What is this section about (n00bs read this!)

[AFK]

Honestly, as time goes on the PD, in my opinion, will have less and less impact.  Because the one big mistake Hill and Thornley made when they put the PD together is in how then constructed their message.  Obvioulsy, the philosophies are timeless, but the way they framed it isn't necessarily so.  The 50s humor just doesn't translate very well in 2000.  Oh sure, some people will still get it, but many will be instantly turned off by it.  Think of anyone who hates the Three Stooges and that kind of old-school slapstick humor.  They will wrinkle their noses at the PD and not bother with it. 

This was one of the reasons for the BIP.  An attempt to reach some younger cats who aren't going to get into the old-thyme humor.

I agree with you, though I personally had no problems with the humor. However, BIP has a message that I feel is substantially different than the one in the PD. It's a nice read, but I don't think it can be the updated PD. I understand you aren't going for that either, but it'd be a pity IMO if the ideas of the PD would be lost.

I didn't have a problem with the humor either.  But I'm into that kind of cornball/punny humor.  But I also know that not a lot of people these days are.  Yeah, the BIP message was substantially different.  In a certain respect, it was really written for the time it was written in.  The Bush Presidency has brought us tons of crap to deal with.  Yet, it feels like a majority of Americans are too apathetic to actually want to do anything about it.  They are perfectly happy as long as they still have their American Idol being pumped into their living rooms.  Anyone who lives in the states may have noticed how the Gov't is offering coupons for people who still receive analog signals for their television.  The gov't is really concerned about the public losing their teevees.  I think that is very telling. 

Anyway, I guess, at the time of the writing, we felt like this kind of shit deserved a very straightforward message.  It also needs to be said that all of the authors of the BIP acted independently.  We weren't comparing notes as we wrote.  It just so happened that our messages seemed to coalesce the way they did.  And as you spend time here at PD.COM you'll discover that while we do share a certain sense of comradery, that's about all we share.  We have some very different minds at work here.  That we all came together the way we did, IMO, says we were addressing things that needed to be addressed the way they were addressed. 

[Cramulus]

Honestly, as time goes on the PD, in my opinion, will have less and less impact.  Because the one big mistake Hill and Thornley made when they put the PD together is in how then constructed their message.  Obvioulsy, the philosophies are timeless, but the way they framed it isn't necessarily so.  The 50s humor just doesn't translate very well in 2000.  Oh sure, some people will still get it, but many will be instantly turned off by it.  Think of anyone who hates the Three Stooges and that kind of old-school slapstick humor.  They will wrinkle their noses at the PD and not bother with it. 

This was one of the reasons for the BIP.  An attempt to reach some younger cats who aren't going to get into the old-thyme humor.

I agree with you, though I personally had no problems with the humor. However, BIP has a message that I feel is substantially different than the one in the PD. It's a nice read, but I don't think it can be the updated PD. I understand you aren't going for that either, but it'd be a pity IMO if the ideas of the PD would be lost.

Well I don't see how those ideas would be lost. This is just another layer, another strata of Discordian thought. A bit newer. If it creates a tension between itself and the PD I think that's good - it encourages critical thought and introspection.

I think the "jailbreak" mindset is a very useful one. I think that in many ways, comfort is the enemy of self-awareness. The thing about the jailbreak isn't that we're encouraging you to leave everything behind, all the time. The point is to evaluate which bars in your prison are helpful and which you need to escape from.

Look at the Parable of the Gong for example. The guy broke out of his prison, but he's still acting in a robotic way, and that gets him in trouble in the end. (well actually it gets his mentor in trouble) "Black sheep are still sheep" and all that. A lot of us feel like that's one of the "Core Tenets" of Discordja (lol).

[Triple Zero]

Why is it important to strive to break out?

self liberation and reality enhancement?

i dunno but it seems to me that discordianism places "freedom" as more important than "happiness".

