The BIP is not a Discordian work: discuss

[Cain]

Warning: IRC log being posted ITT


<Cram>: you should be able to make sense of this text without being a PD member.
<nobody>: he screwed more women then anyone i ever knew
<Burns>: i agree
<nobody>: my advice is make it suck less then the bip
<Burns>: then edit it
<Cram>: in what ways do you think the bip sucks?
<nobody>: it was pedestrian, boring, not funny or interesting at all
<Burns>: how would you have done it differently?
<ENKI-][>: what is it that you guys are working on?
<Cram>: the sacred chao te ching
<ENKI-][>: ah
<ENKI-][>: i'll take a look at that. i haven't actually taken a look at the progress since the original post
<nobody>: i would of made it funny
<Cram>: nobody: that's a very challenging and lofty goal!
<nobody>: the bip didn't even try to be funny as far as i can tell, except in one small place
<Cram>: yeah it wasn't really supposed to be humorous
<Burns>: YOU'RE A PRISONER OF YOUR BELIEFS, NOBODY, YOUR CRITICISM OF THE BIP IMPRISIONS YOU
<ENKI-][>:
<Burns>: actually i like it not necessarily being funny
<nobody>: i think discordian works that aren't funny are sorta missing the point
<nobody>: i really think the theme of discordianism, when you boil it all down, is...
<nobody>: enlightenment through absurdity
<ENKI-][>: well, one way to make it funny without it being funny is to be so self-conciously serious that it ends up coming out the other end
<ENKI-][>: i have an example of what i mean somewhere. sec.
<nobody>: i dig ya enki
<nobody>: i don't think the bip qualifies though
<nobody>: the bip is some srs guy yelling at everyone to wake up
<nobody>: its just tired, cliche, and boring
<Cram>: I don't think you can reduce discordia to one simple "mission statement" like that.
<ENKI-][>: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VE_1KlWFJyA [TITLE: Tetris - The Movie VIEWS: 483905 FAVES: 830 RATING: 4 RATERS: 2207 UPLOADED: wwwBLACK20com ]
<Cram>: eh maybe you find it tired and cliche -- it actually helped me out quite a bit in my life, when I found it.
<Idem>:
<Cram>: have you tried to write discordian literature? It's a very interesting process to me. forces you to examine all those assumptions you've got. In the end I think humor is a tool, but it's not the central feature.
<Burns>: i think it takes a humorous attitude to really grasp the seriousness of the BIP
<Cram>: also, it's nearly impossible for nonprofessionals to be "funny" on cue. Which means if humor is the litmus test for discordian works, well, none of us are good discordians then :-P
<Burns>: when you can laugh at your OWN BIP, then you've gotten to a workable place
<Cram>: but I'll point out that lots of Discordian texts arne't actually "funny".. Thornley's essay on Zenarchy comes to mind. Very highly discordian, and contains very few jokes.
<Cram>: our intent with the sacred chao te ching is certainly not to create a funnybook. If there are some lulz in it, so be it, but that's not the focus
<Idem>: yes
<ENKI-][>: well, your intent, Cram.
<Cram>: fair enough
<ENKI-][>: but i would agree with the assessment that discordian texts don't have to be funny
<ENKI-][>: (take nearly everything on PD, particularly the rants. mostly angry, not funny)
<nobody>: i wouldn't consider the bip to be a discordian work
<Cram>: and what, pray tell, are your requirements?
Burns is off to edit a bit...ttyl
<nobody>: mostly that it at least vaguely follows the enlightenment through absurdity theme
<nobody>: actually i guess that'd be my only requirement at all
<Cram>: I think it does follow that theme, personally
