Messages

I regard most of the stuff that comes from my mind as utter bullshit. The top post is no different. The dichotomy of Life vs. Oblivion is a lovely crock of conceptual crapola and likely doesn't hold up under modest scrutiny. c'est la vie. I use it cause it's a fun lens to look through and if you hold it just right you might be able to set fire to some loose kindling or insects. It was an effective tool I carved out of the mormon faith which I subsequently used for getting out of the mormon faith. How's that for raiding the temple 

I could try and polish it up for presentation if anyone wants a show and tell. Passing around spoils is half the fun. 

spontaneous spouting of poetry seems to be a common side effect of consuming discordianism. Nothing to be concerned about. If your iambic pentameter lasts longer than 4 hours, consider consulting a physician. 

in all seriousness, abusive upbringings are probably more prevalent than anyone wants to admit, and the effects will probably require a lot of effort to untangle and understand. I hope that you are able to find places you find comfortable and safe enough to unravel the patterns of psychology and biology. I'll do what I can to make this a place where you can do that, but I can't promise much as this is a public place.

I love it! Very well done.

I also feel this internal struggle. Finding the balance between worthless turd and viral diarrhea epidemic is more art than science. This is makes it harder for those who deal in the logical, and especially those who've suppressed (Sometimes out of necessity) the emotional.

I'm glad you enjoyed it. Here's to hoping I can keep practicing that art of balance.
It sounds like you might have some specific experiences in mind regarding self censorship?

This is a good post, a lot of good thought in there.

I'm with you in that I am immediately on guard when someone says they have all the answers, or that they have this great shortcut / life hack which will only cost you $19.99, etc etc. When I started reading about Gurdjieff, I was on high alert against being subsumed by cult dynamics.

But I also know that there are certain things out there -- often they are abstract spiritual topics, like meditation, or techniques that are best transimtted by example -- which I cannot necessarily figure out all by myself. Words you read in a book fall short. I need someone to lead me to the place. This requires trust. This trust can be abused. Intentional inner change is always risky (or else it is worthless).


To navigate this dangerous terrain, there are two pieces of armor I keep polished:

-Verification. A good teacher doesn't ask you to take anything on faith. You have to do your own work to verify what's given to you. (I think - most things you haven't verified yourself should be regarded as empty until proven otherwise) This raises a deep question though -- How can we verify the intangible? What does it mean to KNOW something? To have a real understanding of the cosmos and the self? (This mystery is the essence of gnosticism.)

-Discordianism. Eris has a powerful weapon in her arsenal: laughter. The Principia Discordia is not fucking around when it presents laughter as the highest tier of magical tools. Laughing at someone blunts their authority. Laughing at yourself can jailbreak you from your trajectory. With the flip of a mental switch, you can reevaluate what you're doing and go "ehhh most of this is probabably bullshit, lol". If we can see ourselves as a cosmic shmuck, then the banana peels that the cosmos lays for us are no longer dangerous, but part of this slapstick routine. Fundamentalism and orthodoxy crumble as soon as you stop taking them so seriously. And sometimes we need to take things seriously, we just also need to remain flexible, to not get trapped.

I'm glad you thought this pile was good. It felt a bit too long, I was wondering if I should've chunked it up into smaller works. What's done is done.

Gurdjieff was one of those I had in mind for the third type of guru. Not naïve and still striving to help those who strive to live. From reading your experiences it seems like you have found a group that isn't overridden by the seekers of oblivion. Congrats on that. I'm still trying to decide if I should continue attending the cabal meetings, and the above post was my attempt at sorting through some of that. The fact that much of the discussion revolves around the works of Gurdjieff raises difficult concerns for me because of my bias and past experiences, because I see him as having the role of a guru. For now I'm leaning towards sticking around because at the very least it gives my mind something to chew on during the quiet hours at work.

As for verifying the intangible... I guess I could go stare at that topic for a bit. I've got an unpublished post about the ugly bits of epistemology and that damn near everyone constantly fnords out of their minds so that they can function. It's a turd that still needs several coats of lacquer to make it presentable, but next week is going to be unbearably slow so I might as well. The TL;DR is that you can't verify intangible stuff in any way that is conclusive, so you just give certain concepts a ride around the block and kick the tires and see if it is useful or not. If you're brave/stupid/thorough, you could also try driving it full speed into a wall and see where/how it breaks.

