Watch this newb dance

[Verbal Mike]

I'm a newb. I'm the worst kind of newb, too, because I'm not going to read the whole forum before posting my own bullshit here. If that pisses you off to no end, I hear ya man, I hate this shit myself, but I don't need you blasting me for it right here, right now. Save your time.

I've just read the BIP booklet (online) in almost one sitting, after first bumping into the whole project earlier today.

First of all, I wanna thank you guys. BIP is one of the best things I've read in a while. It's powerful, convincing, concise, and intensely Inspiring. It may have already triggered some major changes in my life for the coming years, and I'm very grateful to have read it.
I do however have a few remarks I'd like to make, which are a little negative, and you guys have probably heard them before, but I would be grateful to hear your replies to them personally.

BIP reminds me way way more of anarchist pamphlets I've read (the good ones, specifically), and of Fight Club, than it does of the Principia. This is not, naturally, a problem in and of itself, and it might be taken as a compliment. I'm just not sure how comfortable I am with that as an erisian. PD had tremendous power in its vagueness and in its humor, and both are practically non-existent in BIP. One may say we live in an era far more cynical than the decades that gave birth to PD, but if I'm not mistaken, most of the souls present in this forum were hooked in via PD, and PD is undeniably at the core of all things Discordian (or at least right near it, basking in the core's heat).
I'm not entirely comfortable with the fact that BIP does what it does without making me smile and without actually confusing me. I feel like I've been more punched into Enlightenment than, well, Confused into it, which is how I think PD worked for me. To me, Discordja has always had a real fun, funny, hippy bend to it, which is part of what made me so comfortable with it fresh out of a couple years of playing stuck-up hardline atheist god-basher. It's like Discordia is all "whoo, freedom is fun and awesome and hillarious!" and BIP is like "FREEDOM MUTHAFUCKA, DO YOU SPEAK IT!?" with that glorious afro and a nice handgun pointing into your brain. Yeah, both are about freedom. Yeah, BIP is much more clear to Internet-trained brains than PD may have been. Yeah, BIP can probably hook all kinds of cool folks and haul them in on the fun sooner or later. But am I the only one who thinks this should all happen light-heartedly, with a smile? Isn't that part of the whole point? Do we want hoards of thugs disseminating misinformation without stopping to pick the imaginary flowers?

ALL HAIL ERIS.
  And fire at will now.

EDIT: (+20 min.) Ah, now I remember the smart thing I wanted to say but couldn't remember. What I think I'm missing here in BIP is something to help me take myself less seriously. That was really the power of the humor in PD - it was disarming. BIP seems like a great tool to make people take the world less seriously, but it might make them take themselves dead serious, which, if you ask me, is not much better than just the dead part.
And still, fire at will.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Best first post ever.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

I see what you're saying, but I think humor is just one of many ways to approach the 'take yourself less seriously' thing. Maybe BIP isn't focused enough on the fact that the way we define ourselves, like the way we define anything else, is often the result of holding yourself captive to assumptions and "bars" that don't need to be there.

In the Black Iron Prison, the Warden is locked up in the High Security wing.

[Verbal Mike]

In the Black Iron Prison, the Warden is locked up in the High Security wing.

Well said.

[Verbal Mike]

Reflecting on yesterday's Enlightenment in my Most Holiest Bathtub just now, I think I realized another thing about BIP.
Basically, it starts off badly before getting really good. I think I actually bumped into BIP a few days ago, read the first page (the one about "this is your prison"), and thought "oh, that", and moved on. On the other hand the next part, about the two-man con, was very powerful and really pulled me in. Moreover, I can just see all those Jon Does on the street picking up this Booklet of Light, reading the whole "welcome to hell" thing, and tossing it in the next trash bin (or on the pavement, bless them). But I can also imagine those Jon Does reading the Two-Man Con and wanting to read more. So many people are completely disillusioned about Democracy these days, this is just the kind of thing that can strike a chord with the Faceless Masses. Why doesn't BIP just start with the Two-Man Con right off the bat? The whole Iron Prison thing can be explained afterwards. In fact, Two-Man Con can lead into it, since the Con is such a prominent, clear example of a Bar.