<ENKI-][>: for what it's worth, i wouldn't put the BIP necessarily into the discordian category, but it fits into the same category as the PD and a number of other works that are pre-discordian and ostensibly unrelated: which is to say, it falls into the category of works that involve the goal of actively recognizing the difference between percieved reality and objective reality.
<badge>: how is that not discordian
<ENKI-][>: i mean, PD and some of RAW's stuff does that through enlightenment-through-absurdity
<ENKI-][>: and the BIP does not, in my opinion.
<ENKI-][>: i'd just say that that stuff isn't solely the domain of discordianism.
<ENKI-][>: my $0.02
<Cain>: Asurdism has to be funny. therefore, Camus and the BIP =/= Absurdist. obviously
<ENKI-][>: i thought camus was supposed to be existentialist <_<
<Cain>: nope
<Cram>: I think it's problematic to define "discordian works" too rigidly. We don't have dogma, after all. Evaluating whether or not something is discordian based on its adherence to some unspoken principle sounds kind of dogmatic to me.
<badge>: I thought the central point of discordianism is perceived vs objective reality
<ENKI-][>: point taken.
<nobody>: ok then, call everything discordian
<nobody>: sorta dilutes the point, but whatevs
<ENKI-][>: it's a central point, and probably bigger on PD than elsewhere.
<Cram>: well it's not an All or Nothing issue
<Idem>:
<Idem>: yes
<Cain>: false dchotomy
<ENKI-][>: but i wouldn't say it's the only point
<Cram>: Uncle BadTouch takes the Everything is Discordia approach... like MileyGASM... taking it too far, I think
<Idem>: I didn't really pick up many points in teh PD
<Cram>: he claims she's a discordian because she's in a photo giving the peace sign, and was born on the 5th. or something
<Cain>: thats because Uncle BadTouch is a fuckwit
<badge>: nobody what is the point then
<Idem>: first read it when I was ~14 though
<Idem>: found it hilarious
<ENKI-][>: you can certainly make a good argument for most things with the everything is discordia approach
<badge>: you can make an argument, don't know if it's going to be "good" though
<Cram>: I think it's easier to say something is Discordian than it is to say something isn't Discoridan.
<ENKI-][>: depends more upon your rhetorical skill than the facts
<nobody>: the point is everything is about as realistic as one certain thing, that you can skew your view on the universe and still be ok, that it's actually desirable, and the point is came to in a roundabout way
<nobody>: through surrealism, absurdity, and other funny stuff
<Idem>: yes
<badge>: wat
<Idem>: saying "that wall is discordian" could make perfect sense
<Idem>: but saying that the wall is not discordian requires specification
<nobody>: now the apocrypha discordia, thats a great discordian work
<Cain>: absurdism and surrealism =/= necessarily funny, nothing
<ENKI-][>: Cain: ostensibly, surrealism shouldn't be funny except perhaps in retrospect
<ENKI-][>: at least, to my understanding
<Cain>: well it can be funny, yes. but it doesn't have to be, its not a necessary requirement for that category of work
<ENKI-][>: but it wouldn't be the first time i totally misunderstood the point of an art movement
<nobody>: when i use surrealism, i'm not really talking about the art movement
<nobody>: i'm more talking about the juxtoposition of expectations
<ENKI-][>: i'd think that if you started laughing at the output of your automatic writing or drawing while you were doing it it might have a censoring effect
<nobody>: really i'm talking about a certain sort of absurdity i guess
<ENKI-][>: but it would likely be quite silly afterwards. for example, in exquisite corpse
