Rant 137: Sowing Seeds...Part 2

[Irreverend Hugh, KSC]

Rant 137
Sowing Seeds: Part 2

"General Semantics is nothing but its own feedback loop. A pseudo-science where circular reasoning masks itself as insight."
-Tequilarius Malignatus (from "Slap them! An Analysis of  Semanticians' Sex-fantasies")

Are cliches dominating your thoughts like pop-up ads gone wild? Are you getting infected with online emotionally transmitted diseases? Are you finally getting tired of all the pushes and pulls of society pointing at you, towards you, and in you, telling you to go out and go this or that, do this or that, to get on the bandwagon and join the latest fad that will finally make all those scary fnords go away? Are you finally sick of all the "plausible" excuses of the religious or the close-minded people who try to feel up every gap in knowledge with ready made mass produced answers endlessly parroted to the point where they get confused with wisdom? Are you finally getting tired of the sort of world in which you will have to be forced to do things you wish not to do in order to survive and make ends meet?
And are you getting sick of just sitting around bitching about it?

What have you done about it?

You could choose to revel in all the mass made distractions and cliches and beliefs that are bombarding everyone daily even as most people half-consciously support them. You could breath a sigh of relief that you have some ability to see through the facades that lately pass themselves off as personality. You can swim in this society like fish along the currents and tides of the fads, phobias, and fashions that people have equated with meaning. You can use these things to your advantage. You ever think about that?

There is no escape from society, no matter how bad you think it is getting. (Unless you think going off to live in some New Age fiction is actually escaping.) So you may as well learn to play the game well, not only for survival but for subverting of the very viral thought forms that spread from mind to mind so easily in this globalized society. You hate preachers? Preach sermons of your own. You hate advertising copy? Write some of your own. (And find ways of distributing it.) You hate the system? Use its own rules against it. You think you want to see more discord? Become the SNAFU you crave.

Are you looking for a better more superior alternative to the blandly marketed alternative counter-cultural options? Start your own. Are you finding that you don't fit in with the local Discordians? Make up your own sect and jake the bastards. Just remember that being mean makes you in no way a seed sower of Discord. It just means that you are being mean, which says pretty much nothing, except that no one will enjoy your company. No one much likes abusers, but you will find more enablers among those you consider "normal," so if you want to be mean, just go back to your milk-fed life, look for the appropriate enablers and don't worry about anything the rest of us may do.

If you want people to hold your hand and tell you it's okay, you'll have to do what most people do and actually make some friends. Just because some of us are more open to oddballs than the rest of society doesn't mean we are natural born therapists or anything. Besides, none of us know where your hands have been. And anyway, if you want to sow seeds of Discord, why would you be asking for hand holding? You can ask Eris, but would you trust Her to hold your hand? Would you trust any of the rest of us to hold your hand?

Sowing seeds of discord isn't about revolution, or any other mass marketed prefabricated ideological scheme that you can find for sale at your nearest Borders. It is pretty much self-explanatory. It exists and is done for the benefit and enjoyment of the Children of Eris. Whether Eris Herself actually cares about it is debatable since She is known to give contradictory statements in the same damn interview. You can rest assured that She won't stop you, unless doing so results in funnier outcomes.

Again, are you sick of it all? Are you sick of the rats gnawing at your heart from the inside? The thoughts and ideas that are telling you that no matter what you do or say you are not good enough unless you buy the newest products and practice the latest correct thinking? Are you sick of the prospects of meager validation being imposed upon you from the hordes of those locked into the unconscious conspiracies of normalcy that war on sentience every single day? Are you tortured by pop-up thoughts from the dazzling glitzy ads that clamor for your attention, time, and soul?

Well, it's time to start laughing at the whole thing for starters. Then, it's time to ask yourself what you are doing about it. Never mind the approval or disapproval of others. Never mind when some people try to tell you that you need to do or say this or that in order to be a "true [label]" or to call yourself a "[label]".

September 25th, 2005

-Irreverend Hugh, KSC

[ataraxia]

You're on a roll today.

Oddly enough, this board (and the others that I share with people from here) is basically my only source of real "peer pressure". Only here am I ever worried about being a "true whatever" or getting respect. In the rest of my life I either am and do, or am not and don't. (Kinda like that Yoda line.) And only here do I think about the comforts of companionship to any degree great enough to allow worry.

I'm really screwed up, aren't I?

[l0c0dantes]

Only in the nail sense ya are

[ataraxia]

[LHX]

You're on a roll today.

Oddly enough, this board (and the others that I share with people from here) is basically my only source of real "peer pressure". Only here am I ever worried about being a "true whatever" or getting respect. In the rest of my life I either am and do, or am not and don't. (Kinda like that Yoda line.) And only here do I think about the comforts of companionship to any degree great enough to allow worry.

I'm really screwed up, aren't I?

i hear that

this shit is like the intellectual olympics or something


offline is like local area track meets with the fat kids

[ataraxia]

As soon as you're sure about something, you're wrong.

So this post is wrong.

("...and here are the Skeptics, a tribe of men who speak other than they think...")

[The Good Reverend Roger]

As soon as you're sure about something, you're wrong.

Bullshit.  Enough with the epigrams, already.

[LHX]

As soon as you're sure about something, you're wrong.

So this post is wrong.

("...and here are the Skeptics, a tribe of men who speak other than they think...")

i am sure you are not wrong about being sure
(?)


like the only way to get it right is to stop talking

[ataraxia]

Just to stop talking would not be enough, you would have to stop thinking, too.

But you can't. So you just have to keep going. ("...and you're alone in the woods and you don't know where the fuck are you but you can't go back because that would be karmically wrong - you just have to keep going forward...")

A lot of things seem different after some thought. So what can you really do? I sure don't know. And that's why I'm not some other religion, or none at all.

(Bonus points for getting the quote even though I had to write it from memory.)

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Woooweee!  You hijacked the thread in the name of the Navel Lint Gathering Ciricle Jerk Society!

[ataraxia]

And you did so in the name of the Bash Your Fellow Poster Society. Just because something looks like crap to you doesn't mean you ought to complain about it. At least I was on topic.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

Just because something looks like crap to you doesn't mean you ought to complain about it.

WTF?  Of COURSE I should...or are you suggesting I complain when I *like* something?

AYRTS?  IA?

[ataraxia]

I'm suggesting you complain when it's USEFUL.

YHBT. HAND.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I'm suggesting you complain when it's USEFUL.

YHBT. HAND.

It's always useful, then I do it.

What?  No ghey-assed W-whatever?

TGRR,
Knows that everyone should have a friend like me.

[ataraxia]

W-Whatever!