The World Discordian Project

[Cain]

This is building off the idea proposed in this thread that Discordianism may be a little too American-centric (hey, we came to a similar conclusion, only related to the time it was created not so long ago, so I'll go with this) and that a good idea to help spread it may be to study subversive mythology, stories, folk heroes and ideas from other cultures, then try to fix them into a Discordian context.

A few things on culture before I start.  If we want to work from the most basic level, I would say Discordianism, as it is now, works best in a postmodern, Western culture.  Principally the USA, but also to a lesser extent Europe, Australia, Canada, Israel and New Zealand.  We can homogenize these as a "Western culture" for now, although there are significant differences we should explore later.

Following on from that, if we use Samuel Huntingdon's somewhat flawed macro-cultural model, we can divide the world up into several zones of related cultures, like this:


# Western civilization, centered on Western Europe (particularly the European Union) and North America, but also including other European-derived countries such as Australia and New Zealand. Huntington also includes the Pacific Islands, East Timor, Suriname,[citations needed] French Guiana, and northern and central Philippines.

# The Orthodox world of Armenia, Belarus, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Georgia, Greece, Moldova, Montenegro, Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Romania, Russia, Serbia and Ukraine.

# Latin America. It's a hybrid of the western world and the local indigenous people. May be considered a part of Western civilization, though it has slightly distinct social and political structures from Europe and North America. Many people of the Southern Cone, however, regard themselves as full members of the Western civilization.

# The Muslim world of Central Asia, North Africa, Southwest Asia, Afghanistan, Albania, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia, Maldives, Pakistan, Somalia, Mindanao, and parts of India.

# Hindu civilization, located chiefly in India, Nepal, and culturally adhered to by the global Non-resident Indians and People of Indian Origin, the diaspora.

# The Sinic civilization of China, Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, and Vietnam. This group also includes the Chinese diaspora, especially in relation to Southeast Asia.

# Japan, considered a hybrid of Chinese civilization and older Altaic patterns.

# The civilization of Sub-Saharan Africa is considered as a possible 8th civilization by Huntington.

# The Buddhist areas of Bhutan, Cambodia, Laos, Mongolia, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Arunachal Pradesh, Kalmykia, parts of Nepal, parts of Siberia, and the Tibetan government-in-exile are identified as separate from other civilizations, but Huntington believes that they do not constitute a major civilization in the sense of international affairs.

# Instead of belonging to one of the "major" civilizations, Ethiopia, Haiti, and Turkey are labeled as "Lone" countries. Israel could be considered a unique state with its own civilization, Huntington writes, but one which is extremely similar to the West. Huntington also believes that former British colonies in the Caribbean constitute a distinct entity.

# In some cases, the Sinic, Hindu, Buddhist and Japonic civilizations are merged into a single civilization called Eastern World.


While this is a flawed thesis, it may give us regional areas to concentrate on, and hopefully build around.  Say we cant find many trickster/rebel ideas located in South Korea, we could hopefully build from others in the region to make something that could express those ideas in an intelligible and familiar way - even if its not from the actual country involved.

[LMNO]

Wow.  Now I wish I knew more languages and cultures.

[Verbal Mike]

I think this is an excellent excuse to explore the idea I had not long ago of Chaos Judaism. It's gonna take a while because I don't have any books that explore Judaism as a philosophical framework. I may have grown up surrounded with it but I'm pretty sure I missed out on all the cool parts of the religion.
Or maybe I'll find a copy of the Jewish Bible and read it, haven't done in ages (and never in whole).

[LMNO]

"Kaballah".


Or, more specifically, SSOOKN.

[Dido]

I wonder why Huntington's division seems reasonable and galling at the same time.
Dito the idea to transplant Discordianism into other cultures. Surely there must be other subversive concepts  (for lack of a better word) and persons identifying with them with whom Discordians can communicate.

[Cain]

Its galling because Huntingdon is the dick who came up with the quasi-fascist Clash of the Civilizations thesis, which is the intellectual grounding for most right-wing whinging about "Mooslims taking over teh wurld!"

But yes, I started warming to the idea after reading Trickster Makes World for the Pranks and Pranksters course at Maybe Logic.  Lots of different tricksters there, from Yoruba, Greek, Native American, Indian and Chinese culture.

[Dido]

Its galling because Huntingdon is the dick who came up with the quasi-fascist Clash of the Civilizations thesis, which is the intellectual grounding for most right-wing whinging about "Mooslims taking over teh wurld!"

But yes, I started warming to the idea after reading Trickster Makes World for the Pranks and Pranksters course at Maybe Logic.  Lots of different tricksters there, from Yoruba, Greek, Native American, Indian and Chinese culture.

thnx. I was not sure if it was the book or me being 15 when I read it.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

 

I fully support this concept! Perhaps people can volunteer to research a specific culture and then present some findings to the forum?

