admit that referances to RAW's work are very common in Discordian discussion boards, including this one. But like I said before, the fault lies with Discordians that still have dogmatic tendancies, whether they know it or not. Even if Illuminatus was a very stuctured, orderd "Bible to Discordianism," any smart discordian would know that such a thing does not exisist, and if someone did religiously "follow" whatever was in any book, then they aren't discordian. RAW presented his perception of Discordianism, it is a shame when people claim it as THE book to read on the subject, but the whole thing is a joke anyway(although, like the bible, it does contain some shreds of wisdom, in my eyes that is).


And as for it being the only discordian work of fiction in print, don't worry about that, in five years I'll have a novel out that completely blows the Illuminatus out of the water, but until then, someone should start a magzine that punblishes articles about all the different crazies that make up Discordianism. That would be a pretty efficent and definetly entertaining way to let people see all the formless froms of discordianism.

Also, Davedim, of course it's bullshit.

[nurbldoff]

Whether or not you like RAW (I kinda like him but not quite as much as I used to, he does tend to go on and on...) you still have to acknowledge that, without him (and Shea, I suppose) odds are that none of us would ever have heard about Discordianism in the first place... Illuminatus! is accessible in a way that PD never was. Maybe that's part of the problem, but what would be the point of a movement if it had no members?

Or wait, maybe that's the ultimate movement?

[LHX]

if somebody forced me to read a book, i would read Wilson before most other authors


i agree tho: the lack of fine-tuning and polish in Wilson's literary efforts are a bad example for discordians

sloppiness and disorder is not the same thing


Wilson could have benefitted from the school of half-short-twice-strong

[Dr. Cow Ass]

if somebody forced me to read a book, i would read Wilson before most other authors


i agree tho: the lack of fine-tuning and polish in Wilson's literary efforts are a bad example for discordians

sloppiness and disorder is not the same thing


Wilson could have benefitted from the school of half-short-twice-strong

lol, even though I love his work, I have to admit that it took me three tries to read the full illuminatus trilogy.

[Cramulus]

ba-BUMP

Cain, as long as you're wearing your Pagan Pariah mask, maybe this should go on the blog too? There was a lot of Illuminatus humping in #discord the other day, and I needed to read this to remind myself why nothing in Discordia should be taken as a Sacred Text.

I've read Illuminatus countless times. I own two copies, my own copy and a "lender" copy. I can think of few works of fiction that were more mind-expanding than the first time I read Illuminatus. But I do find it disturbing that many Discordians I've met are interested in the same ten things, and yes, most of that really does boil down to that most of us have read RAW, and many of us treat him like an Authority - or at least let him suggest cool things to get into. Now we've got a shadow of homogeneity in our weird little Discordant subculture.



"If you meet Bob on the road, kill him."

[LMNO]

"If you meet Bob on the road, kill him."

I've always thought that this was a strong reason behind the RAW-bashing on this site.

[P3nT4gR4m]

I always figured if someone is cool then they're cool.
If some asshole decides to take their word as gospel then they're some asshole.

Doesn't detract from the cool only from the asshole.

[Cain]

ba-BUMP

Cain, as long as you're wearing your Pagan Pariah mask, maybe this should go on the blog too? There was a lot of Illuminatus humping in #discord the other day, and I needed to read this to remind myself why nothing in Discordia should be taken as a Sacred Text.

I knew I shouldn't have gone to bed early.  I could have mocked RAW fanbois.

I'll put it up on the blog in a bit.