What to do about a Professor, Cramulous?

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Professors are a pain in the ass.  They tinker with your perceptions and then when you look around, everything you thought was true turns out to be wrong.  They kick the door of your house in, and all that damned sunlight hurts your eyes.

I was comfortable in my Gray House, which is of course different than everyone elses' Gray Houses, because I'm a Discordian, right?  And now it's all bright and shiny, and some fucker comes in while I sleep and dusts the fucking place.

Then the professors killed my God.  I was happy with the God I had, and those damned professors insisted on showing me that the words and ideas I received from the God of Doom were actually just empty echoes in a damp old cave...Just my own prejudices reflected back at me all distorted like a funhouse mirror.

I was comfortable on my lost highway, listening to Hank and brooding.  It's just the way I am.  But suddenly there's construction crews putting in off ramps, and the radio only plays Brad Paisley who jabbers on about hope and inclusion and having a good time and Goddammit, what happened to my country station?  Someone's gone and scrubbed all the filthy out of it.  Professors again, telling us about all the GOOD things, when I just know that it will all end in tears.

I was really happy with my hate and rage.  It was a one-size-fits-all suit of armor that I could run around in, safe from dealing with idiots and horrible evil bastards...And anyone else that wanted to bother me.  Then the damn professors proved that rage and hate can and should be directed in useful fashions.

This new world they're building, it's all shiny and bright and new, and for some reason they just can't see the horror lurking under the surface.   Or that should be lurking under the surface, if things were being run properly.

Or Kill Me

[Pope Pixie Pickle]

No one ever sees the cancer under the surface, Rog. You must be fitted with some kind of scanner.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

No one ever sees the cancer under the surface, Rog. You must be fitted with some kind of scanner.

The alternative is that the bastards have carted away all the cancer, and there's no DOOM left for me. 

[Dysfunctional Cunt]

No one ever sees the cancer under the surface, Rog. You must be fitted with some kind of scanner.

The alternative is that the bastards have carted away all the cancer, and there's no DOOM left for me.  

Give me a bit, I'll be back to full "Certain Doom" capacity with any luck in the next 90 days!!! 

[hooplala]

I don't think I understand this one, Roger.  Though my mind is a tad foggy today, so it's probably me.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I don't think I understand this one, Roger.  Though my mind is a tad foggy today, so it's probably me.

I was just doodling around with the two main and somewhat opposing Discordian viewpoints.  Also trying to mock myself a little for being so damned dark about everything, all the time.

I mean, just because we ARE doomed doesn't mean we have to act like it, right?  As much as I fear and loathe Cram's upbeat outlook, and wish to descend on New York with a horde of like-minded desert dwellers in a mighty jihad to purge the faith, I sometimes have to admit that he has a point.

[hooplala]

I don't think I understand this one, Roger.  Though my mind is a tad foggy today, so it's probably me.

I was just doodling around with the two main and somewhat opposing Discordian viewpoints.  Also trying to mock myself a little for being so damned dark about everything, all the time.

I mean, just because we ARE doomed doesn't mean we have to act like it, right?  As much as I fear and loathe Cram's upbeat outlook, and wish to descend on New York with a horde of like-minded desert dwellers in a mighty jihad to purge the faith, I sometimes have to admit that he has a point.

Ah, ok.  I like that idea.  I've been noticing a theme in my own stories lately, namely that the world is pretty shitty, but there's some beauty in that shit.  Not ground-breaking I know, but its what I do I guess.

I guess my confusion was that I couldn't quite figure where your actual opinion stood in the piece, but based on your explanation that is exactly the point, so yeah, I missed the point.  I'm hungover.

[Cramulus]

I have this curse, roger, and so do you, and we both got it from tampering with that fucking mummy's tomb. Sure sure, we read the warnings, but we ignored them anyway because shit - we are already so accursed, what could an additional mummy curse possibly do to us?

And the mummy tomb was Discordia. It was wrapped up in sheets and buried, back in 1959, and different groups of people keep digging it up and posing it and taking pictures with it before they send it back into the ground.

And you cats got that bug in 2006, when the first Black Iron Prison stuff was put together. I wasn't here yet, I was floating around in my own pineal headspace of self destructive hedonism and magical thinking and I needed a harsh slap in the face. And the money ran out and I got a new job and I was sitting there wondering how to pass the time in my new cubicle, and I logged into this forum for the first time in two years, and this time I actually stuck around and made myself an identity this time.

And I printed out the BIP pamphlet and I took it home and at first I hated it, and then I loved it, and then I hated it again but I hated it because it was RIGHT and then I poured myself into it like waffle batter. And that's where I got the curse.

And this curse is best summarized by - I think it's ECH - in his article Can You Feel It Coming:

You CAN NOT bring the MACHINE™ down. You can't even slow it down. What you can do is very slowly and unobtrusively begin to rearrange the basic components. We will refer to these as "widgets" and "sprockets". If widget A and sprocket B combine to exert societal influence C on the stinking morass known collectively as "humanity", then it stands to reason that the MACHINE™ can be reprogrammed at a very basic level and in very small increments. You waste your time dreaming of how to effect such a change on a global, national, or regional scale (the impossibility of which, I might add, keeps you in your perpetual state of blissful apathy), dreaming of assembling a group of like-minded fellows who will march with you to the very gates of the ivory tower whereupon those who have misled and exploited you will be cast down upon the parapets.

