Reworked version:
“'Tis the soldier's life to have their balmy slumbers waked with strife.”
- William Shakespeare quotes
An angry man stirreth up strife and a furious man aboundeth in transgression
- Proverbs 29:22
"I have a high art, I hurt with cruelty those who would damage me."
- Archirocus, 650 BC
So, you want to consider yourself a freethinker, do you? You want to be a revolutionary, fighting against the forces of order? Or perhaps you just like chaos, or want to have a good time. Well listen up.
Most Discordians seem to think they have to live up to some sort of inane standard of wackiness. And of course, most of them get this conception from the Principia Discordia which, while a founding book of Discordianism, is hardly the only valid viewpoint going around. Or did you forget to pay attention to that “not believing what you read” part? Anyway, back on point. Your average Discordian believes acting in cute, inoffensive and nonsensical ways is somehow the “correct” way of doing things – and ironically is filled with a degree of venom for those who disagree, or make fun of them.
Now, there is nothing wrong with acting in such a way....not if you want everyone to ignore you anyway (not that there are not times this is not useful, only there are also times when it is counter-productive to whatever goals you are pursuing, that you require attention or to be seen as credible). But lets be honest, it is not random, or funny or clever or especially impressive in any way. Its a tired old script from a tired old book which is a single group's interpretation of Discordianism, and Eris.
Oh yes, Eris. How many times will I be confronted by some Myspace girl with a name like xXxErIsxXx acting like what she thinks is a Greek Goddess? “But Eris was all zany and stuff, don't you know? It says so right in this book!”
No. Sit your punk ass down, shut up and listen for once in your life, before you run your mouth off. If you're going to take your lessons in Greek mythology from some Beatnik track, then you are stupid, and deserve to be mocked. However, you are lucky. Because today, I am at hand I am willing to give you an alternative explanation of the facts. You do remember facts, don't you? Good. Well, if you haven't run away by this stage, I may as well get going.
Now, if you read the hippie-rag, you'll have the impression that Eris was the Greek goddess of Chaos, and that the Greeks, for some bizarre reason, concluded that chaos and strife were the same, and so fucked everything up until the Wonder Kids who wrote the PD set us all straight. Wrong! First off, Eris wasn't the Goddess of Chaos. Secondly, her name means strife in the Ancient Greek. That's a literal translation. Those Greeks were many things, pig-headed, unenlightened on sexual ethics, persistent raiders and looters, but one they were not was stupid. If there is a Goddess calling herself Strife, what do you think she might be like?
Well here are some more clues. Luckily for you, I had access to a pretty good Classical library a while back, and plenty of spare time. And I went digging. Hesiod, for example, answers the age old question posed in the PD, that of why do wars keep on happening if no-one wants them? "[Eris] is hateful ... [she is the one] who builds up evil, war, and slaughter.” Alright, now we're talking! How about that age old Greek classic, the founding epic of Western literature, the Iliad? Well, according to our buddy Homer "Their fighting work [was woken by] . . . man-slaughtering Ares, and Eris, whose wrath is relentless."
And that's just the start of it. "[The] goddesses, who range in order the ranks of men in fighting, [are] Athene and Enyo, sacker of cities." Enyo being another name for our Lady of Discord. Sacker of cities sounds...well, kind of violent to me. Maybe the sort of occupation where the chaos is a little more visceral, and the humour somewhat more black than normal. We continue: "Ares drove these [the Trojans] on, and the Akhaians grey-eyed Athene, and Phobos drove them, and Deimos, and Eris whose wrath is relentless, she is the sister and companion of murderous Ares, she who is only a little thing at the first, but thereafter grows until she strides on the earth with her head striking heaven. She then hurled down bitterness equally between both sides as she walked through the onslaught making men's pain heavier."
For those of you not up on your Greek mythology, Ares was the god of War, and not in the good sense. He reveled in slaughter, and was filled with blood lust. Battle was another outlet for his bas instincts. It was not, like for Athena or Zeus, the careful application of strategy towards a defined victory. Obviously the same does not apply to Eris, she is the goddess of all strife after all, whether its clever and justified, or stupid and mean. But she does have close relations with Ares, it is undeniable. And that particular branch of the Olympian family tree was not viewed kindly.