<Cain>: Andre Breton: "Surrealism is based on the belief in the superior reality of certain forms of previously neglected associations, in the omnipotence of dream, in the disinterested play of thought. It tends to ruin once and for all all other psychic mechanisms and to substitute itself for them in solving all the principal problems of life."
<nobody>: like a pyramid with an eye on top, but also a nose
<ENKI-][>: the ears have walls.
<nobody>: when i say surrealism, its more in the sense of non sequitors
<Cram>: again, I think it's kind of limiting to reduce Discordia to "enlightenment through non sequitor". Humor is the motif, but it's not the *point*, if there is one anyway
<nobody>: mebbe its sorta limiting, but its a joke
<Cram>: is it a joke?
<nobody>: we're essentially the people taking the joke waaaaay too far
<Cram>: probably true. but that don't mean we're doing it wrong.
<badge>: nobody if that's your definition of surrealism you should stop saying surrealism, because you're wrong
<nobody>: well, i think we are doing it wrong if we loose the humor
<nobody>: -o
<Cram>: you're taking humor pretty seriously!
Cram snickers
<Cain>: obviously if not every work contains humour, we must be trying to get rid of it
<ENKI-][>: unfunny jokes are the best kind!
<nobody>: surrealism:
<nobody>: : the principles, ideals, or practice of producing fantastic or incongruous imagery or effects in art, literature, film, or theater by means of unnatural or irrational juxtapositions and combinations
<nobody>: from merriam webster
<Cain>: I got mine from Andre Breton
<Cain>: who may just know
<Idem>:
<Cain>: since he founded
<nobody>: it really doesn't have to refer to the fucking art movement
<Cain>: and led, the surrealist art movement
<nobody>: fuck him and fuck his movement
<nobody>: naming a movement something doesn't need to ruin the damn word for every other purpose forever
<Cain>: you're just upset because you cant make words mean what you want
<ENKI-][>: reminds me somewhat of a punchline i remember from somewhere. "salvador dali is my favourite author! can't paint for beans, though."
<Cain>: lol
<nobody>: i can make words mean what i want you beanhead
<ENKI-][>: i agree somewhat with that statement. i like his writing better than i like his painting.
<nobody>:
<Cain>: yeah, if you want to appear psychotic
<badge>: nobody, you can but you just can't expect to communicate well with anyone else
<nobody>: anyway, i have to go to w*rk
<ENKI-][>: nobody: when i use a word, it means exactly what i want it to! no more, no less! *falls off a wall*
<nobody>: i leave you with this
<Cram>: lol\
<nobody>: surrealism was a word before it was a specific art movement and it meant something, the movement didn't change that
<Cram>: I leave you with this: http://discordia.wikia.com/wiki/Bad_Discordians
<ENKI-][>: the word preceeded the movement?
<ENKI-][>: i thought the word was derived from the movement, myself...
<nobody>: i dunno, i just made up the idea
<nobody>: look into it
<badge>: checking OED
<badge>: it's not even IN my OED
<badge>: how old is this thing? goddam
<ENKI-][>: you have a hardcopy?
<Cain>: I looked into it. I found no evidence of surrealism as a body of work or method or style preceeding the surrealist movement
<Cain>: the word "surreal" existed
<Cain>: but the "ism" is kind of important
<ENKI-][>: how much older is 'surreal'?
<badge>: much like...oh..."discordianism"
<ENKI-][>: it looks like it's derived from the french, but you can never tell with the way some words will take the b in sub and replace it with the letter that follows it
<ENKI-][>: i forget the term for that

