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I agree with Nigel on the point that it's still possible to avoid it in ways and in part. Still, my own way of life simply would not be plausible without the Internet. When I have connection problems, I literally feel like I'm missing a vital organ, or a part of my brain.
Felix, I think you might be a bit too optimistic... Technology already has the potential to pick up the surrealists' goal, but it seems more likely to either destroy mankind or make life really, really boring forever.

http://www.dmso.org/articles/information/muir.htm

Reminds me a little of the DCA story (which is not at all over yet)...
http://www.depmed.ualberta.ca/dca/

Circle-slash?

OIC. Well I generally prefer to drink a lot of tee and sleep about as much as I'm awake, until I need prescription-only medication... Not too much into the whole OTC medicine thing. Haven't taken a pain-killer in years, which makes me stupidly smug.

No, I don't know what an OTC is, but in any case I'm trying to replace this biological chaos with a more pleasurable kind of biological chaos.

Yeah, probably. I dunno, I'm sick and slightly feverish and I suddenly felt compelled to write something along these lines.

Everybody has gone insane. It's difficult to deny now. Everybody is so damn busy trying to create order, they've forgotten order is itself just a comfortable illusion we create to help stomache the chaos. And yet every one has some completely different conception of order; every single person has a completely unique vision for the patterns underlying our reality. This guy says God creates order. That other guy says there is no god, but that order creates itself. Then five million other dudes agree with his basic assumption, but completely disagree on what kind of order that is. And a billion disagree with the guy who believe in God, in exactly the same way. Then a million other assholes just disregard that question entirely and instead focus on how fucked up people are and how they can fix it. This shit is crazy.

How can there be order if it's so fucking hard to find. And if it's so hard to find, who the hell cares about order? We're swimming in freakin' chaos here!

THIS REMINDER BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE BEATABLE SAINTS CABAL
_{You can't beatify us,}
^{but you can sure beat us!}

A Discordian is prohibited from believing anything they read.

I refuse to believe that.

Hmm, and none of these seem to really be compatible with Cain's Agent of Strife. They are all categories of passivity.

Problem is, I definitely lean towards that direction, and I actually hate the new word. I just couldn't think of anything better.

Rata, you defined all of these by way of linking Discordia to other things. I know many people here got into this stuff much later in life than I, but for me Discordianism is itself some kind of world view - it's not something I link to things I had before, but rather a collection of ideas I identify with and find useful and amusing in trying to understand the crazy universe all around me.
So how about the following (with suggested Really Cool Names):
Chaotician (*Scientific*) - understands Discordianism in terms borrowed from, similar to, or compatible with scientific models (such as Quantum Mechanics)
Philosophreak (*Philosophical*) - understands Discordianism in terms of philosophy, or of a way of life, or in terms borrowed from, similar to, or compatible with other philosophical models (such as Absurdism).
Esotericist (*Spiritual*) - understands Discordianism as an esoteric metapyhsical or spiritual model, or in terms relating to or compatible with spiritual or metaphysical models (such as Chaos Magic).
Pinealist (*Dada*) - understand Discordianism in terms of humor or satire, without necessarily interpreting it as a model of reality, or of anything else.
(None of The Above)

not sure this will make the categories more appropriate or useful, but I think this is at least a better way to phrase everything.

Tha above post has been nominated for the 2008 award for "Best First Post, Ever."

Damn newbs, stealing my thunders.
*rofls at himself quietly, and yet maniacally*

Okay, rereading what I wrote I think I should just add a little:
The part 000 quoted tries, apparently, to explain this passivity subjectively - but as 000 said and as I think I agree, Cain is more of an AoS and so he does not identify with Chaoticians as much. In other words, it's an explanation of the subjective cause for the situation, but it comes off as trying to be objective, and might miss the point because of that. OTOH, RJJB's explanation is entirely subjective and thus explains why, err, some people might be relatively passive, but only explains it from "their" point of view.

Gah, brain not working. Stupid flu-or-whatever. Does this post make any sense?

> This view of chaos, as being an ongoing and current state of the world, where the parameters are defined but within those
> parameters the eventual outcome cannot be measured, occasionally breeds a certain level of passivity, although this is not
> always the case.  The thinking is since chaos is both self-evident and ongoing, there is no need to "expose" people to it,
> they are exposed to it every day.

i dont know if this is the only, or even the most important reason for any perceived "passivity".

though maybe it is. it is more as a contrast for the Agent of Strife, it seems.

I also had a bit of a hard time with that part (since I'm definitely passive so far and mostly a Chaotician in these terms). But I think RJJB gave a much more satisfying explanation just a bit earlier in the thread:

could this "division" be due to different views of chaos itself?
In the two categories Cain points out,I see one (Choaticians) who sees Chaos as an interpretational key to the world,
while the other one (Agent of Strife) sees Chaos as a tool of change...

Seems to me this very aptly hits the nail on its head.

Thanks Cram!
link
This is just plain text. Dunno if any graphics would really enhance it.
The flyer has two flaws:
-The formatting is imperfect (but people won't notice this)
-The WWW address seems a bit too central to me... It might make the whole thing come off as an attempt to sell something...which is what it is, in a way, but this effect might need some tweaking to make it less of a factor.