Eris didn't just have her fun in the Iliad either. During the Thebaid, she assisted Hephaestus in making a cursed necklace, which drove the Thebans to fratricidal war. During Dionysos' war against the Indians, she spurred him back into battle. For Hera, she broke up marriages. She was even there when Zeus fought the demonic dragon called Typhon, escorting him into the fight, though she took no part in his actual battle. And of course, most famously, she stole a Golden Apple of the Hesperides, and initiated the Trojan War, in response to a snub.
So you can embrace the positive aspects of Disorder all you want, but maybe you should keep an eye to whom your role model and symbol for all this is, eh? Chaos can be both positive and negative, but just like in rejecting the positive aspects of strife is denying that creative, freethinking touch, denying the “negative” aspects of strife also rejects the benefits that comes with it.
What benefits are these? Think on it for a moment. I'll give you a clue, from the epic Dionysiaca, if it will help. "[Aion, god of time addresses Zeus:] 'Lord Zeus! behold yourself the sorrows of a despairing world! Do you not see that Enyo [another name for Eris] has made the whole earth mad, mowing season by season her harvest of quick-perishing youth?"
That's Zeus, King of the Gods, he is addressing there. Eris, a relatively minor goddess by Greek standards, has them so worried and afraid they are looking to the chief god himself to intervene. And with good reason. She was disruptive. And dangerous. And far too smart. Unlike Ares, great lumbering clod that he was, she successfully manipulated the vanities of three Olympians (not to mention putting Zeus in the difficult position of having to choose between his wife, daughter and the Goddess of Beauty) and caused a war which bought down one of the most powerful and rich cities of the time. She was troublesome to the ruling order, in the extreme.
Only Hermes was anywhere near as vexing, and he was carefully kept under Zeus' thumb. Eris answered ultimately to nobody. But she got away with such things, time and time again. And of course, you could say that you prefer the Eris you thought existed. That the one above is not an especially pretty picture. I would be inclined to agree, its not exactly the sort of attributes which, in and of themselves, are especially praiseworthy or benevolent. But consider it this way – Eris was a disruptive goddess of strife and conflict, but it is never specified who she has to bring conflict to, or if her strife may serve a higher purpose. You cannot make an omelette without breaking a few eggs, after all. Or, if you prefer Terry Pratchett:
Fred grunted his disdain for a mere fact of geography. “War, Nobby. Huh! What is it good for?” he said.
“Dunno, sarge. Freeing slaves, maybe?”
“Absol- Well, okay.”
“Defending yourself from a totalitarian aggressor?”
“All right, I'll grant you that, but-”
“Saving civilization against a horde of-”
“It doesn't do any good in the long run is what I'm saying, Nobby, if you'd listen for five seconds together,” said Fred Colon sharply.
“Yeah, but in the long run what does, sarge?”
No doubt, some will call me an agent of destructive disorder. And they're right...for a given value of right. Noam Chomsky was wont to point out that everyone wants peace. Everyone. George W Bush. Hitler. Stalin. Mao. The question is, as always, on what terms? Unfortunately for them, and many other, their terms are entirely unacceptable to me. The wasteland's they would call “peace” are not worth considering. I'd rather be the disgruntled outsider, kicking ass and causing havoc, than be on on anything they have to offer.
And that, my friends, is why I like Eris. Not because of some incredibly bound counterculture book written before I was born. Not because of its 60s and 70s centric, uncreative and repetitive adherents, whom for the most part have done nothing to build on such ideas, only disseminate them like the credible fools they are. I like Eris because I want to live my life the way I please, and anyone who tries to stop that is in for a world of pain and misfortune, as only I know how to administer. It is, as the man Archirocus says, a high art. And well in keeping with the historical image of our Lady here.
Of course, its not a path for everyone. And I won't pretend that. All I'm saying is keep this in mind next time you're prepared to run some more of your hippie-trip by me. Its your trip, not everyone else is interested in the ride.
