Subgenius k00ks by Ivan Stang

[Cain]

Thought this was good enough rantage to bring over.



When you take the path less traveled, you sometimes find that it is less traveled for a damned good reason.

The Church attracts weirdoes; that was always the whole idea. But even though our "weirdar" has a very broad range of tolerance, some of the ones we find stuck to the Tarbaby of Dobbs scare even us.

Much of what "Bob" said was so obviously designed to sound just like what an insane crackpot would most want to believe, that many did. As redundant as the term may seem, we now have to deal with SubGenius Kooks.

We sincerely regret that, sometimes, the Church of the SubGenius just makes assholes worse. It causes some people's heads to explode in exactly the wrong way. Apparently more people heard what "Bob" said than were capable of understanding what he meant by it. Mister Dobbs didn't tell us much about the MAL-ALIGNED NORMALS; he only devoted one paragraph to them in The Book of the SubGenius. He made it seem like when the Church went public, it would all be hilarious creative writers, talented illustrators with great drugs, and luscious bespectacled plumper babes who play killer bass. It would be like one big marvelous X-Day Drill that never ends, brimming with priceless sarcasm in every possible form. A lie by omission is still a lie. You gotta hand it to Dobbs, though. He always did lie, and he was right every damned time.

Some so-called SubGeniuses start out laughing at all the wrong things in "Bob's" Word. When they finally figure out what the rest of us were laughing at – them – they piss their mental panties in rage and become the alt.slack Internet forum trolls and human open wounds who now fill our killfile lists. They short-circuited when they finally got Part Two of "Bob's" Important Message, resulting in their misplaced faith glands becoming all infected and runny.

We're sick of seeing unpleasant, unfunny wanna-be-bullies agreeing with, and even living by, ALL THE WRONG BULLSHIT in The Book of the SubGenius. The underlying POINT of the whole thing was a warning about THINKING THAT WAY, in one-dimensional, stereotype-swallowing, us-vs.-them black-and-white Dumbass-VisionŠ but that message goes right over their simple Bobbie heads, and they start enthusiastically making the Church into what it's a take-off on, instead of the stupid religion it was truly meant to be.

It figures that something created by "Bob" would do that, sure. But we worry that we'll just get better at it, and end up unleashing a hundred permanent assholes for every one True Beautant the Church inspires.

The SubGenius Kooks seemed funny to us, at first, but after a couple of decades of it, they're just depressing. Each one is a misunderstood world savior. (In a way, though, aren't we all?) Not every spazz with a "Bob" shirt sets off our "cradar." But the worst ones really believe they're "Bob," or The Anti-"Bob," or somebody even more important.

There are so many fakes and copycats: The FlubGenius Must be Lax The RubGenius Must Rub Backs The UnGenius Must Smoke Crack see what we mean? Tiresome.

If only we were kidding. If only this were just another part of the satire.

The Church may be a joke – among other things – but it's a sufficiently penetrating joke to have driven a few people QUITE MAD. It IS, after all, the direct, revealed WORD of J. R. "BOB" DOBBS. Which is all it needs to be. Even if every SubGenius disavowed the whole thing as a crock, forever, there would still remain that ONE IMMOVABLE FACT of the ISNESS of "BOB." No matter what we think about it, THAT FACE will always be there, and THAT FACE will always be laughing. And usually not laughing with us.

We'd be the last to denigrate the Differently Saned, or to promote 'sanity,' as the Pinks define it; but, hey, as SubGenius Spice put it, "Every church has its pew."

Most SubGenii deprogram themselves. Having to deprogram zombies from our own cult was once a rare event. But nowadays it's a spectator sport – you can watch us do it daily on alt.slack! We're currently experimenting with a preventative approach. We sold all these dipshits the insanity; now we're working out how to sell them the cure.

What's considered "crazy" has drastically changed over the years. "Insane" doesn't mean running around the mall with your underwear on your head anymore. Nowadays, that's fashionable, whereas demonstrating any manners at all has become weird. What's "weird" nowadays used to be considered COMMON HUMAN DECENCY.

THE WORLD OF THE DIFFERENTLY SANED

It's not that they see things that aren't really there. Serious religious nuts (and speedfreaks too) see connections that aren't there. Marvelous connections between, say, quantum physics and sappy mysticism. The only reason the rest of us don't see the connections is that we are not completely insane.

