TGRR's New-Style Discordianism™ Without Eris

[Telarus]

I used it during my HS "neo-paganism? what's that?" phase. Mostly for the reasons 'ppp' pointed out.. of course I wasn't raised terribly religious, so that didn't take long and it went into disuse. Now, it comes out spontaneously rarely (about 40-50% with the male epitaph) or else I'm using it because there are pagans to mindfuck in the area, and it's an appropriate "squawk" (social signal) for my purposes.

I think that Cram has a great point about how we as humans tend to hijack portions of our brain networks for other purposes, and being able to access the 'social processor' for things that normally fall outside of it's purview by projecting a human form onto it is quite interesting.

I also tend to change my belief on Eris fairly regularly, tho. There are times I behave as if she was an external personality.. but the functional difference between that and what terry Pratchett calls "putting on this Grimes writing head" only can be pieced apart outside of those experiences...

But shit, I do the same thing with martial arts and 'chi'. The usefulness of the model-in-action is constantly tested, and discarded-for-that-purpose if found wanting.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

The ONLY thing that makes US right and THEM wrong is that we know how the universe works.

I think this is where our paths differ

because I don't think that We Discordians have stumbled upon the TRUTH, I think We and They are are just stupid in different ways.

We don't have AS MANY Truths as They do.

But what we have is a keen grasp of the important ones.

I don't know what color the train is.
I don't know what the engineer's name is.
I don't know what time it's due at the station.

But I DO know that it's coming down the tracks, and I'd best be off them before it gets here.

And that's all you NEED to know about the universe.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

There is no need to say "Goddess" unless your point is to show how fucking edgy you are...

I agree that overusing "Goddess" isn't particularly useful and may be a way to demonstrate "how fucking edgy [one is]," but the use of the word Goddess in reference to Eristic forces remains, in my opinion, an effective and viable means for reprogramming semantic reactions associated with "God," because the use of "Goddess" can be intended to disrupt human and male chauvinism prevalent in the subject-predicate linguistic form that is typically used by people who haven't attempted to update their linguistic maps of reality by applying some techniques and methods of abstractions provided by general semantics.

Who are you, and what the FUCK did you just say?

I'm not wading through that pile of jargon. 

[PopeTom]

The ONLY thing that makes US right and THEM wrong is that we know how the universe works.

I think this is where our paths differ

because I don't think that We Discordians have stumbled upon the TRUTH, I think We and They are are just stupid in different ways.

We don't have AS MANY Truths as They do.

But what we have is a keen grasp of the important ones.

I don't know what color the train is.
I don't know what the engineer's name is.
I don't know what time it's due at the station.

But I DO know that it's coming down the tracks, and I'd best be off them before it gets here.

And that's all you NEED to know about the universe.

I'll get off the tracks once I'm finished putting all these coins on the rails.

[LMNO]

There is no need to say "Goddess" unless your point is to show how fucking edgy you are...

I agree that overusing "Goddess" isn't particularly useful and may be a way to demonstrate "how fucking edgy [one is]," but the use of the word Goddess in reference to Eristic forces remains, in my opinion, an effective and viable means for reprogramming semantic reactions associated with "God," because the use of "Goddess" can be intended to disrupt human and male chauvinism prevalent in the subject-predicate linguistic form that is typically used by people who haven't attempted to update their linguistic maps of reality by applying some techniques and methods of abstractions provided by general semantics.

Who are you, and what the FUCK did you just say?

I'm not wading through that pile of jargon. 

"If you change a common signal, you may be forced to pay attention to it."

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

I'm generally with Cram's point of view.

Is Eris really real? I don't think so. Is Eris a great metaphor and meme, I think so.

There isn't a 'need' for Eris in Discordianism... but she can be useful for people that like to play with their brains in a certain way.

[Cramulus]

I was just flipping through Kerry Thornley's Zenarchy, with this thread in mind, and found some bits which may be relevant to us...  (though if I'm veering off on a tangent, I'll be happy to split this out)

While Thornley never refers to Eris in this book, he was interested in imagining/becoming a group that gathered around matriarchial values.

The Only Solution is a Yin Revolution

"What is really being said is that intelligence solves problems by seeking the greatest simplicity and the least expenditure of effort, and it is thus that Taoism eventually inspired the Japanese to work out the technique of judo — the easy or gentle Tao (do)." (from Psychotherapy East and West by Alan Watts, Random House, 1961)

"The True men of old waited for the issues of events as the arrangement of Heaven, and did not by their human efforts try to take the place of Heaven." — Chuang Tzu (from the Texts of Taoism by James Legge, Dover Publications, 1962)

"It is interesting in this connection to recall Dr. Reich's distinction between matriarchy and patriarchy, as given in The Mass Psychology of Fascism. According to Dr. Reich, work-democracy and self-regulation of primary drives were characteristics of primitive matriarchy, and both were destroyed by the rise of authoritarian patriarchy. Recent anthropology has cast doubt on the existence of the `primitive matriarchy,' but, as G. Rattray Taylor shows in his Sex in History, there can be little doubt that cultures do show more Matrist tendencies in some periods of their development, and more Patrist tendencies at other periods.

Patrist periods are characterized by sexual repression, limitation of freedom for women, political authoritarianism, fear of spontaneity, worship of a Father God, etc. Matrist periods, on the other hand, are characterized by sexual freedom, high status for women, political democracy, spontaneity, worship of a Mother Goddess, etc. This agrees with Dr. Reich's picture of the distinction between Patriarchy and Matriarchy.

Chapter 6 of the Tao Teh Ching Says:

The valley spirit never dies She is called the Eternal Female

"According to Needham, Blakney and other Sinologists, this Eternal Female is the goddess of pre-Chou China forgotten by the conventions of the Patrist Chou State and official Confucian philosophy. Blakney considers the early Taoists to have been recruited from peasants who remembered the Shang State and its Matrist orientation."

(from "Lao-Tse and Wilhelm Reich, Prophets of Inner Freedom" by Robert Anton Wilson in the September 1963 issue of A Way Out, School of Living, Brookville, Ohio)

"The True men of old did not reject (the views of) the few; they did not seek to accomplish (their ends) like heroes (before others); they did not lay plans to attain those ends. Being such, though they might make mistakes, they had no occasion for repentance; though they might succeed, they had no self-complacency. Being such, they could ascend to the loftiest heights without fear; they could pass through water without being made wet by it; they could go into fire without being burnt; so it was that by their knowledge they ascended to and reached the Tao."

— Chuang Tzu (from the Texts of Taoism by James Legge, Dover Publications, 1962)

So Follow the Way
Of the True Men of Old:
Find Shade in the Summer;
Grow Fur in the Cold.

This was followed by a portrait of the archetypal counter-cultural woman drawn exclusively from my old New Orleans French Quarter friend, Loy Ann Camp. Therein I compared her to the woman in Bob Dylan's song of whom he says, "She's got everything she needs; she's an artist; she don't look back..." For in the most literal sense Loy, like so many of the hip females of the early Sixties, was an artist by profession who was "nobody's child" and who never stumbled because she had no place to fall — a perfect balance of gentleness and strength.

It's interesting to look at the Discordian seed writings through this lens... maybe it's not so much about a specific crazy Greek chick as it is about choosing a symbolic alternative to the 1950s patriarchy.

[Doktor Howl]

The ONLY thing that makes US right and THEM wrong is that we know how the universe works.

I think this is where our paths differ

because I don't think that We Discordians have stumbled upon the TRUTH, I think We and They are are just stupid in different ways.

Balls.  The Truth is, the future isn't done with you yet.