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Or Kill Me / Rant 169: It Rolls On

« on: May 31, 2006, 09:32:09 am »

Rant 169
It Rolls On

"According to the philosopher Ly Tin Wheedle, chaos is found in greatest abundance wherever order is sought. It always defeats order, because it is better organized."
-Terry Pratchett (from "Interesting Times")

Our great excommunication machine known as the Discordian Society rolls on and on, despite our best intentions and to spite our frivolous bouts of forgetfulness and memory-hole blaming. It doesn't even matter if you get attacked by pigeons in the middle of the park for eating bunless hot dogs. It doesn't even matter if you stand there under the street light at four in the morning and shout to the passing taxis filled with drunken club goers on their way to greasy spoons to try to eat their way out of half-assed hook-ups and vodka-red bull cocktails. It doesn't matter that the world at large doesn't believe in Eris, She certainly returns the favor.

While it rolls on and on, provoking laughs and hoots and the occasional exclamation of "what the ring tailed rambling hell?" the murder machine of Patrick Pearse's nightmares is also still rolling on and on. Pearse looked upon the education system of his day and called it the Murder Machine. People laughed and thought he was just being a maudlin Irishman, possibly drunk on wine (though Pearse himself was not a drinker). "Education a murder machine?" they'd say, "How daft!" When Pearse was a boy, the mass starvation of his country was still fresh in the minds of survivors and perhaps he thought, a bit over-optimistically, that humanity would stop getting ground up by one another, if only people would remember. (A shame that most of the victims of that genocide spoke a language most Irish don't use these days. So, instead of accounts and memorials, the horrors just appear as a historical footnote.) Unfortunately, Pearse went and got himself killed by firing squad for being a leader of the Irish uprising in 1916, so we have no more comment from the man. (Grayface seduces even the smartest people, it seems.) Maybe it was for the best though, since he didn't live to see the murder machine flex its muscles all across the 20th century world. (The Holocaust, Cambodia, the Cultural Revolution of China, the destruction of Tibet, Rwanda, Bosnia, the Soviet gulags, and so on and sickening so forth.)

The modern world and all of its progress and betterment and education still keeps its murder machine rolling on and on. (Well, humanity is still under the Curse of Grayface and his ugly face shows up everywhere, even in Slayer songs.) It's not even about fighting for the right to call someone the prettiest anymore. It's about "let's get them before they get us" or "let's just get them. why? well, because they are them." Or it's about "well, I rather fancy buying cheap products at cut-workers-throat prices." It's about people believing that they are the best and some other group is an impediment to their progress and/or happiness. People say that education will help solve this problem and make people more open-minded and not so keen on the idea that killing thousands of other people can make the world better. But that is not what is happening now, is it? The question, which Pearse and others have long raised, is what sort of things are being taught to people during their education? Pearse warned that education can be used for evil as much for good, but no one believed him because humans are always in denial that their methods of progress or betterment can be used for horror and destruction, even as we sit here and sift through the evidence. Pearse's conclusion was that education in his country was being used to murder the Irish people. (And in retaliation for the near slaughter of the Gaelic people, the Irish gave James Joyce to the world as a stunning example of what sort of education was going on there. They also thought Mr. Joyce's ramblings a good example of what the Irish thought about being forced to speak English.) No one at present really knows why Grayface and his minions had it in for the Irish, but I suspect it was because, as poor and oppressed they were at the time, they were still having fun and they still thought of themselves as deserving of fun. (The Church, Protestant and Catholic versions, made quick work of those ideas after all the fun people were starved or exiled.)

It blows the minds of humanity to realize that education can be just as effectively hijacked by the murder machine as a group of Discordians can get hijacked by offers of cheap beer and hot dogs. (But what does humanity at large know about all this since they aren't even aware that Grayface is pulling their legs out from under them.) Oh yeah? Some of you are thinking. "Well, that sort of shit never happens where I am from. This is America (or Japan, or Italy, or some other 'advanced' post-industrial nation)." But just remember that Germany was one of the most advanced nations in the world with a highly educated population when many people there decided that killing other people would be a good idea for Europe. Can't happen in America? So you think, but America's past had several episodes of its own outbreak of murder machinery. (You think about the so-called Indian wars now and remember that what was happening was a large nation was conquering smaller ones and calling it manifest destiny.)  

So what does this have to do with our great rolling roiling Discordian Society and its excommunication machine and all and sundry forms of Operation Mindfuck? Perhaps it's all about staying free from the viral meme-infections which lead people to funny ideas where they reserve soft-spots in their hearts for "getting rid of them." The Murder Machine (Grayface's greatest invention if it could ever be called that) must be stopped. Piece by piece, if need be. Maybe it is a futile endeavor because of the odds, but we have better than odds here. We have oddballs and outcasts and fruits and nuts...people who try, at least occasionally, to get a breath of fresh and free thought. Why should we even care about what most of humanity chooses to do with one another? Because we are participants in the whole story regardless of our personal views to the contrary and thus our fingers should point at ourselves first. (Also because much of what some parts of humanity do to one another includes them doing it to us, if they can.)

Think about it. Our irreligion demands no sacrifices (excepting that little idea known as sanity), and cares little to nothing for the fact that the neighbors worship in different, odd, and silly ways...because we like different, odd, and silly things and they should be encouraged. We Discordians don't care if someone is white, black, brown, purple, or even from America. We don't care about the gods others call upon. (Much of the time we don't even care much about the Goddess we call upon, since She can take care of Herself, mind you.) This sort of tolerance and encouragement is a gem in the trash-heap of the long sordid and horrible recent history of our species. It is a spite and truck-loads of spit in the face of anyone suckered by the incessant whining of Grayface which gets them to say "See. Look at what you made me do." Perhaps we can put a few cracks in the edifice. Maybe we can remember to help subvert education systems that turn people into dutiful cabbages. In the worst case scenario, we will still get the last laugh, not only that but the first laughs as well. The world can be a sorrowful enough place as it is, what with hurricanes, floods, earthquakes and shit like that going on. So I ask why people insist on making it a hellish nightmare for other people? Not because of some programmed biological instinct. Not because of some mystical stain on our collective soul. But because we, as a collective species, simply choose to make it so.

We, as a species, are, quite frankly and literally suckered and seduced by the seemingly powerful notion that ideas and plans are more important than life itself.

It is often claimed that the Aztecs practiced human sacrifice and other cruelties, and we rightly denounce such idiocy. But then we, collectively, turn around with our millions of dead on the altars of progress or purity or ideology or religions, and have the audacity to say that we are better than the Aztecs. (Even though they invented tortilla chips!) Those Aztecs would probably see us as the savage murderers and probably not only savage but all too stupid too (think about just the lives we humans willingly give up for the sake of modern transportation). Although the Aztecs were just as much suckered by Grayface as the rest of the population on this planet, they were probably not as suckered in as their future conquerors were.

Well, the Discordian Society isn't putting up with this sort of nonsense. (Especially when our own sorts of nonsense make us go giddy.) We need no lives sacrificed on any altar for any reason. We don't even need dedication to any mystical abstracted mysteries culled from the secret recesses of magical occult books on sale at Borders. We don't even need the world to acknowledge us (and what a horror if they did). What do we need? Perhaps a little bit of memory. Perhaps some idea of the results of people who take their ideas too seriously. (The results being what I just called the murder machine.) So maybe we should, right at this moment, go out and sacrifice ideas and truths and lies and denials for the cause of chaotic and untrammeled lives. (It's hard to imagine even living freely when one's life is being trammeled. And I don't know exactly what a trammeler is but I don't like the effects.) We need to sacrifice the murder machine...

We also need our laughter. It helps to watch the forces of order try and try again to impose more order and to have it all end up with only the same damned chaos. Perhaps some of these orderlies should have given themselves the gift of reading old Lao Tzu. The only problem is that many people and organizations then start blaming other people or groups when they realize that all their attempts at order is so-much pissing in the wind. We Discordians piss in the wind too, but we know this, enjoy it, and get our yucks in without ever having to stop in that pathetic state where we need to blame and maim others for our silliness. You would think that most of these groups would actually take a look around them and back at history and see that no matter how many millions have been killed for whatever reasons, the same damned chaos is there. Life itself cannot be stopped no matter how many individual beings get stopped. And in the end, Eris laughs all the same at the fools who insist on their ways as being better even as they prove themselves to be more savage and cruel than those they hate.

And we'll still be around insisting that there is no need for all that drama and that snuffing out all those people is the worst sort of sanity in the annals of the short-lived concept. Why? Because, and I am being very hopeful here, we Discordians really dislike people being used like so much fodder for any idea. It goes back to that deeply rooted mistrust for authority, not because an authority is naturally any less trust worthy, but because authority as an idea should never be taken so seriously. The fact that it takes itself rather too seriously gives us the creeps, as it well should.

Does this make us better than the rest of humanity? Depends on your definition. (I don't think anything makes us better or worse except our actions.) But maybe we have do have an inkling of something here. Some way of being or some way of approaching life that at least ensures we can enjoy it while we are here. (Even if some of us keep getting reincarnated and all that. Well, Eris does have a sense of humor that makes even some civilizations cry.) We even have stumbled upon the idea that we can enjoy our lives while we are here without having to destroy other people. Authority (the Murder Machine, trans-dimensional soul suckers, or purveyors of three-headed mind pollution, among other names) hates you personally, if you start thinking crazy things like this.

Regardless of the murder machine's track record and it's amazing ability to keep duping people into believing in any of its causes, our Discordian Society is far older (and has a fine pedigree of the most bastardized mongrelizations ever, and we should know...we made up the certificates just yesterday) and it will far outlast humanity's best attempts at self-destruction simply because we don't discriminate on the basis of species or planetary origins. It's not as if the fnords are needed to eat people's souls and destroy their joy, human beings do a fair job of it all on their own and perhaps that is the point people tried to make when they invented the whole fnord idea. If that makes any sense, I swear it came from somewhere else.

So keep your heads up. The sensitive are the ones who usually have the greatest survival skills (probably through no merit of our own, it's just that we tend to read the writing on the wall a little bit quicker than most others and thus jump out of the way sooner). And if you are reading through all this now, chances are you one of these survivors. It seems hopeless now because stupidity is reproducing faster and exponentially, but do remember that evolution didn't get us this far, (actually it didn't get us anywhere...more like it got us certain things like two legs and large amounts of gray matter and such as that) only to have it all get ground up in the cogs of stupid viral memes. Our Great Lady of the Rollicking Ha-Ha ensures us that some of us will always be around, if only so She can say "See. I told you fools this would happen if you licked that yellow button."

I find myself agreeing with the line from the old Principia Discordia that says "Humanity has been on a bad trip for some time now." We need to stop tripping. Or tripping better. Or something else. But don't listen to me if you want to be told what to do, especially not when I am wearing a silly hat and going around ranting and all that. Listen to yourselves. If we all jump out of the way of the murder machine in different directions, we have the best chance of getting through it all. Even after we feel hungover from all the golden apple rolling and all of our rollicking circus acts.

In closing, this rant should be considered the excommunication notice to the murder machine. We'll create our own methods of madness, thank you very much. And frankly, even when the MM claims to be about freedom, all it really does is all it ever does. It rolls on. Can I get some help pushing a bus into it's path?


Discord 72nd, 3172 / May 25th, 2006
-Irreverend Hugh, KSC;
Episkopos of the DSSS/PMM, Arch-Drunk in the Church of Eris, Sub-Underling of the Hoshi Church, Chairperson of the Dept. of Pigeon Evangelism for the Gerfrickdan Sect,
and (Con)Founder of the Flaming Church of Baby Jesus on a Motorbike.
(Failing these, there is always witchcraft. You know, pins and dolls and odd-tasting stews.)

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Or Kill Me / Rant 168: The Great Joke

« on: May 31, 2006, 09:31:10 am »

Rant 168
The Great Joke

"The fools look for solidity as if they would actually find it. The rest look for it knowing there will be fun and games when they don't find it."
-The White Mouse (from the "Blue Light Sessions")

"Our revenge will be the laughter of our children."
-Bobby Sands (Stailceoir Ocrais, 1981)

The greatest joke of all is the fact that we have an irreligion with the title "Discordianism" and this makes us think that we must promote all sorts of discord, strife, and disorder because such things are understood to be what Discordianism is about. "Discordianism is about discord," some of us say almost dogmatically. But those of us (sometimes within the same person) who say such things in earnest seem to be incapable of understanding metaphor. Some of us seem to be literal minded and fundamentalist in our insistence that discordians must always be creating or causing strife. But all of this is simply a joke. Societies every where are always finding ways to build in pressure valves for any of its malcontents to blow off steam through. Thus Discordianism can be seen as merely another pressure valve. An escape mechanism to expend and dissipate energy that may otherwise cause real or lasting changes if not so diverted.

