Mindsculpting: Eris loves you.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Actually, I was positing that both are valid. Re-read my post. There is no physical Eris goddess-entity, and the simultaneous holding of a multiplicity of perceptions of Eris doesn't invalidate any of them. It's not an either-or... YOUR Eris can be all of them, if that floats your boat.

What I'm objecting to is the "YOUR Eris is negative! YOUR Eris is unnecessary! YOUR Eris is reflective of a pessimistic worldview! There is no reason to choose YOUR Eris, but there is a reason to choose MY Eris!" attitude that he's responding with to people who see differently from him.

Yes... I was agreeing with you.

It seems to me that people see the Eris that they want to see. If they are generally optimistic people, they have an optimistic view of Eris, if they are generally pessimistic people, they tend to see her in a darker light (ergo the mirror comment).

It seems insane to me to attribute Good/Evil/Optimistic/Pessimistic to Eris, or to uncover the metaphor... It seems insane to me to attribute Good/Evil/Optimistic/Pessimistic to Chaos/Discord/Black Swans.

The optimism, pessimism, the strife or the cooperation seems, almost always, to depend on the Erisian, not Eris... and I think I've already stated my opinion on the value of an more optimistic outlook.

[shadowfurry23]

Why are you so convinced that your dogma is better than mine?

I'm not.

 Part of my purpose in this thread though is to defend my position, and I am attempting to challenge yours as well.  I'm sorry if that's coming off as antagonistic - to a degree it is a limitation of the internets tho, nuance gets lost.

I LOVE the image of Eris as a kid with a magnifying glass. You want a momma, I want a mischievous, dangerous troublemaker.

Cool, that's kick-ass.  
My concern is that the more tender side of Eris is getting lost though - I see more Hodge than Podge on the PD boards.  I think that's a pity.  It's not fucking critical though, I'm just stirring up shit about it.

You seem to be saying you want us all to be and want the same things... like you're looking for a sort of homogeneity that, frankly, has no place in MY Discordia.

Without Hodge, Podge is imbalanced, right? MY Eris is leaving a flaming bag of poop on YOUR Eris' doorstep, ringing the bell, and running away right now.

Don't tell me how to be Discordian. There are thousands of pinealist neo-flower-children who will gladly embrace your vision of Eris. There's really no reason for you to heckle the fifteen or so people who don't. You want something? Do it. Leave me the fuck out of it.

I'm uncertain why everyone thinks I'm trying to enforce dogma here; I'm offering an interpretation and yeah, I'm challenging yours as a result.   I have stated several times that this is my trip, and it might work for you and it might not - I don't know how that's getting lost.

I fail to see how defending my interpretation is heckling.

As for leaving you the fuck out of it, if you want to be left out of it don't post in the thread, hon.  Easy-peasy.

I really have the utmost respect for (nearly) everyone here, and have no intention to offend.  Y'all are taking this pretty seriously, which was a little unexpected actually.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

I really have the utmost respect for (nearly) everyone here, and have no intention to offend.  Y'all are taking this pretty seriously, which was a little unexpected actually.

It happens when this topic arises.

Everyone loves their dogmas... even us.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I'm not.

 Part of my purpose in this thread though is to defend my position, and I am attempting to challenge yours as well.  I'm sorry if that's coming off as antagonistic - to a degree it is a limitation of the internets tho, nuance gets lost.

Then why are you using such antagonistic, disrespectful verbiage for other people's views of Discordia?

Cool, that's kick-ass.  
My concern is that the more tender side of Eris is getting lost though - I see more Hodge than Podge on the PD boards.  I think that's a pity.  It's not fucking critical though, I'm just stirring up shit about it.

This is just one place. You want it to be more lighthearted? Post something funny, happy, warm, fuzzy, and sweet. This thread, particularly the way you've responded to people like me and GA, is more of what you're complaining about.

Also, pessimism is not Hodge, and optimism is not Podge. Both can be either-or.

