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Yes we're horrible toxic people, because this is 2020's Mental Illness Olympics, and the winners get a free pass on giving life-threatening advice with the bonus of having zero accountability for their shit behaviour.

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Messages - McGrupp

#376
Thanks everyone. That felt awesome.
#377
I hope so, because it's happening.

I found myself with myself in a large meadow.

"I wonder what's in that tent over there?"

"I thought you gave up on that sort of thing? Wait, that one! That's the tent you're going to? You're kidding right?"

"I...I just want to see what's inside."

"......okay, knock yourself out."

I enter the tent and after a period of time emerge stumbling holding.

"FUCK! What the fuck? I....What the fuck!?"

"What happened to you? What did you find in there?"

and I told him. How I couldn't justify my life. How I'm the epitome of the priveliged American. Sure I played at poverty. I've lived on my own. Refused handouts from my parents, except for all those times I didn't. Even went hungry and slept outside a few times but I was never without the safety net. A simple phone call was all it would ever take to remedy it. One day I made it.

Got back on my feet. Get a fairly decent job (I get to use my brain and on occasion I do help some people, though they pay me for that) Move into an apartment and proceed to do this:

WEEKDAYS
Get up with much difficulty
Go to work
Come home
Enter bubble where I smoke pot and watch cartoons and movies online and avoid any news because it makes me angry and want to   smash someones head in with a hammer but I feel that smashing people in the head with a hammer is wrong. (and like a lot of pot too btw, I used multiple dealers just so they wouldn't think I was some kind of a freak or something)
Stay up too late and go to bed. (Not a real bed, that bed is buried under the debris in my bedroom where I don't go. No, I sleep on the floor in a snow angel of trash and debris that I made around the glowing rectangle I spend most of my time around.)

WEEKENDS
2 whole days of numbing bubble! Hooray!!!

And anything that separates me from that bubble is like nails on a chalkboard.

"Wow...Wait a minute, isn't all this exactly what you were telling me about before you went in the tent?"

".....yeah...."

"What's in that tent?"

The other me went to look inside the tent. But the tent was empty.

The only thing inside was a mirror.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Today at lunch I took a walk on my lunch break. Turns out there is an atrium with trees over by the cancer center.

Decided to try to take a look around. Surfed the web and WOW! I don't even know where to start so I will just state that water is wet.

At some point Transmetropolitan and the Weekly World News exploded over onto reality. Somehow I found myself here http://www.wetcanvas.com/forums/showthread.php?t=166492
Try as I might I cannot bring myself to have an opinion on The Beadmakers Liberation Front. Pricefixing? Empowerment for the smalltime crafter? Do I even really know what those terms mean?

I have no idea.  I thought I had a good education but instead I'm just a good parrot. Not being full of shit is going to be very hard work.

I didn't smoke pot today. I took 18 bags of garbage to the curb. The place is still a mess but a beachhead has been established. Tomorrow I hope to regain access to the kitchen.

I have no idea what the hell I'm doing.

#378
Sounds awesome. PM-ing.
#379
Well, first Leviticus and now this, Case closed.

I noticed on the side one of the articles you can link to is entitled are Americans getting smarter
http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/daily-ticker/americans-getting-smarter-143840511.html

No, no we are not, but we are getting better at taking tests apparently.
#380
That really is amazing the way it keeps its balance.

They've come a long way from their first version.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXJZVZFRFJc
#381
Literate Chaotic / Re: ITT: Original Story Ideas
March 04, 2013, 05:06:31 PM
Humans make first contact with an alien species that considers respiration and sweating a form of excretion.
#382
Quote from: McGrupp on February 27, 2013, 09:49:52 PM
Quote from: LMNO, PhD (life continues) on February 27, 2013, 05:43:56 PM
Discordia is a verb.
Ah, I see. For some reason I thought it could be a noun as well.
I think I understand what you were trying to tell me here, or at least I understand how silly my response was.

