Baddies

[Placid Dingo]

From Here:

Didn't I tell you, Don Quixote, sir, to turn back, for they were not armies you were going to attack, but flocks of sheep?

Alot of the trouble, in general, seems to come from a need to maintain the whole 'us and them' thing, which means we always need to break out the semantics and work out who's us and who's them. Some of the more nationalistic may bething 'the nation' us, and 'those scary brown people' to be them. Or some consider the good, clean breast loving type male to be us, but the scary sexually twisted non-hetrosexual to be them.

And of those two things, I met one covering them both; a gay Indian who annoied me by whining about how he couldn't get a job for discrimination. From who? THE CHRISTIANS. Them.

Discordians, who make a point of NOT taking everything so very seriously, really ought to be immune to the most of this nonsense. But that seems to very largely be not the case. We are us, and them is 'the greyface.'

Don Quixote would attack Windmills for the rationalre that 'they might be giants' (yes, the origin of the group's name). He also tells us that 'Too much sanity may be madness. And maddest of all, to see life as it is and not as it should be!'. (don't press me on this, I haven't read the book, i'm working off wikiquote). So Quixote fights the windmills, and we fight the Greyface, because lets face it, it's more fun this way . But that's the point; it's fun.

There seems to be this borderline paramilitary tone to a good deal of Discordian discussion, like these Grayfaces aren't just something we've made up to make fun of how seriously people take things, but are indeed a very real and dangerous set of people, a band of politicians, neocons, Christians, concerned individuals, police and whoever else seems to deserve to be lumped with THEM. THEY want to remove everyones individuality. THEY are intollerent. THEY are out to get you. THEY want a new world order. THEY kicked your puppy (bastards!).

But really THEY didn't, because THEY don't exist. I mean sure they exist; in the same way that gays, foreigners and Christains do exist, and the same way in which every complaint against these people has at least one case in which it is legitimate. But, we could also say that THEY are the peopel with moustaches, and as Anton Wilson would say, the information which is consistant with our reality tunnell come in, the rest satys out.

The thing is that to me Discordia isn't about them at all, it's about us. If we create a fictional 'them' such as the Barvarian Illuminati to help enhance our experience, then that's cool. (See also; Cat's Cradle). But our aim should be to enhance US and OURSELVES, not to fix THEM. So often the prevailing attitude is 'THEIR shit is fucked up, let's go fix it'. Well, everyting is kind of messed up, but if we fix OUR shit, at least we get that benefit.

Same issue with O:MF. {Hippy warning;} I'd like to see a lot more love and a lot less hate. The spirit I see O:MF in is 'Something fuicked with my reality tunnel, and it was a profound and valuable experienace for me, and I want to be able to give that experience to other people. Not other people suck, let's fuck with them.

I'm all for an innapropriately epid war against the Greyface, with pleanty of hyperbole and shaking of fists. But let's not forget that it's a game, and we make the rules, and us and them is a fairly useless over-complication of the universal rule that simply, some people are dicks.

[Jasper]

I liked this a lot because there's some good stuff in there, but I gotta say one thing in opposition.  A lot of people do suck, and it is immensely pleasing to fuck with them.  You're not going to escape the human tendency to look at in-groups and out-groups.  If you and a bunch of smart people get together and abolish the "outgrouper" mentality, you've just created an in group.  Oh those bastards they don't see how we've transcended outgroup prejudice altogether.

Don't fight that tendency, I say.  Use it.  I can get behind a war or fight if I'm part of a unified in-group, faced against a vilified out-group.

I'm not proud of it, but the best solution is to proactively direct the tendency in ways I deem suitable, instead of attempt to resist my nature.