I'm uncertain why everyone thinks I'm trying to enforce dogma here; I'm offering an interpretation and yeah, I'm challenging yours as a result.   I have stated several times that this is my trip, and it might work for you and it might not - I don't know how that's getting lost.

I fail to see how defending my interpretation is heckling.

Because you're not "defending" your interpretation... you're attacking other people's interpretations when they explain how theirs differ.

As for leaving you the fuck out of it, if you want to be left out of it don't post in the thread, hon.  Easy-peasy.

I really have the utmost respect for (nearly) everyone here, and have no intention to offend.  Y'all are taking this pretty seriously, which was a little unexpected actually.

I mean don't try to demean me into following your dogma, baby doll. Also, you don't have any idea how seriously anyone here is taking this. Do you realize that?

From your posts, you seem to be taking it very seriously, yourself. Are you?

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Also, pessimism is not Hodge, and optimism is not Podge. Both can be either-or.

This is a very good motorcycle. In fact, we can stretch this much further.

We can be Optimistic Discordians without necessarily being PINEALIST HIPPIES (though often those two things get conflated).

We can be Pessimistic Discordians without necessarily being Greyfaced Hunchbrains (though often those two things get conflated).

I personally, tend to be an optimist discordian, I think.

[shadowfurry23]

Justifications can't be axioms.  That's the whole POINT of an axiom - they don't need to be justified.  You just assert them.  I'd have no problem with #1 if you just said "The universe loves you."

I'm not saying that life isn't a gift.  I'm saying that receiving a gift doesn't imply receiving love.  Has everyone who has ever given you a present truly loved you?  Have you never given a present to someone just because it was expected of you?  The conclusion does not follow.

The conclusion doesn't have to follow, certainly.  As I said, I've chosen to believe it is so.  Nothing says you have to.

As for axioms not being justifications, you'll note in the OP I suggested that faith is a belief based on a belief.  Semantics aside, is it unreasonable to have suggested what I did?  I obviously don't think so, but your objection suggests I could have stated it better. 

You might consider not that I am wearing rose-coloured glasses, but perhaps that you are wearing shit-stained ones.

IT'S A CONDITION, OKAY?  STOP BEING SO FASCIST, YOU WITH YOUR 20/20 VISION AND LACK OF OCULAR DIARRHEA!

LOL, did I not include enough conditionals in there for you?  "Might consider" and "perhaps" weren't enough?  Should I have added "possibly maybe in some senses but not necessarily so don't take it so damn personal if you don't think so"?  Would that have been sufficient?

Also point 6.  The driving force of the universe isn't change; the effect of the driving force in the universe is (very often) change.  Maximization of entropy is a good candidate for driving force, but that's neither here nor there.  You might state the the nature of the universe is change, or that change is the only constant, but change is a result, not a cause.

chicken/egg

I drop a rock from a height.  It falls to the ground.  Is the driving force here gravitational attraction, or is it rocks on the ground?

I'm not getting a good feel for your argument I must confess. You seem to be arguing in terms of Science whereas I'm arguing in more loosey-goosey spiritual sense.

And with regards to this whole Eris thing... if you want a mother figure just make up a mother figure.  Don't repurpose the goddess whose only notable role was starting a decades long war because she didn't get invited to a party.  People died, Shadow.  Women and children were raped and murdered and dragged from behind chariots and had their fields salted because she didn't get invited to a party.  Don't go redefining our words and names to fit something you like.

LOL now who's telling who how to be a Discordian?

[shadowfurry23]

Then why are you using such antagonistic, disrespectful verbiage for other people's views of Discordia?

It's a debate tactic that is apparently coming off poorly.  My apologies.

Because you're not "defending" your interpretation... you're attacking other people's interpretations when they explain how theirs differ.