Remember that there is no greater cause of conflict and strife than societies in thrall to authority (whether that is embodied by people, institutions, religions, or laws). So, in this respect, even if Discordianism wasn't an escape valve or a diversionary trick, it lacks the experience to successfully challenge or change anything in the larger scheme of things. How could it, when systems of authority have so much more experience and ability? Perhaps viewing Discordianism as supposedly some sort of method or means of challenge is a wrong way of going about it. After all, the founders of modern Discordianism, whatever else you may think of them did say that "the Discordian Society has no definition." Why the hell don't we ever get it through our heads that nonsense is salvation?

We can try to make it a serious or important endeavor, but remember that even Che Guevara is now used to make people rich in a system he died opposing. There is nothing, not even Discordianism, that can resist the great maw of the market. (Some of you disagree that Discordianism is just another escape valve for blowing off steam. I dislike the idea too, but for the sake of argument, let's try to see some truths in the idea.)

In this light, we Discordians may just be fooling around playing with life, but at least many of us admit this. The idea that Discordians must seek to cause change or must seek to set anyone else free is just an idea that many of us (and not only us but most people in the world, actually) have in order to make ourselves feel better or to make us feel like we are doing something much more important or full of meaning than really exists. Who needs meaning? Those who for whatever reason feel they lack it.

A bunch of us Discordians going around parodying religions and reverencing Eris in silly ways is no more or less silly than a bunch of people going around talking about and taking part in all sorts of revolutionary or anarchist-chic activities and ideas. A great joke that is never understood is that all of human endeavors and ideas are simply creations of ours and when we fail to see this, we become the victims of this joke. Discordianism possibly provides a way to see this joke as it is, but that is not what often happens, is it? (And if you would like for one of us to show you how Discordianism can give you a way to see this or for any other form of bottled air, let us know. Dis-orderlies are standing by.)

Many Discordian Fundamentalists would have us believe that the only things or ideas that have merit are Discordian things or ideas, or at least those of them that can be considered useful to Discordianism. Some people even think that in order to be a true Discordian, one must constantly fight by tooth and nail or by guile in order to promote Discordianism or discord, or trouble or disorder or whatever the latest chaos-chic idea is these days. Or that one must demonstrate one's freedom by never having anything to do with such "boring" or mundane activities such as children, food, or furniture...but people who think this way should know that some of us would like to enjoy life and the things we have while we are here. What part of freedom means not having fun? All of us Discordians claim to not want to be duped. Some of us actually don't even want to be duped by Discordianism itself. (Can we remember the whole thing is a joke?)

I know some of you will take issue with that and say "who are you to call Discordianism a joke?" And then you'll get all huffy and puffy and blow your mental aneurysm. But still, Discordianism is a joke. The greatest joke, probably. All religions, thoughts, ideologies, and systems are jokes. What fun would there be if they weren't? At this point you may be saying "how dare you so blithely dismiss this serious and very important thing as a joke? Life is about more than fun." Yes. Sure it is. For you, maybe. Humor works for me as much or more than any other reasons you may have for living. Humor is why I am into Discordianism. Hell, think about it. An entire religion centered around and expressed through humor. An irreligion.  

Now, before some of you conclusion-jumpers go off and respond to what you think I am saying, pay attention (I know that is hard in today's age of point-and-click). I am not saying that going around wanting to create changes in society or going around wanting to show people they are free is worthless. I said it is a joke. Everything is, in as much as it can delude us into falling for it. If you infer that by being a joke that your project or scheme to promote discord or to "do good" is worthless, then you need to ask yourself why you feel that humor is worthless.

Some of us say the words "Operation Mindfuck" and no longer laugh at the silliness of such a thing. Some of us think that whatever project we have got going on in Operation Mindfuck is of great importance, or that Operation Mindfuck never had anything to do with laughter or with nonsense. Some of us have deluded ourselves into thinking that Operation Mindfuck and the whole Discordian Society is about some sort of twisted circus-like messiah-ship in which we have to run around getting people to use their heads or to free their minds or something to that effect. But this is just another part of the joke and Operation Mindfuck's greatest contribution to the world is in the numbers of Discordians who get fundamentalist about it.

I still hear a lot of whining and complaining from some of us about how Discordianism is a failure or about how we need to start "doing things" in the real world (which is really one of those fnord phrases that means whatever agrees with the person who says it). Or I hear complaints about the need for intelligent discussion and such (even by some of the same Discordians who used to complain about such high-handedness). I don't mind the contradictions and in fact encourage them. It's just that many of the more serious Discordians get all huffy when these sorts of contradictions are pointed out. ("Not/Never I" they say.) Many of you reading this now may be pissed off because I am basically saying that no matter what you do, it is a joke. Some of you feel that you have given so much both to Discordianism and to carrying the flag of discord that no one should be able to criticize you or laugh at you. But you know that's absurd. Being behind or for the Discordian cause is just another silly part of Operation Mindfuck. And nothing you can do will change the fact that Discordianism is simply one of the many pressure valves that society has for blowing off steam.

Lighten up. If you think you have seen through the game or the system or society or the normals or any other of the no-good-shit categories used today, why is it that you don't find it funny? The flag of discord is just as limited and bigoted as any other flag. (They are flags after all. Flags care nothing so long as people are willing to fight and die for them.) We Discordians are no different from any other group of people that imagines themselves to be a special elite crowd...separate from the world of the so-called normal people. But our behavior shows that we are pretty much the same. Sure, some of us reverence Eris, and claim freedom, but that is no different from people reverencing Liberty and claiming to be free. Sure, we have silly titles, a myriad of terms and phrases that only insiders or experienced members know, but this is just like any other group. We claim to be better or smarter or funnier (though there is evidence for this last one), but many groups do this.

Perhaps the only thing that makes us distinct from any other group is that we claim to be able to see through reality all the while falling for our own lines of bullshit. But on second thought, this makes us like every other group. Perhaps then, it's the fact that we spend so much time and effort trying to "see through reality" that we miss out entirely on "seeing reality." Who can say? It's up to us to decide.

Quite frankly, if Discordianism wasn't the Great Joke (though some call it the Great Tickle) that it is, most of us wouldn't be Discordians now, would we? If we couldn't make fun out of both order and disorder (who are often in bed together) making all that racket as they roil about in the hodge-podge, then what would be the point of going around pretending to evangelize people who never heard of Eris and are therefore in danger of reincarnating as Mao-buttons? If it weren't for the Erisians (Eris-lovers if ever such a type of people could be labeled) making muck and mucking about with the Pagans and the Buddhists at all those silly fire festivals (and occasionally showing up at the odd Wiccan circle and causing hoots), the Discordian Society would be so much the poorer. (I say this because some Discordians go around saying that Erisians are sad for actually believing Eris exists. However, the Erisians are not sad at all. Most of them actually wake up laughing every morning. In fact, the only time I ever saw an Erisian cry was when Chairman Chao accidentally tried to inhale tobacco smoke through his eye.)

Then there is apathy. Some of us Discordians go around thinking that others of our kind are simply being apathetic or pathetic because we don't go around trying to "do things" about the state of the world in which we live. But really, the vast majority of us "do things," it's just that most of us don't talk much about what, how, when or where simply because once the laughter dies down we don't have the energy or the sense to try to make sense in any meaningful way that anyone who wasn't part of it would understand. (Though all efforts to try should be encouraged because, damn it, one of us has to become a great story teller at some point. I have my predictions as to who that might be, but I'll keep my mouth shut for now, since I already talk too much and most of the time my mouth runs on ahead of my brain. (The two are in a state of discord at the moment.))

Perhaps Samuel Beckett or Oscar Wilde or even Robert Anton Wilson would have something to say about this. But we don't need them for a good time and a laugh. In this Great Joke of Discordianism, all we need is a few good minds blown in the wind. Promoting discord? Sure thing. Promoting order? Absolutely. Promoting change and freedom? All right. Promoting nothing but some hoots and laughs around? Okay. But we must draw the line at turning our Great Joke into something of serious import. Otherwise, it will be the end of the whole thing and at that point we'll have to realize that Discordianism is another escape valve. And we don't want to do that, now do we? Not that it is much more than an escape valve, but there is promise in finding solace in nonsense, despite what all the detractors say. What's the point of not laughing at our foibles?

Discord 69th, 3172 / May 22nd, 2006
-Irreverend Hugh, KSC;
Episkopos of the DSSS/PMM, Arch-Drunk in the Church of Eris, Sub-Underling of the Hoshi Church, Chairperson of the Dept. of Pigeon Evangelism for the Gerfrickdan Sect,
and (Con)Founder of the Flaming Church of Baby Jesus on a Motorbike.
(Failing these, there is always witchcraft. You know, pins and dolls and odd-tasting stews.)

3

Or Kill Me / Rant 167: History

« on: May 19, 2006, 07:48:12 am »

Rant 167
History

"Anyone who prefers wealth or power to true friendship is out of his mind."
-Euripides

"Your species doesn't, as a whole, at least admittedly, eat its own young. It just makes them slave away carrying other people's food and shit or it sends them out to slaughter other young. And you call yourselves the most evolved species, huh?"
-The White Mouse (from the "Blue Light Sessions")

Supposedly from the earliest times (whenever that was), Discordians have been mostly hated and despised by the vast majority of people, or so it goes. But just in metaphor, since the vast majority of people have never even heard of such a thing as Discordianism. People these days who call themselves Discordians look back at past social, political, and religious heretics and think of them as Discordians as a sort of source of inspiration. And there may be some truth to the idea that many of these unwitting past "Discordians" might have called themselves such a thing if they had known about it. But we shouldn't let this metaphor or idea blind us even while we allow ourselves to explore the implications of people in the past struggling for or expressing the cause of human freedom and wonder.

What the vast majority of people have supposedly hated and feared since time immemorial is chaos. Anyone or anything that couldn't be fit into preconceived categories or groups has been despised and feared. The very fact that existence is chaos has been denied and any idea leading minds to this fact has been denounced as wrong or silly. Any idea or scheme or project that leads to change is very often derided as impossible or false simply because it leads to conceptions about reality that disagree with the prejudices and cognocentrism of the dominant social ethos.

Many times in history, heretics (i.e. those who choose for themselves what to think about and/or believe in, as opposed to those who are merely willing to follow someone else's thoughts or beliefs) have been bullied, imprisoned, tortured and killed. Pagans have killed heretics as easily and as readily as Christians and Muslims have. Atheists have also killed heretics of all stripes and colors. And, I venture to say that, though it may be rare due to the nature of our irreligion, Discordians have also done their share of persecuting heretics and others deemed "normal" or "boring" or "pink" or "gray," (note: all of these terms used to mean something, but nowadays it seems they all mean "different from Discordians").

Since the global society around us has been yet again hijacked by fear since the Fundamentalists of Muslim and Christian persuasions started their crap again, Discordians these days appear to be gearing up for another bought of persecution mania. Only this time, instead of the persecution being against Discordians as heretics, it appears that many Discordians are going around doing society's job for free by persecuting other Discordians and other types of heretics simply for being different or for disagreeing. Why worry about being hated by the so-called normals for free-thought or for "thought-crimes" when some of your own fellow Discordians will gladly persecute and bully you just for the chance to look more cool or more advanced or more chaos-chic than you. (Yes, chaos-chic, as in, "we are more chaotic than you" and other such failures to get the joke.)

