The thing is, if you are talking to your averag every day joe, even referencing Taoism and Zen is going to get you in trouble. They're going to start thinking about sage burning weirdos with Asian fetishes.
That is what I loved about the BIP project and why I think it drew so much attention. We didn't laden it with the "joke wrapped in religion wrapped in joke" stuff and we didn't laden it with mystical terminology. It was written in language and used terminology that anyone could get.
I never actually read the finished versions, but I recall the drafts. I remember them not sitting well with me because they seemed to take the ideas posed too seriously. That has it's time and place of course, and plenty of value contained, but unless the content drastically changed I don't think I'd equate the text to the PD. For me the joke is the part of it... the part that frees one from the pressure and what makes Discordianism different from any other religion that takes itself seriously. I kind of feel like without that aspect I'm missing one of the things I value most from the mental exercises posed in the PD. Plus as previously mentioned, getting someone to read anything is rough, even just a t-shirt.
Also I think your "sage burning" quote would apply less to those I traffic with and more to those I don't. Being insulated somewhat by weirdos, I almost never encounter "normals" in social circles. Most people I know are flippy in some way. Burners, Circus performers, Fetish Artists, Internet Trolls, and other things not common among everyday Cul-de-sac Joe. I accept that isn't likely the world for most people, but for me, encountering someone who is just a little bit weird is rare from the opposite direction. As such most of them are sage burning hippies or in the case that they stealth as normals, have some incredibly fucked up weird shit about them that they don't let the rest of the world in on and have no space to throw stones in glass houses.
On a side note, I'm also thinking that I do recall that I do meet grey faced bores on occasion but tend to assimilate them to the dork side over time if they are chill. Unrelated to the topic at hand, but a thought that popped up... I recall this happening somewhat recently (past 6 months) with a new co-worker. After hanging around myself for a bit she later confided in me that her husband was starting to think she was going weird because she talked about poop at the table in some connotation of some internet thing I mentioned to her casually. I cracked up at her story, but for all the wrong reasons and assured that indeed she was indeed edgy and cool, when really the thought made me wonder why the hell she would consider that story worthy. Regardless I thought it best to encourage her having fun and cutting loose. Turned out they had me over for dinner a few times and soon enough her husband cut loose a bit too and good times were had.
Kind of a bit off track there, but I think it brings home the point about the joke-serious paradox being crucial for me as part of Discordianism.