It's hard to carry on real conversations with a them. They are very precariously balanced mentally, and prefer to lecture. If you question their basic presumptions, suddenly you're barking up an unoccupied tree. The Non-Traditionally-Awared Person can't answer certain questions, because if he lets himself even understand them, his whole mental house of cards collapses. The concept of himself being wrong about something is outside his frame of reference. So his answers are always to other questions than the ones asked – the questions he'd prefer you'd ask.

We're all kooks to some extent. Still, as long as you can take a joke, you can't be too far gone. In order to be able to take a joke, however, one must be able to recognize that a joke has been TOLD. A crippled sense of humor is the single most distinguishing aspect of the "kook" or Deep Pink personality.

Especially severe Deep Pinks are called "Purples" in subjargon.

Thus, many Alternately-Realitied Persons can't experience Slack, except negatively – that is, by blocking the Slack of others. Often, such as in the case of street crazies or Internet poets, it cannot mind its own business. Pretending to teach its kook-view, its "Kookanschauung," to others is how it obtains its sad false Slack, be it from a soapbox on a street corner or via someone else's blog. Unfortunately, being self-righteous and mentally ill at the same time just plain doesn't come off.

FOOLING YOURSELF

New Age beliefs combined with dipshit science can inflict brain damage every bit as tragically as can chronic drug use and cable TV. Luckily for all but the most damaged victims, there is a place in the world for them, often a lucrative one, as RELIGIOUS OR PHILOSOPHICAL TEACHERS. (Important Note: rich people can afford to be much more superstitious than can ordinary po'buckers.)

It's easy enough to learn the trappings of awareness and knowledge. All it takes is impenetrably flighty jargon, punctuated by pregnant pauses and flattery. Big eyebrows help, as does a talent for lying by omission.

Many Mal-Aligned Normals naturally (and automatically) gush the kind of New Age kookademic jibber-jabber and Gaiarrhea that appeals to the Lowest ConMan denominator, the comforting blither-blather of so many gurus, therapists, philosophy majors and other dufii. This self-validating bullshit also tends to be self-generating; that's why we see so many pests who never get past Mysticism 101.* They eat up their own bullshit as fast as they can spew it out.

^ Those who catch on that there is no Mysticism 102 are the ones who teach Mysticism 101, and pen occult books for the those who like to think they're thinkers.

Most New Age guru claptrap doesn't teach you how to be more awake; it only teaches you how to pretend to be more awake, and how to use the lofty vocabulary of Higher Consciousness to categorize all the parts of the personality, and of all human experience, so that you can talk JUST AS IF YOU REALLY UNDERSTAND THEM.

But what you've learned from the guru are just holy-sounding platitudes that keep you automatically SURE that you're NOT ON AUTOMATIC. We know this, because we're the automatic robots that are programmed to tell all the other robots that they're robots and must wake up!

It's certainly gratifying to put oneself into the happy mental state of believing oneself to be fully awake and preternaturally aware, to skip straight to announcing the enlightenment without actually having turned on any of the lights, so to speak. But some New Agers are so busy congratulating themselves moment-by-moment about how "IN THE NOW" they are that they miss what's happening right in front of their faces. They talk the trademarked talk of the Awakened Spiritual master, but it stays talk. They don't live forever. They don't speak from the grave. They do talk, however. And it's still nothing but words, words words! We're sick of the hot air, and should probably shut up, ourselves!

"There is nothing, NO, NOTHING, more disillusioning than enlightenment." - Nenslo

Then there are the FOLLOWERS, those with a vested interest in not learning that they're dupes of a con man. There are always plenty of Private Assholes looking for a Major Asshole who'll tell them what to see, say and do, a Teacher or Master with a nice MacPhilosophy they can follow. But followers assume that their leader isn't just a CONNED MAN, HIMSELF, conned by a long line of previous con menŠ a Follower-Follower with somebody else's made-up rulebook.

We may not be enlightened, but we can sure spot a liar. It takes one to know one, and we are liars. The liars are the ones who are bragging about their enlightenment.

Let's say that again. BRAGGING about their ENLIGHTENMENT.

