Creation vs Destruction: FIGHT!

[Cramulus]

The Principia has this to say about creativity and destruction:

THE CURSE OF GREYFACE AND THE
  INTRODUCTION  OF NEGATIVISM

      To choose order over disorder, or disorder over order, is to accept a trip composed of both the creative and the destructive. But to choose the creative over the destructive is an all-creative trip composed of both order and disorder. To accomplish this, one need only accept creative disorder along with, and equal to, creative order, and also willing to reject destructive order as an undesirable equal to destructive disorder.

      The Curse of Greyface included the division of life into order/disorder as the essential positive/negative polarity, instead of building a game foundation with creative/destructive as the essential positive/negative. He has thereby caused man to endure the destructive aspects of order and has prevented man from effectively participating in the creative uses of disorder. Civilization reflects this unfortunate division.



POEE proclaims that the other division is preferable, and we work toward the proposition that creative disorder, like creative order, is possible and desirable; and that destructive order, like destructive disorder, is unnecessary and undesirable.

      Seek the Sacred Chao - therein you will find the foolishness of all ORDER/DISORDER. They are the same!



Question for the class:

Why is creation preferable over destruction?

[LMNO]

Written in 2004:


I'm sure most of you are familiar with the Ancient Chart of Order and Disorder.  Well, if not, here's a quick recap:

Principia Discordia, 00063, "The Curse of Greyface".

THE CURSE OF GREYFACE AND THE
  INTRODUCTION  OF NEGATIVISM 
      To choose order over disorder, or disorder over order, is to accept a trip composed of both the creative and the destructive. But to choose the creative over the destructive is an all-creative trip composed of both order and disorder. To accomplish this, one need only accept creative disorder along with, and equal to, creative order, and also willing to reject destructive order as an undesirable equal to destructive disorder.
      The Curse of Greyface included the division of life into order/disorder as the essential positive/negative polarity, instead of building a game foundation with creative/destructive as the essential positive/negative. He has thereby caused man to endure the destructive aspects of order and has prevented man from effectively participating in the creative uses of disorder. Civilization reflects this unfortunate division.

POEE proclaims that the other division is preferable, and we work toward the proposition that creative disorder, like creative order, is possible and desirable; and that destructive order, like destructive disorder, is unnecessary and undesirable.
      Seek the Sacred Chao - therein you will find the foolishness of all ORDER/DISORDER. They are the same!

Now, while that is very interesting, several of us were thinking a few things:
1. It reeks of hippiedom.
2. It is still dualistic.
3. Some of us like breaking stuff.

So, we thought about it, and made a new chart:


Now:  Possibilities arise fourfold.  The original pattern remains, Creative Order/Disorder, and Destructive Order/Disorder.  But rather than limiting one's observances to an essentially two dimensional outlook, we may expand upon it.*

Orderly Disorder:  The means and methods of predictable chaos, a false front; often used by cabbages to pass themselves off as wise.  They force them selves into carefully planned actions which may look Eristic at first glance, but are almost entirely Aneristic.

Orderly Creation:  Architecture, Mathematics, Haiku, Fugues; Creative energies bound by strict rules, yet yielding great works that bring beauty into the world.  In this light, structure and boundaries are not the enemy, they are merely tools with which to create.

Orderly Destruction:  The triumph of the Aneristic Illusion.  Everything is rules.  No freedom exists, for it is bound by carefully crafted commandments.  The creative spirit has been vanquished, crushed.  Kafka wrote in this spirit, where precise order destroyed the world and the people who lived by them.

Disorderly Order:  Complex arrangements that appear to be Disorderly, but follow a specific set of rules; Chaos Theory.  Also covers the 80/20 rule (for example: when cooking, 80% of the time, you use only 20% of your available spices, which eventually gravitate to the front of the cupboard), and the clutter of a desk where only the person sitting there knows where the stapler is.

Disorderly Creation:  Using Eristic means to Create; Cf. Jackson Pollock, John Cage, Free Jazz, etc.  There is no box to think outside of.  Notoriously difficult to pull off, due to the lack of reference points most humans use to understand Reality.

Disorderly Destruction:  Most Natural Disasters.  Many cabbages consider this the only aspect of Chaos.  This is the scary, unfeeling Abyss of the Irrational Godless Universe.

Creative Order:  The means and methods to which one brings the Aneristic Illusion into greater perception.  The establishing of rules.  Somewhere, someone had a new, creative Idea about how to put things in order.  The creation of written language, for instance, is a  brilliant and insightful way of codifying thought into an orderly system.  Of course, this is also the realm of justifications for repression.

Creative Disorder:  The intended results of Operation: Mindfuck-- that is, one creates a clever and specific kind of disorder, whose purpose is to turn neophobes into neophiles.  Like Creative Order only reversed, it's the willful bringing into existence of things that go beyond the rules, which escape classification. 

Creative Destruction:  The answer to the usual objection to the original Creation/Destruction chart: to wit, "you have to destroy in order to create".  In fact, if one moves beyond the merely physical into the conceptual, every major artistic breakthrough has come from breaking/abandoning/destroying the "rules" in a creative way.

Destructive Order:  When the rules and paradigms that repress and inhibit Freedom and Creation are followed or used.  It's not the rules that are harmful, it's the application of the rules.  "Just following orders" without thinking.  However, could also be the methods used by Gandhi and MLK; Civil Disobedience.  Causing Disorder through non-chaotic action.

Destructive Disorder:  Behavior and actions that are harmful; various psychoses and self-destructive habits; temper tantrums.  This relates to one of the squares on the Old Chart, and generally carries with it negative implications.  There is no Joy, or purpose; there is no greater good.   