[tyrannosaurus vex]

if discordianism involved enlightenment through absurdity, nobody would be a fucking buddha. that's all i have to say.

[BADGE OF HONOR]

nobody is a fucking moron.

[Requia ☣]

Absurdity is a tool and maybe a realization.
But even in the more important sense, 'getting the joke' as I've seen it referred to around here, absurdity is hardly the only way to get it.

[fomenter]

humor is the fulcrum, the work being accomplished can be heavy (serious ) and the energy required to do the lifting can be large but by having humor (absurdity) put in the right place at the right time gets the job done with greater efficiency ...

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Oh, for fuck sake. 

Nobody needs to read the PD again, and pay attention this time.

[Thurnez Isa]

I'm not involved in the BIP, but take a passing interest every so often

I just wanna point out to nobody that as far as I know there is nothing really stopping him from creating his own project...

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I'm not involved in the BIP, but take a passing interest every so often

I just wanna point out to nobody that as far as I know there is nothing really stopping him from creating his own project...

I've noticed that there are a lot more people who are interested in telling other people how they "should have done" a project than there are people who are interested in doing their own projects.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

The BiP is a work... its placement as Discordian... seems to be in the minds of Discordians that wrote it... which seems true of Every Discordian Work.  

On the one hand, I grok what nobody is trying to say. Without the context of PD.com as host, and the individual at PD.com helping people perceive the BiP as Discordian, I don't know that a random reader would think 'Discordian' when they read it. Obviously, what "is" Discordian seems like a silly argument no matter which side you're on. But the BiP , as compared with the body of (what is generally considered by many discordians as) existant Discordian works, seems like a marked departure from what is generally considered 'Discordian'.

If we had the Wise Book of Baloney, The PD, the Apocrypha, Zenarchy, etc... and the BiP. We could easily play the old Sesame St game "One of these things is not like the other"... However, that doesn't make it 'not Discordian', it just makes its 'a sort of Discordian as defined by the Discordians that wrote it'.  We've all been through the 'It's harsh, its not funny, its preachy, its evangelical, its telling you TRUTH etc etc  and tI think those are valid criticisms, when compared with existing Discordian writings. However, I don't think one must compare one Discordian writing with another to determine if it 'is Discordian'.

If I had to slot the BiP somewhere, it would probably be as a RAW inspired essay, more than a Discordian one. That is, its message and argument seem, to me, more closely aligned with the concepts RAW was hyperfocused on than those that Thornley, Benares, Hill etc were focused on. A post-Illuminatus/Cosmic Trigger/Prometheus Rising kind of Discordia, modified by the Stark Fist method of the Sub Geniuses.

Maybe the better question is "Should we pigeonhole the BiP as a Discordian writing?"

[LMNO]

Nobody is mixing the Medium with the Message.

While the way the PD was written* did stress "sillyness" and attempted jokes, that seemed to be the way they were trying to slip the other stuff in there.

There's nothing inherently "funny" about the Lo5, Starbuck's Pebbles, The (An)Eristic Illusions, or the Creative/Destructive grid.

I don't see any humor in the First Revelation of Eris:

You have built for yourselves psychic suits of armor, and clad in them, your vision is restricted, your movements are clumsy and painful, your skin is bruised, and your spirit is broiled in the sun.

    I am chaos. I am the substance from which your artists and scientists build rhythms. I am the spirit with which your children and clowns laugh in happy anarchy. I am chaos. I am alive, and I tell you that you are free.

The parable of the Bitter Tea isn't really that funny.

The Sermon on Ethics and Love is bittersweet and cynical.

The Legend of Greyface has this as the moral: "mankind has since been suffering from a psychological and spiritual imbalance. Imbalance causes frustration, and frustration causes fear. And fear makes for a bad trip. Man has been on a bad trip for a long time now."  Ha-ha?

They spend an entire page to discuss entropy.  In a very non-humorous way.

The whole section on the Sacred Chao doesn't have a single joke.

"Nonsense as Salvation" isn't about being funny, it's about "Salvation from an ugly and barbarous existence that is the result of taking order so seriously and so seriously fearing contrary orders and disorder, that GAMES are taken as more important than LIFE; rather than taking LIFE AS THE ART OF PLAYING GAMES."



The rest is simply the spoonful of sugar to make the rest of it go down.  The PD used humor to get its message across, but the message itself isn't really all that funny.

Until you understand it.  And then, it's more like Horrormirth.









*And let's not forget it was only the POEE Cabal's interpretation...

[Cainad (dec.)]

The bit about reality grids ("The Sacred Chao", pg 49) and Starbuck's Pebbles are two of what I would consider the most important parts of the PD, and they aren't exactly a barrel of lulz.



And the BIP has plenty of funny shit, it was just more hard-edged (dare I say, Darker and Edgier, but only just). The interview with the "real" Queen of England, the Parable of the Gong, and Roger's "What the Hell Are You Doing?" are funny as hell, and several, if not most, of the other pieces have at least one joke or gag in them.


But then again, so what if the BIP is considered only sort of Discordian? There's really nothing wrong with that, as far as I'm concerned. Some people will be attracted to the PD, others will be attracted to the BIP, and some will be attracted to both. They both lead to similar (albeit not identical) trains of thought while presenting their ideas in very different packaging. If someone who would really grok the ideas as they are presented in the PD gets exposed to the BIP as their first "Discordian" work, they might be turned off to the whole thing and never bother with the PD, or vice-versa.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Nobody is mixing the Medium with the Message.