[Cramulus]

I think I agree with you about the order of rants. We really like that "Hey kid, welcome to prison" as the opening line, but I agree that the first page doesn't hook quite as well as it could. Hard to say though, because I don't think the two man con, despite its strengths, works quite as well as an intro piece.

Part of this is experimental. I wasn't around when they first assembled this thing, but I was around when I assembled the release #2. The idea at the time was that we were going to try multiple approaches to the same idea - a dark pamphlet, a light pamphlet, an absurd pamphlet, etc. Of course, we never did finish writing Lollercaust, and the Golden Sphere of Possibility is just a single essay which is essentially a find-replace edit of BIP -> GSP.

One of the cool things about this project IMHO is that it's all kopyleft and opensource and the .doc version is in my signature for you to edit any way you want. If you don't like the order of the pages, switch 'em! This isn't a "we're the producers and you're the consumer" relationship - the work belongs to the community, and to anyone who will be arsed to read it!

But all in all, welcome to the board. Good observations - we really really appreciate when people read the BIP and come in to tell us about it. If I could ask, how did you first stumble upon it, anyway?



CRAMULUS

[Verbal Mike]

This isn't a "we're the producers and you're the consumer" relationship - the work belongs to the community, and to anyone who will be arsed to read it!

Good point. And yet, I'm more interested in joining the collaboration behind the work, rather than just re-appropriating it as I see fit. I don't live in an English-speaking country right now anyhow, so I'm not going to be distributing copies any time soon. (People in this town seem to begrudge needing to read in English, and I'm not yet fit to translate the whole thing for the locals.)

How did I stumble upon BIP? The first time I think I just saw it in the sidebar nav on PD.com when I went in to show my mom a passage or two of PD (yes, my mom.) But that was the time I said "oh" and moved along to happier scripture.
The second time was a result of hunting down Erisian blogs. I had a few biggish moments of Enlightenment a few days ago and I was thinking of starting a blog so I'd have a soapbox to spew my propaganda off of. I thought it might make sense to get in touch with Discordia online a little before I start anything new. I actually have you to thank, Cramulus - about a day after I added 23ae to Google Reader, your post about GASM showed up and surfing the links I ended up on the BIP wiki and quickly ended up downloading the readable pdf and Enlightening myself.

Thanks for the warm welcome, by the way.

[Cramulus]

How did I stumble upon BIP? The first time I think I just saw it in the sidebar nav on PD.com when I went in to show my mom a passage or two of PD (yes, my mom.) But that was the time I said "oh" and moved along to happier scripture.
The second time was a result of hunting down Erisian blogs. I had a few biggish moments of Enlightenment a few days ago and I was thinking of starting a blog so I'd have a soapbox to spew my propaganda off of. I thought it might make sense to get in touch with Discordia online a little before I start anything new. I actually have you to thank, Cramulus - about a day after I added 23ae to Google Reader, your post about GASM showed up and surfing the links I ended up on the BIP wiki and quickly ended up downloading the readable pdf and Enlightening myself.

Thanks for the warm welcome, by the way.

that's the best thing I've read all day


HEY GUYS, OUR MASTER PLAN IS WORKING

[Triple Zero]

HEY GUYS, OUR MASTER PLAN IS WORKING

also:

BIP is like "FREEDOM MUTHAFUCKA, DO YOU SPEAK IT!?" with that glorious afro and a nice handgun pointing into your brain.

made me smile.

[barumunk]

Do we want hoards of thugs disseminating misinformation without stopping to pick the imaginary flowers?

