DISCORDIA: A Brief Critique

[Cramulus]

I'm going to put a couple of cards on the table.

1. I simply do not have the patience to refrain from starting new projects every few weeks. As many of you have noticed, I get hooked on an idea and it becomes my all consuming drive to keep making it bigger until I eventually lose control of it. (which is the goal) I feel that a Discordian Society which is not engaged in activitism is just masturbating with religion. Not that this is bad mind you, but I find it terribly boring. If I were the pope of Discordia, I'd declare that Discordia is about DOING SHIT, and that to be a good Discordian you have to GO DO SHIT.

1a. The projects I find most fun are the biggest ones, the ones that get the most attention, the ones that actually seemed to engage a greater system. When the Adam Weishaupt Society's fake news was dissected by big name bloggers, when Stephen Colbert winked at us and said 23 Skidoo - those were the moments when I said, "hey, this machine actually works AND IT KICKS ASS. I wonder what else it can do?"


2. Some of the most fun projects require participation, and frankly, getting people to participate through this thing called the Internet is difficult. Most people are very passively engaged by it. Effecting their real life through a text medium is challenging. The only reliable way to start bigger projects is to get more monkeys hammering at their keyboards and obsessing over our ideas. I am not content just waiting for cool people to find our forum and then seeing if they survive the social selection process. I am also not going to start going door to door with pamphlets, or preaching the STRANGE WORD from soapbox*, so we're kind of at an impasse.




I am in full agreement that starting a list of our projects and hosting that on the front page will help redesign our internal machines to focus on those things.





*any more than just being a "good discordian" and having fun is an advertisement for others to do the same

[hooplala]

1. I simply do not have the patience to refrain from starting new projects every few weeks. As many of you have noticed, I get hooked on an idea and it becomes my all consuming drive to keep making it bigger until I eventually lose control of it. (which is the goal) I feel that a Discordian Society which is not engaged in activitism is just masturbating with religion. Not that this is bad mind you, but I find it terribly boring. If I were the pope of Discordia, I'd declare that Discordia is about DOING SHIT, and that to be a good Discordian you have to GO DO SHIT.

Wow.  I find this paragraph very disturbing.

Exactly where does it say that to be Discordian you have to be an activist?  Seriously.


I really can't put into words how shocked and disgruntled this has made me.  Well, at least I know now.

[Cramulus]

  I find it disturbing that you credit me with any authority. I'm talking about MY Discordia, which I am the pope of. If you don't like doing fun projects, bully for you.

and please read the definition I linked of "Activitism". I think you're confusing it with activism. There's an extra tit in there.


I am by no means encouraging people to go find a cause (or some other baggage) to masturbate with.

[hooplala]

I find it disturbing that you credit me with any authority. I'm talking about MY Discordia, which I am the pope of. If you don't like doing fun projects, bully for you.

and please read the definition I linked of "Activitism". I think you're confusing it with activism. There's an extra tit in there.


I am by no means encouraging people to go find a cause (or some other baggage) to masturbate with.

Not so much 'authority' as now I have this view of what you think of me if I am not participating in activism (I will check that link on my lunch today, BTW).  I respect you opinion, and this information forces me to wonder how much you can respect me if I am not 'out there doing something'...

I never said I wasn't paranoid.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

I'll tell you what works for me -- Cram and I briefly had a discussion earlier this week where I said I was giving up contributing to anything for the foreseeable future because I'd run out of creative energy. I've had a writer's block for a long time and no ambition, I was getting jaded and just falling into a "who cares" mindset.

What got me moving this week wasn't anybody pleading with me not to give up or listing reasons why I should keep trying, and that wouldn't have worked anyway. What got me going was that I saw Bones' Καλλίστη video and it got me thinking about what Discordia could be. It could be a shadowy, undefined presence that nobody can easily recognize - more than a bunch of goofballs, more than just another culture-jamming circlejerk. We could easily give the illusion that we are much more than the sum of our parts, especially using the media.

And, as for "Activism," I think Cram wasn't referring to holding protests and all the other ineffective, boring shit that "activists" do, but more along the lines of forcing "reality" to capitulate to the demands of a determined group. Or something.

[Cramulus]

I find it disturbing that you credit me with any authority. I'm talking about MY Discordia, which I am the pope of. If you don't like doing fun projects, bully for you.

and please read the definition I linked of "Activitism". I think you're confusing it with activism. There's an extra tit in there.


I am by no means encouraging people to go find a cause (or some other baggage) to masturbate with.

Not so much 'authority' as now I have this view of what you think of me if I am not participating in activism (I will check that link on my lunch today, BTW).  I respect you opinion, and this information forces me to wonder how much you can respect me if I am not 'out there doing something'...

I never said I wasn't paranoid.

no no no, I'm not saying that people suck if they don't do activities. I'm just saying that THAT's what I'm into, and activitists are the specific people that I want on my team. People who are content just reading about Discordia do not make good playmates. As I said, if that's your thing, keep doing it (whatever it is), but it's not for me.