(freedom and happiness being two important calibrating points in philosophy of ethics)

I really don't see it as a prison. Rather, I see it as a grid of reference points I use to make sense (or nonsense) of my universe. I don't want it gone, or at least not until I'm done having fun. Obviously I can change my grid as I see fit, expand it to encompass more perspectives, and I like that. Perhaps I should reread BIP, but it gave me a very negative impression of the prison.

see, you can be a cog in the machine, and be perfectly happy, take your soma pills every day, and you never even as much as need to go near the walls of your prison cells. nor do you pay attention to the shadows of the bars, because that's just the way things are supposed to be and you tell yourself everything is fine, afterall, you like it there.

but if you say "obviously i can change my grid as I see fit", this changing is in fact pretty much the same process as we mean by "breaking out". so to word it better for you, it is important to be aware of your grids, and it is a good goal to strive to be as much in control as possible of your grids.

it means the same thing. the reality-grid view is really close to the BIP view.

so the PD did tell you what to think?

also why do you think the BIP pamphlet takes itself too seriously?

In a sense, the PD did. However, since the message is not to take anything seriously, the message itself isn't overly serious. I felt the BIP pamphlet takes itself too seriously because it doesn't offer the same. It says "this is where you are, this is what you should do, full stop".

nah i think it just tells you, really really loudly, to THINK FOR YOURSELF, SCHMUCK

what is it that you think it tells you what to do?

it's telling you to "break out", right?

what do you think that means? how do you think somebody can accomplish this?

imagine already somebody a slave driver standing next to you with a whip, "BREAK OUT OF YOUR PRECONCEIVED NOTIONS OF REALITY ALREADY"

see how that doesn't work?

it doesn't really tell you what you need to do. but you just stopped thinking as soon as it seemed it did. you read the pamphlet and think "hohoho this thing is trying to tell me what to do, therefore it must be wrong" and stop there.
while you could also think, "hm this thing is telling me i should break out of a prison, what does that mean? what do they mean by that? how would i go about doing that?" and then realize that the meaning of what it says pretty much corresponds with your ideas about reality grids, you read on and dig to see if it contains any insights that you hadn't thought of yet from the grid-angle.

does it make more sense now?

[Faust]

Honestly, as time goes on the PD, in my opinion, will have less and less impact.  Because the one big mistake Hill and Thornley made when they put the PD together is in how then constructed their message.  Obvioulsy, the philosophies are timeless, but the way they framed it isn't necessarily so.  The 50s humor just doesn't translate very well in 2000.  Oh sure, some people will still get it, but many will be instantly turned off by it.  Think of anyone who hates the Three Stooges and that kind of old-school slapstick humor.  They will wrinkle their noses at the PD and not bother with it. 

This was one of the reasons for the BIP.  An attempt to reach some younger cats who aren't going to get into the old-thyme humor.

I agree with you, though I personally had no problems with the humor. However, BIP has a message that I feel is substantially different than the one in the PD. It's a nice read, but I don't think it can be the updated PD. I understand you aren't going for that either, but it'd be a pity IMO if the ideas of the PD would be lost.

Well I don't see how those ideas would be lost. This is just another layer, another strata of Discordian thought. A bit newer. If it creates a tension between itself and the PD I think that's good - it encourages critical thought and introspection.

I think the "jailbreak" mindset is a very useful one. I think that in many ways, comfort is the enemy of self-awareness. The thing about the jailbreak isn't that we're encouraging you to leave everything behind, all the time. The point is to evaluate which bars in your prison are helpful and which you need to escape from.

Look at the Parable of the Gong for example. The guy broke out of his prison, but he's still acting in a robotic way, and that gets him in trouble in the end. (well actually it gets his mentor in trouble) "Black sheep are still sheep" and all that. A lot of us feel like that's one of the "Core Tenets" of Discordja (lol).

the parable of the gong is actually my favorite piece, I give it to anyone who seems interested and it has always gone down well.
The actual Jailbreak document has had the most mixed results, some people really dont like it, either out of of feeling uncomfortable, or finding it preachy.

