Handcuffs

[Pæs]

Yeah, I see where you're coming from.

I was hoping to say that reacting to the knowledge of the BIP by becoming determined to ESCAPE isn't a useful reaction, because once you reject your reality tunnels, there's nothing else there and you're entering the territory of nihilism. I take for granted that nihilism is useless.

Which is why I am asking whether framing it as a prison is setting ourselves up for the reaction where we miss the point we're trying to get across with the metaphor and end up pursuing nihlism (pointlessness).

ETA for further clarification:
The perspective I'm writing from probably already incorporates Discordianism as Perfect Nihilism, or at least that the Barstool makes nihilism a useless point of view.
If you reach nihilism, you made a wrong turn. It's used to show that the "I'm not free until I'm OUT of the prison" is the wrong approach.

[Placid Dingo]

Fair enough.

I actually really didn't like the language of the BiP metaphor at first, for that reason. A jailbreak implies escape, and redecorating your cell kind of implies surrender.

Handcuffs is actually a very good metaphor because what were saying is you can take them off and put them on again at will. It does miss somethig in that it still implies allrestricting views as inherenty bad.

I remember Pratchett being asked if the creation of the Discworld map would restrict him. His answer was good writing was restriction. If anything can happen nobody cares- if Mi4 had no limits Tom Cruise would have killed the baddies WITH HIS BRAIN in the first few minutes. Instead he is bound by limits, and this gives a tense story.

In life we could be limitless like this : refuse to define our name, our identity, our gender, our purpose. But we get narrative out of limits and meaning out of narrative so really our limits define us. What we want to do by jailbreaking is step out of the circle to become both the author and the protagonist and DEFINE the limits that define us and find ways to interchange limits when convenient.

[LMNO]

In terms of the OP:  I haven't followed up immediately, because the details are incredibly hard to pin down.  You try to chase a behavior or mode of thought to its origin, and it gets all slippery.  The mind immediately self-justifies, and you're left with ashes and shadows.

And, to be honest, it's a bit frightening.  Do I really want to find out that some of my favorite patterns were imposed upon me, rather than self-generated?  In the end, I suppose it all adds up to "me", but this Doktor business can be unsettling.

Over the weekend, I'm going to track down a small piece, see if I can get my hands on it, and offer up something concrete.

[Pæs]

You try to chase a behavior or mode of thought to its origin, and it gets all slippery.  The mind immediately self-justifies, and you're left with ashes and shadows.

[Q. G. Pennyworth]

In life we could be limitless like this : refuse to define our name, our identity, our gender, our purpose.

OMG THIS.

I've been trying to get down some stuff on the subject of identity for the book I've been working on and haven't been able to get anything down, but this is the core of it. I've spent the past four years Anonymous. I answer to pseudonyms more comfortably than to my given name. My clothes are costumes and hand-me-downs. I look in the mirror and I see nothing. Okay, not NOTHING nothing, but just a meatsack, unrelated to who I am. The face is strange, angles wrong. I don't know myself in photographs.

I did it to myself, I know. Consumed too many weird ideas too fast, filled up on the mental equivalent of magic mushrooms instead of eating my peas like a good girl. Stared in the mirror in the dark, til my face vanished and I saw the monster beneath.

I see the walls, see the bars, know them for what they are and what they deny me and what they protect me from. But me? The thing pacing inside this elaborate psychic construction of memory and shame and chemicals? It's a gaping void. A tiny black hole, self-contained, around which my consciousness orbits desperately attempting to weave a narrative structure around it, to close the wound in space.  But the inexorable gravity of the void sucks it all in, spaghettifying identities to the breaking point and leaving nothing but radiation.


Huh. I guess that's a pretty good metaphor for self-centeredness. I should probably cut that out.
Thanks, guys.

