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I dont have a set way to write my music. Sometimes I will sit down and the track will be complete in an hour or two, other times it can take weeks. I also start a lot more tracks than I finish.

I have had a few tracks just land in my lap though (or brain), fully formed... Just had to figure out how to make it real. Write it down, feed it into an electronic sequencer... whatever...

I like improvising the best though. I put together loops and use them for a basis, then I can drop them in and cut them out at will, I use the BPM controller to speed up, slow down the music and play a keyboard over the top. The band just knows the key changes and all improvise their way through the soundscape. We started as a joke in the local university band comp, but were so popular that we got gigs out of it and found ourselves in like a real band.

I think people might be reading too much into the concept of being infected by memes, either that, or I have it all wrong in my head. This is all written from the POV that a meme is a cultural artifact. It seems to me that there is a big difference between learning a meme and believing in the meme.

Take the Christian memeplex. Being aware of all of the memes does not make a Christian. I know about the virgin birth, the three wise men, Jesus getting nailed to the cross and the resurrection. Knowing these things means I have been infected by the memes, in that I am aware of the cultural artifacts. It does not make me believe the memes and any time I would use them it would probably be in the context of trying to create dissonance within the memeplex in order to challenge peoples faith.

Lets see if I can synthesise this with Manta's excellent rant about Ericksonian psychology and what I just wrote...

As people grow up they absorb the memes in their environment, spending their youth as more of a memetic attractor than selector. This makes sense when you think how easy it is to convince children of the existance of Santa Claus, God or any other fictional charecter. The more memes people absorb, the more dissonance this creates, meaning that sorting out which memes to believe and which not to becomes an important task. (Perhaps a reason for adolescents Identity / role confusion crisis?) So, keeping with the christian example, at some point people can be faced with a choice, to believe in Creationism (or Intelligent Design) or Evolution. Someone who keeps believing in the Christian memeplex would be more likely to believe in creationism. Someone who rejects the Christian memeplex would be more likely to buy into evolution.

Before I started to read The Art of Memetics, I scribbled down a few properties I thought that Memes might have. The most interesting one is the idea of memetic exchange, where I was trying to mesh my understanding of evolutionary psychology with the concept of memes. I will paste what I wrote below.

People talk a lot, we like to express ourselves. Communication represents cultural exchange and therefore a memetic exchange. The cost of expressing memes is very low (the cost of the calories burned from wagging your jaw and the time spent expressing it).

Memetic exchange goes a long way to divert human competition into a cultural competition (as opposed to a physical war of each against all). People living in the same geographical locale tend to share cultural artifacts and therefore have more of a memetic resonance with each other. When they have violently different memetic foundations, this can result in civil war, religious violence etc.

People living in the same geographical region are likely to share a lot of memes and therefore the cognitive resonance of communicating in a similar way. People from different cultures have fewer memes in common and this can create more cognitive disonance. This goes a way to explain why people are more likely to kill for King and Country than murder their neighbours.

Cognition is tied to emotion. Cognitive resonance can promote feelings of solidarity, cognitive disonance can provoke rage. These are just tendencies, some disonant ideas can promote solidarity through changing people's reality tunnels, challenging misconceptions etc.

I am not sure whether the idea of memetic exchange fits in with the concept of a meme, so I'm just putting it out there. I think it applies under some circumstances, E.G. People meeting in the street, but doesnt seem so applicable to advertising or the mass media (although, people in the same geographical region would still share similar sets of memes).

Personally, I always thought the "slave to your own power" idea didn't hold up. If upholding one's power or right to hold power over others is what one wishes to do, then to say that one is constrained by doing so seems a bit off. That seems like saying that someone who loves someone else unconditionally and wants to do nice things for that person is a slave to their own love, or that eating when you feel hungry makes you a slave to your stomach. Sure, those things affect what choices you do make, but not necessarily what choices you're forced to make.

I can be a slave to my hunger or love at times.

What do you mean by 'what choices you are forced to make'?

