Explaining the BIP to normal people

[AFK]

I also want to throw this out there.  I think a lot of the discussions about the negativity of BIP are making an inaccurate assumption.  It is assuming that the people who pick up the pamphlet already know what its about before they start to read it. 

[Triple Zero]

Another think, Prof:


Try to see the infrared spectrum.  Go ahead, wake up from that dream.

if we keep conflating the physical world with the world of consciousness, we're gonna get nowhere further

Person 2 is obviously one of those folks who just "skim the surface" as I've referenced in earlier discussions.  Do we really care whether or not this type of person gets reached?  I don't.  I'd much rather focus on someone who will read the title, look at the cover, and then read the damned thing.  The writings in the pamphlet cut to the chase.  There are no lasers and special effects to distract from the message.  there are no corny puns and/or jokes to distract from the messages. 

yeah? so sure about that? because you heard what Silly just said, he read the PD and came here, if he would've read the BIP pamphlet he might not have bothered.
i cannot speak for him of course, but i don't think it's because he'd just skimmed the surface.

i dunno what i would have done myself. i googled for discordia forums, cause at a certain moment it hit me -- there should be some out there (everything is on the internet)
but i didn't google for that "map is not territory" stuff, or "mind machine" concept that are to tangential to the BIP. of course i found it funny that they kept on turning up in whatever stuff of interest i was reading.
anyway glad i found this place.

but

i don't quite see how "black" and "prison" can be not seen as negative connotations, yeah sure you can turn anything any way you like, but if you look at the title of a book, you're gonna go with the obvious metaphore. that's not skimming the surface, that's just getting a first impression. that's part of this prison you know you simply can't process all the information that's coming at you, so you need to skim the surface, on 99% of everything! now are you saying that you can point out which surfaces should be skimmed and which should be dived into, for fear of otherwise "simply not getting it" ?

this is IMO why you need to balance the dark with the funnay

also, i'm making a lot of bold statements in this post, and in a few moments i'll be leaving for the weekend so ha i won't read the replies until sunday

[AFK]

Hey, kid. Welcome to Prison.

You think you just woke up here one day, right? Think again. It was your whole life that brought you to this. Fact is, you were born to be here. Go ahead, look around. I,Äôll be here when you get back.

Looks smaller than it is, don,Äôt it? Sometimes, it doesn,Äôt even feel all that bad. But still,Ķ You look through those bars, and you see all that you,Äôre missing. Hopes. Dreams. What could-have-been. Here, put your palms up to the Black Iron, grab the bars, let me show you something.

Feel that? That,Äôs all the books you,Äôve read. And that entire wall over there is your adolescence. Look up: It,Äôs your CD collection. The floor you woke up on? Your parents. Like I said, you were born to be here. It,Äôs your life, it,Äôs the cold trap of your own existence. You painted yourself into a corner.

So, now you,Äôre wondering why you feel trapped here, in your own life. Why now, why today, can you see the bars of a Black Iron Prison that you made for yourself? Because you stopped reacting, and took a couple of steps forward. You thought you could do what you wanted, you tried to be self reliant, and bang. You smacked your head against the wall.

What,Äôs that? Yeah. That,Äôs when the claustrophobia sets in. When you didn,Äôt know you were trapped, everything was fine. But now that you know, you can see your entire, tired, monotonous life stretch out before you, trapped in these 4 walls, these 6 sides. Breathe, kid. It,Äôs just abject panic that you,Äôre feeling right now. Some even say that this is what death feels like: An unchanging life, immune and unfeeling to what you really want.

Look around you. Look at these cold, black bars. The colorless ceiling. The hard ground. That,Äôs your universe. That,Äôs the world you,Äôre going to be living in for the rest of your life here in Prison. You,Äôre going to live out your life in quiet desperation. Or, not so quiet if you decide to take the rife/bell tower route. Either way, long or short, it,Äôll feel the same. Dead, unchanging.

So, if you,Äôre interested, I,Äôd like to invite you to a jailbreak...

Just turn around.

Retrieved from "http://www.poee.co.uk/bip/index.php?title=Welcome_to_Prison"

Note the bolded section.  Isn't this a positive?  That all you need to do to break free of the prison is to turn around?  That the bleakness described can be escaped by an action that is rather simplistic? 