This thread could have easily been renamed "I just read Principia a week ago, didn't reread it enough or get a chance to read other texts and/or let them gel in my head but got excited and really really wanted to talk about it." Thank you all for being so patient with me.

Quote from: Telarus on March 02, 2013, 06:49:17 AM
Welcome to the Illuminati  :lulz: :fnord: (& you're right, we have much better parties  :wink:)
:lulz:
#383
Quote from: Bebek Sincap Ratatosk on March 01, 2013, 03:54:09 PM
Quote from: McGrupp on February 28, 2013, 10:07:41 PM
Quote from: M. Nigel Salt on February 27, 2013, 10:24:42 PM
I agree with you about being wary of using it for a cop-out, which is what many do.

It is not so much that everything is true and false at the same time as that nothing is absolutely true or absolutely false, though they may be so close as to be true or false for practical purposes.

Likewise, reality may or may not be objective (the territory), but how we experience it is subjective (the map) which is why, for the map to be at all useful, we first have to agree on how we will describe features of our experience (consensus).

Also, because how we experience reality is subjective, everything matters a great deal. To someone. I prefer to choose to care about things that affect a great number of people a great deal (humanism), rather than to choose to care about things that affect myself (hedonism).

I am not using anyone else's philosophy for this, it's just my take on things, so please, no one go rattling on about circuits and other occult shit.
This helps clarify things. For some reason whenever I hear any theory about the subjective nature of reality I immediately try to apply it to walking through a solid wall, which I'm pretty sure is a missing the forest for the tree, type situation.

As has been said already, most of the people here consider the perception of reality as subjective, while accepting that there is likely an objective reality somewhere under all the subjectivity. The wall may exist, but an artist may see it as a canvas for their next mural, a construction worker may see it as an important load bearing structure, the revolutionary may see it as that thing to put people up against once the revolution comes.

There's a popular set of memes here: "The Map is not the Territory" or "The Menu is not the Meal" (from General Semantics). Or those with an eastern mystical bent will quote the Master "The road you speak of is not the road you walk on". All of them are basically saying that the thing we describe (or the thing our senses describe to us) is not exactly the actual thing. A Menu may say "Filet de Boeuf" but its not gonna taste like anything like beef. A Map may have a blue squiggle line, but no matter how hard you try, you won't catch any fish in the blue squiggle.

The reality we experience is processed through our neurological instruments, then filtered through our reality tunnel (the accumulation of beliefs, knowledge and experiences we have had so far in our life). The result is our subjective interpretation of whatever the hell it was that objectively existed before we got hold of it.

For me, I find Discordianism to fit very well with Absurdism. There can be a meaning to existence, but its one we create. Its value is the value we give it and it seems to require looking into the Void, accepting that Eris is there ordering and disordering things (in some sense) and our subjective reality is ours to experience, manipulate and control. Maybe we are humanist, maybe we are hedonist, maybe we bounce back and forth between them, but objectively, none of those options are "Right" or "Wrong".

Subjectively, other people might consider you to be an asshole though, depending on which options you decide on.  :lulz:
I can't believe I didn't make the connection between Emperor Norton and this until about 5 minutes ago. No wonder he's revered.

I think the reason my brain tries to rebel against such ideas is that I'm so used to having rules and asking questions such as 'Am I doing it right?' or "Am I viewing this correctly?" That when you take that away my mind instantly tries to tell me that such a framework is invalid.

That's what draws me in, the fact that the chair of outside validation and authority that I've been trained to try to sit in is the very chair that keeps being kicked out from under me.

(Okay, actually Pinealism and the notion that Discordians would have livelier parties than the Nihilists is what drew me in, but the chair thing is what I find truly fascinating)
#384
Quote from: M. Nigel Salt on February 27, 2013, 10:24:42 PM
I agree with you about being wary of using it for a cop-out, which is what many do.