Just as one example: Many of today's Discordians seem to have a thing for the Chaos Magic side of the occult. Many others are bitterly against any form of magic seeing it in the exact way that Atheists dogmatically see it as superstition and such. But the example is not in the interminable squabbling between tunnel vision infected partisans on either side of this debate. The example is in the Chaos Magic movement itself, which may sadly show just where Discordianism is heading if we don't get over ourselves soon. When Chaos Magic first congealed, it was very similar to the Discordian take on life, but narrowly confined to the small occult subcultures in England and America. Chaos Magic practitioners wrote manifestoes and formed groups and denounced all of the other occultists as being stuck in the past and of being to closed-minded and "normal." (Note: the word "normal" among occultists may not seem to fit, but it is used in context.) Then Chaos Magic practitioners immediately set about to the task of going after one another and became divided between the mere dabblers and the "real, serious," Chaos Magicians who rode their lives on a wave of cultural pioneerism and "We are better than thou-ism." (Otherwise known as the "We are better than the herd-ism.") Without much time passing, the CM movement pretty much died in a haze of wanna-be hardcore punk and death metal meandering with the only interesting thing to come of it being the Cthulhu mythos being made into an irreligion.

Discordianism hasn't escaped from this sort of crap happening to itself as a movement either (and that's why I discussed the whole "what happened to the CM movement" thing). There are forever or always people coming to Discordianism with chips on their shoulders and bugs up their asses, and this is not in itself much of a problem. (It can be quite entertaining, really.) The problem is when such people try to get other Discordians to do and say and think as such people think they should do, say, and think. "Otherwise," say such people, "you can't be a real Discordian." And thus, we show ourselves as being just as narrow-minded and prejudiced as the larger society from which we claim to be different.

In history, as anyone who has spent any time reading Classical writings would know, these sorts of debates and happenings were going on all the time, so there is nothing special about it from that perspective. The thing to get out of this perspective is to see that all of our modern day thoughts and ideas and statements about how stupid most people are or about how we are doomed or about how society is going to become a prison (or that it is a prison, though I don't see many such people complaining about not having to go out and hunt for their own food)...all of these ideas which we express and then think of as unique or new, have already been expressed thousands of times in the past thousands of years. Human nature hasn't changed much. People, whether Discordians or otherwise, seem to hate anything new or anything that changes any other thing. People still loath and fear visionaries, while they lap up any benefits of the visions. People still attack, maim, and kill one another for being different or smart or stupid or godless or heretical or any other reason. People still go about as mental and spiritual cripples while laughing and deriding anyone else who tries to heal and un-cripple themselves. The old game is still played and just because we claim to be able to see through it, doesn't make us any more special than any other people across the vastness of human history who have seen through it. The so-called conspiracy of normal is just as adept at using heresy for its purpose nowadays as at any other time in history. (Look at what happened to Jesus Christ, or Socrates, or many other historical people respected, yet killed by their own people for thought-crimes.)

We are no different just because we can think differently. The question is, do we act differently? Do we even have the courage to even form our own attitudes as opposed to just picking and choosing the attitudes inculcated into us from childhood by society? The same thing with emotions. We seem to believe that we inherit them and must feel by choosing among a palette of pre-fabricated emotions, instead of trying to create our own. It's not the thoughts of feelings that really count (even if we make a big deal about how "chaos-chic" they are). It's how we go about thinking and feeling in and of itself. The way we think and feel, our attitudes, if you will. Are our interactions and relationships free, or are we just following along the inculcated patterns of habit taught to us by the society of "normals" which we claim to be better than. It's not in the forms themselves (the friends, fellows, brothers, sisters, parents, lovers, etc.) but in the freedom of being one's own person and allowing others the same freedom. Remember that? It seems like I am just blowing off hot air, but really thing about it. Who do you befriend? People who think "freely" like you and who can be labeled as Discordians even unknowingly? Or anyone who shows even a spark of life and freedom, no matter how normal or mundane their life's form is?

"The butterfly is dangerous to the cocoon. But the cocoon's destruction is inevitable regardless." (-The White Mouse, paraphrasing Phil Hine; from the "Blue Light Sessions.")

Above-the-herd-ism is a dangerous and insidious viral meme that we rightly denounce when we see it expressed by Fundamentalists of other stripes, such as Christians, Muslims, or certain Atheists, and so forth. But when people from within the Discordian Society express the same sort of idea, do we recognize it for what it is? Not usually because we are too busy trying to prove ourselves more pretty or better than the rest. We are too busy knocking each other down and like lobsters in a pot, we try to drag anyone who strikes out for freedom back into the pot simply because, though we would never admit it to ourselves, misery loves company.

Instead of looking at history, even our own short modern Discordian Society's history, we claim to be smarter than the average bear or better than the average Pagan, or prettier on the inside than the average Joe-normal, Jane-pink, little-Billy, or redneck Mary. We go on and on about how much better we are than the masses without any sense of self-irony and in sharp ignorance of the fact that the last time such "above-the-herd-ism" was popular was among the Fascists in Europe just before WWII broke out. The Fascists loathed democracy as the tyranny of the masses. The masses of normal were derided for being machine-like and automatons who shouldn't be trusted with running the affairs of society. "No," said the Fascists, "we need 'special' people who are above the common herd to rule society and to tell us what to think." Back before then, this type of thought was called aristocratism. In the nineteen-twenties and thirties this was called Fascism. In the sixties through the eighties, it was called "cult of personality." Today, many people call it "elitism."

What the hell is our excuse for not seeing this threat for what it is and then again for nurturing it? And then what is our excuse for attacking and deriding even fellow Discordians who are trying to throw off the mental, spiritual (and even physical) manacles? Sure, the behavior is as common as humanity, but remember we Discordians consider ourselves hip to the game? So we of all groups have no excuse and no recourse. We are, quite simply, exhibiting as much stupidity as any group of armed militias who are afraid of Mexicans crossing the US border. Instead of seeing Discordianism in as many forms as there are Discordians, we go around using definitions or the urge to definition as an excuse to be vile to one another.

Have we forgotten that what we consider normal and full of order is just as much chaos as what we consider disorder and weird? Have we forgotten that our own brand of chaos is just as much chaos as any other brand? The only distinction that matters is freedom (and even "freedom" can be hijacked for a cause that purports to be about freedom). If a Discordian, whether like or disliked by you, is happily trudging away in an "orderly" fashion from within the margins of a "normal" life, you can say what you will about this, but remember that the conclusions you jump to are your own. Freedom and prejudice are ever in enmity across the battle fields of delusion, sense and nonsense, and meaning-meaninglessness. One hates and fears differences because that means chaos can't be held onto or controlled. The other cherishes and tolerates differences (regardless of the personal tastes of the person holding to it) because it means that chaos can't be held onto or controlled and this means that there is always hope for life.

Eris didn't set us free. She told us we are free. She still tells us we are free. Because the major difference between freedom and the slavery of prejudice (or narrow-mindedness) is choice...heresy (at least the original meaning of the word), whether that heresy resembles what may be considered "normal" or whether that heresy appears as the most outlandish and silly fucking expression ever known to humankind. It's not the silly hat you wear on your head, but what is inside that head and how that head goes about seeing things that matters. It's not the length of your hair, or the clothes you wear, or the jewelry you flaunt. It's not the games you play, whether mindfucking or not. Nor is it the Discordian groups you belong to (or which belong to you, or whether the difference is useful). What matters, I venture to say, is that you feel free enough to choose for yourself.

My fellow Discordians, whether you love me, hate me, or are indifferent or ambivalent towards me, whether you agree or disagree with me, or whether you haven't made up your mind (and never in fact intent to), let's not fall victim to history. Let's not have the Discordian Society to be yet another historical mistake or another vehicle that can be hijacked by fundamentalists who are afraid that the vary nature of the universe is laughter (whether this idea makes the rest of us laugh or cry). I am not saying that we all need to get along or that we all have to accept one another, but on the flip side, we would do well to remember what Discordianism means in terms of freedom and perhaps learn to respect differences no matter how much we disagree with the forms through which another expresses themselves.

I know you think that this is an attempt to be rational, I am not going to stand for such slander of my horrible character. It is just something to think about.


May 18th, 2006
-Irreverend Hugh, KSC;
Episkopos of the DSSS/PMM, Arch-Drunk in the Church of Eris, Sub-Underling of the Hoshi Church, Chairperson of the Dept. of Pigeon Evangelism for the Gerfrickdan Sect,
and (Con)Founder of the Flaming Church of Baby Jesus on a Motorbike.
(Failing these, there is always witchcraft. You know, pins and dolls and odd-tasting stews.)

4

Or Kill Me / Rant 166: We are Suckered Again!

« on: May 19, 2006, 07:46:08 am »

Rant 166
Those Damned Fnords! We Have Been Suckered Again!

A lady asked an Irish butcher "How can you be so cruel as to kill little lambs?"
He replied "An' ye wouldn't have me ate them alive, would ye?"

"Those who are dogmatic about not being dogmatic are the worst fanatics of all."

"...people stopped patiently building their little houses of rational sticks in the chaos of the universe and started  getting interested in the chaos itself - partly because it was a lot easier to be an expert on chaos, but mostly because it made really good patterns that you could put on a t-shirt."
-Terry Pratchett (from "Witches Abroad")

Discordianism/Erisianism is a funny sort of irreligion in that it is made up from scratch and actually admits to this (unlike other sorts of religions which are also made up from scratch but then try to say that it was a revelation from God, or that it was really the first religion or such other advertising schemes; sometimes I think that "scratch" could be a useful deity since it seems to be the material that goes into a lot of other things). The problem is when some Discordians or Erisians (which I will just call Discordians from now on for brevity's sake) forget this and try to get Discordianism established as a real bona fide and FDA approved grade A religion. This is not a bad thing in and of itself, but then we get issues like people believing in such absurdities as "Real Discordians" as opposed to fake Discordians and other such Graying of our fields. Unless it is a grand joke, none of us can really stand there (or sit there or fly there) and go around pointing out who are real and who are fake Discordians since we admit that our game is made up and thus as fake (or real, or rather fake-real) as about any other thing in modern human society.

If you don't like the way some other Discordian or some group of other Discordians are going about the whole thing, you are always free to form your own sect and excommunicate as many of those "others" as you can find. This has been the great thing about this "movement" and if we lose this and start getting concerned with legitimacy and organization and policing who is "real" (you can get a lot of "real" on sale at Wal-Mart) and who is "fake," then we pretty much become what I said over a year and a half ago: our own grayfaces. Why blame another when Grayface lives within ourselves?

What part of the phrase "you either get it or you don't" means that we need to go around taking out our frustrations on the so-called normals or pinks or grays that we claim to find showing up online in Discordian forums and such? What part of that phrase means that someone who doesn't "get it" will never get it? What? Have I busted a fundamentalist thought bubble? What? you say? "
But, Hugh," you say, "of course we can label other people and put them into pigeon-holes and categories to make ourselves feel better. Of course we can, Hugh. You see, we are special and not like everybody else." Explain to me why you feel you can't be labeled or pinned down and yet you turn around and try to label or pin down others. Explain to me exactly why you think that being a Discordian is any different from being any other thing? Explain to me how Discordian is not just another pretty label to excuse yourself of any responsibility to live your own life and be your own self. I have run across quite a few free people who never even heard of Discordianism. So what is really in the name? Who should care about it? Why? Does it even matter?

What would some of you do with yourself if Discordianism suddenly disappeared and you could no longer use chaos as an excuse for your lack of social skills? (I would actually be happy because then I could finally 'really(tm)' retire from the ranting business.) Some of you wail about freedom and how we are under threat and all that, but you know that is only so much more advertising. I don't care about DOOM any more than I care about Jesus coming back. (Though, if you seem Him when He does come back, I want the motorbike.) Every period in human history was filled with people going around shouting "DOOM! The End Is Nigh!" and all that blather. It makes good entertainment, but besides personal DOOM or specific places on Earth that got too close to volcanoes and such, DOOM has largely missed the bus. (Even with much of our world leadership trying their damnest to bring DOOM to the globe these days.) DOOM is yet another fnord-letter word.

"Real Discordian" is another fnord bearing title. You may as well say "You don't get it. Fnord." to all those who look at you in bafflement after you explain to them for the fifteenth time that Eris is really behind the insurance forms they have to fill out. Or the fact that when you go to any government agency, you have to wait in a line in order to be given a number so you can wait in yet another line, ad nauseum.

We are as infected with fnords now as the rest of the general population, though that much is no problem. The problem is that we pretend that we are not infected and riddled through and through with fnords. In our speech, our writings, our thoughts, they are all over the place and instead of seeing them, which we used to love doing, we are starting to deny that they are there...bringing us back around to the same sorry state we were in before we saw them and were able to be easily manipulated by the masters and the authorities in society who planted them there in the first place. How do I know that we are infected with fnords? Because of the knee-jerk reactions I see among us all whenever we come across some word or some thought which disagrees with us. Weren't our strings cut? So why are we all still acting like puppets?