An excerpt from my unpublished notes cause it feels relevant. I dunno, hungover + boredom is probably not the best state of mind to be composing words in. Fuck it and I'm sorry.
"I am a crock of shit. In my view, Discordianism is this. It is seeking to fulfil that which novelty cannot. It is a bottomless striving. It is endless seeking. It is self deception where necessary, and where possible it is staring at the naked reality, no matter how unpleasant. It is ritual for the biological urge for ritual. It is gathering and dividing. It is hooking objective reality to subjective value, winding up the springs, and marching disorderly into the unknown. It is clear as mud, mystery that requires pickaxes, and likely always poop at the core."

My relationship to the concept of gurus is complicated. I wish I could say I unilaterally hate the concept and the actuality of gurus from beginning to end. I feel like that would somehow be easier then my actual feelings.

First the negative, and there is a lot, so sorry. I grew up in a religion that could be adequately described as a hierarchy of store-brand gurus. It was customary or expected that for every major decision or doctrinal question that arose in your life you would first study the issue, think about it a while, pray about it, and if you didn't get clear feelings or an answer one way or another about the matter, then you could always go to the next guy (and it was always a man) up the chain for council on the matter. On the surface this could look innocuous in a "it's just an org chart" sort of way. But because it is associated with the church I left for a host of reasons and negative feelings, those negative feelings also glom onto it and bias me to seeing any potential problem.

For example, someone you might not actually feel close to often ends up involved in decisions that they likely don't have any right to be involved in. This rando was selected to their position by no other qualifications than "The next guy above him got good feefees about it". So why should I feel culturally conditioned to give this rando any say about a difficult business decision that could affect my family's financial well being, or who I should marry, or whether or not I should move across country for a job opportunity... etc. They haven't been specially trained for any of this. It is literally a roulette game in regards to the quality of their advice and reactions to your issues. Confessing your perceived failings to one of these individuals could result in anything from honestly good encouragement and perspective adjustment, to social disfellowship and enduring the shame of being barred from participating in public rituals that signify your personal worthiness/righteousness. But I digress. I just wanted to show that I mostly see the problems with this system, and that the negative bias I've developed towards the church leadership has also colored my view of guru's in general.

At least with the knock-off gurus of my church, most of the time they didn't get completely wrapped up in it and go off on some power trip (I've not experienced a severe case of this myself, but I have heard of instances where some congregations end up noticeably more cult-like because the leader really ran with their position. But that could all be cautionary folk lore, I'll never know). But there are plenty of individual operators who I could name that make a living off of their guru status. With these I've noticed a few recurring failure modes which cause me to be extremely wary.

Concept X
In programming, there is the concept of a God Class, which is where you have one object class that just does too much, it clogs up schedulers, modifying it becomes a nightmare because it is tied into too many other processes. To me, Concept X feels like a God Class problem. It is the one sized fits all "Secret" thing that you personally need in your life that will "Fix all your problems", and it is impossible to figure out on your own, and so powerful it's actually dangerous if you aren't properly trained to implement it in your life, so you'll need to sign up for a whole series of courses so you can be correctly shepherded into this enlightenment. And if it doesn't work out for you, well, that is an expected outcome as well because it's super hard to grasp and even harder to master Concept X. Not many people actually manage to master it, but you could be one of them! It's fine, we have a Money Back Guarantee if it doesn't work out for you. Non-Refundable fees may apply.

Most of the time Concept X is a blatant grift. There is nothing at the core. It's not even bullshit at the center, but it has several layers of very expensive bullshit surrounding it to keep you from seeing that there was nothing there. The promoter is just trying to keep the show going and the money flowing, It's smoke and mirrors and improvisation that only unintentionally helps enough rubes to keep the testimonial page stocked, and exhausts or bankrupts the rest so they leave blaming themselves. Occasionally the promoter actually does have something in mind for their Concept X. It is usually the same microwave re-heated folk wisdom you could have gotten for far cheaper from somewhere else, but you had to work for this one so maybe it sticks. Other times it's more bizarre, like an obsession with something random. More then likely it is what fixed a problem in the promoter's life, but it isn't likely to help you and your problem in the slightest.