The BIP is definitely not the PD II or a modern age rehash, I think it is more just a different approach to some very similar ideas. The fifties humor may not suit some people but these people may be more suited to the direct approach of the BIP without all the circlejerk'ing jokes

[Janvier]

I didn't have a problem with the humor either.  But I'm into that kind of cornball/punny humor.  But I also know that not a lot of people these days are.  Yeah, the BIP message was substantially different.  In a certain respect, it was really written for the time it was written in.  The Bush Presidency has brought us tons of crap to deal with.  Yet, it feels like a majority of Americans are too apathetic to actually want to do anything about it.  They are perfectly happy as long as they still have their American Idol being pumped into their living rooms.  Anyone who lives in the states may have noticed how the Gov't is offering coupons for people who still receive analog signals for their television.  The gov't is really concerned about the public losing their teevees.  I think that is very telling.

I was wondering whether our disagreement is fueled in part by the fact that I don't live in America... I'm a (Czech/)Dutchie.

Anyway, I guess, at the time of the writing, we felt like this kind of shit deserved a very straightforward message.  It also needs to be said that all of the authors of the BIP acted independently.  We weren't comparing notes as we wrote.  It just so happened that our messages seemed to coalesce the way they did.  And as you spend time here at PD.COM you'll discover that while we do share a certain sense of comradery, that's about all we share.  We have some very different minds at work here.  That we all came together the way we did, IMO, says we were addressing things that needed to be addressed the way they were addressed.

I understand, but by tuning the BIP to this time aren't you basically making the same mistake Mal-2 did? Or don't you see it as a mistake?

[Janvier]

Why is it important to strive to break out?

self liberation and reality enhancement?

i dunno but it seems to me that discordianism places "freedom" as more important than "happiness".

(freedom and happiness being two important calibrating points in philosophy of ethics)

I find very difficult in general to make a choice between those two, but I also don't really have to since to me freedom inevitably leads to "happiness", which is to say not merely the emotion but just a general feeling of being content and at ease.

(Are you a philosophy major by any chance?)

I really don't see it as a prison. Rather, I see it as a grid of reference points I use to make sense (or nonsense) of my universe. I don't want it gone, or at least not until I'm done having fun. Obviously I can change my grid as I see fit, expand it to encompass more perspectives, and I like that. Perhaps I should reread BIP, but it gave me a very negative impression of the prison.

see, you can be a cog in the machine, and be perfectly happy, take your soma pills every day, and you never even as much as need to go near the walls of your prison cells. nor do you pay attention to the shadows of the bars, because that's just the way things are supposed to be and you tell yourself everything is fine, afterall, you like it there.

but if you say "obviously i can change my grid as I see fit", this changing is in fact pretty much the same process as we mean by "breaking out". so to word it better for you, it is important to be aware of your grids, and it is a good goal to strive to be as much in control as possible of your grids.

it means the same thing. the reality-grid view is really close to the BIP view.

Somewhere in the course of the discussion I realized that as well. However, I'm not concerned with breaking down the walls. I'll definitely give BIP another read though.

so the PD did tell you what to think?

also why do you think the BIP pamphlet takes itself too seriously?

In a sense, the PD did. However, since the message is not to take anything seriously, the message itself isn't overly serious. I felt the BIP pamphlet takes itself too seriously because it doesn't offer the same. It says "this is where you are, this is what you should do, full stop".

nah i think it just tells you, really really loudly, to THINK FOR YOURSELF, SCHMUCK

what is it that you think it tells you what to do?

it's telling you to "break out", right?

what do you think that means? how do you think somebody can accomplish this?

imagine already somebody a slave driver standing next to you with a whip, "BREAK OUT OF YOUR PRECONCEIVED NOTIONS OF REALITY ALREADY"

see how that doesn't work?

it doesn't really tell you what you need to do. but you just stopped thinking as soon as it seemed it did. you read the pamphlet and think "hohoho this thing is trying to tell me what to do, therefore it must be wrong" and stop there.
while you could also think, "hm this thing is telling me i should break out of a prison, what does that mean? what do they mean by that? how would i go about doing that?" and then realize that the meaning of what it says pretty much corresponds with your ideas about reality grids, you read on and dig to see if it contains any insights that you hadn't thought of yet from the grid-angle.

does it make more sense now?