Maybe those who sit on top of the pyramids are happy being there, I don't know. Anecdotally, people in positions of power tend to be workaholics, Stalin worked about 20 hours a day to keep his reign of terror from biting him back. Rupert Murdoch works tirelessly to maintain News Limited. Politicians tend to work very long hours and have to spend a lot of time and energy maintaining 'respectability' in the eyes of the media.

From my own perspective as someone who likes being in control of his own time as much as possible, to take on a position of domination over others would be enslaving myself to a role, where my freedom of action is restrained by having to always play the role of Boss. To use the  Eye in the Pyramid analogy, everyone below me would be telling me what I wanted to hear, in order to try and curry favour. From that position of being fed misinformation I would then have to make decisions affecting all of those below me, causing negative chaos. Personally I think I would lose out on a cost/benefit analysis. (Such logic applies to me, Im not sure if it can apply to anyone else).

The way I look at it, regulated freedom is no freedom at all, but a list of constraints.

I like your stuff. 

*thud*

How free are you now?

*oww*
From the time I sparked up my joint to the time you hit me I was freer than you could be by hitting me.
You were either hitting me because you were told to (in which case you are obeying orders), or because you want to control me. If you want to control me you are either gonna have to hit alot of people, spend a lot of time worrying about being hit and make plans to avoid being hit. In that case you are going to have to become a slave to your own power.
Well thats my own personal trip on power.

Political systems are opposed to freedom, because those certain lines are contraints. I.E. They are against freedom.
Take Rat's Thou Shall Not Smoke Weed example. That is a control. By smoking weed, you run the risk of punishment. The freedom to smoke weed exists, but only through disobedience. The way I look at it, regulated freedom is no freedom at all, but a list of constraints. However, laws are only a theoretical limitation because the choice is always yours whether to obey or not.

I think it fits in with some Anarcho-Individualist philosophy, particularly that of Max Stirner in The Ego and Its Own. He spoke of 'spooks' (Geists, he was German). External forces, like the Law or the Church exist because people believe in their governing 'spooks' (You could replace the word spook with meme or meme-plex). A Church has all of the religious artefacts because people acted as though their god was real and provided them with offerings. The Law gets enforced because cops, lawyers magistrates, judges etc all believe in the spook of the Law. If you behaive as though there is a god or a law then you are acting to external ideas and not owning yourself.

According to Stirner the ego can own itself only through the rejection (or perhaps a concious examination) of the spooks which seek to control it.

it's like the meme bomb "If this was a movie, would you be a character in it? Or just an extra?" -- activitists are generally the characters.

This reminds me of the Situationist International, in fact the whole topic does in a way. The Situationist International were a French art/ activist group around mainly in the 60's. Their most famous work "The Society of the Spectacle" viewed people as either 'actors' or 'spectators' and that society was geared to keep people spectating, rather than participating. To join the Situationist International, you had to contribute to their theory and because of this they never had more than a couple of dozen members, yet their influence was massive. Cram's quote above is just a re-formulation of their most famous meme, which is widely accepted these days by a lot of people, many of which havent even heard of Situationism.

The main reason Im bringing them up is that they demonstrated that you don't need a lot of people to get a lot done. Another reason is there is something in Eater of Clowns's idea of appearing to be secretive and exclusive. Of course things like the Pope Cards cut across this, so I am not sure how applicable it could be. For me, getting the ideas of Discordianism out there is more important than people knowing the name.

A really high quality gag could raise our profile, the problem being, that it needs to be a really good mindfuck for the media to pick it up.

Another way could be to pick a Discordian Holy day and try to get as many people involved in stunts as possible, everywhere. If it was left to me, April 1 would be a good day because it is the day of pranks, it would be easier to get people involved. The downside being, the message could just get lost in the April Fools madness. This would rely more on the quantity of pranks rather than the quality.

The cost of fixing the economy, Priceless.

Mastercard-Too much credit is never enough.

When I first encountered the concept of Horrormirth, this is what came to mind.

Ive had an interesting idea for a while now, using the Choose Your Own Adventure format for non-fiction. The idea comes from the linear nature of writing. Often I find that I'm trying to discuss too many points at once and a way to get around this is to provide the reader with choice, do I want to read about X or Y now?

