The Pendulum of Discord

[Zurtok Khan]

May you get what you want.
- Old Gypsy Curse

We've all heard it before.  We exist only to swing the pendulum back to chaos, so it can again move to order, so it can move to chaos, etc.  Well, I'm sure we've all seen it put a different way.  

The world, the Earth it's self, does much the same thing.  Sure, the scientists are bitching about global warming, and all that jazz.  I'm even fairly sure we help it along, but I am not so proud to think that I, or the collective us, really have a very big effect on what the earth is going to do, on what it is doing.  To me, past Ice Ages are proof that the world has gone through cooling periods, and logically it stands to very, very, very good reason, that it will also go through warming periods, although the effects of such will not be anywhere near as drastic.

And, that my friends, brings me back to Us.  The Principia Discordians, or whatever you'd like to call yourself to distinguish from the herd.  We have all been duped.  Ohh, not by anyone out there, we're not important enough (yet) for the President (Dick Chenney, of course) to turn his beedy little eyes on us and lie straight to us.  I'm sure even the CIA and FBI ignore us 99.9% of the time.  We're all a bunch of nutjobs thinking we're going to change the world.

So, Us, who have we been duped by?  Us, of course.  We've duped ourselves.  There are two sides to the Discordian Movement.  There is the Spiritual ELF, and the Material POEE...or however you'd like to look at it.  I suppose to bring it into sharper focus, there's the Pie and Cookie's Crowd, and then we have the...I don't know what to call you folks...trolls, realists, negatives?  Well, whatever, you know who I'm talking about.

But, even that remains incomplete,  The Trolls and the Pie and Cookie crowd aren't that far apart, in the end.  So maybe, We've got the TPC group, and (my stomach turns to say this, but I find no other way to put it) the Real Discordians.  Not that anyone is more real then anyone else, but there are some around here who don't threadjack, who are offended at the threadjacking of, intelligent threads.  I'm talking about the people around here with...respect.  There we go, the proper contradiction.  Not real Discordians, none of us are real, it's the Respectful Discordians.

The pendulum swung from Intelligent Rants to Pie and Cookies, and at it's worst, Trolling.  It became habit, it became hateful, it became destructive, it became pointless to post anything around here because in the end you were going to get told "Not to step up Opie!" (not blaming teh Chef/Roger, but you're a useful tool here).  It came to the point, got to the point, is at the point, that new or different idea's were looked on as being thoughts of a "dirty hippy." Or some such shit.

But, we did not look and see the pendulum manipulate us, who pride ourselves on being above the heathen masses who walk in the lands of THUD.  We fell under the blade of group think, a couple people trolling turned us all into Trolls.  Hateful, nasty beings with nothing good to say.  All we could do was spout about how much we hated so-and-so, or go off and try and piss off someone else.

And now the music has reached it's cresendo, and is quieting back down.  We're coming back from the frantic and ill directed energies, or so I can see.  We need to work on it, of course, but how can you fail to see that we fell prey to the macinations of chaos, and remained pitifully unaware?  Or so I assume, as no one has pointed this out to me before.  This is the Destructive Order that we all seem to dispise.  Or maybe, it's just the Constructive Chaos teaching us things.

The Pendulum is swinging, still.  Just thought you should know.

[Irreverend Hugh, KSC]

You are becoming quite the writer. Keep it up.

I do think that the pendulum is just a metaphor and it can't be shown to swing one way or the other. But that's just me.

[Eldora, Oracle of Alchemy]

You are becoming quite the writer. Keep it up.

I do think that the pendulum is just a metaphor and it can't be shown to swing one way or the other. But that's just me.

The pendulum is actually a good metaphor, for this reason:

People assume that a pendulum goes back and forth, but it is actually inscribing an ellipse.  And better than that, the ellipse is costantly moving around a circle

[Irreverend Hugh, KSC]

And the circle is a metaphor for something that is ongoing....sort of like the eschaton being immanentized....

[Eldora, Oracle of Alchemy]

And the circle is a metaphor for something that is ongoing....sort of like the eschaton being immanentized....

More like the circle that is time for everyone else.  On account of time not really being linear, but only appearing so  

[Zurtok Khan]

You are becoming quite the writer. Keep it up.

I do think that the pendulum is just a metaphor and it can't be shown to swing one way or the other. But that's just me.

Awww, thank you Hugh.

You DO know that I'm actually just a split part of your personality that's posting when the rest of you is asleep...or else.

[gnimbley]

My only criticism is that you divide us up into two groups. More than that
I think. (23?) There is a tendency to divide everything up into two
groups. Usually it is an oversimplification. Just like saying someone is
totally wrong or totally right. But I like your writing very much. Keep
it up.

[Guido Finucci]

There is a tendency to divide everything up into two
groups. Usually it is an oversimplification.

Things tend to polarize and seperate themselves into opposite ends of various 'continua'. As a result, I find that the two groups thing can often be rather useful to understand to a first approximation what is going on. Of course one needs to bear in mind that no one continuum completely defines any individual and no two individuals will be identical where they fall on every continuum. As long as you remember that groups thus defined are a bit fuzzy, they can do good work.

My two cents.

[Chaplin_Sinatra_Fonzarell]

I'm a uniter, not a divider!

[agent compassion]

I'm a multiplier, damnit!

[nurbldoff]

Every phenomenon is multi- (infini-?) dimensional.
Every division is one-dimensional.
Thus it can only partition, narrow down, but never truly describe.

Or sometjing.

But I do agree with some of what you wrote, Zurthok, although I don't think it's always desirable to separate the "bad" stuff from the "good" stuff in a place like this. It's all a continuous, synergic feedback driven system, give or take.

[LMNO]

I think I have officially decided not to like Zurtok.




You can figure out the reasons yourself, if you want to.

[Ghost In The Machine]

I think I have officially decided not to like Zurtok.




You can figure out the reasons yourself, if you want to.

Spill it.

[LMNO]

Hint: Epistles no 1 - 3.

[Ghost In The Machine]

Hint: Epistles no 1 - 3.

Whose?  Hugh's or Roger's?