And what's with all the sectarian squabbling among some of us? You know the deal. It happens about once every 2.3 months. The latest crop of "Real Discordians" goes after all the "Cookies and Pie Discordians" and instead of sharing perspectives and learning how to tolerate the fact that YES IN FACT OTHER INDIVIDUALS ARE DIFFERENT from both you and the way you think they should be, we attack one another. Nice play this is, huh? Eris plays another fucken joke on us at our expense, all of our expenses. And we fall right on into it. Again and again. Suckers. That's what we are. We can't even see past our own denial of our inner grayfaces or the fact that there are fnords, and instead of perhaps helping one another, if only for the laughs, we are falling for the Golden Apple Trick, AGAIN! (She snickers at us even now. I can see Her there with that evil grin. The grin that says "I keep making thousands of apples, I even teach you all how to make them for yourselves, and yet you still fight over each and every one that rolls your way." Eris is, BTW, a devil of a cognitive therapist. Though you may not want to trust the course of therapy since Her idea of healing has nothing at all to do with sanity.)

I find it funny that I have fallen for Her joke yet again. Especially since it is basically the same joke with few variations each time She plays it. I find it funny that the rest of you have fallen for it again right alongside me. Are we really THAT fucken gullible despite all our appeals and promises to the contrary? Damn. We have been punked, all of us. The whole damned Discordian Society. Punked. Played. By our own Goddess by all gods' sakes! Heh. I mean, you can say that it was bound to happen seeing as Eris is a deity and deities have certain advantages over us and all that, but come on now. That's just an excuse. Especially because each and every one of us knows the story of the First Golden Apple Trick, so we should have known better.

Remember that Grayface is not inherent in any system of organization, it is in our attitudes. Grayface does often use disorder and "chaos" as often as "order" and "law". So long as something gets hurt, maimed, killed, or destroyed, anything is useful for Grayface. The little Grayface inside each one of us has convinced us that yes, "I am the best, the prettiest one," and we are still willing to fight over it. In the meantime, the rest of the world keeps on doing the same damned thing. The difference is that we should know better, right? So I ask you again, what makes us Discordians any different or better or worse or distinctive? And does it really matter? Does it really amount to anything that each one of us feels unique and individual when every other person on the planet feels exactly the same way about themselves? Every one goes around saying "I'm not like every one else," while going around being like every one else. Then Eris comes along, laughs at us, Her supposed co-conspirators and drops in a shiny apple and we immediately set to proving that we are in fact quite like every one else. From the first Greek gods who fought over the first Golden Apple, right up until nowadays with Discordians going around trying to prove who is "real-fake" as opposed to "fake-real." And the fnords still jerk us around and we still get afraid of all those things we have been obediently trained to fear. We lash out in hatred and intolerance all the while claiming to be more open-minded and chaos-positive (or whatever the newest jargon words are).

The Grayfaces in charge of our societies have no need to worry about us, seeing as we never can take a joke ourselves, not even when it is specially wrapped, signed, and hand-delivered by our own Goddess. Instead of subverting the dominant paradigms we are fighting one another for the right to be recognized as the best subverters or the realest Discordians. Or some other such drivel that won't matter as the years go by, because (DOOM advertising follows) the Christian Fundamentalists will take over America and march all of us to our own nice camps with walls, barbed wire, and electric shock treatments where we can fight and squabble all we want amongst ourselves about who gets to go to the gas chambers first. "How," you ask me, "can you live with that prediction?" I don't know. Belief in reincarnation helps, I suppose. It's not over until it's over and is it really ever over? Maybe the next incarnation of the Discordian Society, (probably another 3 thousand years in the future) will get it right. Who can say? I am starting to have my doubts.

Discord 64th, 3172 / May 17th, 2006

-Irreverend Hugh, KSC;
Episkopos of the DSSS/PMM, Arch-Drunk in the Church of Eris, Sub-Underling of the Hoshi Church, Chairperson of the Dept. of Pigeon Evangelism for the Gerfrickdan Sect,
and (Con)Founder of the Flaming Church of Baby Jesus on a Motorbike.
(Failing these, there is always witchcraft. You know, pins and dolls and odd-tasting stews.)

5

Or Kill Me / Why Won't You...

« on: March 28, 2006, 05:57:39 am »

Why Won't You Come Over Here?

"Everybody is always so quick to point out how unique and lively they are. It gets boring after about the fifth person."
-Hous Bin Farteen, Fifth Muslim Lama

"We think ourselves better than ancient people like the Aztecs. Yet we still sacrifice thousands every year to the old time gods of war that we made up in our prehistory as an excuse to steal and kill."
-Some Random Liberal (in a pub)

"There is more magic in a streetlight shining at night than there is in those that either claim to believe or disbelieve in it."
-taken from "The First Witchcraft Statement" (by WITCH)

I know you. Fool. Sure, you can make your claim to being different or unique, but if you were so unique, why all the fuss in trying to convince me that you are not a replica? You can say you are not merely a replica because you think differently than everyone else. In the meantime, everyone else is thinking that they also think differently from everyone else. Just because you may or may not call yourself a Discordian doesn't mean you haven't escaped from either slavery or from being a two-dimensional cut-and-pasted character mass produced by the media. Especially since thinking of oneself as creative and unique is merely another one of the memes THEY use to keep you a dutiful producer and spender. Think about that for a minute. THEY couldn't care less about how free you think yourself, or how creative you imagine yourself, regardless of the reality behind either thought. As long as you keep producing for THEM and spending what THEY pay you to buy THEIR products. (And those products are not just material, they also include spiritual and intellectual products as well.) What does that say about humanity's cream of the crop? The elite? The leadership? Those who like to think they are in control? It says exactly what THEY think about you and what your place is in this society.

Hell, THEY don't even care how revolutionary you are. THEY can always kill you and then sell fucking t-shirts with your face on them. (The Che Guevara effect.) Either way, you are still a product to THEM in this great spectacle. Want to be a heretic or a witch? THEY can just kill you and later on make money selling books about your religion to fascinate bored soccer moms who are still closet feminists, just don't tell their husbands. (The Wicca-lite effect.)

Remember when I said we are really performers in a circus? Well, THEY are trying to take over the whole damned show and frankly some of us are getting sick of THEIR antics. Do what you must to make yourself feel better. If that means sacrificing goats to your ancestors, or if it means taking part in the New Reformed Unorthodox Susan B. Anthony Coven, or even it means calling yourself Discordian and getting wasted on tequila, do it. And then the same reality will be waiting for you when you're done. This might cause you to drink some more or to take drugs or to cast a magic spell and then.........Yep. Still there waiting for you. As always. That same reality. (Unless, of course you are some sort of shaman or witch or some trans-dimensional multiversal traveler, then that's just sweet.) Don't just sit there or lay there! Learn to either change things for yourself, or change reality, or if you believe such things are possible, then get into a different reality. Either way do something that proves you actually have some life in you. Prove that you are not merely a PDA, cellphone, a laptop with wireless internet, or a collection of emotions picked up from all those tunes you have on your I-pod. Prove that you actually have what the ancients called the divine spark...i.e. you are not just some zomboid dead brain who is just waiting for life to happen to them.

If you can't even do that, you might just be a cabbage. You never know, what with all the antics that THEY are into.  (A sort almost relevant digression follows.)

But we need not worry about THEM too much. Why? Why, you ask? After I just spent a good paragraph of horrid writing explaining how THEY are such evil bastards? I'll tell you why. Pay attention. Listen up. Dress down. Live sideways.

We need not worry about THEM because as much as THEY take over parts of our circus, we always create new spaces and tents. We also manage to assimilate a good deal of THEM every day. And who knows, sometimes we coax them into taking over one of our tents, just so we can burn the place down. (Is that mean?) Besides, the worry game is just another one of THEIR ruses that THEY use to keep us from exploring even the possibility that there are possibilities that THEY can't imagine. Just why do you think Eris tossed in that shiny apple? And we have better things to focus on then worrying about THEM. We know they are cabbages and that's that. Either eat them or stop fussing. Hell, we know some of you may even have been duped or convinced that you yourselves are cabbages, and for that we are sorry. It was funny though, you have to admit.

(But back to my earlier thought train.)

Just because you can or cannot SEE the fnords doesn't mean THEY won't eat you. Hell, they (I am tired of caps) already probably infest your mind in the form of memes. Just how do you know that they are not trans-dimensional soul suckers (as the Good Reverend Roger, scourge of the Prophets, often puts it)? They might be small or little and they may masquerade as thoughts or emotions you believe that you yourself have come up with, but then again, how do you know it's not some Scientology plot? (If there was ever an overt and powerful Greyface cabal, it's those loons.) Why wouldn't it be? Most of today's major religions do the same thing to their followers, so it should be no surprise that a newer elite religion for the rich and powerful wouldn't want to get in on that game. Just why do you think that those who become Buddhas immediately get the hell out of "here"? Well, for one thing, if they stay too long the religious and superstitious slaves of the thought-forms we call memes will torture and kill them (and then, just to add insult to injury, they will form new cults around them and taunt their memory by calling them "martyrs" or "saints").

Don't take my word for it, look around yourself. Look inside your mind. You will see that it is actually quite difficult being a free-thinker, or a Discordian. It is of course always fun to be one, but it is a lot easier to call yourself one than to actually live like one. Unless of course you have woken up to the fact that only if you take yourself  and THEM seriously, is it difficult. And even then the obstacles in your own mind, whether self-created or inculcated, are a lot more difficult to dissolve than the ones that exist on that material plane of reality we call "Reality (tm)" . Just who or what started this whole mess, who can say? All you may ever be able to do is to work it out for yourself. Especially if you can't find any of the rest of us.

But don't follow in the footsteps of the Buddhas. We need you to come over "here" or to stay "here" once you have awakened. Why? It provides decent entertainment, for one thing. Once you have discovered what both yourself and THEY have done putting all those over-reproductive and viral memes into your head-space and life, you become a living example of what THEY say is impossible. (Of course I can't tell you what that is because every individual realizes it differently.) Just what do you think is possible or impossible? And why? Have you even bothered to explore or experiment with "reality"?
The greatest work of art you have is your mind and body. (Your life.) Don't let it become the property of someone or something else. Ideas, actions, and thoughts should be your play things. Your tools. Your creations. Things that show you are fully here and not trapped in some dead-brained thud zone.

Are you crazy enough to exist? Are you fully here? Are you here at all?

If not...

Why won't you come over here?

March 24th, 2006

-Irreverend Hugh, KSC
Co-Episkopos of the DSSS
Unholy Agent of the (Unrighteous) New Reformed Unorthodox Susan B. Anthony Coven

6

Or Kill Me / Welcome to the Freak Show (another effing rant)

« on: March 28, 2006, 05:56:07 am »

Welcome to the Freak Show

"What would a major religion be without a ponderous hierarchy of pretentious titles to confuse, awe, and madden the people with? Reasonable. That's what. And we won't stand for that kind of nonsense around here."
-Principia Discordia

Illuminism - that body of thought which relates to artificial lighting paraphernalia. (Such as light switches, light bulbs, fluorescence, photons, candles, matches, and flashlights.) It is not presently understood why such things need their own body of thought, but perhaps they were jealous of humanity's pre-occupation which television.
-from a Concise Guide to Discordianism

"There is a sharp disagreement among competent people as to what can be proved and what can not be proved, as well as an irreconcilable divergence of opinion as to what is sense and what is nonsense."
-Hagbard Celine (Illuminatus Trilogy)

"It's far easier to fight for principles than to live up to them."
-Adlai Stevenson

"I'm not like everybody else."
-What Everybody Else Always Says

Are you standing in line to get the next new thing, waiting for some action, waiting to be noticed, waiting for the perfect day when everything goes your way, or when everything works out, or when you will find that thing/experience/thought that will give your life that sense of meaning which you have been inculcated to desire? Are standing in line to the rest of your life? Are you wondering why you have been put into a universe which seems to have nothing to do with your wants, dreams, or longings, yet you still wait for some miracle as if by waiting you can melt the ice of your lethargy? The Conspiracy of Normal would like for you to keep waiting in line for the nice shiny products that you have been duped into believing will cure your angst, sadness, or loneliness.