The real problem with Concept X, is that it often can feel, or even be, real. We're a bunch of flawed poo flinging hominids that are capable of breaking in novel and interesting ways. I'd guess it's a somewhat common experience to look at your own life, find something you don't like about it, look at someone else's life (or at least the halfway curated bits they'll show) and think "they've got their shit together" and wonder, "what am I not getting?" Thus Concept X is born. But the difference between the real ones, and the ones pushed by gurus, is that there isn't just one, there is one for every problem that everyone has, and they are all slightly different keys for different locks. It genuinely is the thing you don't get, it often lies in your blind spot, if you could truly internalize that thing, you'd be able to finally fix that thing you don't like about yourself or your life (while simultaneously breaking some other shit in your life and dropping that into your new blind spot, you know the one, that crevice under the bookshelf, the one you thought you saw a large roach crawl into last Tuesday night.)

The Guru Trap
You ever wanted to unlock your creativity? Want to take your Business to the Next Level! You're poor, want to become fabulously rich? If you pay for this book, or this course, you can learn all my life coaching tips on how to Become the Best You!

I have less to say about the Guru Trap. Have you ever met a guru who claims to help everyone else get their business off the ground, but the only business that they've ever personally successfully operated is the business of being a guru? How about one that guru's so much helping others unleash their creativity, that they just don't have the time to make any art or anything creative at all?

The Guru Trap feels less common now a day. But I still see hints of it now and then. The Guru Trap is the pyramid scheme of fail states. It's inside network sales that never make it outside. It is people making money telling others how to make money doing the thing that the guru isn't doing anymore. Presently this pops up most prevalently in "Hot new money making ideas", like crypto currencies, or dropship sales, or affiliate marketing, or the classic literal MLM's. The only ones making the real money are the ones selling the shovels, maps, and instruction manuals to desperately hopeful, mostly talentless rubes who dream of striking it rich in them there hills.

Creeping Cultification
Don't worry! Follow my directions and things will go alright! Life is a messy affair. There are no two ways about it. There are plenty of bedraggled souls out there who often have been dealt a mediocre hand in life. Many seek oblivion whether or not they recognize it, the seductive abdication from responsibility and consequence. Don't believe me? Ask yourself, does this not rhyme with many a layperson's depiction of heaven? To dwell with a source of absolute authority, to forever bask in that glory, in restful peace for eternity. Oblivion by any other name is still just as empty.

There are gurus who are naïve and do not grasp this truth, they "Just want to help others". Along comes a follower, willing to sacrifice much to be absolved of the messy affairs of life. They seek direction in as much as the guru is willing to advise. And each bit of advise is but a bandage on the crumbling dam. And the guru either learns and drives off the seeker of oblivion, or they don't and exhaust themselves on problems they do not grasp. I pity and laugh at these.

There are gurus who are sociopaths, and definitely grasp this truth, and seek those who seek oblivion, and offer such absolution in exchange for devotion. And they have sick harems, and leave human wreckage in their wake, and burn bright and fast, and sometimes (but not often enough) get chased to foreign lands by the authorities, and on a rare occasion get thrown in jail forever. I openly despise (and maybe a little bit secretly envy) these. (Damn You Scruples!)

There are the extremely rare gurus who are not so naïve, and know this truth, and do their best to distinguish between those who seek oblivion, and those who seek life, and they do what they can to drive off those who seek oblivion and try to help those who seek life. They do so knowing full well that this is no easy task and that they will still frequently fail. Once they die though, they are no longer there to drive off seekers of oblivion, who will deify the guru, bastardize their teachings, and likely fuck shit up in the name of the guru. These are the source of my complicated feelings. I hate that.

Finally there are gurus, who are only gurus to themselves exclusively. And they beat off any seeking followers with sticks and terror and flung poo. These I openly admire cause they never waste too much oxygen thinking about this shit. They have real problems to fucking deal with, and deal with it they do, and deal with the consequences they will.