That covers half the Yoga world right there. As everybody who should've kept their mouths shut has already said a thousand times, "Those who know don't say, and those who say don't know."

It's easy to fool the follower types. False Prophets use tricks so simple that they impress only intellectuals – like the Power Stare, a technique so basic that it's used by chimpanzees and rednecks, but easily cows bookworms, gimps, nerds, dips, Trekkies and geniuses.

Giving lessons in enlightenment certainly implies that a person is qualified to teach it, and here we find the people who tell you what's smart. BEWARE YE the bushy-eyebrowed mystic who solemnly intones, "You are truly intelligent, I can see. Obviously there are many things which I do not need to tell you." Telling everybody who's smart and who's dumb is a good indication that you've gotten the two reversed.

Almost everybody secretly thinks they're a little smarter than most people, but dumbasses know they are.

We SubGeniuses are always trying to figure out if we're getting dumber, or smarter, or if we're really just a brain in a jar dreaming everything.

"I'd like to think that if this were all just a fevered hallucination of mine, I could hallucinate something where I get laid more." - Rev. Joe Cosby

We so frequently think ourselves dumbasses that that itself gives us a tiny vestige of hope that we might actually be slightly smarter than most people, or, more correctly, that we might have at least half a brain. Einstein, Lincoln, and Mark Twain, for instance, probably thought themselves dumbasses, and they certainly were right, yet they were a little smarter than most people.

For we are, ALL of us, DUMBASSES, and none of us really KNOW a damned thing for sure. All really IS vanity. That said, ALL DUMBASSES ARE NOT CREATED EQUAL. Generally, the dumber they are, the more sure they are that they're RIGHT about how much smarter they are than everybody else.

[Cain]

OUR CALLING: TO UNMASK THE FALSE PROPHETS.

Which is the WORST False Prophet? Which person lies the most to you? Bush? Rush? Geraldo? "Bob"?

NO. It's YOU. THE BIGGEST LIAR YOU KNOW IS YOU.

We know this because we're the biggest liars we know. BUT! – we're trying to CATCH ourselves in our own lies.

Oops, there went another one.

Before you go unmasking False Prophets, you might want to peel off that thing you have super-glued to the front of your face. Everybody is pretending to be something they're not, because nobody can completely know what they are. The act of observing yourself drastically affects the outcome, for there is one thing vastly more powerful than the human mind:

THE HUMAN EGO. And the SubGenius ego is a thousand times larger than that!

That thing is much better at outsmarting the mind than the mind can even guess. In fact, it makes the mind THINK it's WINNING! – just by sweet-talking itself! It can form a labyrinth of beautiful words, and then take those words for the real thing. Next thing you know, a guy who's nothing BUT ego is telling everybody else how to LOSE THEIR EGOS.

As the rapper, Poop Bobby-Bob said: "The Pink Boy's got a "BOB" COMPLEX."

Paradoxically enough, this type is easy to spot because they practice flamboyant humility, conspicuous humbleness and the most grandiose self-effacement, constantly reminding you of their supreme egolessness.

"A bunch of passive-aggressive serial killers." – Joe Cosby

"You can take it from me, being ego-free is terrific!" - Baldin Pramer, Doctor of Zen and Tao Studies, University of No University

((Editor's Note: Never let it be said that we pick solely on Christianity.))

"Buddhism is a bigger crock than Christianity, if such a thing is possible. You have this fat guy, lurching from one excess to another. He burns out on earthly delights, gets all angsty like some little goth chick, then suddenly he's all enlightened? Give me a break. If he had any brains at all, he would have paced himself. The good life falls in his lap, but he blows it big-time, and for this becomes a great spiritual leader? By that standard, your average Midwestern American has more on the ball. I'm really tired of this bullshit. I'm supposed to accept these extraordinary legends, from a time when most people couldn't even read, as somehow worthy of my respect? Even as allegory they're way short of the mark, yet these bastards take them as established fact worth dying (or killing me) for? Fuck them!!! Lamas, priests, monks, mullahs, rabbis, sages, wise men, spirit guides.... ad nauseum. May they all burn in HELL! In the struggle against darkness and tyranny, ignorance and superstition, every religion that ever came along has either dropped the ball, or become the new oppressor." - Rev. Polar Bear

Our goal: to become the Oppressor To End All Oppression.