Is it an education? A job? A career? A romance? A house? A car? Stocks and bonds? Some new direction that gives you the illusion of meaning... that gives you the illusion that you are finally doing something that matters? Or is it some rearranging of your lifestyle to give you the illusion of a new direction? Will it be a new religion? A new belief system? An epiphany? A paradigm shift that gives you the illusion of growth?

It is not we who waste time, it is time which wastes us. It's about time we ponied up and admitted this. And while we still are out chasing our desires, using our minds and bodies only getting more of the latest and greatest new things or experiences, we haven't grown up. We are still like children grasping and pushing, attracting and repelling, hoping and fearing on an endless treadmill that is grinding our hearts to pulp and reducing our creative visions to mindless pap. Our innate poetry is twisted into gibber. Our music is locked up and perverted into stupid jingles which trap us into deceiving ourselves that our own habits and issues are all that matters in this world. Our lives get pissed away and they trickle so slowly down the mountains of our bullshit.

We are not polluting the earth without polluting our own potential first. We cannot bear hatred and cynicism for life without twisting it upon ourselves first. We cannot run in horror from the fragments of life that call themselves human without first loosing a few of our own. We cannot get lost in a city of millions without first losing our ability to live our own lives.

So welcome to the freak show, the human zoo where the joke is on you. Every dream you have is everyday drained of its energy and profit before you even realize what it might have been worth to you. But only because you remain unaware of the means by which that can happen. If this is not the kind of place or the life in which you want to exist then do something about it and do it fast because the ship is sinking and if you don't learn how to swim in the seas of chaos now, you will be dragged down by all of those people who insist that their method or plan is the thing to do or experience. Or you will be dragged down or held back by those who are jealous of anything you may achieve, or by those who see the world as a shitty place and who would rather you fail at everything so that their cynical dogmas are proven correct than to see you be happy. Learn to live your own life now before someone else tells you what is or isn't possible and your mind listens and locks you into patterns and habits just to "fit in" and be accepted by all of the rest of the fools who have yet to realize the ship is sinking. Or by all those fools who want to hold you back from doing whatever it is you were put here in life to do because they feel that making your own life is impossible.

Simply jump off and learn to swim now. You don't have to prove the naysayers wrong. You simply need to live your own life. Don't stop to tell anyone that their shitty collective ship is sinking or that the sea is chaos. They will only disagree and hate you for it. They will either try to persuade you to come back to their lunacy that masquerades as "progress" or they will seek to destroy you for showing them yet again how much they hate themselves for staying aboard a sinking ship. So simply jump off. Come and swim with us. Come and join our freak show. We guarantee no satisfaction, but we will tell you this up front. You'll make your own damned satisfaction and we will help you learn how. We won't promise that any of it will make sense. We won't promise you any heaven or any rewards beyond the fact that you might like yourself a whole lot more than you did before. For this we don't want anything in return, not even gratitude. Just learn to become your own person.

Remember where the idiots see chaos as disorder and strife, you can see freedom, opportunity, and the realization of your life's deepest callings. Are you crazy enough to exist? Well, you are already here if you can read these words, so you must be crazy enough. Now it's time to pony up to the bar and live life like you mean it. If you can do this, welcome to the freakshow. The rest of us who live life on purpose will gladly embrace you as a brother or sister, no matter how often we may squabble and gibber and prank each other. This is Discordianism at its finest, yet you won't hear any of us call it that too often because it doesn't need the label.

Approach all paradigms, beliefs, methods, schemes, plans, and motives (ulterior or not) like you don't give a fuck. That is the way to truly learn how to use them to their fullest in creating your life's work of art. But don't use this approach as another stupid dogmatic stance. Don't use it to try to deceive yourself into thinking that you are not impressed by anyone other than yourself. Because even if a woman decides to merely be a waitress, if she is living her life to its fullest by being aware every moment, then that is something to be impressed by. Instead of wasting time and breath attacking and telling her that her life has no meaning, perhaps you could stop hating yourself and live your own life, no matter what is you think you do. It's not in the different choices that a person makes...it is not in the standard of living or the amount of money they acquire...it is in their approach to life that the creativity comes through. It is how they see life that makes them unique. And they are not beholden to you to try to make you impressed. If you are not strong enough to tear down your own walls of bullshit cynicism, that is no one's fault but your own. And how do you think you can swim on the oceans of chaos while weighed down by all that crap?

Use your mind. Remember to keep your pineal gland clear of your own bullshit as much as others' crap. You can only be enslaved when you choose to enslave yourself. Why are you running from the laughter that could be yours? Is it because it is free?

In this freakshow, each one of us is charged with the task of keeping our own lives valuable and meaningful. No amount of believing or philosophizing is going to do that for you. You must simply make the choice yourself. You'll be surprised at how much the universe or existence will start conspiring with you to accomplish your goals, if you simply choose to see it that way.

That said, red shoes and bowling alleys or not, get up and dance!

March 20th, 2006

-Irreverend Hugh, KSC
Co-Episkopos of the DSSS/PMM

"Thanks for passing the torch. I think I burned my hand, though. Would you like this thing back?"

7

Or Kill Me / The rants...

« on: March 02, 2006, 08:04:17 am »

or at least this round of them have been placed into their own Volume number 2, for those who like that sort of thing.

8

Or Kill Me / A Few Bad Monkeys Don't Stop The Show!

« on: March 02, 2006, 07:45:58 am »

A Few Bad Monkeys Don't Stop the Show!
(Otherwise known as Rant 163)

"Ye have locked yerselves up in cages of fear-and, behold, do ye now
complain that ye lack FREEDOM? Ye have cast out yer brothers for devils and now complain ye, lamenting, that ye've been left to fight alone. Verily, verily I say unto you, not all the Sinister Ministers of the Bavarian Illuminati, working together in multitudes, could so entwine the land with tribulation as have yer baseless warnings."
-from the Epistle to the Paranoids

Life ain't easy at times. Even though we may have realized that we are really performing in a circus underneath Eris' Big Top, or even in one of the other tents set up on Her grounds, life can still get hard from time to time. And that is what crying or talking is for. You get over it. You move past it. Done deal. Move to the next act in the performance. If you find it nearly impossible to do this, either you need to relax and go with the motion (which in time takes you to a better feeling), or you need to question what you are doing that makes it so nearly-impossible.

You can complain about those assholes and those people, whether fellow performers, or audience members who delude themselves into thinking they aren't performing, who make a mess and run roughshod over your act. We all do it. Blowing off steam is part of getting past the crap. However at some point in life, enough is enough. And you have to get on with your own performance. Because the rest of us aren't going to stop and wait. This is not cruel. This is compassion. Good medicine.

As you get more experienced with life in the circus you start becoming better at being able to spot the few bad monkeys and can learn to avoid their drama, but in any event, they don't stop the show. None of them can. Not even if there were thousands of them. None of us can either. The show goes on forever and it is so much more than any of us can even begin to conceive of. Infinity is a good word to use for this, though I think of it more along the lines of dance sets. The music never really stops and each life span is simply a dance set.

Why is the universe is like this? Don't ask me. It tends to treat you the way you see it. Not in every case, but in the vast majority of the time. Think about it. If you are so worried about all the bad monkeys and the assholes going around trying to make you and the rest of us miserable because the gray fools haven't yet realized they are in a circus, you will feel shitty and then see a lot of things around you as shitty. Even if you get a smile from someone, you'll think "why are they smiling? what do they want?" Do you see how this works? You do have a lot more say in writing the script of your performance than you imagine. Remember it isn't laid down before hand. It is mostly improv.

Just put on your red shoes (or whatever color, or hell, do it barefoot) and dance. I'll tell you something I learned about Eris (or whomever/whatever you blame reality for), because some of you think that you get all sorts of cool points or props for causing as much disruption and discord as possible. Eris actually doesn't care about that. Some of you have allowed that Yahweh and His evil twin Satan to sell you their old con-job about pleasing them and getting all sorts of goodies for it. Eris wouldn't set up something like that, not unless you are that gullible. (This is why we DSSSers used to go around calling ourselves the Bastard Children of Eris.)

Eris actually wants you to enjoy your performance. She deems it wise if we all could simply enjoy our own and each other's performances, but figures if some are going to be bad monkeys then that's their own damned fault. Skilled performers can improv their way around any type of monkey business, good or bad. Happy or sad. Illuminating the "opposition" into seeing that they too are performers in this circus as much as the rest of us who know it; that is the mission of the Erisian Movement and of the Discordian Society. (Though the former tends to be more heavy into the spiritual, occult, and cuisine aspects of the show.)

Remember reality? But do you also remember that 80-90% of what you think or remember about reality is simply and only what you think or remember about it. Even what you perceive or how you feel about it is part of the performance you are making up. I think the old crusty surrealists used to say that one's life is the greatest work of art. It might sound like some ruse, but they hit upon a more decent of a way of seeing it than any of the so called philosophers or theologians (or politicians), all of whom haven't figured out that they are performers...all of whom think of their various versions of the truth or the solution as being the actual sum of reality. This is sad since they didn't get the joke or the memo or the fact that all of their ideas are just as much fiction as a novelist's story.

Whether the monkeys are in your head or in other people, a few bad ones don't stop the show. There is no excuse for not dancing beyond the fact that you simply don't want to dance. And that is only your choice. Stop using the other performers' acts as excuses for the way you feel. If you want to come bowling with us, bring some beer, shiny shoes, and make sure that the next time you hoot and holler like a monkey that you get the joke. And try not to piss on the damned lanes because you drank too much beer too quickly. Otherwise we may just have to leave you there to explain to the cops why the pins are on fire and you're stumbling around gibbering some muck about Eris.

February 24th, 2006
-Irreverend Hugh, KSC
DSSS / PMM

9

Or Kill Me / Rant 157: Something Smells Over Here

« on: February 19, 2006, 10:50:51 am »

Rant 157
Something Smells Over Here

"What I want to know is how the Scots got to ancient Israel in the first place."
-Chairman Chao (when asked about the Maccabee rebellion)

"How could anyone confuse a cabbage with a human being? You'd think it would be just about impossible...One of the five Aneristic Orders, though, is seeking to make this distinction less clear. The Defamation League (who secretly controls almost all organized religion and Goddess knows what else) has been secretly costuming cabbages and trying to pass them off as humans. Why they are doing this is uncertain, but keep in mind these are some of the same people who said you'd go to hell for spanking the monkey."
-from the Summa Discordia

"We all know about presidents getting shot by people, but this is the first time a vice-president has ever shot someone."

We live under the glamour and dazzle of a basic socio-cultural philosophy which cuts us down and away from inherent value as living beings and then says to us that we can buy ourselves to being real. We get frustrated when something prevents us from playing this game. Or when that next new greatest advertised thing is too expensive for us to consider. We are a society of credit cards, loans, financing, and debt because of this. We never once stop to question the motives behind all of this, and yet we rail and rant against our government which spends money in exactly the same way.

I am amazed when I run into people who get cars by financing, who take out extensive loans to buy property, and who constantly shop on credit. When I ask about this wastefulness, I am usually told "But how else will I be able to afford these things?" My response is "You can't afford those things. That's why you are in debt, silly." Paying for something when you don't have the money upfront for it obviously means you can't afford it. And in the future you will be less able to afford anything similar.

This is a symptom of a greater problem and you all know what this problem is. A combination of Stupidity and The Fear. Otherwise known as DUMB and DOOM. Each one of these is bad enough, but when they mate they produce the bastard children known as slavery and hatred. Look around you at human cultures. Doesn't it seem like that most of them have been entranced by the tango of stupidity and fear throughout history. DUMB and DOOM have been the cause of death for humans more so than any natural causes. DUMB and DOOM get us to spend money we don't have out of fear that we can't keep up with the neighbors, won't be able to buy the new IPod, or won't be able to impress that date, and if we can't do these things, the fnords will eat us. DUMB and DOOM convince us that we have no time left so we must run out now and buy ourselves a new and improved version of the hottest lifestyle so we can look in the mirror and feel sexy and alive. (Ignoring the fact that if you can't do that already, nothing else will do it for you.)

