Sermon I exposition of the movement

[JeanXlamb]

Consulted by an oracle of nonsense I open my first sermon with these words, "A circle joins the path, and an intention is born." I give a message of careless poetry to the world.

Having reflected upon the condition of Man, Art, and Reality, the nature of why many express themselves has become more lucid, crystalline, obvious. I name you pope, "Jesus" of the moment, the frog-licker of cynicism.

And now the hour has arrived: another message oracled out of the "realms":

"The practice denies nothing in fruition."

Now, I, JeanX, raped mongrel, and "URINE"-covered lamb give you the real sermon:

Exoteric conjecture (I) you are the sermon , you are the dialogue, you are the freedom, you are the truth , you were the falsity! Now, you are the paradigm for "no-paradigm", the hinge upon which your two halves meet. One half being your judgment, the "you," the "I," the construct pushed into reluctance and dualistic skepticism. The other half Wallowing in sinlessness and childocity. Listen to the Word of a moment's "Lamb,"
I am your haiku, your absolutely arrogant alliteration! Embrace me as you embrace all your constructs, lost in your sea of opinions grabing on to the rocks of rational dialecticsim while I throw buoyant fecal matter your way!

I am JeanX , existential interloper, the radiating beacon of freedom!

WATCH ME

JOIN ME

...ME
http://merde-a-belles-dents.deviantart.com/
http://www.youtube.com/JeanX111

[Verbal Mike]

Look, I like it. It reminds me of The Broadsheets of Ontological Anarchism. And I liked those.
But I don't think I really grok your point, if you have one.

Dada is an art, and like all art it can be done for the sake of art but also for the sake of making a point. When you call something a sermon, it should generally have a point, and one would expect the point to be self-evident.

But I did like it.

[JeanXlamb]

Maybe my point is no point? Isn't making a point sometimes pointless? Or maybe I have a point, thats my point. maybe

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Yeah, but random pointless nonsense has been done so much for so long that in order to be novel, interesting, or surprising, sometimes having a point makes all the difference.

[LMNO]

I'm gonna give it a 6.5 out of 10.

It's really reaching for that "expressing the inexpressable" thing, without being meaningless.  You can feel the intelligence of the message, even if the message it self seems intelligable at first.

What would really knock it out of the park is if you go totally meta and post a "commentary" on the piece.  That would show a really cool left-brain/right-brain kind of thing.

[Triple Zero]

have we worked out yet what comes after post-modernism?

cause i think i could really go for that.

[Cain]

Pre-modernism, it would seem.

We're sort of in philosophical limbo right now, as I understand it. The old meta-narratives are resurfacing (nationalism, liberalism, Islam etc) but they're being impacted on by globalization and cross-cultural contamination in so many ways they don't really resemble their predecessors. 

Supermodernity has been posited as a term, as a reaction against the nihilistic assumptions of decontructionism and postmodern philisophy, but I can't see it especially catching on.

Also, welcome to the forums JeanXlamb

[Verbal Mike]

Another term you might be hearing in the future is nachmodern (after-modern, in German). I edited the translation of an article about nachmodern aesthetics and it actually kind of makes sense. No idea if it will catch on. And I can't really explain what exactly it is. I've been repressing all memories of that editing job, it was hell.
But it doesn't really apply in this case anyway. It seemed to be mainly about things that seem normal but are, on second thought, deeply unsettling.

[Triple Zero]

talking about this topic with some friends that study literature, art & media and related things, they usually refer me to an argument (made by some guy or other) that post-modernism is in fact, sort of by definition, the last possible stadium, "the end of art(?)".

cause unless you go back to where you were before (which is what you mean by "pre-modernism", right?), which is kind of impossible cause you can't really "un-know" things (and call it progress), in order to proceed to a newer stage you always need to complete the cycle of life and death (as we see in all mystical symbolistic systems), you need to destroy the previous stage and build something new out of its ashes.

the problem with post-modernism is that it's all about destroying itself. it's like an ingrown toenail. if you say "we should do away with our previous notions of post-modernism" you're being post-modern. it's nearly inescapable like a Zen riddle.

i've been really mulling about this for some time now. in fact, pretty much ever since somebody described to me what "post-modernism" means in clear words that made sense to me. the only way out, and also the reason why i asked, is a bit tooting our own horn.

(part of) what we do on this forum, if we wanna call it neo-discordianism--just for a moment now, i know we don't like tags, but bear with me just to draw a line with the "old" fluffy discordianism which is obviously post-modern in a way, using dada and nonsense as "salvation" in order to shake people's mind loose from predefined notions of "order".
on this board we (read: some of us) say "fuck that dada bullshit, been there done that", we reject the notion of "everything is permissible", we do embrace the "think for yourself schmuck", reaching out to virtue ethics for a moral base and keep critically evaluating everything we encounter, including ourselves, but not ironically, not even cynically (we save our cynism for other topics), we refuse to settle for the post-modern mental sockfucking conclusion that "nothing is true", let me get that straight, even if "nothing is true" if you interpret it from a certain angle, that doesn't mean you get to settle for it and bask in the woolly cotton candy feeling that nothing matters because it's all meaningless anyway.
that is the easy way out, we've been there, done that, discarded the map, ignored the menu, but now it's time to demand the finest steak that's only listed if you read between the lines (urgh sorry for that last metafor, guys).

am i on a right track here? it's not really my background to write about cultural/philosophy, so i may have gotten it all wrong. in fact, if i do, i'd love to hear about it, because as i said, the above has been mulling through my head for quite some time now

[Requia ☣]

The discordianism around this board seems to be more of an existentialism based discordianism, rather than the postmodern stuff I usually see elsewhere.

[Verbal Mike]

000, I think you're pretty much right. But I think technically, what you call "neo-discordianism" is not a real escape from post-modernism but rather post-modernism minus most of the associated baggage. It is, in a way, an application of post-modernism to post-modernism - which remains post-modern while denying post-modernism.
It is the end of the end of art.

[Telarus]

Cain uttered>

++let me get that straight, even if "nothing is true" if you interpret it from a certain angle, that doesn't mean you get to settle for it and bask in the woolly cotton candy feeling that nothing matters because it's all meaningless anyway.++

Very true, Cain. But this "undercurrent" that you point out runs thro the Illuminatus! trilogy (granted, it's a pretty buried meme amongst all the other claptrap), but the main caracters are constantly running up against "Celiene's Choice", being squarely confronted with the "Nothing is True" or "There are no Enemies, Anywhere" meme-bombs. Hagbard, (and thus R.A.W.) is _not_ satisfied with the characters simple accepting the meaninglessness of everything, and use it to scramble their way out of their previous arbitrary mental cages.

I see this in the conversations between Hagbard and the Dealy Lama, and in alot of Camden Benares stuff.

All is Meaningless only in Some Sense.

[Telarus]

LOL, here I go and reply to this and _then_ go read Cain Illuminatus! rant thread. Ah well. Annoying catchprases or no, I got what you're saying. BTW, have you read any Camden Benares?

I liiked his book on Tarot alot.

[Triple Zero]

telarus:

1. that wasn't cain's utterance but mine
2. that's very nice for the illuminatus trilogy that its characters are so brilliantly smart

verbatim:

1. that's just what a postmodernist would say!
2. BURN HIM

[Verbal Mike]

I think I was rather trying to analyze the situation via post-modernism. But I was heavily stoned at the time so who knows what my point was.