The World Discordian Project

[Cain]

Young Krishna may be a good start, just as a hint.  He was an unrelenting thief and womanizer, but in a good way.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

http://ompage.net/ChristKrishna/krishna.htm

Now that is so ripe for manipulation to our needs it is sooper Funnay!

http://www.uexpress.com/tellmeastory/index.html?uc_full_date=20050515

Yasoda, standing not far away, smiled when she heard these words. She had come to understand that her son, Krishna, would always reveal two sides. He was chaos, certainly, but more than that, he was a blessing, a gift to this world.

It appears that Krishna was supposedly at the height of Bureaucracy... signifying the descent into Aftermath? 

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

I think I'll be off to the library this weekend....

[e]

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)?

The Yakuza though, pretty much are just thugs when you get right down to it.

Traditionally speaking, poets and zen types, ronin (again, in many cases just thugs), is all I can think of off the top of my head.  Oh, there are also the Eta, but they're so outside the "normal society" that people still, I believe, look upon them with some disdain.  In fact, apparently so disdained that the term I just used there is actually derogatory and is still the most common so far's I know   .  Well worth a mention or two, though.

As for Ninja, I honestly don't think they qualify as being "outside" normal society in the sense we want.  Historically speaking, they were so sworn to loyalty to the lord they served that it wasn't even funny.  Not exactly great harbingers for the words of Eris.

Speaking of Zen types, I once found this wonderful blog post or something online that was called "Koan or Cruelty?".  It had 4 Koan in it and 4 stories that were just priests being cruel, and invited the reader to to guess which was which.  Fun stuff.

More recently, and back on topic, there is the counter-culture movements of the 60s-today, which are essentially japanized versions of the 60s here.  Lots of things got a lot more westernised, lots of coffe-house tomfoolery, western music, jazz, rock, etc.  There were a lot of student riots in the late 60s about various things, mostly involving left/right political things and student rights.

As an excerpt:
"Several thousand students fought with police in Tokyo on 7 November in
the course of an attempt by students to storm the official residence of the
Prime Minister. Police used water cannon and tear gas to repel the
students, who were equipped with helmets and staves. Students were
demanding the return of Okinawa to Japan, the end of the Japanese-American
defence treaty and the repeal of the riot control act. There were more than
400 arrests."

In fact, Toudai (tokyo university) was actually occupied by students for about half a year (maybe more).  And that's occupied in the sense of barricades and fights with the police.

A good source of (modern) Japanese counterculture is Murakami Haruki.  Think of him as a slightly less extreme Kerouac.  Sort of.  He also has the benefit of actually being popular in the mainstream, I believe.

[Cain]

I defer to your judgement in such things.  I was just thinking of groups from outside of Japanese mainstream culture, historically, as starting points for further discussion.

Sounds very similar, the Tokyo University takeover, to the Sorbonne one as well.  Which ties in with Situationists, who were very Discordian in some ways.

[e]

Well, I'm not Japanese either, so I may be totally wrong.  One of my friends here in LA has a japanese host student staying with them, so maybe I'll confuse him horribly and ask him about this sort of stuff.  He wants to play the drums in a rock band over here, or something, so I don't think he's exactly a normal Japanese person.

[Golden Applesauce]

Pretty much all I know about Japan I learned from too much anime and manga.  Judging by the heroes of their media, they're (or at least the youth who watches/reads that stuff) are starting to backlash against the cram-school and the constant drive for perfection - we see a lot more laid back, against the grain type protagonists and less training, training, training and striving to uphold the world order against deviant threats type heroes.

Our family hosted a foreign exchange student from Japan not to long ago; she and all of her friends had dozens of t-shirts covered in Engrish.  I think that wanting to be American is the "in" thing over there.  I won't ask her though, because her english was pretty much limited to pointing and grunting, and my japanese is limited to exclamations.  (I believe in you!  Do your best!  I... I... I LOVE YOU! Eeehhh?  Pervertpervertpervertperver!!  Dumbass!  Fool! Moron!  Bonkurazu!)

[e]

In the latest of a number of far-too-long posts about Japan from me...

Pretty much all anybody online knows about Japan they learned from too much anime and manga.

This is the single biggest problem with Japan and the internet.    

Suzumiya Haruhi would be a good nomination for sainthood, but including anime characters in a PD equivalent seems weird to me unless they really do have a huge grounding in pop culture (e.g. Doraemon).  Additionally, remember that we don't want to just reach the sort of people who are likely to have already come up with the same ideas on their own.  What we really want to get a hold of is people who haven't thought of this yet, so we can show them what a good idea it is.

Since the vast majority of the human audience is in "adult-hood", it might not be a bad idea to include some older pop culture from Japan though.  This way you can appeal to the "Remember when you were a child?  Well, you still can be!" impulse.  Doraemon, though I came up with him at random, might actually be a pretty good spokesperson... spokesthing for Japan, since everybody (and I do mean everybody) in Japan knows who he is, and he represents the "creative and magical aspects of childhood" or some such BS.

A big part of the "counter-culture" in Japan involves going against the grain.  Everybody is supposed to be polite nice bland workaholic professional reliable normal people, even to the extent of self-sacrifice (the latter being a big theme in Japanese culture).   This of course means that prominent "rebels" are normally labeled as supreme malcontents and dangerous people. 

--TheStripèdOne
Anti-weaboo since 2004

[East Coast Hustle]

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

I would be happy to provide any relevant information regarding the Caribbean basin, particularly the ex- and current british colonies and the American colonies.

they're not as strategically significant as most other civilizations, but they're geographically close to america, predisposed to "trickster"-archetype behavior, and my experience is not only firsthand and experiential, but from the perspective of a member of the West Indian diaspora.

[Cain]

What are the main archtypes down there?  I would guess Papa Legba and Eshu, but I suspect there are several I am missing.

Also, once I've finished my (bloody) essays, I'll get on creating a template PD or two, in order to guide our research etc

[Requia ☣]

I'd point out that we don't necessarily need to have an icon people have heard of.  Eris is only in one well  known myth, and even then most people don't know that part very well.  (Paris and the three goddesses kinda steal the scene).

Not being very well known can work to our advantage too, if nobody has strong preconceptions about a meme then they're going to be more open to whatever interpretation it gets assigned.

[M.K]

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.

Sounds good. I bet some Finnish would-be-Discordians would like to have some Kalevala stuff fixed into Discordianism.

[7RY57]

Being Australian, we're used to feeling like the geeks at school who gathered in their teeny group far away from everyone else at lunch time... but that's not my point.

If anyone is interested, look into Australian Aboriginal mythology. Their stories and beliefs are SO strongly based upon metaphor and are sometimes extremely funny.
      ...If I remember correctly, the 'creator' is a giant rainbow snake.


On another note, happy 888 my friends.

[fomenter]

Zen buddhism  comes to mind for japan but i have no real grasp of the connection (if there is one) . i will do a little asking on Russia / orthodox world and get back to you if i find something

[Cramulus]

On another note, happy 888 my friends.

it's not 8/8/8 for another two hours, auspag!