Great post man/lady/person. its was refreshing to read, and its nice to note that most of the people finding the BIP have very much the same take on it in relation the PD (its still fucking awesome though)... some of us [you] just seem to be far more articulate about it

[AFK]

Welcome, glad you found the pamphlet and enjoyed it.  Now to your feedback:

You certainly are right, the BIP does go right for the jugular.  I think there were a couple of things influencing that.  1) I think it was a factor of where the authors were, mentally, at the time.  (me being one of them).  I don't exactly recall what was going on in the world as it was being put together, but we all seemed to be in a similar head space at the time.  2)  I think some of us felt like while the humor in the PD was useful in places, in other places it was a little too distracting from the central tenants or ideas.  I think there was a want to strip that back and really get to the meat of "Think For Yourself, Schmuck/"

Think about it, the PD was written when?  What kind of humor was in vogue during the 50's and 60's?  Anyone who knows me knows I enjoy humor, but the humor in the PD is severely dated.  The next thing you must understand is that the BIP was never meant to be a stand alone project.  As we were completing it we were already contemplating two more pamphlets.  One, "Lollercaust" would have seeked to infuse more humor into our writings.  There was a third, which, IIRC, was to get more into the sort of mystical/esoteric ideas.  As it turned out, the other two never really took off.  We discovered that trying to be funny on command is really, really hard.  In fact IIRC, Hill/Mal said he accumulated stuff for the PD over a period of 10 years.  We knocked BIP out in a matter of months.  I think it can still happen and maybe you can help with that. 

I have to respectfully disagree with you, and others, about the order of the pamphlet.  I love that first piece and I think it's a strong introduction to the idea.  (no, I didn't write it so that isn't influencing my opinion).  In a way, I think it serves as a sort of "Starbuck's Pebble" test for the BIP.  If after one reads that first bit, if all you get out of it is depression, bleakness, etc., then maybe that person isn't ready to consider what it is actually talking about and need to come back to it later.  That's my take anyway. 

[Verbal Mike]

There's a great deal of difference between cutting back on dated humor and being outright serious. To me, The Curse of Greyface is one of the most important pages of PD (and of anything I've ever read, I think), even though it didn't make me laugh. It was just a nice and loony attack on seriousness, and in this day and age seriousness definitely needs some attacking.
Like you said, writing something funny on command is not easy. I'm not really sure whether a hilarious "Lollercaust" pamphlet is a realistic goal. Toning down the dead seriousness of BIP is definitely possible, however. I'll go through it some time over the next days and pick a page to try and treat with a little lighthearted idiocy. I hope I can contribute something to this project.

As to the order of the pamphlet, perhaps that would be a better basis for branching. Your argument for the order in BIP makes sense, but I still think it's more of a turn off for a great proportion of the potential audience. There could be BIP, the pamphlet that starts off by telling you the world is a prison [and that you can change it maybe], and another pamphlet with essentially the same material but starting with something else. It could be called The Two-Man Con if that piece serves as its initial hook.
But I'm jumping way ahead of myself here. I'm gonna see if I can massage some humor into some part of BIP, for starters.

[AFK]

Okay, I'm a bit of a purist and do have quite a bit of investment in the BIP pamphlet as a contributor, so if this sounds a little bitchy, well, you know why.  (Also, I am under the weather and not in the best of moods):

Anyway, I honestly don't believe we need to be messing with the BIP anymore.  It's been revised once already, and Cram did a wonderful job of that.  I honestly think energy and motivation is best served being invested in a new project, instead of revising what has been done.  We don't need a BIP 3.0, imo.  I mean if you are just doing it as an exercise I think that's cool, but I think we need to let sleeping dogs lie and move on. 

[AFK]

Also, just a note on kopyleft guidelines as relating to the BIP:  the writings by The Good Reverend Roger are NOT kopyleft and should not be changed or altered. 

[Verbal Mike]

It's mostly just for practice, to see how much energy it would take to take the brain-slapping goodness of BIP and inject it with some funnies.

As for the kopyleft issue, duly noted.