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About Chaos, and the illusions of Order and Disorder

Started by Cainad (dec.), January 10, 2010, 09:40:56 PM

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Cainad (dec.)

Discordians, especially PD.com-flavored Discordians, are notorious for disagreeing with each other about pretty much everything, up to and including the details of the pseudoreligion that they are nominally all members of (in some sense). Whether Discordians should stick apart or organize for greater hilarity, whether or not Eris should be thought of as an actual deity, or whether or not to pray to Her, and all sorts of things that the PD itself likes to be ambiguous about (and even when it's not ambiguous, a Discordian is supposedly forbidden from believing what he reads, so...); all this and more are up for grabs in a theoLOLgical Discordian discussion.


But one thing that I have never seen challenged in my time here is the notion that Everything (capital "E") is Chaos (capital "C"), and that Order and Disorder are illusions created by our own pattern-seeking minds.

When I first read the PD, this seemed self-evident. But I am no longer in that headspace, and now I wonder why we never argue this point. It's often used to back up another argument, and frequently used to clear up ambiguity about when something should be described as "chaos" or as "disorder," since the two are often used interchangeably among people who don't share our fucked-up worldview.

Not sure where I was going with this, but it's something that's been squatting in my brain for a while and it won't go away. I guess I'm just not comfortable knowing that there's something Discordians have yet to argue about; gotta poke it with a stick, you know?

Mesozoic Mister Nigel

It's all chaos, which encompasses order and disorder.

The word chaos is often misused.

The end.
"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."


Cainad (dec.)

Works for me. Now to find someone who disagrees; I got an itch to scratch.

The Johnny

Quote from: The Right Reverend Nigel on January 10, 2010, 09:47:38 PM
It's all chaos, which encompasses order and disorder.

The word chaos is often misused.

The end.

:lulz: nice. If only this could be done in the magic thread.
<<My image in some places, is of a monster of some kind who wants to pull a string and manipulate people. Nothing could be further from the truth. People are manipulated; I just want them to be manipulated more effectively.>>

-B.F. Skinner

The Good Reverend Roger

Quote from: Cainad on January 10, 2010, 09:40:56 PM
Discordians, especially PD.com-flavored Discordians, are notorious for disagreeing with each other about pretty much everything, up to and including the details of the pseudoreligion that they are nominally all members of (in some sense).

No we aren't.
" It's just that Depeche Mode were a bunch of optimistic loveburgers."
- TGRR, shaming himself forever, 7/8/2017

"Billy, when I say that ethics is our number one priority and safety is also our number one priority, you should take that to mean exactly what I said. Also quality. That's our number one priority as well. Don't look at me that way, you're in the corporate world now and this is how it works."
- TGRR, raising the bar at work.

Cainad (dec.)

Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on January 11, 2010, 03:26:22 AM
Quote from: Cainad on January 10, 2010, 09:40:56 PM
Discordians, especially PD.com-flavored Discordians, are notorious for disagreeing with each other about pretty much everything, up to and including the details of the pseudoreligion that they are nominally all members of (in some sense).

No we aren't.

Oh, yeah? Well, what's the root word of Discordianism, then? Huh? Huh?

That's right, it's disco. And there is nothing more disagreeable than disco.

Cain

OK, the thing is, essentially, if we don't agree that Chaos is a stand-in/co-equivalent to "Everything" and everything is made up of "order" and "disorder" then we have to

a) come up with another meaning for chaos, and
b) come up with a meaning for things that are neither chaos, nor order, nor disorder

NotPublished

*passes the wine about* Think it'd take a bit of that
In Soviet Russia, sins died for Jesus.

LMNO

Ok, here's something to argue about: Our definition of "Chaos" adheres to neither the social nor the mathematic definition.

So why the heck are we calling it "Chaos", anyway?  Eris is a STRIFE goddess, not an "All-Encompassing-Summation of Universe" goddess.

AFK

Well, there is always the possibility/certain likelihood that the human concept of "Everything" isn't actually all inclusive.
I mean, yeah, we say up front that as humans we can't see, witness, experience everything.  Indeed, we say up front we can't really even conceptualize "Everything".  There's shit that we just haven't thought of, and can't think of.  But indeed, perhaps the idea of "Everything" itself is limited.  But we can't really even begin to contemplate that.  