It does, but I still disagree 
I personally strive for philosophical growth, but I know quite many people who have put forward the following argument:
The way my universe is now I am content and happy, and my goal is to be content and happy in life.
If I learn more I may become malcontent and unhappy.
Therefore they don't feel the need to break out.

I guess the basic point which I disagree with is that one goal in life can somehow be better than another.

[Triple Zero]

no i'm a Computer Science major, but i have very broad interests and followed a couple of extracurricular courses on Philosophy (also on Information Law and Emotional Intelligence, btw).

but ehm, as far as my opinion goes, one of the points of discordianism is actually actively *shaking loose* the people that volunarily put on blinders and tell themselves they're happy being ignorant.

so why do we do that?

because the blind sheep are the ones that fucking spoil it for everybody else. the people that, very egoistically, say "i don't need to know what's really going on, cause i'm happy in my current state of ignorance" are the ones that give the greyfaces and the machine their power.

and the BIP Pamphlet is just one way of shaking a certain group of people loose, in the hope that they wake the fuck up a littlebit. Operation:Mindfuck is another. the original PD is/was also one.

[AFK]

Anyway, I guess, at the time of the writing, we felt like this kind of shit deserved a very straightforward message.  It also needs to be said that all of the authors of the BIP acted independently.  We weren't comparing notes as we wrote.  It just so happened that our messages seemed to coalesce the way they did.  And as you spend time here at PD.COM you'll discover that while we do share a certain sense of comradery, that's about all we share.  We have some very different minds at work here.  That we all came together the way we did, IMO, says we were addressing things that needed to be addressed the way they were addressed.

I understand, but by tuning the BIP to this time aren't you basically making the same mistake Mal-2 did? Or don't you see it as a mistake?

Not really.  The PD is a foundational book.  It more or less established the idea of Discordianism.  In that sense, it is more important to be "timeless."  I don't see the BIP being that kind of work.  I think it is more strictly meant for the time it was written in.  Perhaps the authors of the PD were thinking the same thing.  So I suppose, if the BIP had any sort of relevance in the world of Discordianism 30 years from now that criticism would be valid.  However, I don't think the BIP has that kind of staying power, and I'm not sure it should.  As time goes on, and different problems arise, the message does need to be changed to suit those times.  

[barumunk]

I didn't have a problem with the humor either.  But I'm into that kind of cornball/punny humor.  But I also know that not a lot of people these days are.  Yeah, the BIP message was substantially different.  In a certain respect, it was really written for the time it was written in.  The Bush Presidency has brought us tons of crap to deal with.  Yet, it feels like a majority of Americans are too apathetic to actually want to do anything about it.  They are perfectly happy as long as they still have their American Idol being pumped into their living rooms.  Anyone who lives in the states may have noticed how the Gov't is offering coupons for people who still receive analog signals for their television.  The gov't is really concerned about the public losing their teevees.  I think that is very telling.

I was wondering whether our disagreement is fueled in part by the fact that I don't live in America... I'm a (Czech/)Dutchie.

um No I dont think thats It, Im from South Africa and I still disagree with you

[AFK]

It really just boils down to different strokes from different folks.  It's right for some, wrong for others, relevent for some, irrelevant for others, right and releveant for others, wrong and irrelevant for others, right and irrelevant for others, wrong and relevant, so on and so on. 

[Triple Zero]

I was wondering whether our disagreement is fueled in part by the fact that I don't live in America... I'm a (Czech/)Dutchie.

ha another dutch! do you live in NL now? which part?

(*maakt het geheime hollandse illuminati handgebaar*)

[Verbal Mike]

Why is it important to strive to break out? I really don't see it as a prison. Rather, I see it as a grid of reference points I use to make sense (or nonsense) of my universe. I don't want it gone, or at least not until I'm done having fun. Obviously I can change my grid as I see fit, expand it to encompass more perspectives, and I like that.