DUMB and DOOM keep us locked away in our own narrow worlds with our own fixations and habits afraid of stepping out. Afraid of admitting that no matter what we do, life pretty much happens largely out of our control. Heads up, people. Beware of God. She's Out of Order. And She doesn't care about your bullshit, no matter how much of it you think you can buy or get on credit. Eris isn't buying any of it. If living life free of DUMB and DOOM seems impossible to you, question why you are alive (especially if you are Erisian).

In fact, it is nearly impossible to have DOOM without dumb. Remember for about 1500 years the Christian Church convinced Westerners that they'd go to hell if they didn't tithe, have lots of babies, give their land away to nobles, or believe in hell in the first place. How would people even put up with this. They were convinced to be DUMB. They were connived into it. Every now and then a bunch of people would be burned at the stake just to drive home the point and people largely stayed DUMB, until Eris tossed an apple into the Church and the Protestants and Catholics split apart and started killing one another to prove who was prettier. The air in Western culture was thus cleared for a time. With the believers of Christ focused on fighting each other, the diversion gave the rest of the people some space to start thinking again. This allowed science and democracy to creep up from behind and slug religious domination upside the head, and it has been stumbling around ever since, refusing to fall over once and for all. Some breathing room was created. But DUMB and DOOM are a hearty couple and they still manifest all around us.

Look around you now. Where do you feel the most DUMB coming from? Hell, sometimes DOOM gets confused by Eris and you actually become positively afraid of being stupid so you immediately wise up. But look around you. Muslims going on a rampage over some cartoons. Christians whining about holiday greetings or the fact the public schools don't teach the Bible. Jews and Arabs convincing themselves to hate one another. North Korean politicians with bad hair days. Vice-presidents shooting people. None of them are aware of themselves acting like silly gits. None of them are yet aware that there is no God but Goddess, and Her name is Eris. (Okay, pick another name if you think you can find someone better to blame reality on.)

But fear not. Stupidity and Fear is a choice. You can escape them when they try to take over your life, even if you might not be able to escape their followers. The world's great religions are not really all the great. Stupidity and Fear are the greatest religions of all time and people are blindly creating gods, cultures, economies, wars, and microwaves out of them. Scratch the surface of any shining rational or justification or excuse, whether religious or not, and you will find the true sources: stupidity and fear. What can we Discordians do about this?

Laugh at ourselves, first off for falling for this game and then forgetting that we were playing it. Then whatever comes to mind next.

February 17th, 2006
-Irreverend Hugh, KSC;
of the DSSS/PMM
Conspirator with High Papessa Bella
Agent Provocateur in Hoshiko and DS#3's War Against Hostages
Church of Eris ArchSwinging Bastard
and silly man who convinces white people they can be shamans so he can get a good laugh

10

Or Kill Me / Rant 156: Neopagan Meander

« on: February 14, 2006, 09:22:57 am »

Rant 156
Neopagan Meander

California neurobiologist James McGaugh on new findings that the brain can separate parts of one memory for processing in the hippocampus, the anterior cingulated amygdala: "It is the first time we have found this fragmentation in the brain of what we would think of as a single experience." In other words, every one of us is a scatterbrain. Human history makes sense now.
-from the feb. 9th, 2006 QT column in the Chicago Sun-Times

"Have faith your socks are where you left them. Unless the puppy got there first."
-from the Summa Discordia

"Trouble is, we end up with a model of our own ego as a God. That's where Eris can help. She can shake up our GodModel a little. Not an old man - a woman, and a hottie at that. Not staid and serious - a hell-raiser. Not overly concerned that you're having fun - mad that you're taking so few chances. Mix up the GodModel a bit every now and then to make sure that someone other than you is involved."
-from the Summa Discordia

I know you. And you are thinking I can't possibly know YOU, seeing as this is just a collection of electronic words you are reading from anywhere on earth, and all you are to me is some anonymous web reader, probably a little bit too kooky for me to want to really know in real life. But when I say I know you and you protest that I can't know you at all, we are both right. I do KNOW you and I don't. What I mean by this is that I know some of what you will be thinking in response to this collection of basic scrawling packaged into some rant format that you would probably think was more valuable if you had to pay exorbitant amounts for it. And I don't actually know you, as in I have never met you. (Well, some of you anyway. You should be so lucky to hope that we haven't met.) But I won't let that stop me and neither should you. So let's start again with take two, shall we?

I know you. Yes, YOU. I know you. You have this neat cool alternative religion that you call Neopaganism or Wicca or Asatru or Druidism or Mithraism or even that new heathen comet-alien worshipping techno-raver cult that your neighbor has started. I know you are caught up in your neat ideas about these old musty gods and goddesses you have dusted off from the shelves of ancient mythology and now you think yourself special and unique because your version of God, or Gods, or Goddesses, or Socks, is so different from the average person in your society who is still worshipping that guy who got into a mix-up with the authorities in ancient Israel. You know that guy, the one who saves souls and probably redeems them for valuable prizes? Of course you do. You didn't like that sort of religion, so you went looking around for a while and found the latest version of Neopaganism, or the version that made you feel special finally, and you now have either a gaggle of deities with whom you can identify, or you have one favorite god, sort of like an ethereal best friend. (And I wonder about that. Some children made up invisible best friends when they were growing up. I wonder if that is part or whole of the impulse to find gods and to make religions around them. I don't blame any of the gods for that. I blame you, dumb ass.)

Problem is, most of what you know about your chosen God, or gods, or Socks, is really a reflection of yourself and what you would like to see in this existence. The fact that you have opened up the game, so to speak, to more than one god, a good thing actually, doesn't mean you haven't gotten caught up in the old "make-my-ego-bigger-and-grander-by-adopting-deity" trick. (It happens all the time. For a good case study, read the meander of Aleister Crowley, who best exemplified this sort of thing.) I don't know about you, but last time I seriously tried to do that, my gods took a vacation and let Eris to the dirty work of slapping that silly snotty notion right out of my heart. Of course, I didn't like that. It was pretty painful at the time, despite the fact that it was also pretty funny. I don't like that because normally I don't like it when gods go poking about in my business. Hell, I don't mess with theirs. But then I should have expected that Eris gives no damn about any bullshit that I may cherish. Now if you have trouble thinking about these gods as being real, just consider what I have said to be the working metaphor for the moment. If I found out that any of you took my words literally in this regard, I would duly make sure you never made that mistake again. You may be just a screen name on the web, but we Discordians have our ways, especially with all the Witches that have lately joined the "Movement."

I am not here to attack your faith in your gods. I am not here to breathe down your proverbial necks as Neopagans. I am here to simply poke you a bit. You know the routine...the whisper at your ear that tried to find a home in your awareness that says "Hey. Pssst. Over here! Look around you. You're still a slave. Wake up!" I don't want you to feel guilty over wasting your time chasing after your ego-figments (that you have confused with gods). I want you to snap out of it now while you can, before the memory holes come to swallow you hole. (And memory holes, unlike Claw Shrimp, do not spit their quarry back up.) The greatest transdimensional soul-sucker is your own bullshit. Read that again. Think about it.

Some of you have gotten into the happy-happy-joy-joy of Neopaganism. I don't knock anyone's quest for happiness, or...hell, even crass entertainment. (You should know I too like crass entertainment as evidenced by my newfound addiction to television crime/cop dramas.) But in all of that "all-is-good" mentality, has anything really changed in the world, or even in your own life for the better? Has it? Honestly think about that. Because if you're saying that all is good and that the goddess loves you and that you should harm none or at least not harm those poor suckers who are simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, and yet you still slam doors in front of old ladies and kick your dog, I question you and your gods. Read that again and again. You may find an occult truth there that is so astoundingly amazing that if you actually realized it, you would see how much of a drooling idiot you have been up till now. And please know that I don't want you to be a drooling idiot, unless you are aware of it and know that you like to be so silly. The problem is (as I have spelled it in my exacting anthropological treatise entitled "To hell with this crap! Let's go bowling!") that some of you are going around drooling all over the place and hopping around like fools all the while thinking of your endeavors as being the most important holiest thing you could be doing, without ever once getting the joke. Remember that Carlos Castaneda character and how he acted in front of that old Don Juan chap? That is you.

Reality? That is Eris, my friends. (I call Her Eris, but reality could "really" be any of those gods you don't like much because they are too scary, chaotic, dark, or feminine for you.) If that scares you, too bad. It could be the funniest thing you have ever heard if you would just sit back and for once smell the roses. Not your idea of how roses should smell. Not your idea of prettiness and all-is-light. But actual roses. You want to find divinity? Look into that mirror when you wake up in the morning, before all your silly notions about who you are and what you should be doing snap you into place in the vapid throes of ego. Do you even really know who that sucker is staring back out at you? If you are so quick to rush to judgment or have a ready made answer, then you are a slave to your own soul-sucking bullshit. A mere subject of three-headed mind pollution. A sliver of life that has lost its innate sense of wonder. True wonder that comes from realizing that the universe is much more vaster than you could ever hope to know, and that this awareness is, frankly, the way to be free, or at least to start living as if you are free. (I have to put the last bit in there for you determinists out there who think you have it all figured out.)

It doesn't matter to me whether you are a Wiccan, a Druid, or some other sort of Pagan. (Or even if you call yourself a fellow Discordian.) What matters is that you know what to do with all of the bullshit you have. I am not saying reject it. That would be stupid. You can't get rid of it. But you can see through it. You can use it to make beautiful things. (I am not saying "beautiful" as in some social standard. I mean "beautiful" as in what attracts you and leads you into happiness. This is the art of Eristhetics, actually. And if you want to learn more about that, you can report to our offices and receive your initiations now, while supplies last.) But I meander now because you have a logical hole in my argument: You can say that your own bullshit makes you happy and that I should respect that. However, remember back there a few paragraphs up? If your life is actually getting better, then chances are you aren't a slave to your own BS and perhaps you have no need to extend your ego out into those favorite images of any of the gods. If your life is not getting any better and it's not even satisfying you...if you find yourself constantly blaming everything else but yourself and you have not lifted even the slightest finger, then you are full of it. Perhaps Eris or one of us can help you in this respect, but remember that we are not therapists...well, for some of us, not yet.

Imaginary friends or gods help you none, unless it is part of some elaborate Vajrayana Conspiracy, in which case keep going because those nutters have a method to the madness that even works on crusty old mountain monks. And some of those imaginary things are found out to be...SURPRISE!...not so imaginary. But that is another joke that you would be an idiot to forego realizing.

In all of your worshipping, rituals, and what-not, remember this: How much is truly making a connection with what the hell is really going on? And how much is simply to pack yourself into a fortress of BS in which you can still impute that the universe really revolves around you? The reason why I like Eris is because She is a god that constantly changes colors and shapes and forms so I can never confuse Her for my own image of Her. Reality works this way. Not because it necessarily looks to break us out of our stupidity (evolution will take care of that mutation, eventually...hopefully), but because it is just that way. So all of your labels and conventions are simply a way to think about existence and whatever or whoever the hell is going on. All of your images about the deities are simply the ones you have chosen. If you sit there and think that one or more of the gods have chosen or called you to them, you are just being silly. Ego makes you think that such things could happen, no matter how much you try to dress it up in humility. Ever heard of metaphor and symbol? Try not to confuse them for existence, which is a meander. Any meaning you make of it, or claim to derive from it, is your own artistry.

So sorry to all you goddess or god worshippers, no matter the name. Here comes the sound of a can of worms being ripped right open.

Sorry to all you druids who think you have been called to protect the Earth (a pernicious idea that stems more from Morgan Llywellyn novels than from any truth). You want to protect the Earth? You could do far more than simply "reviving" some supposedly ancient practices while dancing around bonfires. (Hell, I like drinking and dancing around bonfires too. But I don't claim any significance for it. The old Celts, by the way, saw no need to keep the Druids around, so why should you? Some Welsh went ahead and revived Druids too, but these are glorified poets. And I suspect tourism was a motive behind that con-job.) Druids. Protecting the Earth? Sort of like the Christian Fundamentalists protecting the faith? I find it hard to believe that any of you so-called Druids out there could even be so, since you aren't living in Gaul or old Ireland or ancient what-have-you. How would you know what they hell they did or thought, especially with regards to the Earth? I rarely see any of you speaking in Gaulish or some Celtic language they would have spoken. You think thoughts can be translated? Don't count on it. Even insights are culture bound. (Sort of like the insights that Americans have that delude themselves into thinking they can pick up pieces of foreign cultures and readily understand them.)