Now for the Complicated Bits.
Confession time. In my naïve youth, I was taken by the siren song of helping others. To this day I cannot completely shake the positive feelings I have with the concept of "helping others to help themselves". I firmly believed in the powers of mantras and positive affirmations and a rudimentary understanding of meme magic. I hoped I could be capable of forcefully injecting a virulent positivity into the world like one could inject a Cajun marinade into a turkey (Pro tip, it generally works out better if the turkey is already dead). When my grand ambitions smashed up against the grim realities, I'm sure by now you can guess which one survived. The fragments of those ambitions still linger about, complicating things. Thank <insert higher power here?> YouTube de-listed all my old videos. Thankfully, I didn't accrue any followers for my efforts.

Now I view that time in my life partly as a temptation to folly, and partly with a bit of longing. In my current state where I've ceded so much to oblivion's pull, I can see in those fragments bits and pieces of my own personal concept X, I can see the patterns that helped me to deal with the messiness of life head on rather than seek shelter from it. I saw in it some strange mentality that felt better than the mundane. But they are fragments at best now, the memories are not quite as clear. So back into the forge it all goes, maybe I can make something better next time, something that can survive an encounter with the grim realities for a little longer. But first I need to make some real things away from this so I'm not just a Guru Trap myself.

Nothing can be grown from the void.

At least you can grow something from Bullshit.

Sometimes, what grows from Bullshit is a regrettable abomination.



I've long resided with Scylla, swallowed into nothing, going along to get along.

But recently I've been feeling the spasms of life returning to me. Clawing to escape, to avoid some fate I've found unpalatable.

Scylla must have finally found me unpalatable as well. Shaken from the quiet. Disgorged into awareness. Left to flail and flag among the waves.

And so I swim from familiar torment to uncertain future. My head only intermittently high enough above the turbulence to catch my shifting bearings. Before plunging back to a pumping rhythm of arms and legs.

In the moments of clarity, I can see the stronger twin of my long time captor. Charybdis, thrashing the throngs in her snare, her countless limbs colliding countless howling victims, cranium to cranium. A fate somehow even less palatable to me than the one I was trying to escape. For now, she is still a ways off.

I aspire to be more than nothing. I fear what the world does to those who become something.

until then, your grave deserves to read

   "He was a tube
   food went in, poop came out"

Is that all?

A fine eulogy.

I have just a bit more about this subject, then hopefully I'll be off to the races delving into other topics. For now I'm just trying to process some fears and other feelings so I can repair some of my faculties.

Thank You for your advice. I'll do what I can to implement it.

My problem is certainly multifaceted. But the hermit bit of it is probably the largest chunk. I lost a lot of my meat space socializing structure over the last couple years (left church, finished school, pandemic crushed the weekly gaming gatherings in my one remaining meat space friend group and then we all moved quite a bit farther from one another). On top of that I purposefully killed my digital existence a long time ago to avoid some amount of stress and conflict, and in doing so, found myself now lacking the skills and resolve to engage in the various online communities where I lurk. The other chunks are some amounts of the following and other stuff that probably lies in my blind spots.
1. I've become a genuinely less interesting person having sacrificed many of my creative pursuits so I could focus on school the last few years. (Now that school is over I'm trying to rekindle some of those pursuits)
2. My confidence has been punctured as I've moved from a job where I was seen as highly experienced by my peers, to a new job where the majority of my work is somehow less skilled and all of my work is performed in isolation so I can no longer rely on peers for feedback on my performance. (Another issue I might explore in writing here. This one seriously needs addressing in some form.)
3. I'm still trying to wrangle the structure of my time to see where I could schedule new meat space socializing. There have been a lot of big structural changes in my life recently (moving from an apartment to a house that carries new maintenance needs, new job, no more school) And I'm still trying to pin down a more consistent schedule that meets the majority of my physical, mental and social needs. (Yes, some people would just jettison the "schedule" part of it, I struggle to do so.)
4. General fears. Fears that I'll do damage to others. Fears that I ruin social gatherings. Fears that I'll inadvertently bring the world down on my head because of some stupidity that was allowed to persist in one of my blind spots, and in doing so no longer be able to support my loved ones. I'm detrimentally conflict averse, something I likely need to overcome.
5. M'fkin Depression... Just that whole whirlpool that still consumes energy that I'd rather were freed up to actually work on the above, instead of being spent just getting back to the starting line.