I think one of the main points of BIP is that very often, the grids we use are not the grids we would really choose. One of those is the chunk of grid that says "some grids are better than others", which makes us often settle on the first reality tunnel that happens to pique our interest. More often than not, the first reality tunnel you bump into will be one that other people have settled in. This whole thing has crazy sinergistic power that basically means most of what most people believe is likelier not to be the grid that you would choose, just the grid that others happened to choose. As a pothead I think you can understand the concept of entering a very different state of mind, altering your own reality - in a way, this is what BIP caused me to do. It has made me re-examine facets of my personality/Prison/grids that I had always managed to convince myself I hang on to for good reasons.
I wouldn't say this has made me happier, but I'd lie if I'd say I wasn't glad this happened, if I'd say I wasn't grateful for this pamphlet.
That said, no one piece of scripture will resonate the same with all who read it. If you don't like the pamphlet and its metaphors, go find ones you like better.

(I also wish the pamphlet were more light-hearted, by the way. It just may not be a realistic thing to wish.)

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

I think that there are some really useful aspects to the BiP and I've come around to seeing it as a different model (similar in some respects to the 8-Circuit grid) to use when discussing these concepts. That being said, I still think the overall feel is one of pessimism rather than optimism (as the PD was). Sorta like Discordianism, through the glass darkly.

I haven't yet figured out why I think this (particularly since its authors continue to insist its not pessimistic). I've considered the following so far:

1. The BiP metaphor makes a judgment about the individuals perceptions. THEY are in Prison. We ALL are in Prison. In contrast, the Reality Tunnel metaphor used by Leary and Wilson doesn't make a judgment about the individuals perception, it simply identifies it as a tunnel, obviously a larger tunnel is preferential to a smaller one, but there's no concept of being entirely trapped or that the trap is bad/wrong/evil (concepts which tend to go along with prison). As LMNO said the other day if you think of being born as being a fresh prisoner, just getting processed... the metaphor can look pretty depressing, pretty quickly.

2. The style feels very much like the style of an Anarchist, or Libertarian, or Socialist pamphlet. That is, it feels like a series of essays directed AT the reader, from a position of Knowledge, held by the author. The PD reads like a series of sense and nonsense, which the reader may or may not get something useful out of... the concluding message may be perceived differently by each person reading it... The BiP on the other hand, feels (to me) like a direct message stated directly... that may be its intent, but it seems to lend to a more pessimistic feel IMO.

3. I may simply be more comfortable with other metaphors. Several of us have discussed BiP vs Reality tunnels/Grids and, for me personally, I think its less clear than those metaphors. Using the old metaphors we can talk specifically about changes in perception/how we see data (ie Reality Tunnels) and we can talk specifically about changes in ourselves/how we process data (ie. circuit re-imprinting). In the BiP, this feels a bit muddled to me. I think this led to my initial lackluster impression of the metaphor as well.

At least these are things that I've identified about my perceptions of the BiP. That being said,. it seems to be resonating with some people, so I doubt it matters much if it necessarily resonates with me

I think this issue would probably be moot if we were producing more pamphlets... if the BiP was one among many different pamphlets with different map/model/perspectives then I don't think it would be analyzed quite as stringently. 

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

The BIP is just a companion volume, a different approach. It works for some people; those are the people it's for. If it doesn't work for you but the PD did, there you go.

Ideally, there SHOULD be many texts, and many approaches... I don't know if I have any essential insight to contribute to a new text, but I'm willing to give it a shot. Why not? Why don't we pick a week in which each of us with an interest in contributing will write or draw something, and the result will be the next companion text? Maybe the theme should be writing from the inside; the subjective meaning and metaphor of Discord.

[Thelaughingman421]

Multiple texts might cause people to misconstrue the true meaning behind the whole thing, though. However, multiple texts might also cause Them to think theres more than just us think-for-yourselfers out there. Having everyone contribute matierial(sp?) on some given day would be a good idea to create reams of new propaganda. I'm far too blunt to be insightful and philosophical, though. Or maybe i'm just being self-deprecating again?