While the way the PD was written* did stress "sillyness" and attempted jokes, that seemed to be the way they were trying to slip the other stuff in there.

There's nothing inherently "funny" about the Lo5, Starbuck's Pebbles, The (An)Eristic Illusions, or the Creative/Destructive grid.

I don't see any humor in the First Revelation of Eris:

You have built for yourselves psychic suits of armor, and clad in them, your vision is restricted, your movements are clumsy and painful, your skin is bruised, and your spirit is broiled in the sun.

    I am chaos. I am the substance from which your artists and scientists build rhythms. I am the spirit with which your children and clowns laugh in happy anarchy. I am chaos. I am alive, and I tell you that you are free.

The parable of the Bitter Tea isn't really that funny.

The Sermon on Ethics and Love is bittersweet and cynical.

The Legend of Greyface has this as the moral: "mankind has since been suffering from a psychological and spiritual imbalance. Imbalance causes frustration, and frustration causes fear. And fear makes for a bad trip. Man has been on a bad trip for a long time now."  Ha-ha?

They spend an entire page to discuss entropy.  In a very non-humorous way.

The whole section on the Sacred Chao doesn't have a single joke.

"Nonsense as Salvation" isn't about being funny, it's about "Salvation from an ugly and barbarous existence that is the result of taking order so seriously and so seriously fearing contrary orders and disorder, that GAMES are taken as more important than LIFE; rather than taking LIFE AS THE ART OF PLAYING GAMES."



The rest is simply the spoonful of sugar to make the rest of it go down.  The PD used humor to get its message across, but the message itself isn't really all that funny.

Until you understand it.  And then, it's more like Horrormirth.









*And let's not forget it was only the POEE Cabal's interpretation...

I think all of this is true in some sense.

That is, the first edition of the PD, at least according to Omar, Mal etc was intentionally absurdist humor. Mal-2 was a hardcore atheist and was interested, first and foremost in exposing religion via reductio ad absurdum. In the process of collecting this silly joke and that weird pesudo-religious essay, something further clicked... the memes they were collecting became a memetic entity and grew from there.

I think that the later editions of the PD and other works by the authors tried to walk the line of 'mastering nonsense as well as they mastered sense'... so that both were exposed as being Absurd. This (IMO) seems to be one of the areas that the BiP is somewhat weak on. IE it feels like a serious book that seriously takes itself seriously. That's not necessarily 'not Discordian', but it does seem to skirt the edge of recognizing the absurdity of the Reality we live in. At the end, we have no final analysis that says "And we wrote all of this from the comfort of our cell, we have no idea if this is true, or just  mad scribblings inspired by a life sentence in our own BiP". At the end, you feel as though the author/s have 'laid down the Truth', rather than played a game of ordering and disordering.

Everytime someone critiques the BiP, I try to see why... and generally, it boils down to 'Too Serious, Not Funny, Not Absurd, Not Optimistic..." I have begun to think that all of those critiques may really be trying to state the same thing. I have no delusion that Discordian works MUST have absurdity, or must not take themselves seriously... but I certainly understand why some people might. I don't think it has anything to do with 'needing to reread the PD' or Not Really Understanding Discordianism... but rather its an expectation for the game, for the sense/nonsense for the unseriousness in the final assessment.

We can find serious essays in the PD, as LMNO points out, but they are juxtaposed with unserious essays/rants/songs/pictures. The beauty of the final essay on Salvation is that it deconstructs the entire PD, everything they've just told you is still a game, ordering and disordering, sense and nonsense to expose the absurdity of the whole shebang. Indeed, I have come to think that these very arguments about the BiP Discordian credentials are a shining example of this absurdity. Sense (the BiP) vs. Nonsense (mosbunal existing Discordian writings) = People arguing about what is or isn't discordian (Absurdity)... the extraction is at a much higher level than we're used to (ie entire works of sense vs nonsense) rather than both in a single book, but the basic idea seems right.