This could easily be taken further, people seem to have different takes on different aspects of Discordianism. These differences, rather than being glossed over, could be accentuated within a publication, so that when an idea gets challenged the alternative also gets put forward so both arguments can be explored. Different branches can lead to their own conclusions too, so that people will get more from the work, the more times they read it.

I originally envisioned this idea being used to do some sort of overview of Philosophy, but I am lazy and it will probably never happen. Rather than the idea fading from my memory I thought it could do some good here.

If people are at all interested, we could set up some sort of Wiki, like Cramulus' Choose your own adventure story.

 

The show reminds me of Jerry Springer.

He says some good stuff justifying his show, I had a dig about for some sources on it but no luck...

If you wanted to include why people would go on the show, it would be easy enough to use the 15 minutes of fame angle. A lot of people want to be famous and they often don't care how. Shows like Springer give them a chance no matter how devoid of charisma they may be. Its probably the same with those torturous Japanese game shows. Some people want fame so much that they will trade their respect and dignity for it.

 
My beatbox decided to die yesterday. Its off to the repair shop, and I am lost without it. I'm hoping it comes back working, with all of my tracks still there, but it may not. I was going to share my music on here once I recorded my new tracks, which was waiting on a new soundcard (my current sound card puts static across the recordings). But since my beatbox is not working, I could be waiting forever.

So, here is my stuff. http://www.mp3.com/artist/frew/summary/

The recordings are all a little rough because they were meant for one-off performances and since I put them up, I've come to the conclusion that some of them could do with some lyrics too.

Its all techno, and because I'm off on my own little trip, it doesn't really fit into a sub-genre.
Best Tracks:
00000001. DrumnBass psychadelic madness
Warm. Nice dance track
BassDrive: Heavy and hard.
Bazaar. (Ambient, finished as a finalist in the MusicOz awards "Instrumental" subcategory, without the use of any instruments in the traditional sense)

What with the political stuff and the BIP look-and-feel, I figured somebody might have a use for this:

I was going to subtitle it with "DEMOCRACY" in the Despair style, but meh.

How about: The last doughnuts are OURS.

I can contribute as I get inspired. I do pictures and mash-ups and can write too, best way for me to work is to look at the topic, think for a bit and see what happens.

I'm Emailing vol 1 to my photocopy slave at the local Uni, she will do up a few copies and distribute them to likely deviants there.

And...

Hitchikers Guide... Quantum Psychology...

Chaung Tzu. Ive got the complete works, the guy was pretty much an ancient Discordian. Lots of cool parables. I might put up some of his stuff one day when I get off my butt (and am reading it again).

Sorry for your loss man. 

I don't think sure we'll see another Reformation-like event, at least in the West.  My (limited) understanding of the violence attending the Reformation was that a lot of it was due to the fact that the Church ruled through ideology/theology; people who disagreed with that ideology could not do so without also challenging the power structure.  Now that Western governments (and by 'Western' I mean North America and Europe) have variations on constitutional democracies, the ruling class is not tied to ideology.  Every couple of election cycles, the ideology in power shifts; there's nothing revolutionary in disagreeing with the current ruling ideology anymore.

Thats just the two man con. Two faces of the same coin.

Take the vast swathes of what both major parties (In pretty much any 'democratic' country) agree on. Economics over environment, engagement in stripping away civil liberties under the guise of the war on terror, looking after major financial backers of their parties (Corporations, many of them the nastiest), Pro copyright, pro-prohibition, Nationalism, the list goes on.

Election of left of field candidates usually spur the secret services into action. We elected a Greens politician to the Australian parliament, and the CIA sent a team into my town to investigate. When South Americans elect left wing governments, its usually followed by a coup. (Fortunately Bush has taken his eye off that one). It doesnt usually have to be that overt. Being ignored by the corporate media is usually enough to stop any alternate candidate, although the space is opening up there.

The spread of information opens up the ability to criticise and poke fun at the powers that be, (e.g. the two-man con meme) and may well start to undermine it. Thats what I hope anyways.