Sorry to all you Wiccans who think that your version of Mystery(tm) is better than anyone else's (especially those of you Wiccans who think your version is better than the Christians'). Perhaps many of you more recent Wiccans should learn to respect that fact that if you are divine, then that means those annoying Christians-you-dislike are also divine. Even that waitress who thinks your pentacle is Satanic is a divine being. Even that drunken Asatruar who wakes you up in the middle of the night with his blot next door is a divine being. It might be better for you to actually find the Wicca that you can't buy at your local chain bookstore, before you go off calling yourself Wiccan. I know this is hard for you to accept in this point-and-click era, but book reading does not make you a member of a religion. And since I have been involved with this form of Paganism for years now, I can spot you silly gits from a mile away. Not saying you can't join in the spectacle. Just saying you may want to realize that religion is more than reading and wishful thinking. If it is not more than this, then the Atheists are right.
 
Sorry to all you Pagan Fundies who think yourselves a bunch of more aware, more tolerant, more connected people. I have personally witnessed how some of you shit on one another with impunity because you believe yourselves to be so much more freer and less-bound than the majority of society. So how you think you are all somehow exempt from that stupid human failing is beyond me. You may want to think about what hypocrites you are to talk about how evil and polluting society is when you are the ones driving your lovely tree-choking cars and SUVs out to all those silly festivals designed to make you feel at one with the Earth. I stay away from Pagan festivals (unless I go with other Discordians) because if I want to involve myself in melodrama, I can hang out with wannabe actors. One with Earth? Frankly, most of you would wet your pants if you attained any sort of oneness with the Earth. She'd slap you like the naughty child you have been and then laugh at your silly pretensions. (Too bad the Earth won't give a rat's ass about you when you poison yourself for your comforts. Evolution is the oldest game in town and we humans are but a side experiment gone awry if we can't figure out how to be human anymore. )

Sorry to all of you who like to point your fingers at "those-others" for the mess the world is in. This game of divinity is not the "my-god/s-is/are-better" routine that you have been making it out to be. Don't lie to me. No matter how often you claim that all gods and goddesses are worthy and how all paths are valid, I know that you just say that by rote. How do I know this? I can see it in the way you live, or what you say. What it all boils down to is that you have fallen for the vile illusion that makes you think that what you are doing or what gods you are into is of supreme importance. This still lets you think that the world revolves around you.

Eris, or whomever you blame reality on, doesn't revolve around you. If She did, you would be wise to worry and hide somewhere. Sharks and other predators circle their prey too. And you wouldn't want to be caught on THAT thin ice, now would you? Because if you fall below, we shall be waiting to make you the next court jester in our elaborate Erisian mystery cult. A cult that offers satisfaction guaranteed, but with our fingers crossed behind our backs. (But at least we tell you our fingers are crossed, unlike the other spiritual contenders.) A religion which finally cuts through the crap and says "Sorry suckers! The secret of the universe is out: There is no secret."

If you can get yourself to stop wrapping everything around you into some twisted version of yourself, you might just actually learn what any of your gods/nature/universe/Bob/etc. might actually be doing or saying. And don't cry too loudly when you find out. Because Eris doesn't like anyone who does more bitching then Her. Give Her that indulgence. She has been around a bit longer than you, so She might have a valid grievance or two more than you do. I just hope some of you Neopagans can stop using your spirituality as an excuse to exist. You already exist and need no excuse for it, you silly gits!

February 13th, 2006
-Irreverend Hugh, KSC;
of the DSSS/PMM
Conspirator with High Papessa Bella
Agent Provocateur in Hoshiko and DS#3's War Against Hostages
Church of Eris ArchSwinging Bastard
and silly man who convinces white people they can be shamans so he can get a good laugh

11

Or Kill Me / Rant 155: Great Religions?

« on: February 10, 2006, 10:06:29 am »

Rant 155
Great Religions?

"Where did all those angry Muslims find those hundreds of Danish flags to burn? Smells like an Erisian plot to me."
-Chairman Chao (when I asked him what time it was)

There was a time not too long ago, when people in Western societies would go just as batshit over perceived slights against Christianity as the Muslims are now going over the perceived slight to their religion. Remember that the West used to burn witches. They used to stone their neighbors. They used to hunt down and kill one another to prove how righteous they were. If this religious hold had stayed with the West into modern times, some of us would be flying planes into buildings and blowing ourselves up in crowded markets too. What gives? Religion. Fanatical you-are-nothing-god-is-everything-you-miserable-sinner/infidel type of religion. It is a sickness. It is designed to make you go batshit and kill your neighbor, no matter how many times some hippy pops on the scene and tells you to love one another and all that jazz. Why? Because while your mind is ablaze with the psychic fever of fanatical religion, you and your fellow humans are easier to take advantage of by the guys (usually the "guys," rarely the "girls") in charge of the officially sanctioned proper orthodoxy. While you are all too busy killing one another trying to prove whose version of God is correct (despite the fact that God likes to changes colors and shapes all the time), your priests and holymen are living it up off your donations. They make you feel guilty. They make you feel like you are a nothingman, an underman, a miserable unworthy bastard who needs to get right with God, preferably by killing other people for it. (Human sacrifice seems to have never really died off.)

Muslim extremists don't mind killing you if you don't believe and won't listen. Despite what some of the more polite Muslims will say. They have co-religionists who see nothing of value in you unless you become Muslim. This is not special though. There are some Christians who see you the same way. You are simply a cardboard target for either conversion or a swift kick to hell. The only difference between Muslims and Christians nowadays (besides the whole theological dispute) is the fact that Christians don't kill non-believers or each other as rapidly as the Muslims still do. Unless you wish to factor in what Western secular states have done as being "Christian." And, just remember, it hasn't been all that long since the Christians last ran amok in the West (remember the Nazis?) chopping up the non-believers and 'undesirables'.

This latest furore over the whole Mohammed cartoon thing is an amazingly concise proof in my theory that most people LIKE BEING STUPID. Why? Because when they are stupid, they can blame any horrible or shitty thing they do on someone else. "Sorry officer that I burned down that embassy, but they shouldn't have played with Mohammed!" Or, "We Muslims are good. You Christians started the crusades...Jihad? What Jihad? What? We never conquered Spain and killed people there. Spain was always Muslim." I don't know about you, but it seems like God is jerking these poor suckers around, feeding them lines of BS in an effort to watch them off one another. (God does get lazy from time to time and She prefers to let the humans screw themselves since that seems to be their highest skill set.) God did it with Christianity in an effort to get the madhatted Europeans to tone down and come off their world conquering shenanigans. Not because She cares. But because She wanted things to settle down so that some geeks could create the internet.

But I digress.

Religion, while not poison like that fat Chinese communist said, is a crock of bull when people let it infect them with mental illness. Or people use religion to excuse their illness and then blame it on God. I am sorry, but She is getting sick of all that. If you forget to flush your own toilet that is your own damned fault. I don't know what you see, but I look at the history of the Christians and the Muslims and I see killing fields, rivers of blood, and a bunch of men telling women what to wear, who to have sex with, and what to do with their own bodies. Muslims and Christians have not only forcefully converted large populations on the planet, but they have killed millions of each other in Jihads and Crusades. They both are also experts at killing their own people, whom they dub "heretics" or some other stupid label. (The Welsh used to say "Before you'd kill a dog, you'd call it mad.") Both religions insist that non-believers must approach their religion in the way the believers would. That is simply arrogant and stupid. Why must a nonbeliever treat someone else's religion as special? Why would anyone even think that nonbelievers must follow and respect the laws of someone's religion? I don't see Muslims or Christians willing to approach other religions as being true and right. So why would they expect other people to think that Islam or Christianity is any better at the game when both these religions disrespect not only each other but all other religions. I am not sorry for saying this but that sort of religious arrogance is not going to fly for long. People will vomit that crap right up. And they'd better hurry while Eris is still willing to play nice and with one hand behind Her back.

It doesn't look good for religious extremists. They seem to be the most entertaining bunch in the circus but it's a shame that they don't even realize that they are playing in a circus. It's also a shame that they seem focused on trying to get the other performers to act like them when all the people in the audience want is to see a good show. And, by the way, the whole long beard thing was a joke that some of you have forgotten. Anyone have any suggestions on unclogging the pineal glands of those infected with either Islamitis or Christianitis?

Great religions? They don't seem too great from where I stand, unless you factor in body counts. How can they be great when they seem to breed extremists and never seem to be able to stop those extremists? How can they be great when they go around bullying everyone else around the world? If any of those fundamentalists whether Christian or Muslim think that they are going to bring the world back to the way it was when they were running shit, they have another thing coming. They had power before, and remember what an absolute violent shithole much of the planet became because of it? You can tell me that that is unfair because these two religions have given many people hope and strength but I will only just retort with, "Yeah. Just like fascism promises to give you hope and strength if only you would just believe." I may be wrong but it's something to think about anyway.

February 8th, 2006
-Irreverend Hugh, KSC

12

Or Kill Me / Rant 154: The Pretty Noose

« on: February 01, 2006, 11:33:18 am »

Don't even fucking ask me how much or how hard it was to just get this fucking text file to show up to post here. Just read it. Tonight was fucking wierd. I think I will avoid the internet for several thousand years now. It's been a long night after a long week after a long....you know that shit.

Rant 154
The Pretty Noose

"Theories are like patches on a coat, one day they just wear off."-Tibetan saying

"You chuckle from inside as you see the facade of samsara and nirvana; [this] view will keep you constantly amused, with a little inner smile bubbling away all the time."
-Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

"If you can't stand the thought of being limited by someone else's beliefs and ideas, why be confined to your own ideas and beliefs?"-from an earlier rant

Nihilism is as much an abdication of personal responsibility as essentialism. Both are the dull radiance of stupidity tricking you into the seemingly more comfortable idea that there is no such thing as free will. But this idea is only an ancient superstition repackaged in a more scientific wrapper for today's supposedly more sophisticated public. You can deny free will, even as you deny that you have chosen to think this way. Then what are the causes of you being here at this moment, reading this? Destiny? Fate? Fortune? (Certainly not karma, since most people who evoke karma have little understanding of the concept.) No. Those terms sound too religious or superstitious. So you prefer to think of your abdication of responsibility as something else like social currents buffeting you along, or as upbringing, or as biological expressions, or as some combination of these things. But your supposedly materialist terminology doesn't mask the old superstition which excuses your behavior. After all of this, you may finally realize that no one could really care on a day to day level about the free will / not free will argument, since it has about as much relevance as discussions of angels dancing on pin heads. It is clear, when one's head is not full of the bull shit of philosophy, that on a day to day and realistic level you have a certain degree of choice which is reflected in certain conditions of your life. That said, drop this philosophical speculation about free will like a bad habit. It only leads to stupidity.

What is the truth or truths as you know them? Are you willing to let such truths take over your life or excuse you to do evil things to others? Do you let such truths delude you into thinking you are better or worse than others? Do these truths become stories you tell yourself in an effort to cobble together some identity fiction that will finally be recognized by others? Why should you even care? Do you let these truths become foundations of bullshit that you hide behind in your attempts to make the universe do what you want?

The problem is not that you lack freedom. You have ample opportunities to exercise that freedom. The problem is that you believe that in order to be free you must get everything you want, eradicate everything you dislike, while ignoring the fact that the universe and everything else out there adds up to so much more than you. Instead of seeing this as it is, you try to hide behind extremes of either "determination" or "free will." But both of these extremes are merely false choices. They are simply more jewels on the pretty noose of attachment which is strangling you from seeing things as they are. When was the last time you asked yourself "what in the hell is really going on?" and when was the last time you asked that question and actually didn't deny the answer?

I can help, but my truths are only relevant for this lifespan I habitually call mine, and then only for the situation I am currently in. In a contingent and endlessly shifting reality, having a truth that claims to have figured out all the answers to anything for all time is simply capitulation to delusional stupidity, no matter how consoling or attractively dazzling such a truth may seem. Remember the old Discordian adage "It is my firm belief that I must hold no firm beliefs." Some of the insights about our human psychology that I rant on about have been suggested to me by people trying to live in freedom from bullshit, so I try to share them, but even they are not truths to cling to. They are simply the responses I have found for dealing with the bullshit in and around me. Some of you may find them useful. (Otherwise go read some other rant I have written. I have written so many, I am sure that your burning issue has been dealt with at some point.)