Destructive Creation:  The process of building things that have no purpose but to destroy.  Oppenheimer, creating the Nuclear Bomb; or Bioengineering new viruses that can wipe out the planet.  In general, these are poorly directed creative energies.

Which leaves us with 4 spaces left: Orderly Order, Disorderly Disorder, Creative Creation, and Destructive Destruction.  What do they mean?  The fuck if I know.  And there lies the first clue.  They are also the purest forms of these aspects.  That is the second clue.  You can come up with other clues on your own.  Regardless, it soon becomes obvious that if one takes the four purest elements and combines them simultaneously into a fifth, Eris is born.  She is all things, all conflicting ideas, all concepts, all aspects.  Hence, the 5-fingered hand of Eris occupies those spaces.

Of course, when you take the New Chart to it's obvious conclusion, you can create an even newer chart with things like Destructive Disorderly Order, and Creative Destructive Disorderly Order, and Orderly Creative Destructive Disorderly Order etc.  I leave this exercise up to the reader, as it's getting late, and I'm almost out of scotch.




*The wise-assed among us would like to remind the reader that ultimately, every single square in this chart should contain the Hand, as this is merely another exercise in Illusion, and these aspects are merely interpretations of that which is Chaos.  Fair enough.  Turn the page.

[Cramulus]

so do you prefer creation or destruction -- and why?

[LMNO]

I prefer Creative Destruction.

[Cain]

Why is creation preferable over destruction?

Because the POEE says so.

Cain,
starting to buy into this Orthodox Discordianism thing.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

I like them both.

Without creation, nothing would exist; without destruction everything would exist and that would be very cluttered. I consider the either/or of Destruction vs Creation as a facet of the Eristic Illusion or the Aneristic Delusion depending on which side you end up on. Creation and Destruction are both necessary, both inextricably linked and both valuable as Creative and Destructive forces (as LMNO's grid shows).

And the POEE were just Hippies that couldn't grok the necessity of destruction...

[Cramulus]

so you prefer a balance of creation and destruction, with neither outweighing the other, yes?




speaking as a mother, I prefer the creative trip. I generally have a lot more fun creating than I do destroying. I like making magazines, art, text, games, etc. I love seeing people talk about or build upon something I created.

There's a lot of badly formed order out there which I'd like to destroy, but rather than engage it, I tend to use escapism. My motto for the last year has been "Ignore all that shit. Maybe build a kingdom in your living room."

When you break other people's toys, you also tend to hurt egos, and that initiates a Revenge Cascade. Generally, I'd rather not fuck with that. It has a tendency to introduce more negativity into the world, and that shit sticks to you and everything you do.

[LMNO]

You might be taking "Destruction" too literally.

In order to Create something new, you need to Destroy previous notions, rules, or ideas about what it is you're doing.

So, in order to Create, you must also Destroy.

[Cain]

While I agree, it could also be said that you are taking creation too literally, since not every creation has to break boundaries or conventions. 

[LMNO]

Agreed.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

I agree with both LMNO and Cain. Sometimes Creation requires destruction, sometimes it doesn't... sometimes destruction is simply necessary (see Rat's old belief system). Destruction may not be whacking someone elses toys... it may be destroying your own BIP bars and walls...

[LMNO]

To look at it poetically, if you create a drawing on a piece of paper, with each line you create, you are destroying all the possibilities that do not include that line.

A drawing of a horse destroys the drawing of Richard Nixon that could have been there instead.

In creating a thing, you are destroying the possibilities of other things.

[Cramulus]

I looked at the chart this morning and I thought "well okay obviously it's stupid to pick one and not the other." Nothing in the universe fits neatly into one of those categories, and existence involves both sides of any coin. I sensed my mind moving towards the Middle Ground fallacy, where when presented with two extreme options, a reasonable person tends to go "Neither! Both! ...Compromise!"

What made me start thinking about this was the recent #6 debacle. I had gone over to his blog with the olive branch, trying to initiate some creative order. You know - realign both sides of the argument so that some cooperation could take place. And he (and most of the people on PD) were on the destructive trip, basically engaging in that emotional revenge cycle. (To be clear: I'm not knocking or passing judgment on the destructive trip, clearly both sides are very entertained.)

but I was wondering to myself why I spend so much time on the creative. And I think it's probably related to a 16 year old version of myself incorporating the above Principia page into my personal moral matrix. But I want to come back and look under that stone, why does POEE prefer the creative over the destructive?

Is it because the Creative trip connects you to the world while the Destructive trip distances you from it?

Is it because it's easier to inspire people and sustain yourself through Creativity than through Destruction?

Is it because our common notion of the Deity is that it Created the universe, and we all want to be a bit more godlike and share those qualities? Love and childbirth and making a home, are, after all, creative acts.

As for POEE - I think it might have something to do with Mal and Omar and RAW essentially wanting to make the world a better place, rather than just sequestering themselves in fantastic escapism. (Omar would eventually escape too far) But we can definitely see that the Principia pushes the creative side. Whether they use order or disorder, they are attempting to create new meaning, new ideas, new energies.

[LMNO]

They also emotionally charged the terms of "Creative" and "Destructive".

Before they even built the chart, they had already decided that Creative = Good, and Destructive = Bad.


Most of the replies in this thread are using the words as emotionally neutral, and consider Creative/Destructive as simple verbs.

[Cramulus]

They also emotionally charged the terms of "Creative" and "Destructive".

Before they even built the chart, they had already decided that Creative = Good, and Destructive = Bad.

well yes, because they were using the chart to explain their point of view. They wanted to complicate the traditional good/bad dichotomy by overlaying a new dichotomy on top of it.


My question is not about the meaning of creation and destruction or the "reality" of that dichotomy, so much as why they / you would pick one over the other. Is striving for a personal balance between the two really desirable?