This, I believe, is why so many go right from question to deity.  I mean, when you start thinking about the idea that what you are experiencing is likely .0000000001% of the whole she-bang, AND that you'll never really be able to define the parameters of the whole she-bang.  It's just easier to turn over all of your thinking and beliefs to a magical beardo-fairy.  
Cynicism is a blank check for failure.

Triple Zero

afaik, Eris is only sort of a sub-goddess of chaos, and more the goddess of Discord and Strife.

the idea that all is chaos, in a spiritual/mythological manner, is also from several creation myths from different religions.

see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_(cosmogony)

in the bible, Genesis 2: first "And the earth was without form, and void", which I consider to be equivalent with Chaos, because after that God needs to start separating things, order from disorder, day from night, water from land etc.

and then there's Mummu, about which I only have read in the Illuminatus Trilogy [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mummu] which was also described as primordial chaos, but from that wiki page I gather RAW might have made this up (anyone? wiki's not very elaborate about it either).

and hindu ... I thought Brahman (not Brahma) was also Chaos but that's not quite true either (might be another mindfuck seed planted by RAW?) either way check it out, Brahman is like totally way cool like a sort of combo of Ayin-Soph-Aur and the first two sephiroth, sort of [at first glanced] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahman



either way, my view of it is that Eris only embodies Chaos in part, Chaos is larger than Eris.

and Chaos as order+disorder, makes sense to me, cause Chaos is formless, and if it's not just disorder, but so formless that you haven't even distinguished yet between order or disorder, I mean, you can't really get much more formless than that, right?

and yeah, from a creation point of view it also makes sense, it kind of says that creation was already there except it wasnt divided into order and disorder yet, and for that reason it also didn't exist? sorry I'm not really good at wording that, so never mind. it makes sense in my head though.
Ex-Soviet Bloc Sexual Attack Swede of Tomorrow™
e-prime disclaimer: let it seem fairly unclear I understand the apparent subjectivity of the above statements. maybe.

INFORMATION SO POWERFUL, YOU ACTUALLY NEED LESS.

hooplala

Quote from: LMNO on January 11, 2010, 01:06:10 PM
Ok, here's something to argue about: Our definition of "Chaos" adheres to neither the social nor the mathematic definition.

So why the heck are we calling it "Chaos", anyway?  Eris is a STRIFE goddess, not an "All-Encompassing-Summation of Universe" goddess.

The re-defining of the word chaos is what makes Discordianism a religion to me.  A lot of religions re-define words for their own use, don't they?
"Soon all of us will have special names" — Professor Brian O'Blivion

"Now's not the time to get silly, so wear your big boots and jump on the garbage clowns." — Bob Dylan?

"Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)"
— Walt Whitman

Triple Zero

Ex-Soviet Bloc Sexual Attack Swede of Tomorrow™
e-prime disclaimer: let it seem fairly unclear I understand the apparent subjectivity of the above statements. maybe.

INFORMATION SO POWERFUL, YOU ACTUALLY NEED LESS.

Cain

Trip, I actually thought of chaos more as a dialectic overcoming of order and disorder, sort of a synthesis of the two.  Because to me, pure disorder indicates no order at all (at its most theoretical extreme) whereas pure order indicates no disorder at all (at its most theoretical extreme), whereas in any truly random system, ie chaos, order is always going to arise, if only temporarily and contingently, before being overcome, dissolved or whatever.  Chaos in this sense is sort of the middle path between the two, but also, because of its contradictory nature, a set or category above order and disorder.

If you see what I mean.

Mesozoic Mister Nigel

Quote from: LMNO on January 11, 2010, 01:06:10 PM
Ok, here's something to argue about: Our definition of "Chaos" adheres to neither the social nor the mathematic definition.

So why the heck are we calling it "Chaos", anyway?  Eris is a STRIFE goddess, not an "All-Encompassing-Summation of Universe" goddess.

You have a good point about Eris being the Goddess of Strife, and of Discord, not of Chaos.

However, you are dead fucking wrong about our definition of "Chaos" not adhering to the mathematic definition.
"I'm guessing it was January 2007, a meeting in Bethesda, we got a bag of bees and just started smashing them on the desk," Charles Wick said. "It was very complicated."