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An Orcish raiding party charges into your building. How do you react?

In Dan Carlin's Common Sense podcast, (#297) he was talking about Bernie Sanders...

Carlin admitted that while he likes Sanders, and prefers him to Clinton, he's not 100% behind framing the issue in the US as "wealth inequality". Carlin (who is left leaning but not squarely in either camp) thinks that wealth inequality isn't itself a problem, the issue is merely that political power can be bought. If it were 1 person = 1 vote rather than $1 = 1 vote, a lot of the issues we're facing would dissolve.

I've been thinking about that a lot recently, as I've always thought wealth inequality to be the big blinking neon Satan. But I wanted to bounce that off you guys - what do you think? Is wealth inequality an issue if rich people don't have disproportionate access to the political engine?

In a perfect world where citizens united were overturned and campaign finance was reformed, would wealth inequality still be an issue?

[Q: Were the discordians like Robert Aton Wilson Illuminati?]

Q: Were the discordians like Robert Aton Wilson Illuminati?

    Yes, they were good Illuminati, but they were a confused group.

    Their situation was similar to that of Aleister Crowley and the other occultists of his generation.

    Discordianism and other chaos-oriented philosophies is often a step one takes shortly after their intuition activates and they begin receiving Illumination. A person in this stage is acutely aware of how material reality is an illusion, but they have yet to understand what is behind that illusion.

    In terms of the Plato's cave analogy, they have freed themselves of the shackles and they have looked to the sunlight coming from outside the cave, but it is so powerful that it has left them in a state of existential shock. All the order they knew, all the things they thought were real, they now realize are mere shadows on the wall.

    This leads them to a state of mistrust and with it the adoption of the idea that there is no order in the cosmos at all. That behind the illusions is not intelligence but chaos.

    Chaos is indeed an aspect of nature, but it is not the sole ruling force behind all things as the discordians believe. Eventually the discordian will awaken to this fact, usually this awakening occurs once this individual begins to reconsider the ideas of trust and faith, and gives them another shot.

    When this happens, the circling and nonsense will cease and the initiate will take another step toward the light.

    As a teacher once said:
    "Its only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything."

    I want to pipe up from the Zen Lunatic branch of Discordia...

    Discordians have hard nips for disorder because we live in ordered times, and ordered times call for disobedient measures. But like order, it's just another tool in the bag. That's why the Chao has the golden apple of strife, but also the pentagon of keeping shit together; order is just another part of the carousel ride.

    There's a season of Bureaucracy coming. It's like an ice age, of a sort. It might have already begun, and when it comes, it's going to swallow us all. And you'll pay a processing fee.

    Discordians handle this in two different ways: Some of them are trying to prolong the current age of creativity (delaying the inevitable as long as possible). Others think that the only escape through prison planet is the path to Aftermath – they think we have to shake the rickety bridge, intensify the shitty parts of the order (memetic escalation, see the works of known and noted Discordian Stephen Colbert) until everybody gets sick of it and we replace it with something else. That's what we call Aftermath, the redemption from Bureaucracy, and that's where we're headed.

    As for Chaos - it's not disorder. It's the unknown. It's the untapped. The Ancient Greeks said "First there was Chaos, the vast immeasurable abyss. Outrageous as a sea, dark, wasteful, wild." FIRST, there was chaos. That's the base layer, this raw formless potential, the world as it exists before it gets felt up by thoughts and language. The parts of it we "get" we call order, and the parts of it we don't "get" we call disorder.

    Your brain builds this model, this little dollhouse of what you think the world is and how you think it works. And everything that comes in through your senses gets passed through this sorting engine that labels it and associates it and creates a model of it in your head and sits it down in the dollhouse. And for a lot of your life, you're in the dollhouse. It's a black iron prison of your own automatic reactions and choices and associations.

    So the zen-Discordian obsession with Chaos is not like a defiant brick through a window (not any more than disillusionment or ecstasy is a brick through the windows of the dollhouse). It's aimed at something kind of like satori, kind of like an a-hah, but feels like you are pissing yourself laughing.

I know a young Sun God. The way he lives his life is inspirational to me.

When you see him at a party, he's friendly, energetic, outgoing, easy to approach, interested in what you are talking about, fun to be around.

When he's at work, he's the same guy.

I find this trait, dare I say, heroic.


You could say my psyche is more fragmented and compartmentalized. When I'm at work, I feel like a different person - and it's not always a fun person to be. The job demands someone who is detail oriented, professional, submissive. A lot of the traits which make me fun to be around must be tucked away.

A few months ago I was at a corporate training session for something or other. The guy in charge was basically just running a script. He was doing all the textbook things which make you a good speaker - enunciating, making eye contact, clear phasing, giving time to ask questions... but I couldn't help but feel that I was interfacing with a script, not a human. Anything which humanized him was tucked away deep behind those eyes. Maybe this is just my own hangup, that I feel alienated by the Persona.

But as I grow, it feels less alienating. I understand why you have to build a wall between the personal and the professional--it's a survival trait. I can't help but wonder what effect this has.

Dear Journal:

By golly! I've been adrift down the amazon (or was it the ebay) for god-knows how long. Haven't seen heads or tails of another civilized chap in ages.

The infection is getting worse. The shaman at the last village recommended I lick one of those colorful local toads as a remedy, but it's only made my head all stuffy and dizzy, and now everything looks queer.

It's time to go ashore and have a rest. I'll put a kettle on, and hope none of the natives notice me.