[LMNO]

I'm with you, RWHN, but then again, I tend to read things all the way through.

[AFK]

M'Lords, ladies, gentlemen and scum. Welcome.

Now the first three please fuck off, this is aimed for the last category. You,Äôre living your nice little lives, feet up, watching the telly and having a cardboard, microwave meal.

Are we sitting comfortably?

Watch the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 or the tits on Channel 5. Face it mate it's variations on a theme, same damn thing over and over, repeated into your brain till it starts to go pink and mushy.

I called you scum, why? Because that's all you are to them, that's all you'll ever be as far as they are concerned.

Who's they? Some secret society? Some American conspiracy theory? X-Files bullshit?

Nope, they are the people taking a hammer to your skull and nailing you down. They are all the people who have ever told you how to think, what to say, what to do.

It started back in school and will go on for the rest of your life. If you want it to. You see mate, all you,Äôre being asked to do is think, not saying throw down the tools and join the TUC. When somebody tells you what to do, what to say you question it, think for yourself. Sure you may end up doing it anyway but then it's your choice, not an order.

You think your God can save you? You think your country can save you? You think the Human race can save you?

Your on your own mate, nobody gives a shit about you or your life. Everybody you know, have known and will know want something from you. Your boss, your partner, the guy down the street. All they see when they look at you is what they can get from you. You do the same damn thing to them.

Don't give em any of that denial crap, if you spend five seconds being honest with yourself you'll see I'm right.

It's the great rat race mate, or if your gonna get martial about it, rattenkrieg. You,Äôre a tool and that's how anybody will ever see you, even me.

So what's the point of this little lecture? Let me be honest, yeah it's a rare trait honesty. I want something from you, just like everybody else, I want your freedom.

I see that got you confused, not what you think mate. Your all chained up, shackled down and you probably don't even realise it. Cultural conditioning, it's a pain in the arse but we all go through it. We are taught to obey, to listen, to follow the party line. They throw us a couple of freedoms like scooby-snacks to make you toe the line.

I'm not asking for you to fight the system, not asking for you to join some crazy revolution, not even asking you to join a movement. I'm asking you to wake up, think for yourself. You see there are folks who have, folks who have realised what the hell is going on and learned to live their lives constantly questioning the status quo.

Now what do you say? I'm inviting you to a jailbreak mate, all you need is to provide your own lockpick, think you can do it?
Retrieved from "http://www.poee.co.uk/bip/index.php?title=Scum"

Another simple silver lining courtesy of the BIP.  

[AFK]

Look, I could go on and on with this.  I hope you see my point.  What incentive is there for someone to "wake up" if we are asking them to wake up from a warm and fuzzy dream?  They won't.  Those who are afraid to confront the grit and "reality" of the BIP, aren't ready.  Maybe they'll come back, maybe they won't.  Those who are ready, will read every word, will eat it up, will see what we are saying, and will "get it."  Again, it's about potential.  Some will have it, some won't.  I'll be damned if I'm gonna fluff it up for people content to live in Happyland. 

edit:  Okay that came out stronger than I intended.  I've had a sub and so I feel much better. 

[P3nT4gR4m]

What's really amazing about this argument is that it's so polarised. Seems to me the truth is prolly in the middle somewhere, in that some people relate well to the terminology and some people don't. It concerns me that it get's a bit heated at times as some highly skilled debaters (and a few idiots like me) both try to impress their point on the opponent.

I find it fascinating but I think in terms of progress it's probably a fairly stupid point to get hung up on. As RWHN said - most of this shit is (K) anyroad so there's no reason why we cant have two camps both producing, probably with a truckload of collaborative crossover. If the 50/50 ratio (or whatever we actually have here) proves true in the audience at large then having both slants, maybe even as entirely seperate publications is bound to cover all the bases.