That last one is definitely the source of "oblivion's certain strange allure" Doing what needs doing is gonna take a lot of effort and energy, from a certain perspective it's a lot easier to give in and just drop to the bottom.

I'll really try to show up at the next cabal pot luck... I guess that is what I'm trying to say. Any idea when that'll be? And what is the next subject? I can at least attempt reading something. Hopefully I can bring something other than my usual "We're all going to die anyway" downerism to stink up the table.

My Home Town (Lebanon, Ohio) has decided to pass an ordinance not only banning, but criminalizing all abortion. The Council Meeting consisted mainly of the Council talking about how they use the Bible to make all of their decisions in local government, and friends of mine calling them on their shit.

The Protest of the decision was met with a Counter-Protest of Right-Wingers with big guns that was about quadruple the size. This is the same town where known Nazis in the area assaulted protesters on camera in the streets during past protests. It's likely going to get pretty ugly here soon, and we'll be moving into Lebanon likely within the next few months to get out of this piece of shit house.

Hopefully, I can get some SRA buddies together over the next few months to join at future Protests to discourage future threats and intimidation.

That sucks. It sounds like Ohio is quite the battleground in more ways than one. I just read how a lot of Ohio Republican legislators are trying to push for a bill that would prevent basically any organization from encouraging or enforcing mask wearing or vaccinations. I know that there are lots of people who would cheer on these actions in pursuit of the cause of "personal liberty". I am not one of them. I'll admit I don't have a position that is free of contradiction. But I feel like it should be my individual right as a laborer to not have to service an individual or work closely with someone if I feel doing so would put my health or safety at risk. In the same way I am currently informed that I can consult my manager and implement additional safety measures if a procedure exposes me to a level of risk I am not comfortable with.

Are you going to be alright moving into Lebanon?

Discordianism and the COTSG are not things that any human being can do forever.  You get in, you get what you need, and then you leave.

Chaos is not sustainable.  It's just a lot of fun as a short term thing.

Noted. In the meantime I hope it's alright with everyone that I practice "existing" again till I develop the motivation and fortitude to find other places to do more than just lurk. I'll try to shine up some rants or other writings to drop here when things get slow, and try to improve my conversational skills so its worth interacting.

The Great Seriousness... now there's a term I've gotta throw in the forum search bar. Probably something there that might keep me occupied for an hour or two.

A lot of grayfaced infighting that resulted in eris "rewarding" us with four years of the Maga Khan.

Just when I thought I'd heard all the nicknames. Maga Khan  Brilliant. I'll try to keep my own gravefaced nature in check. I don't think I would want yet another Great Seriousness (no idea if there's been more than one) or worse.

Yeah, proud is probably the right reaction. Good on Ya!

[The obvious solution is to fill that vacuum, and the best way to do THAT is to find something new, something you've never done, and get involved in it.]

Isolation is self-reinforcing.  The less you have to do with people, the less you WILL have to do with people.

The thing about religion, same as politics, is that it narrows your crowd down, because making friends outside of the crowd is frowned upon.  So if you leave the religion, you're going to have this massive vacuum in your life.  The obvious solution is to fill that vacuum, and the best way to do THAT is to find something new, something you've never done, and get involved in it.  Then find something else to get into before the "new" wears off of whatever it was that you chose.

I guess Discordianism is somewhat fulfilling that role for now. I wont deny that some low level depression compounds that self reinforcing cycle. It is definitely more difficult to find something new when far too often nothing feels new (thanks depression!). I'll keep working on that to see if I can't get that sense of novelty back in working order. Now that you mention it, I remember writing a rant a while back that touched on novelty. Maybe that needs a revisit and refactoring, maybe I can polish that turd into a shinier turd.

When my father retired, he suddenly had this huge chunk of his life that was "empty".  He's a biochemist and kind of (literally) wrote the book on microprocessor controls, so he decided to get into metalworking and rockhounding, and found two huge groups of people that he never knew existed, and he's learned things he never would have even heard about if he'd just tried to cling to the community that he had worked in.