If I find anything disturbing, it's how ghastly your reaction to my prattle has been, and how paranoid it seems to be making you, especially since I haven't said anything at all judgmental.

You also said ACTIVISM again, which I have repeatedly clarified I am not talking about. ACTIVITISM is a word I made up, and the definition will take five seconds to read, so you could probably squeeze that in before lunch break

[hooplala]

I did not notice the difference in spelling at all, my apologies.  I read the definition and see that I jumped the gun there, my apologies again.

I took it personally I guess because some part of me doesn't feel like I'm doing enough lately.  It was less about you and more about me.  Again, I apologize.

This has made me questions my beliefs and motives more than anything else has for quite a while, so I thank you heartily Cram.  I am going to give this a lot of thought over the weekend.

[Cramulus]

  it's all good, hoops

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

I think Cram might be referencing the same concept as the Legion of Dynamic Discord (LDD)... those who "actively" go cause Discord, vs the Legion of Static Discord (LSD) which are the people that sit around and watch the Discord while saying "Woha Man, I just flashed on something."



Also, I like this conversation. It has given me pause.

I have friends in the theater scene. Here in Columbus, at least, "theater scene" often seems like  shorthand for "theater geeks that never grew up and instead rent out low budget facilities and desperately try to recapture their college years..." but maybe that's a bit harsh.

Anyway, it seems to me that one could, without too much heavy lifting, turn the BiP into a play...  if it was a funny play, if it was witty, if it was good... it could be freely promoted to groups desperately looking for material, at least here in Columbus. Not a huge audience, to be sure... 50 people a night for two weeks maybe... but if it's 50 people a night in 5 cities for two weeks...

I was thinking about a story like "Story in Five Parts" that I wrote about the BiP. It doesn't mention "Discordia" at all... though the end obviously references Eris... if you know the memes.



Any thoughts?

[tyrannosaurus vex]

that's actually a pretty cool idea, Rat.

[Cainad (dec.)]

I'm gonna be a spag and skip the last few pages to interject something that I think is relevant (before I do that, though, mega-mittens to vex for the OP):

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/ze_frank_s_nerdcore_comedy.html

It's about 20 minutes long, and the relevant bit doesn't really start until about 14:00, but I still think it's worth examining. In fact, the whole Ze Frank phenomenon is worth examining, IMO.

What he talks about in this video is creating virtual social spaces that create low-threshold, easy-to-interact-with activities and simple, minimalist web toys that let people express their creativity in a way that most modern methods make inaccessible for a lot of people.

While this is not exactly what we're going for, it does have a common vein. That is, how do we get a significant number of people to follow up on our ideas, actualize them, and come up with their own ideas?

Ze Frank managed to do that not only with his web site's little gimmicks, but with the video blog he ran from March 17, 2006 to March 17, 2007. The "Sports Racer" community that quickly grew around it (of which I was a proud member) consisted of hundreds of active members and thousands of passive ones who just liked watching stuff happen. Just look at www.zefrank.org for a summary of the level of activity it generated, though sadly it is no longer active.

Obviously, the biggest difference between Ze Frank and us is that he created something that was, ultimately, centered around him. It grew around his dynamic personality and charisma, and diminished when he stopped producing the show. What we want is something that doesn't necessarily center on any one of us, but creates a similarly dynamic and involved group.

Or so my thinking goes.

[Golden Applesauce]

I really think the most major weakness we are facing is the lack of an easily accessible clearinghouse for Discordian works, and that the easy, efficient means for creating that is to implement 000's kick-ass homepage design, with links to the blog, and to other recent awesome projects like Cram's Youtube and any other works that have been assembled in the last year or so.

There is a girl on my campus who decided to google "Hail Eris" after seeing some of my posters (in an attempt to track me down - apparently she was playing internet sleuth after getting back from a CIA internship) and when she eventually confronted me, she said that "there aren't really very many resources on Discordianism."

So I think that that should change.  (I'm not saying that there aren't very many resources on Discordianism, just that someone who went to a small amount of effort should be able to find a reasonable number of things.)

Cain, I agree with you re: single concept of discordianism.  But, at minimum, I want to put my Discordja together in writing for other people to read and pilfer from.  Actually, a book that "defined" discordia a few times and in conflicting ways would be pretty cool too.

[Cain]

Well that would certainly be part of it.  Propagation of the alternatives is something I am entirely for.

[OPTIMUS PINECONE]

     I would like to repeat the general sentiment, That this thread is really groovy.

     Anything I've had to say in response, thus far, has not been a reaction or contrast to any of the ideas or opinions put forth. I appreciate the earnest expressions about creativity happening here and hearing what motivates everyone toward their efforts.

     Equally, whatever I've babbled into the mix I meant sincerely.

     This thread has encouraged between  Nigel and I some of the most in depth, analytical conversations amongst ourselves, related to this board, art & expression in weeks.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

In response to Cram I have to point out that you can be actively Discordian in your own life, your own home, with your friends, without ever participating in wacky Discordian group projects, so it's probably not a good idea to assume that people aren't actively living Discordia just because they're not posting it on the Internet.