Hm.  I'm trying to challenge people certainly, but my hope is really to entertain and make people think.  I'm not trying to get anyone's back up about it - well, I was pretty rude to Cain I suppose but I did try to apologize.  I'll have to go back and look at what I've posted, try to use it as a learning experience to express myself more clearly.

I mean don't try to demean me into following your dogma, baby doll. Also, you don't have any idea how seriously anyone here is taking this. Do you realize that?

Well, if you think I'm trying to demean you, I'm not.  I'm just making suggestions and asking questions.  Apparantly I'm being pretty fucking rude about it, to judge by the replies I'm getting.   

From your posts, you seem to be taking it very seriously, yourself. Are you?

Shit no!  I'm passionate about it certainly, but I'm laughing my ass off here.  I find this whole thing enormously entertaining.  Taking my religion seriously is against my religion.   

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

It seems to me that people see the Eris that they want to see. If they are generally optimistic people, they have an optimistic view of Eris, if they are generally pessimistic people, they tend to see her in a darker light (ergo the mirror comment).

It seems insane to me to attribute Good/Evil/Optimistic/Pessimistic to Eris, or to uncover the metaphor... It seems insane to me to attribute Good/Evil/Optimistic/Pessimistic to Chaos/Discord/Black Swans.

The optimism, pessimism, the strife or the cooperation seems, almost always, to depend on the Erisian, not Eris... and I think I've already stated my opinion on the value of an more optimistic outlook.

I disagree with your assessment of our views of Eris being a mirror for ourselves. How we view the universe is not necessarily, or even usually, a mirror of ourselves. As I posted elsewhere:

A couple years later for some reason I re-read it, and my perspective shifted and all of a sudden it all clicked into place and made perfect, absurd sense. It was kind of dumb because the world is kind of dumb, and for some reason when you realize that all acts are no more or less absurd than all other acts, and accept that the shit just plain doesn't make sense, it DOES make sense. On some fundamental level reality is self-contradictory, and that's OK. :The opposite is also true:.

So that's the basis of my Eris. That's where she comes from.

Here is another story that may help explain my Eris:

One day about seven years ago, I was driving home from work. It was evening, late summer, absolutely gorgeous out with the sunlight sliding from golden to plum as the sun set. The leaves on the trees were just starting to yellow. It was the hardest time I've ever gone through in my life: A man I had fallen in love with, hard, had recently broken my heart and moved to Chigaco. My husband had left me a little over a year earlier, with a two-year-old and a six-month-old baby. I had the kids six days a week, but was paying my ex child support due to an "error" in the divorce paperwork, wherein my ex had calculated child support as if he had full legal and halftime physical custody. I'd just hired a lawyer to file for an adjustment to our parenting plan/child support, and my ex was being vindictive. I was getting up at horrorshow-thirty to drive the kids to their babysitter before work, working a full nine hour day, and then picking them up after, going home, making dinner, putting them to bed. I paid the babysitter $400/month, my ex $265/month, and the house I was renting and trying to buy was $700/month. My piece of shit 1977 Plymouth Arrow leaked fluids like an open wound, stalled out at every full stop, the passenger door flew open every time I took a sharp left, and the muffler had rusted through some time before. Problem was, I only made $12 an hour.

So I was feeling kind of sorry for myself. Actually, I was severely suicidally depressed, on tranquilizers most of the time, and the only thing that kept me going was my children.

And then, as I rounded a corner and my passenger door flew open, I had an epiphany; things could get, arbitrarily, infinitely worse at any moment with no warning. My home could burn down, my children could die, I could become catastrophically ill and unable to keep my house or care for my kids.

And then the world was beautiful again, and I relearned how to be happy.

Rat, my Eris is perhaps a reflection of some part of me, but for the most part my Eris is a reflection of the arbitrary universe I see around me, sometimes beautiful and sometimes devastating, and it is up to me to be the comforting, stable mother-nurturer. I don't need an external one.

I would tend to suspect that people are more likely to see Eris as the complement to ourselves, rather than a mirror of ourselves.