Despite all that, it is fanatical to assume that reality has or does not have any meaning. Don't be so dumb. We are the sort of beings who inhabit a reality in which it makes sense for our minds to try to make sense of reality. That is simply because we are linguistic beings. Meaning is wrapped up in the semiotic web that has been instilled in us from our primal language instinct. Reality is neither meaningful nor meaningless from any philosophical standpoint. It is simply what it is. And it can be changed. So if you feel it is meaningless than the onus is on you to make it meaningful. That is your birthright after all. So enough of this pretty noose of abstractions talking about nihilism or essentialism. Those are simply terms that we get caught up in and bewitched by. The joke is on us and we are the jokers!

-Irreverend Hugh, KSC, DSSS/PMM Co-conspirator
January 31st, O??mealg, 2006

13

Or Kill Me / THIS IS

« on: February 01, 2006, 11:19:31 am »

where my latest rant would have been


IF



the psychochick hadn't fubarred my drives......


MOfucking cockannanny piss blocker!


Just saying.

14

Or Kill Me / Rant 153: Freedom?

« on: January 10, 2006, 07:19:31 pm »

Rant 153
Freedom?

"Stop cowering in the corners of life, hiding behind your ego armor and constricting your heart with your narrow minded clinging."
-The White Mouse

"We may idealize freedom, but when it comes to our habits, we are completely enslaved."
-Sogyal Rinpoche

"Sometimes even when the cell door is flung open, the prisoner chooses not to escape."
-Sogyal Rinpoche

In this vast cult of delusion followed fervently by most individuals of our global village we never imagine that all of our chasing after things, ideas, and experiences is leading us away from becoming free. We think of ourselves so wise and skeptical as we seek out those phenomena that we have been trained to think will make us happy and "real," forever accepted by ourselves and others as successful. But nothing lasts forever. We all know this, not intellectually, but instinctually, and that is why we become both expert adepts at our own denial and expert enablers of others' denial. We may think or say that we shouldn't think about the inherent impermanence of everything including ourselves, because that is morbid and it may bring us more fear. But in our denial of this, we merely express our great gnawing fear of the reality. We rush about in our impressive busy laziness, filling our lives with projects, schemes, plans, people, ideas, religions, experiences, rituals, chores, and anything we could find that could help us remain distracted. We hope that by this distraction that we can escape and finally reach some place in our lives where we will finally have everything we want and finally have pushed out everything about life that we don't want. And in this deception, we add more bricks to the walls that keep us limited, narrow minded, and enslaved. Just because the prison guard is our own delusion, does not mean we are any less enslaved than if the guard was someone else. The mental and emotional chains are always the hardest to break because we have been so skillfully trained to not see such things as having any reality.

But getting to know and befriending the impermanence of everything is the key that unlocks the cell of our lives. Every time we see a sunrise or we adore a lover or when we find ourselves not being able to stop laughing, we get a glimpse of this freedom. The question is how do we overcome the inculcation, the teachings, and the distractions of the cult of delusion so that we can learn to realize our freedom....Not on some abstract philosophical level. Not on some imagined higher spiritual or astral plane, but in the here and now, the present moment, within our very lives as we are living them now, standing on the ground. As long as we are asleep at the wheel of our lives and follow distractions without ever looking within at our motivations or intentions or even what or who we really are as opposed to what or who we are used to telling ourselves, we can't see it. So we devise all sorts of speculations and theories that we accept since they sound so hard core or true or realistic. But if we are not even adept at getting off from the treadmill of distractions and the pulling puppet-strings of manipulated desires (as exists in our current economy), how can we stand there and assert anything about the reality of anything else?

And herein is why looking within is the most potent powder keg flashes of mindfucking. Many people often think that looking within means avoiding the world and focusing on one's own mind and spirit...a sort of abandonment of reality. But they misunderstand. Looking within in those sorts of ways are an avoidance of reality or an attempt to escape responsibility. But there is another more profound looking within, which is not self-focused. It looks within because it is beyond mere cataloging mental perceptions, thoughts and feelings. It looks within to find out exactly what is doing the perceiving, thinking, and feeling. Where the hell are all these things coming from? They are coming from the same sort of processes that give rise to everything else in the universe that exists. There is no difference, though we often like to think so. This sort of looking within confronts and understands impermanence, no matter how frightening. This sort of looking within combined with looking without gives rise to more and more glimpses of what it is like to live with awareness as the center of your being. This gives rise to more and more choices and options in places you never even imagined. This sort of insight can lead you to the realization of where you really stand in relation to other beings and phenomena. Without that relation, you would not exist. And since everything changes and there is ultimately no stable and solid enduring self for you to retreat into and try to hide from the world, you can begin to develop a way of life that is free.

Freedom is one of our deepest instincts, though we are mostly trained by cultures and religions to run away from that freedom...We are trained almost to the point where we feel our instinct is to run from freedom. But the only thing happening here is that our fear has been manipulated either by others or by ourselves. (You didn't think that it was possible for beings to be so tyrannical that they manipulate themselves, did you? Think about it for a while and you will see they are all around you.) Did you ever stop to think about what could happen if you learned to see past the neurotic "convictions" of your own limitations? Our society says that we are free and celebrates our supposed individual liberty yet treats us and trains us to be obsessed only with power, sex, wealth, and everything else it wants us to buy into and sell while it distracts us from contact with the flavor of life and death. It teaches us to try to refine our desire-getting skills while pulling the wool over our eyes about the nature of those desires. And so we find ourselves thinking "if only I had this/that" sort of thoughts. Or we find ourselves trying so hard to grasp at the mercurial mirage of security and endless comfort. Sometimes we even find spiritual-sounding excuses to maintain this stupidity. We say that our endless jumping or running around looking for the next and latest or better thing to satisfy ourselves is the practice of non-attachment, but that is because we are denying the slavery we have fallen into.

We think we need not reflect too much on our lives, since we either believe we are eternal beings who deserve to live forever, or we think that there is no meaning to existence and therefore nothing matters. But these two twin poles are simply the symptoms of a creeping fundamentalism that underpins our choices in maintaining our outlooks. Neither of them are correct. Neither of them get to the heart of the matter. And both of them contribute to our anxiety and the existential angst we often deny is there, just under the surface goading us into making all the stupid and endlessly repeated mistakes we have ever made. Is there a way out? I wouldn't have written this if there was not.

To start with, paradoxically, one must come to the conclusion that there is no escape from your life. You must learn to deal with the whole show, in all of its pretty and ugly aspects, with all of the things you like, dislike, or feel nothing for. All of this is your life, and without any of them, you would not be who you are. Starting from the idea of "no escape" or "no exit," you can then learn to get to know yourself, your life, and this thing called reality that many people often talk about in pseudo-wise fashions. Sure you know about your feelings, thoughts, body sensations, thrills, boredom, spirituality, identity scripts and assemblage points. But what underpins them all? You may be exist because you think, but what is that mind that thinks? Who is this person that feels? How did you get to be the sort of person who claims to be yearning for freedom yet finds that such a difficulty that you many times feel it to be impossible? Don't answer the questions. They are not Socratic questions. They are simply calls for reflection, because intellectualizing about this sort of thing only leads to more distraction. Your possibility of freedom is already an inherent part of being alive. You simply need to learn how to embody it.

I leave you with a Buddhist reflection called "the four faults" to think about for the next time you find yourselves swimming in a sea of delusion and have started losing the ability to distinguish between what may be reality and what is the bullshit that is collecting in your perception. Why does complete liberation seem like such an outlandish and impossible idea? Because it is too close to be recognized. It is too profound for us to fathom. It is too easy for us to believe. And it is too wonderful for us to accommodate, especially in our cynical and world weary mindsets in this post-modern era where we are taught that fundamentalist skepticism is the pinnacle of intelligence.

Stay tuned for more rants.

January 6th, 2006 / Chaos 6th, 3172

-Irreverend Hugh, KSC
"What if when you try to kill the Buddha, She kicks your ass instead and leaves you there shredded and bleeding, yet laughing?"

15

Or Kill Me / Rant 152: The Self Habit

« on: January 03, 2006, 09:23:22 pm »

Rant 152
The Self Habit

"You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you."
-Eric Hoffer (1902 - 1983)

"You ever think about the fact that all these great religions have all these prophets who are endlessly quoted and studied? You know what those great religious forebears did to those prophets, don't you? They stoned them, tortured them, imprisoned them, and otherwise brought about all sorts of horrid deaths upon them. We Discordians don't do such things to our prophets. Never have, in fact. At times we may tickle them, poke them, and make them butts of our jokes, but they are our sisters all the same. You see the difference?"
-Tequilarius Malignatus (from the Sermon on Non-Prophet Status)

Now pay attention here. No animals will be harmed in anyway during the deliverance of this rant. (Otherwise the White Mouse would chew me up and spit me out in a spew of tequila/Guinness and cigar upchuck.)

The self you often think of as "you" is just a collection of habits running along the same old gerbil wheel of conditions being endlessly reborn in every moment. The only problem is that you have gotten taken in by the show. You have pulled the wool over your own eyes and others have collaborated with you. This fiction, or figment if you will, is as ephemeral and fleeting as a sunset or a passing cloud. Yet we derived and impute so much importance to it. We live in an ever changing playground, yet we insist that we can find permanence and a place where all the games will finally go our way. We could just play, but that seems to simple for our all important self schemes.

Like junkies, we insist that all we need is another fix of "if only" or the next best and brightest new thing or experience to make our "selves" truly real...another hit, just this once. Or maybe a few more times. And before we know it we have lost track of time. We have been duped yet again by the idea that the world may be impermanent and unreliable, but at least we have our own selves. We forget the self is just another part of the show we call the world. And all of our attempts at being "realistic" are more often than not attempts at getting others to agree with the way we see things. The real world is nothing but the conventional agreements about how to view this existence. In this "real world" you are simply being used as a means to others' ends as you are using others as means to your own ends.

The "real world" is simply a concept we use to further our sense of a strong self, whether our "realism" is negative and self-defeating or positive and self-aggrandizing. The trick to get out of this trap is to not emphasize either extreme because the truth out there and "inside" you is neither. I have proof that you are not what you think, no matter what that is. What is my proof? Answer this question: Who are you when you are not thinking? Who are you in the brief moments when you exist between plans or schemes or tasks or dreaming or whatever it is you do and think that succeeds in pushing away life's flavor?

What? Can you see it? Can you glimpse for at least a second the profound freedom that approaching life from a perspective that recognizes this ephemeral nature of all phenomena, including your self? That is the purpose of wisdom teachings, no matter what others label them as. This impermanent nature and endless flux is called "chaos" by Discordians and their Chaos Magic cousins (who care little for Discordia). It is called "relativity" (shunyata) by Mahayana Buddhists (who may be the closest thing to Discordian "religion" without ever calling it that).

It is high time you learn to get over your self-addicted habit of "if only" and "just one more," those conditions under which you have delegated your sovereignty. There is a lot of talk of karma and all that. But you are the master of your karma no matter what you may think. You create the habit-forming conditions and the responses to conditions that have given you a sense of identity and it is time to start recognizing this. There is no more of a "realistic" viewpoint than this. You can choose to stay asleep at the wheel of your life, either by thinking that all of your habits and cravings are what give you meaning, or by thinking that since the self and all other things are ephemeral then nothing has meaning. But either view is still the view of someone who refuses to grow up and awaken.

It is not necessary to see or experience new things. Simply learn to see and experience things in new ways. You can see through the stories that others tell, and you can likewise see through the stories you tell your self. You can grow up and learn that just as Copernicus discovered the radical truth that the sun does not revolve around the earth, your life...this thing you call existence, does not revolve around your self. In waking up, the dream may not go anywhere, but you will learn to have more control over your happiness in the dream. You will learn that you can in fact have some say in how things go. You can participate in this world, no matter what the crapscreamers say to try to get you to simply follow their prefabbed and pre-approved methods of living. In seeing through the self habit you can paradoxically become your own person. And you can allow others to become their own people without succumbing to the push-pull which we normally confuse with social behavior. If you can learn to cling to nothing, not even to your "self", no one can get a hold over you. Think about that and its implications for your life.

December 28th, 2005
-Irreverend Hugh, KSC

Delayed posting due to this forum being unavailable and me being on a retreat. It was the last rant of 2005.