[Dido]

I fully support this concept! Perhaps people can volunteer to research a specific culture and then present some findings to the forum?

Which one will you be doing?

[e]

I have vague informational background about "Eastern" (aka look we ripped off china!) cultures.  Particularly Japanese, which I can theoretically speak. 

My largest problem with this project is I keep thinking "Oh, we can use this!" and then realising that the mythology I was thinking of probably hasn't been taught to people in thousands of years.  Curse you, knowledge of ancient mythologies! 

edit: I think a large part of my problem here is that I have no idea in most countries if the ancient mythologies are in fact still taught to kids.  In the "East" this isn't so much a problem, because I know that traditional storytelling and fables are still popular in Japan and China, at least.

In keeping with the "PD is kind of dated" theory as well as the "Americo-centric" one, we should probably try to use current stories and things from various cultures, instead of necessarily sticking to the more "traditional" types.

Of course, an interesting approach might be to replace Eris altogether with (Chaos/Trickster Deity of Choice) and represent the IPD (International Principia Discordia) or WDP-X (Where X is country-abbreviation of your choice) as a 'conversation' between {Deity} and {Modern cultural values}.  Or, you know, not.

edit: It might also be useful to look at the various forms of publication used.   Modifying the content is well and good, but it's not going to help if it's laid out in a completely foreign way than people are used to.  Since I imagine our main method of dissemination of these works is going to be via the internets, it'd be a good idea to get a grasp on the usual web page designs of your chosen country.  Japan, for instance, uses a lot more text-heavy pages than the US does.

With this in mind I propose that we simultaneously design a framework for the WDP-Xs, which each will follow while containing different content.  This is quite an Aneristic approach, but it will make the task considerably easier on the people doing the research.  They could also then serve as a sort of Rosetta Stone for various cultures!  Want to learn about [subversion in] another culture?  simply read their WDP-X!

A wiki might work better for this than a forum thread, as well.  There's going to be a lot of information floating around before it's all done.  I can set one up on my domain space unless somebody wants to put it up somewhere with similar resources (like where the BIP is hosted, or even just as a "portal" within the BIP wiki)

[Requia ☣]

I don't suppose anybody knows a discordian or 5 from one of the non western cultures we could try to get to come over here?

There's a bit of fear that even if we don't botch interpreting a different culture, that the kind of mainstream culture you'd be able to research may not click at all with the kind of people who ultimately respond well to the basic concepts of discordianism.

[e]

The only "non mainstream" culture I can think of in Japan is the Otaku groups.  Frankly, though, they're scary (think 4chan times infinity).  They could be found on 2chan, though, which is the group 4chan spun off of.

[Requia ☣]

I know a little bit about Japan's counter culture, not much.  Something about a gen-x/millenial grouping of 'other humans' (or something similar), kindof a goth/faux-punk fashion sense to those, no idea about them beyond that.

[Cain]

OK, since we are looking at Japan....what about the Yakuza?  I know, they are scary thugs for the most part, but don't they also have certain rituals and ways of identifying each other that would be considered anamethema to the average Japanese person (such as the irezumi)?

Also, if we are looking historically, it is always worth looking at ronin, certain temple masters and other individuals like that.  Musashi would be one, the Sword Saint who taught himself and went around slaughtering (according to the myths) giant lizards (zomg reptilian conspiracy).

Japan's highly class structured and feudal historical organization would have to have produced an equally uncontrolled and unstructured outside element.  What of those people who refused to play by the rules of the Houses and Japanese etiquette?  The ninjas may be another avenue, if you can stomach going through 20,000 pages of crap to find any gems.  Also, Japan must have had a crazy leader at some point...


I agree with TSO that we should probably come up with a sort of Rosetta Stone standard of what we want the format of each book to be, then slot in the appropriate myths and figures.  It would give as a guide as to the sort of thing we need to look for.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

I fully support this concept! Perhaps people can volunteer to research a specific culture and then present some findings to the forum?

Which one will you be doing?

Well, I was thinking originally of seeing what African cultural references I could pick up... but then I realized I'm surrounded by Indian, Sri Lankan, *insert other Hindic/Muslim IT Consultants here* and they all like me. I'm gonna write up a quick survey and send it to a few of the people I know well. See what sort of social memes they see as popular and 'discordant'. Check on mythology and fable... especially look for any well known crazies (Norton I level) that might appear in popular culture or counterculture.

So mark me down for India/Sri Lanka/general Indo area for now... I'll see what I can find.