Discordian Essential Reading List

[Tallgeese]

(note, this is not necessarily essential)

Principia Discordia (DUH)
The Illuminatus! Trilogy
The Crying of Lot 49
Gravity's Rainbow (if you can make it through)
The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged (just so you know what true anti-discordianism looks like)
Lovecraft's fiction


add on!

[Horab Fibslager]

isn't atlas shurgged by ayn rand? fi so you may want to knwo that kerry thornley idolized ayn rand an dher philosophy, at lest during the tim he was party to the conspiracy to assasinate jfk

persoanlly i try to say what discordianism is not. there are so many jokes out there, often practical ones at the expensive of greyface hatng discordians.

[Bella]

Yeah, I read Atlas Shrugged years ago.
It was really useful to me, actually as it talked about the tyranny of the weak over the strong.
And I was drowning under the weight of people who used that tactic.

[Tallgeese]

Randroids are anti-Discordians for a few reasons.
Mainly, Rand put forth a rigid mathematical logic as her sole epistemology. A = A, non-contradiction, etc.
Discordianism says that A = whatever you want it to equal, and self-contradiction is a beautiful thing.
Rand confined her world-view to strict materialism. Very, very anti-chaos.

[Z³]

I'm not a big fan of Ayn Rand.

[Bella]

Me either, but I did find that one thing she said helpful to me.

[Z³]

That sounds kind of like my relationship with Nietzche.

[Horab Fibslager]

even greyface is a discordian, because everyone contributes to disorder in their own way.

[Z³]

Disorder, by definition, is the opposite of order. One does not exist without the other to compare it against.

[Horab Fibslager]

Disorder, by definition, is the opposite of order. One does not exist without the other to compare it against.

exactly, tho i reckon they're more comlimentary than oppository(or opposing one another). it's kinda liek the  he and she of the yin-yang.

i reckon the pd mentions somethign baout this, the eristic and aneristic illusions. prefering a more balanced and mediocre illusion than an extreme and lacking one, i prefer bot to discount that which may be usefull simply because it is more of order than disorder, of course itis silly to say that something is withotu order or disorder, which is kinda like soemthing said in the pd as well, maleness isn't necessarily a lack of femininity, and vice versa, or at least to something to that effect.

in any case, everyone contributes, even if they do not wish to or do not intend to.

[archPope Rocket P Llama]

For what it's worth, before this degenrates as it is wont to do, I'll add a few more books:

The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy Series (6 x 9 = 42, 6+9=15, which is divisible by FIVE!)
ANY Roman Catholic Catechism Book (Absolutely HILLARIOUS!)
The Man Who Was Thursday by GK Chesterton (IN which the Servans of Order are thrown willy nilly into a world of delighful chaos due to their efforts to oppose Anarchists, beautifully displaying the Imposition fo Order= Escalation fo Chaos Law)
Finnegan's Wake by Joyce (A mindfuck to end all mindfucks)

[DJ Zelian]

Fortune cookies.

[Trollax]

Disorder, by definition, is the opposite of order. One does not exist without the other to compare it against.

Actually disorder is the absence of order... but the funny thing is order is the privative... It doesn't really exist... there are two states... chaos and metastability, and they are each a part of the other... hodge and podge...

*has one of those sudden lightbulb momebs with the gooey plop sound like they do on ren and stimpy*

There we go... explains the apparent dichotomy of yin and yang. And a lot of other things... like where I left my socks!

[sakredchao]

kurt vonnegut jr. - anything.

the greek myths I & II - robert graves
the best part about these books is how each story contradicts each following story.  this is a result of the greeks having different local beliefs, and little or no overall organization, beyond that locality.

i also liked his theory that the "ambrosia" which the gods partook of was a psychedelic mushroom..  he used this to explain the dionysian cults going crazy and running around town.

another point of curiousity was that zeus was a latecomer to the pantheon, and the ancient greek cultures were primarily martriarchial..  the high priestess, or queen, took a king for the year, for her sexual satisfaction..  after which she killed him, and some cultures ate the flesh raw, others had their own thing they did..  another common thing was to go through 2 kings a year..  again killing and eating him.  

the only drawback is a negative portrayal of eris, but you can't have every one of your apples golden.

robert graves was an oxford professor, not just some smelly hippy.

[Trollax]

the greek myths I & II - robert graves
the best part about these books is how each story contradicts each following story.  this is a result of the greeks having different local beliefs, and little or no overall organization, beyond that locality.

i also liked his theory that the "ambrosia" which the gods partook of was a psychedelic mushroom..  he used this to explain the dionysian cults going crazy and running around town.

and here was I thinking they were crazy psycho-chicken hippies just because dionysis was a stoner?