^^

Anybody who tells you they're enlightened is looking for a donation. Anybody who tells you what you "need to do" is trying to tell you they're enlightened without being so obvious about it. They want YOU to say it. Like somebody who loses weight and says "I'm so FAT" in order to fish a compliment out of you, except they will usually get real pissed if you don't come through with it.

Of course, J. R. "Bob" Dobbs is an exception to this rule. Dobbs does want a donation, but only so he can continue the Good Work of gathering even more donations. And "Bob" IS enlightened. "Bob" is more enlightened than Mother Theresa, the Dalai Lama and Martha Stewart put together. "Bob" spent many years in the misty Himalayas studying, meditating, and chanting under the great Ascended Masters in their mountain monasteries, and he had a Realization that none of them before had had. And this was that studying, meditating and chanting is REALLY FUCKING BORING.

It was from this epiphany that "Bob" developed a NEW system of enlightenment. Instead of STUDYING AND MEDITATING to get enlightenment, the "Bob"-Dharma was to BUY it, which is much more time-efficient.

Bringing his salesman superpowers to bear, "Bob" quickly realized something about all of these masters he studied with: while they were pretty sure they actually were enlightened, each couldn't help but wonder secretly if the OTHER masters might not be more enlightened, or have some kind of enlightenment which had never occurred to them. So "Bob" quickly brokered a black market network through which one enlightened master could buy another enlightened master's enlightenment, using SubGenius technology to isolate the area of the brain where the enlightenment-pheromones go, and transferring them via toothpaste tubes obtained at a bargain from Army surplus.

"Since he ran the whole network, of course he got the best prices, and got to sample EVERYBODY'S enlightenment. And he passes the savings on to YOU." - Joe Cosby

^^

Our universities are likewise riddled with this disease. The preening dumbasses of academia draw intricate maps of each other's maps until they forget that there ever was a territory. They manufacture endless bloated, pretentious, and pointlessly complicated philosophomoronicisms to convince themselves that they really KNOW something. But, like the religious nuts, they're so far gone into their own silly academic linguistic charades, and so disconnected from everyday primate reality, that they actually believe their own bullshit.

And this crap makes some people feel "smart"!

But not for us the comforting mumbo-jumbo of the Postmodemists, the Bituationists, the Transnormalists; feel-good philosophies make us feel sick, and can only impede the Slack Awareness of the true POSTMUMBOJUMBONIST.

Is it all, then, just BLUFF? False-Guru bluff, and self-bluff? Are we truly that cynical? Is the loftiest guru only bluffing himself so well that he inspires others? Gurdjieff called that the first PITFALL. But was he just saying that, because it sounded wise?

Every SubGenius eventually undergoes that phase of disillusionment with all religion, even the personalized weird non-religions that you thought you could live with. You realize that your... "religion"... was just a framework that happened to appeal to you – a scarecrow skeleton on which you could comfortably hang your own intuition. You weren't sucking down powers from the heavens, nor were the gods tilting the Luck Plane for you. Your Slack is what did it all. And, one day, if you listen to enough SubGenius CDs, you'll be able to do it without any other props or rituals.

But you have to figure out what "IT" is FOR YOURSELF!

Unless you're a dumbass! Then you can pay "Bob" to tell you.

The less you know, the more sure you are of what little you do know; and, contrariwise, the more you know, the less sure you are of ANY of it. One sign of aging in the right direction is that you're no longer so certain you're RIGHT. Being certain is a sign of being stupid.

"It is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT that you understand that you suck, because that is the necessary first step to NOT sucking. Look at the people who suck hardest – one of the things they all have in common is their erroneous belief that they DO NOT suck. Those of us who are aware that we DO suck strive to remedy it and thus continually improve. Those who are not aware that they suck only grow sucklier day by day." – Nenslo

Religion shouldn't be based on what we "know", but on what we don't know. And we don't know shit.

"Bob" said, "BELIEVE ME OUT OF IT." We'll stick with the contradictions that make good sense, thank you very much.

NO BLOOD FOR SNAKE OIL! Fuck 'em even if they can't TELL a joke!