[Cain]

But Nigel, how can you be happy when your view of the Universe is so nasty and negative?  Don't you know human minds are just like machines and thus must internally reflect their external outlook in every way?

[Golden Applesauce]

Shadow, if you say LOL again I'm going to reach right through my ISP and apply large blunt instruments to your nasal cavity.  It's the internet equivalent to giggling in the middle of every sentence, and it makes you sound like a sixth grade girl.

Justifications can't be axioms.  That's the whole POINT of an axiom - they don't need to be justified.  You just assert them.  I'd have no problem with #1 if you just said "The universe loves you."

I'm not saying that life isn't a gift.  I'm saying that receiving a gift doesn't imply receiving love.  Has everyone who has ever given you a present truly loved you?  Have you never given a present to someone just because it was expected of you?  The conclusion does not follow.

The conclusion doesn't have to follow, certainly.  As I said, I've chosen to believe it is so.  Nothing says you have to.

As for axioms not being justifications, you'll note in the OP I suggested that faith is a belief based on a belief.  Semantics aside, is it unreasonable to have suggested what I did?  I obviously don't think so, but your objection suggests I could have stated it better. 

I agree with faith being belief based on belief.  The core of your statement, that the universe loves you, is eminently reasonable to hold as a belief.  My only objection was that in your statement, which we agree is really a belief based on a belief, you attempted to make "the universe loves you" a necessary conclusion to "you exist."  I think what you meant is: I have chosen, for my own reasons, to believe that the universe loves me.  What you actually said (in statement #1) was: "Objectively, we can tell that the universe loves you.  This follows from the fact that you exist."

You might consider not that I am wearing rose-coloured glasses, but perhaps that you are wearing shit-stained ones.

IT'S A CONDITION, OKAY?  STOP BEING SO FASCIST, YOU WITH YOUR 20/20 VISION AND LACK OF OCULAR DIARRHEA!

LOL, did I not include enough conditionals in there for you?  "Might consider" and "perhaps" weren't enough?  Should I have added "possibly maybe in some senses but not necessarily so don't take it so damn personal if you don't think so"?  Would that have been sufficient?

In-joke, sorry.  See IANAR's excellent thread, "Why is the Internet So Fucking Fascist?" for explanation.
In general, when someone types something in all-caps, they're usually being sarcastic.  Especially if the mention ocular diarrhea.

Also point 6.  The driving force of the universe isn't change; the effect of the driving force in the universe is (very often) change.  Maximization of entropy is a good candidate for driving force, but that's neither here nor there.  You might state the the nature of the universe is change, or that change is the only constant, but change is a result, not a cause.

chicken/egg

I drop a rock from a height.  It falls to the ground.  Is the driving force here gravitational attraction, or is it rocks on the ground?

I'm not getting a good feel for your argument I must confess. You seem to be arguing in terms of Science whereas I'm arguing in more loosey-goosey spiritual sense.

For me, the word "force" carries associations of free-body diagrams and whatnot, so that example was the first to come to my head.  I'm not arguing in terms of Science (pleeease don't capitalize that word unless you're intending to say that I'm one of those pan-rationalist Darwin-kissing fundie atheist goons,) that's just the kind of example I came up with.  (And really, is dropping a rock really all that scientific?)

Maybe here's a better example:
Brother says something mean to Sister, and Sister becomes upset.  (I think) that you are saying that the 'driving force' here would be the change in Sister's emotions from not-upset to upset, when quite clearly there is a force that changed her emotional state.  Here I think the driving force might be, say, a combination of Brother's need for dominance causing him to say something mean, and Sister's need for acceptance causing her to feel upset by what Brother said.  Her upset state (which would include "having recently shifted from being happy to upset) could in turn cause something else.  But the change in states, in and of itself, did not cause anything.  The after state would cause different things than the before state, and the transition state could cause something, but I don't think that change is the driving force.  Change is the effect of the force.