After The Great Seriousness, I eventually walked away from Discordianism and started hanging out with Trekkies and learned that there was a whole new level of bickering that I had never been exposed to. 

So the thing here is mostly getting off of your ass and breaking the rut you're in.

The Great Seriousness... now there's a term I've gotta throw in the forum search bar. Probably something there that might keep me occupied for an hour or two.

If a person ceases communicating with anyone else, do they still exist?

In my youth I was addicted to online role play forums. I would interact and have drama and fights and make up with frenemies and I was a prolific creator of all things dumb and toxic and marty stu. And then I took a two year religion imposed hiatus from the internet (excluding the once weekly email to my parents) to ceaselessly bother strangers in real life about the religion I grew up with (and subsequently left a few years later).

After that, I couldn't seem to get back into the role play scene and instead tried to adapt to Facebook and YouTube. I would post a new video every couple of weeks and I would share that to Facebook and comment on things my family would post. But once College started to be a bit tough I didn't have any leftover energy for video production. And after that one nasty Facebook fight, I just kind of stopped... existing online. That was about 9 years ago.

Since then my online interaction can be pretty easily summarized. I've only tweeted four times since I created a twitter account 4+ years ago. I created that account mostly to notify me of reward codes for a game I play. And the other day I had my "cake day" on reddit and got a push notification about it. Wondering where the button might lead I pressed it and landed on my own profile page. It took me one swipe to reach the beginning of my posts 6+ years ago. My comments page is similarly sparse and mostly filled with one spat I had with a stranger about the economy where, I admit, I behaved shamefully.

Since I quit existing online and left the religion that served so long as a crutch for my social life, I started substituting podcasts for actual human interaction more and more till I finally woke up one day to recognize something was amiss.

I'm surrounded by co-workers every week day. And yet, the current average number of words I speak or type a day to another person at work could probably be tallied on fingers and toes. And if you narrowed it down to unique words, the average could probably be tallied on one hand. I go most work days where my only utterance to another human being is "How's it going" as I pass loose acquaintances in the hall. Even conversation with my spouse has noticeably diminished as the years have passed, our familiarity with one another has bred a sense of comfort, understanding, and quiet. And since the pandemic, I'm no longer routinely sitting with friends during game night, so that is one more opportunity to communicate that simply collapsed. Just from a numbers perspective, the amount of daily bi-directional communication I've engaged in has pretty much slid down hill and off some cliffs over the past decade.

I start to wonder. Do I functionally exist at all?

And I know. I'm being stupid here. This is a problem that is entirely in my power to solve. And for the sake of my mental well being I probably should work on solving it. I'm waxing on and on about nothing here.

Yet, for me, oblivion does hold a certain strange allure.

Just went back to read your "A Letter to the morally pure" since that is what you were referencing. https://www.principiadiscordia.com/forum/index.php/topic,38847.msg1435214.html#msg1435214

I think a lot of that is what goes on in the back of my head, one of the reasons I've almost entirely lurked online for the last decade and rarely, if ever, speak up. It seems like a lot of damned if you do damned if you don't loop. Over the last year I've started to entertain the idea of abandoning the concepts of salvation and the possibility that I could be a good person. I've made less progress in this than I'd like.

Even pissing into the wind empties your bladder.

However, that being said, we're sorta way off topic.

True.

Again, it's all about balance.  Extremism is ugly no matter what you're being extreme about, whether that be the extremists hollering inside the capitol building (swallows) or the ugly-faced politicos driving them on (princes).  The difference in the prince and the swallow in the story, of course, being that one is a reformed exploiter who is still exploiting, and the other is a person addicted to being exploited.  The prince (in the story, for example) doesn't even have to be a bad guy.  Just someone who exploits others to do things in the prince's name to wash away the prince's sin (you're getting the irony right now, I am guessing), even as it loads the prince down with more sin.  Extremism in this tale, as in life, always ends badly...Especially if you don't believe there is a god up there to make it all better when you are destroyed.

I'm curious about reasoning that the happy prince's actions in this story loads them down with more sin? Is it because the sparrow (the exploited) dies at the end of the story because of the interference by the happy prince?