"The Conspiracy no longer pulls the wool over my eyes! Now I pull my own wool over my OWN eyes! I'm blinding MYSELF! I'm FREE!"

Trying not to be a dumbass can be a full time job, and obviously not all of us are up to the task. Maybe it's best, as an alternative, to FULLY BE that dumbass. to be that dumbass to the very HILT. The example of "Bob's" life demonstrates this principle more vividly than any other competing religious teacher or system.

"Back when I was doing my Heavy Research, closing in on that little itch in the back of my brain, I started stumbling across these eastern mystical texts about the 'perfection of wisdom,' like The Perfection of Wisdom in a Thousand Verses, The Perfection of Wisdom in a Hundred Verses, The Perfection of Wisdom in a Hundred Letters, and one day I found The Perfection of Wisdom in a Single Letter. And I said well I give up. And then I understood." - Nenslo

IF YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT TO EAT, TRY FOOD. IF YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT TO BELIEVE, SEND ONE DOLLAR." - J. R. "Bob" Dobbs, 1979 promotion speech before Church rollout.

[Cain]

I think us and Stang are coming at some similar things here, if from a different context.  More later.

[Cainad (dec.)]

Good stuff. Also:

"It is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT that you understand that you suck, because that is the necessary first step to NOT sucking. Look at the people who suck hardest – one of the things they all have in common is their erroneous belief that they DO NOT suck. Those of us who are aware that we DO suck strive to remedy it and thus continually improve. Those who are not aware that they suck only grow sucklier day by day." – Nenslo

I nominate 'sucklier' for Adjective of the Year.

[Triple Zero]

very nice.

the subgenius. even their kooks seem worse than ours

the rant could have been a fair bit shorter, but fortunately it was well written.

[LMNO]

I like the part about the New Age mysticz.

[B_M_W]

Good stuff. Also:

"It is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT that you understand that you suck, because that is the necessary first step to NOT sucking. Look at the people who suck hardest – one of the things they all have in common is their erroneous belief that they DO NOT suck. Those of us who are aware that we DO suck strive to remedy it and thus continually improve. Those who are not aware that they suck only grow sucklier day by day." – Nenslo

I nominate 'sucklier' for Adjective of the Year.

Sucklier: adj. To accelerate into suckiness due to the unawareness of said suckiness.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

A very nice set of rants!

[Bu🤠ns]

i got a lot out of this. 

btw, where was this originally printed?

[Cain]

I think it was somewhere on Key64.  I had the URL before, but forgot to post it.  Should be on the main page though.

[Bu🤠ns]

http://www.key64.net/content/post/751-SubGenius-Kooks

got it, thanks   

[East Coast Hustle]

damn. this is good shit.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Fuck Stang.  Fuck him right in his pee-stained dentures.  The bastard spends 30 years telling people it's okay to be their damaged selves, and then he gets all butthurt because not everyone that sees how fucked up everything is meets his definition of "cool".

He's become everything he used to bitch about.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Fuck Stang.  Fuck him right in his pee-stained dentures.  The bastard spends 30 years telling people it's okay to be their damaged selves, and then he gets all butthurt because not everyone that sees how fucked up everything is meets his definition of "cool".

He's become everything he used to bitch about.

LAIL!

What Stang seems to be saying in these posts seems damned close to all the LOL23PINEAL arguments that show up here. You seem to have an issue with Stang so whatever... but if you're so blinded by that, that you're unable to appreciate a good rant.. well that seems kinda sad to me.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Fuck Stang.  Fuck him right in his pee-stained dentures.  The bastard spends 30 years telling people it's okay to be their damaged selves, and then he gets all butthurt because not everyone that sees how fucked up everything is meets his definition of "cool".

He's become everything he used to bitch about.

LAIL!

What Stang seems to be saying in these posts seems damned close to all the LOL23PINEAL arguments that show up here. You seem to have an issue with Stang so whatever... but if you're so blinded by that, that you're unable to appreciate a good rant.. well that seems kinda sad to me.

The rant is the thing I have an issue with...So fuck off with your sadness, emoboi.  There's a bus to throw yourself under every 15 minutes.

Damn.

TGRR,
Has about fucking had it with people who deliberately misunderstand him to score "points".