Well guess what?

YOU ARE the one who has misled and exploited you. You have overlooked the most obvious solution, the most effective solution, the only possible solution.

Kill yourself, fuck the body.

Just kidding.




Maybe.

But seriously, this is what I have come to believe is the true spirit of the oft-misused phrase "we must stick apart": we cannot effect a large scale change, and if we make a serious attempt we WILL be neutralized. Instead, each and every one of us should make a conscious effort to effect a small reprogramming of the MACHINE™ in a manner that affects us and our immediate surroundings. Keep the mutation small, and give it a chance to become effectively contagious.

If we all effect a change on our own paradigm (this DOES require some effort, being a bliss-ninny doesn't count), there WILL be an eventual overlap, at which point the large scale change which we have hoped to effect all along will be impossible to stop. (insert witty closing tagline here)

and that's what it is man, this curse we both have. We're both very slowly and incrimentally changing the world around us by sheer force of personality.

And while this is an extremely noble motivation, the drawback is that it means orienting oneself onto a world that does not yet exist.

I see it kind of like planning a party. A lot of my friends are very noncommittal - they'll never agree to do anything fun, you really have to hand feed it to them. And when you say something like "Hey we're going for a hike on Sunday, do you want to come?" they say something like, "We'll see. I've gotta check my plans," which is code for "If I can peel myself off the couch." And on Sunday I'm standing there alone. So I have taken to the "everybody's gonna be there" method of party planning. I just tell everybody that everybody's gonna be there. And if everybody shows up, that illusion becomes a reality, and you transformed the world. It's alchemy. But if people don't buy it, a half dozen people will be hanging out at a letdown, wondering why they came in the first place.

But we can't have the great party without the lie. And that means deluding oneself a bit.

In my case it's sometimes kind of maladaptive. Like for example my credit score is shot. Not because I can't afford to pay my bills, but mainly because they just don't appear on my radar until I'm getting calls from a collection service. I know it's irresponsible and I'm shooting my future self in the foot. This is my rationale: I can either live in a capitalist world where I am the butt of the joke, the lowest run on the ladder, and kind of hopeless, or I can live in a world where money means nothing as long as I have enough to pay for food, rent, and a little hedonism. So I choose the latter, even though I should have compromised.

You and I, Roger, we are building different worlds. And we're both succeeding, bit by bit. But we're at that part that ECH described as the overlap. So there's disagreement and drama and strain because at some fundamental level you and I are talking about very slightly different places. And we both hold our personal delusions, these phantasmal worlds we're building, very near and dear to our hearts. You and I can see each other's worlds pretty clearly. And I think we both see something great that is missing from our own. But it's still difficult to reconcile.

This place, and by that I mean the forum, often reminds me of the sea -- "...Chaos, the vast immeasurable abyss, Outrageous as a sea, dark, wasteful, wild..." -- and at first I thought we were on a great voyage across the sea, but usually these days it feels like we're just drifting around, pulled by whatever wind is blowing from the arctic circle this month. And I'm okay with that too, it's a bit of a letdown, but it is what it is. Our boats keep knocking into each other. Sometimes they turn broadside and fire a warning shot, or a real shot, and it's because we're all lost at sea. No stars to guide us, just the wind. Maybe if we had the same constellations it'd be easier to get to the far shore. Maybe if we were all on the same boat. But that is not the nature of things, and I blame the mummy, but I also thank him for all the treasures we looted.

[hooplala]

Damn.

[Richter]

Finagle lets good thigns happen too.  Jsut so we don't get comfortable with him.  Often in the most inconvenient or humiliating way though, since Murphy is still running around.  Panceless.  That fucker.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I love when I get stuffed in my own thread.  <---- Not being sarcastic. 

That was amazing, and requires some thought prior to response.

[LMNO]

You guys make a great team, I gotta say.

[Jenne]

You guys get 4 fist pumps and a FUCK YEAH! from me on this one.  This kind of meta-thinking makes me tired, but it's soooo necessary sometimes to get at the nubbin of the WHY FUCK WHY as to things and situations around here-a-parts.  Tension ebbs and flows here, and I can't participate these days like I used to.  But I'm still roving, roaming and loving what I read...even the bullshit drama that ensues from time to time.

The thing is, what feeds this place is dynamism, and once you GET that, you can tap into it, ride it out or just EXPERIENCE it.  All modes are essentially ok or aren't, depending on which field you're viewing it from.  

I thank both of you for your work, your blagging and bragging, your sharing and CARING WAY TOO MUCH...because without you doing that, this place wouldn't be what it is (and bundled into that is everyone else, doing what they do, even the assholes, trolls and bitches--of which I have managed to be 2 out of 3 pretty successfully, for which I give myself a fuck yeah!).

On the offside chance it'll offend you, <3 and smooches.  I loved this fread.  Is kickass.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

You guys make a great team, I gotta say.

I think so, too.  Problem is we go all critical mass and asplode too often.  

I think 90% of that is my paranoia, which I am trying to work on.  I've lost my Slack™, LMNO.  For a couple of years there, paranoia was irrelevant, because I wasn't concerned with the actions or words of others.  Over the last year, however, I've been reverting to 2005 type behavior.  Now that I recognize that, though, maybe I can do something about it.

[LMNO]

Seeing what it is tends to be the only way to deal with it, in my experience.