If the BiP had poked at itself, as well as it poked at the reader, I think more people would perceive it as naturally Discordian. Since it doens't tend to poke at itself, it seems understandable that some people find it 'undiscordian'.... whatever that may mean.

But then again, so what if the BIP is considered only sort of Discordian? There's really nothing wrong with that, as far as I'm concerned. Some people will be attracted to the PD, others will be attracted to the BIP, and some will be attracted to both. They both lead to similar (albeit not identical) trains of thought while presenting their ideas in very different packaging. If someone who would really grok the ideas as they are presented in the PD gets exposed to the BIP as their first "Discordian" work, they might be turned off to the whole thing and never bother with the PD, or vice-versa.

A very good point. If 'Discordian' is not really definable, than either side of the argument is correct. It's Discordian for the sorts of people that consider the BiP Discordian, its not Discordian for the people that don't consider the BiP Discordian. Trying to force the issue one way or the other is ...

Absurd

[Thurnez Isa]

I'm not involved in the BIP, but take a passing interest every so often

I just wanna point out to nobody that as far as I know there is nothing really stopping him from creating his own project...

I've noticed that there are a lot more people who are interested in telling other people how they "should have done" a project than there are people who are interested in doing their own projects.

Agree

What this comes down to in my mind is something doesn't speak to that person for what ever reason. Which is alright. As I said many times I'm not a fan of RAW, and never had been.
Start your own thing... of course I understand that a lot of time there is no time - oh boy do I understand....
But look at other religions - some teacher gives a lesson and then there is a million interpretations of his teachings
I guess the same should apply for made up religions... in fact it should probably apply even more for made up religions, since we have the ability and duty of just making it up on the spot.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

I'm not involved in the BIP, but take a passing interest every so often

I just wanna point out to nobody that as far as I know there is nothing really stopping him from creating his own project...

I've noticed that there are a lot more people who are interested in telling other people how they "should have done" a project than there are people who are interested in doing their own projects.

Agree

What this comes down to in my mind is something doesn't speak to that person for what ever reason. Which is alright. As I said many times I'm not a fan of RAW, and never had been.
Start your own thing... of course I understand that a lot of time there is no time - oh boy do I understand....
But look at other religions - some teacher gives a lesson and then there is a million interpretations of his teachings
I guess the same should apply for made up religions... in fact it should probably apply even more for made up religions, since we have the ability and duty of just making it up on the spot.

you mean, as if we were all Popes? 

[LMNO]

That's not necessarily 'not Discordian', but it does seem to skirt the edge of recognizing the absurdity of the Reality we live in. At the end, we have no final analysis that says "And we wrote all of this from the comfort of our cell, we have no idea if this is true, or just  mad scribblings inspired by a life sentence in our own BiP". At the end, you feel as though the author/s have 'laid down the Truth', rather than played a game of ordering and disordering.

Ahem...

The guy sitting next to you, they're focusing on completely different things than you are. Their entire upbringing has pretty much determined what they're going to pay attention to, just as your entire life up to this point has shaped what you're looking at right now. You know what this means, right? This means that everyone is living in a different Idea of the Universe than everyone else. It's a miracle that we can agree on anything. Just imagine, billions of people, all looking out at a different Universe from between the bars of their own personal Prison. "Okay, big guy," you say, "So what's really out there, if you're so smart?" I have to tell you...


I don't know. I have the same blinders that you do. I live in the same kind of box. But I will say one thing. My saying "I don't know" doesn't mean, "I don't know, and I don't care, because there's no way to escape the biology of my sense." I say, "I don't know, but I want to find out. I want to try and see and feel as much as I can, I don't want to take somebody's word for it, I want to keep exploring, and figuring shit out. I want to walk out of my Prison Cell, even if I just end up in another one. I'm not content only seeing a fraction of what's out there.


Because hey, who knows what kind of fun I'm missing?