It is not so much that everything is true and false at the same time as that nothing is absolutely true or absolutely false, though they may be so close as to be true or false for practical purposes.

Likewise, reality may or may not be objective (the territory), but how we experience it is subjective (the map) which is why, for the map to be at all useful, we first have to agree on how we will describe features of our experience (consensus).

Also, because how we experience reality is subjective, everything matters a great deal. To someone. I prefer to choose to care about things that affect a great number of people a great deal (humanism), rather than to choose to care about things that affect myself (hedonism).

I am not using anyone else's philosophy for this, it's just my take on things, so please, no one go rattling on about circuits and other occult shit.
This helps clarify things. For some reason whenever I hear any theory about the subjective nature of reality I immediately try to apply it to walking through a solid wall, which I'm pretty sure is a missing the forest for the tree, type situation.

#385
Quote from: LMNO, PhD (life continues) on February 27, 2013, 05:43:56 PM
Discordia is a verb.

Ah, I see. For some reason I thought it could be a noun as well.



Quote from: Bebek Sincap Ratatosk on February 27, 2013, 07:12:34 PM
I don't understand the differentiation you're making in option 2.

Having reread what I wrote I'm not sure I do either. I guess what I meant to say was that at first glance Discordianism seems to state that everything is true and false at the same time and there is no true underlying reality that humans can understand. Thinking about that I can see Discordianism as simply throwing hands up in the air and saying 'that everything is true and false and so nothing matters and I'll just sit here and drink beer and since there is no wrong way to be that means I'm right and we'll all wear special hats and pat ourselves on the back for having a philosophy that means we're always right no matter what we do.'

Having reread the above paragraph I'm not sure that helped clarify anymore than the first. Basically I found myself internally railing against the use of Discordianism as a cop out for thought and/or moral responsibility. Again, this was my first impression, which is very unfair and I have since changed my mind. Although there is a nagging feeling that there might be an inside joke 'emperor's new clothes' aspect to all of this.

I am however cautiously optimistic about the wearing of special hats.
#386
Having read Principia a few weeks ago and allowed it some time to stew a few things occurred to me. First is that figuring out what Discordia is or isn't is both really easy and really hard. When I'm sitting on the couch at night thinking my thoughts it's easy, but if you try to write down a statement about Discordia it immediately becomes incorrect in some way.

Attempting to pin down what Discordia is or isn't seems both futile and to be missing the point. However even if there is no right or wrong way to 'do' Discordianism it seems to me that there are probably several million stupid ways.

So here are a few things I've thought over the last week that I've since thought better of:

1. Viewing Discordianism as being destruction obsessed or an almost satanic reaction to our culture and species.
   
Basically my problem here was that I was failing to differentiate between disorder and destruction as well as ignoring the idea that disorder is not simply reserved for genocides and hurricanes but can be used to create. (Okay, cards on the table, I was thinking of Khorne from warhammer 40k. Dude, I know.)

2. Discordianism as being simply a branch of absurdism.

To be sure, the absurd plays a prominent role but I think that it deserves to be differentiated. It is easy to read about how everything is true and false and meaningful and meaningless and to then view it as some sort of nihilism or a fatalistic reaction to a cosmically unintelligible and indifferent universe. I think that a main point in Principia is to point out that there is meaning in the universe but it is not set in stone and that it is up to us to figure it out for ourselves.

3. I could have sworn I had a 3. but it escapes me now.

Anyhow I was curious if anyone else had thought the same thing or the opposite thing as the case may be.
#387
Hello, new guy here. 

Full disclosure: I admit I was drawn to this and other websites by the possibility of getting to feel mildly smug and potentially getting to wear a special hat.

That said, as I read more the hat thing went to the backburner.  Still not sure what to think of Discordianism, but I can't help feeling simultaneously drawn to and repelled by it.

In any case, I'll be around lurking but I did want to poke my head in and say hello.