And with regards to this whole Eris thing... if you want a mother figure just make up a mother figure.  Don't repurpose the goddess whose only notable role was starting a decades long war because she didn't get invited to a party.  People died, Shadow.  Women and children were raped and murdered and dragged from behind chariots and had their fields salted because she didn't get invited to a party.  Don't go redefining our words and names to fit something you like.

LOL now who's telling who how to be a Discordian?

I'm not telling you how to be a Discordian, I'm telling you how to talk.  When I say Eris meaning "she what turns brother against brother for shits and giggles" and you hear Eris meaning "loving cosmic mother figure" then there is a problem there.  Naturally, since I'm the Pope, rather than reaching an agreement or compromise, I declare myself to be right, and that you have to come up with another word/name to mean what you have hitherto been using Eris to mean.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

But Nigel, how can you be happy when your view of the Universe is so nasty and negative?  Don't you know human minds are just like machines and thus must internally reflect their external outlook in every way?

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Shadow, if you say LOL again I'm going to reach right through my ISP and apply large blunt instruments to your nasal cavity.  It's the internet equivalent to giggling in the middle of every sentence, and it makes you sound like a sixth grade girl.

YES! It also reads as pure contempt, in the context of a disagreement.

[Golden Applesauce]

And with regards to this whole Eris thing... if you want a mother figure just make up a mother figure.  Don't repurpose the goddess whose only notable role was starting a decades long war because she didn't get invited to a party.  People died, Shadow.  Women and children were raped and murdered and dragged from behind chariots and had their fields salted because she didn't get invited to a party.  Don't go redefining our words and names to fit something you like.

Are you sure?

A decades long war began because the Goddess Aphrodite was so vain that She was willing to cause war in order to have a mere mortal declare her to be the fairest.

Women and Children were raped and murdered because Hera, Athena and Aphrodite were SO vacuous and self-centered that they were unwilling to allow one of the others to be given an honor without a fight. The Trojan war persisted, because Paris took the wife of another man, a woman who had no love for him, except a false mask of love, as cast by a bitch of a Goddess.

Eris, our beloved hag, our hurricane with a nice cinnamon scented wind, our personification of Chaos NEVER causes the horrors of war, she never causes the terrible things that happen... she causes Chaos, Discord and Confusion. Others use that Chaos, Discord and Confusion to benefit themselves, sometimes leading to terrible consequences.

Who is the fairest one at a Wedding?
Who is the most beautiful one at a Wedding?
Who is the Prettiest One at a Wedding?

Who was the apple for?

Eris might have a great time watching the horrors that man inflicts upon himself, but to blame her as the cause... may be only true in some sense. After all... if they didn't like doing it, you'd think they would stop.

This is valid.

Eris-the-anthropomorphic-diety certainly only played one role in the Trojan War - the Gods could have just raffled off the apple, Paris could have not been retarded, etc.

But Strife-the-domain-of-Eris did dominate the entire war.  When people are clawing each others' eyes out over citrus fruits and sex, you can't say that that's anything other than Strife with a capital S.  In that sense Eris, as the personification of Strife, is responsible for the war and the bad feelings all around.

You could say that Greed was the cause of the war, or that Greed was blameless, and it was just people acting greedily that caused all the problems.  I just don't feel that a distinction is necessary.

[Cain]

Technically, the Olympians are meant to be able to see the future.

Alternative motives were present.  However, unlike in more enlightened times, the Achaeans apparently did not understand the concept of assassination, Odysseus aside.  Of course, the Apple of Discord and the Judgement of Paris were not included in most versions of the Trojan War, such as the Iliad.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

In some senses, I'd like to imagine Eris tossing that apple until we dumbasses learn NOT to waste energy going after it...

...after all, as the ancient Greeks pointed out, there is destructive strive AND constructive strife, and as long as humanity chooses to expend its resources on destructive strife, that will be the face of Eris.