[navkat]

In terms of the OP:  I haven't followed up immediately, because the details are incredibly hard to pin down.  You try to chase a behavior or mode of thought to its origin, and it gets all slippery.  The mind immediately self-justifies, and you're left with ashes and shadows.

And, to be honest, it's a bit frightening.  Do I really want to find out that some of my favorite patterns were imposed upon me, rather than self-generated?  In the end, I suppose it all adds up to "me", but this Doktor business can be unsettling.

Over the weekend, I'm going to track down a small piece, see if I can get my hands on it, and offer up something concrete.

And then you get hit with "Fuck, it's an incredibly spoiled mind that could even conceive to have this arrogant argument with myself in the first fucking place."

*rattle rattle*

It's like being high and realizing you've spent the whole night looking for something but you forgot what...only to realize you're still doing it.

[Elder Iptuous]

...
And, to be honest, it's a bit frightening.  Do I really want to find out that some of my favorite patterns were imposed upon me, rather than self-generated?  In the end, I suppose it all adds up to "me", but this Doktor business can be unsettling.....

Do you know of any discussions (here or elsewhere) that have convincingly argued that the self is anything beyond the body we're born with, and the accumulation of experiences 'imposed' on us?

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

So when you recognize your self and your self-imposed limitations, what do you do with the limitations imposed upon you by society?

[Cramulus]

So, our first steps are to recognize what our various manacles look like, how the locking mechanism works, and how to pick the lock.  The intention of this thread is to figure that shit out.  In detail.

Here's one way of solving it...


from Zen Without Zen Masters:

[LMNO]

...
And, to be honest, it's a bit frightening.  Do I really want to find out that some of my favorite patterns were imposed upon me, rather than self-generated?  In the end, I suppose it all adds up to "me", but this Doktor business can be unsettling.....

Do you know of any discussions (here or elsewhere) that have convincingly argued that the self is anything beyond the body we're born with, and the accumulation of experiences 'imposed' on us?

I don't think I'm specifically referring to the notion of a priori thoughts or behaviors.  Naturally, the majority of our ideas and thoughts are a jumble of experiences, conditioning, and external education.  Even so-called "new" thoughts are often a conflation of two previously existing thoughts.

What I'm getting at is the difference between, for example, liking a band because someone said I should like it, and liking a band because someone said I should like it and then I decided for myself that it appealed to me.

[LMNO]

So when you recognize your self and your self-imposed limitations, what do you do with the limitations imposed upon you by society?

I would say that much the same way you pick and choose the self-imposed limitations you may want to keep for now based upon a full assesment of benefits and consequences, you do the same for social limitations.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

So when you recognize your self and your self-imposed limitations, what do you do with the limitations imposed upon you by society?

I would say that much the same way you pick and choose the self-imposed limitations you may want to keep for now based upon a full assesment of benefits and consequences, you do the same for social limitations.

Oh, I didn't realize it was that easy! In that case, I am going to pick democracy and egalitarianism, and do away with racism, sexism, and poverty. Thanks!

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I totally just got rid of rape and classism, too. Man, life is great this way, I wish I'd known before.

[LMNO]

I'm pretty sure nowhere in my post I ever said it was easy.




Chapter 48
If Order and Disorder are illusions,
then turning one into the other
is simple as changing your mind.*
But we tense our muscles, furrow our brows
and plug away at life.
Meanwhile, our Lady laughs at the silly Cabbages
trying too hard to be spontaneous.

*Please note that changing your mind is not simple.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I'm pretty sure nowhere in my post I ever said it was easy.




Chapter 48
If Order and Disorder are illusions,
then turning one into the other
is simple as changing your mind.*
But we tense our muscles, furrow our brows
and plug away at life.
Meanwhile, our Lady laughs at the silly Cabbages
trying too hard to be spontaneous.

*Please note that changing your mind is not simple.

You seem to be saying that divesting myself of socially imposed limitations is a matter of changing my mind about them. Is that actually what you're saying, or am I misunderstanding you?