[AFK]

Let's be honest, the heat is coming from me.  And alot of that has to do with IRL stuff so I don't want anyone to mistake my arguments for flaming anybody or anything.  And I also have to put out there that I am one of the authors on the BIP so of course there's a little of that "protecting my baby" energy there.  I do believe strongly in what I believe.  To me, the thing is plain as day.  To me, it's a no-brainer.  I have a hard time conceiving it to be otherwise.  Perhaps I'm too involved with the origins of this and so my views are skewed by that.  I don't know.  Anyway, that's where I'm coming from. 

[That One Guy]

Hmmmm. Just read it front to back for the first time, so I'll give some first impressions (before I read it a few more times to really get a feel for things).

The tone IS a bit more harsh and gritty than the PD. It's got some lulz, but it also came across to me as trying to be the smelling salts under the brain of the reader. If smelling salts were rose-scented, they wouldn't work, and it's the same with BIP from my first read-through.

The PD is a product of the "Happy Wanderer" 60s, when dada, abstraction, chaos (in the more modern mathematical/physics sense) and surrealism were just starting to be explored. Now, 40+ years on when these ideas/concepts have been blended into the collective (un)concious to a much larger degree, it would be ineffective to just "do the PD" all over again. Then, there needed to be more sugar since the taste of the medicine was so new. Now, with the taste at least somewhat understood, too much sugar will dilute the medicine.

That's not to say it should have NO lulz, or should JUST be a harsh slap to the brain, but to avoid adapting the delivery of the information to the time it's being delivered is a disservice to the message IMO. I like the balance of mirth and message. It's not perfect, but it's a work in progress and should NEVER be finished.

[LMNO]

TOG, I think you connected with what we were trying to do.

Thanks.

[AFK]

Hmmmm. Just read it front to back for the first time, so I'll give some first impressions (before I read it a few more times to really get a feel for things).

The tone IS a bit more harsh and gritty than the PD. It's got some lulz, but it also came across to me as trying to be the smelling salts under the brain of the reader. If smelling salts were rose-scented, they wouldn't work, and it's the same with BIP from my first read-through.

The PD is a product of the "Happy Wanderer" 60s, when dada, abstraction, chaos (in the more modern mathematical/physics sense) and surrealism were just starting to be explored. Now, 40+ years on when these ideas/concepts have been blended into the collective (un)concious to a much larger degree, it would be ineffective to just "do the PD" all over again. Then, there needed to be more sugar since the taste of the medicine was so new. Now, with the taste at least somewhat understood, too much sugar will dilute the medicine.

That's not to say it should have NO lulz, or should JUST be a harsh slap to the brain, but to avoid adapting the delivery of the information to the time it's being delivered is a disservice to the message IMO. I like the balance of mirth and message. It's not perfect, but it's a work in progress and should NEVER be finished.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

warning: this post will piss off a lot of people and be regarded as affirmation that i'm not getting the point:


does the BIP just do the 'cut to the chase' stuff because we are currently not witty or jovial enough to come up with the lulz?

[LMNO]

Yes.

No.

Kinda.

Not really.


I dunno.  I didn't think the PD was that funny, actually.  There were some bits, but for the most part, I didn't really laugh.

[AFK]

Well the BIP pamphlet was pretty much lightning-in-a-bottle in a way.  It just kind of happened.  We had 7 or 8 people all at the same time at a point where they were writing lots of stuff.  As I recall, we didn't really plan it out per se.  We didn't say, okay you write this and you write that.  It just, manifested itself that way.  So, I don't think there was ever a direct, conscious directive to "cut to the chase" on purpose.  It just so happened that everyone was in that mode.  A "natural reaction" if you will. 

[B_M_W]

I would say that the biggest problem that people have with the BIP metaphore is the word BLACK. The reason they have a problem with it is because they think the black reffers to the prison itself, but it actually reffers to the iron.

What do we know about black, or wrought, iron? Its very strong metal, and very dense, hard, difficult to bend. Thick wrought iron is what they used to craft cell bars from; I don't know if they still do today. So, the black iron is the barrier itself, the limitation to our understanding of the universe. These limitations, the black iron, are what make the prison, the prison is a product of the black iron. The prison is neither black nor iron itself.

Rambling, yes. But thats my take.

In summation, when something says, "Black Iron Prison", the people who don't get the metaphore see "Black, Iron Prison" when we see it as "Black_Iron Prison".