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Why is Discordia more relevant than ever in the year 2008?

Started by Cramulus, September 03, 2008, 06:48:25 PM

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Cramulus

Why Discordia is more relevant than ever in the year 2008?



As time marches on and culture gets weirder and weirder, I think Discordia becomes increasingly relevant. I'd like to discuss why Discordia is a better choice now than it's ever been.

Here's my take, and I'd love to hear yours:

At its core, Discordia has some very valuable lessons about ignoring cultural programming and navigating our fractillian society on your own terms. Its satirical approach towards religion, something that was once so sacred we couldn't joke about it, is an attitude we can carry into numerous other straightfaced territories. Gender, politics, the economy, war, terrorism, our expectations for the future, your goals, your flaws, your life -- these are things that we can easily misunderstand if we take them to be Real and Serious and a Big Deal. Which isn't to say that they're not a big deal. But that it's better to take them with a grain of salt.

When we take something seriously, we get rigid, we get tunnel vision, and we become (in some ways) indentured to it. Discordia is about tearing down walls internally as well as externally. In this decade, where there are so many conflicting messages being shouted at us, it's important to differentiate between What Matters and What Doesn't. And the crystal lesson in the center is that people probably take more stuff seriously than is healthy. Healthy for all of us. Discordia is about using flexibility and humor to cope with the dangers and paradoxes of modern living. It's about escaping the two-man con where both choices are bum, and become an active (rather than passive) character in your life's story.

I think this is the most interesting and confusing period of history to date. Historians will struggle to understand what it was like to live in the 21st century. The Bureaucracy is getting bigger and bigger, and sicker and sicker. There is a great cultural demand for agents of change who will challenge the existing order and suggest that something better will follow. The heroes of our day are the people who are kinetic enough to weave a new tapestry from this threaded culture, and not get weighed down by the dross of the human condition. I'm not interested in the next logical step, I'm interested in that cool stuff that's totally off the beaten path. This is the modern Discordian's role, to exist outside of binary choices, to make objection and change part of the hegemony, and to enjoy oneself despite our programming. We are the silver lining to the cultural cabbage patch. This is not just a society of robots, and we are evidence of it.

Personally, I don't see Eris as a Goddess in the same outdated way that the Christians or Jews or Ancient Greeks think of Gods. She's not some force in the sky, regulating the world by will. You can't communicate with her through prayer. Personally, I see Eris as a force similar to the internet, similar to the spirit of protest, similar to hair metal. She's not the force, but the attitude through which Bureaucracy is transcended into Aftermath. She is the feeling of finding freedom rather than formula. She is the punchline at the end of a decade long shaggy dog joke. And in that I think she has more to offer than the sepulcher and bureaucratic tangle of other contemporary edifices like religions and ideologies and static.

So if you ask me, the Principia is 49 or 50 years old, and it's more relevant than ever.





thoughts?

LMNO


Cramulus

Quote from: LMNO on September 03, 2008, 06:50:03 PM
"similar to hair metal"?

yes -- in the sense that it's a type of energy or movement
moreso than it's a collection of ideas and values

For me, being a Discordian is more like being into a specific type of party
than it is being a part of a religious sect

LMNO

Sorry; I was being glib.

Overall, I like the piece.  PDF/FAQ/et al.

hooplala

"Soon all of us will have special names" — Professor Brian O'Blivion

"Now's not the time to get silly, so wear your big boots and jump on the garbage clowns." — Bob Dylan?

"Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)"
— Walt Whitman

AFK

10 out of 10  :fnord:s

But serioulsy, I like it.  May we share with others? 
Cynicism is a blank check for failure.

Cramulus

jah, share, it's Kopyleft,

but I intended it as the beginning of a discussion. Why is Discordia more important now than ever?

AFK

Because everybody is yelling at everybody else but no one is listening. 

Meanwhile, the ship is still taking on water. 

Cynicism is a blank check for failure.

LMNO

Because so far, nothing else seems to be working.


Because Discordia is about models, not absolutes.



hooplala

"Soon all of us will have special names" — Professor Brian O'Blivion

"Now's not the time to get silly, so wear your big boots and jump on the garbage clowns." — Bob Dylan?

"Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)"
— Walt Whitman

LMNO

Quote from: Hoopla on September 03, 2008, 07:38:58 PM
Quote from: LMNO on September 03, 2008, 07:37:13 PM
Because Discordia is about models, not absolutes.

BINGO


Specifically, hot young models with wet t-shirts and tight underwear.




Any gender.

Cramulus

Quote from: LMNO on September 03, 2008, 07:37:13 PM
Because Discordia is about models, not absolutes.

that's a great angle.

Could you expand on that a bit?


(Like into a standalone paragraph I could quote?)

hooplala

"Soon all of us will have special names" — Professor Brian O'Blivion

"Now's not the time to get silly, so wear your big boots and jump on the garbage clowns." — Bob Dylan?

"Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)"
— Walt Whitman

Golden Applesauce

I don't know about more relevant, because I wasn't around 50 years ago.  It seems to me that the Cold War was in pretty dire need of some lightheartedness, even more than our current War on Terror.

It just seems relevant to me because I personally had (have?) a problem with taking things far to seriously.  And because many of the people around me have concepts like 'mandatory' and 'forbidden' and apply them to things that are really optional.

I makes me sad when people tell me that things like religion are to important to joke about, or old propaganda posters too offensive.  It bothers me when I get suspended from school or hauled before Loss Prevention for reasons like "I know that this is just a misunderstanding, but we must follow procedure."  It hurts when I look around my infosphere and see nothing but advertisements, especially when those ads are meant to make people feel bad about themselves.

The world is ruled by an endless morass of strictures and convention, and no one wants to take responsibility for them.  People are perfectly content to let the train follow its own momentum down the tracks, even though they don't like where it is or where it is going, because this is Policy, it's what Everyone (the everyone in "everyone knows that...") has Decided.  Rules and traditions might be annoying, but it's Not In Our Power to do anything about them.
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