Congratulations primate you've broken out of the Black Iron Prison. You see the walls and the walls fall down. You're free to exist, as you will, in the world that they have created. Welcome to the machine. You know the machine now. It's everywhere you look, from the genetically malajusted , reconstituted animal and vegetable sewage, neatly shrink wrapped on the supermarket shelves, to the intellectual effluent spewing out of the Teevee set in the corner of your living room. As a new primate is born it is absorbed, indoctrinated and trained to function as an element of or slave to the machine.
And when you look upon the machine you see that the machine is bad. The machine operates as a complex series of systems. The Political system, the legal system, the economic system, the education system. Each system functions as a standalone component of the whole. If one component is destroyed the neighboring components will work to replace the missing component. The machine is self healing in the same manner as a biological organism. If, for example, the political system fails, the military system may assume most of the roles of government until a new politic can be established.
The machine is bad but, as I hope I have made clear, it cannot be destroyed. Destroy one component and it will be replaced, probably before you've even begun to destroy the next. You cannot beat the system but this kind of dogma isn't going to stop you trying right? You have to fight it because it's wrong, correct? So you want to beat the machine, you want to tear down the walls of the BIP and liberate your fellow primates, most of whom do not wish to be liberated and will, in fact, oppose you with all their will.
So what's the plan? How do we destroy that which cannot be destroyed? Let me first explain a little about the concepts of destruction and creation. As a physicist once said:
"Every action has an equal and opposite reaction."
You cannot destroy something without creating something else. Destroy a building you create a pile of rubble, destroy a government you create anarchy, destroy an army you create a mountain of rotting meat. Destroy a component of the machine you create a new component. Devoting ones time and energy to destroying a component of the machine is, at best, a hit and miss affair - who knows what kind of component the machine will fabricate to replace the missing one. In many cases is will be something far worse. But, if destruction creates is it not true that creation destroys?
Sure as hell is. In creating fire you destroy wood, in creating words you destroy silence, in creating ideas you destroy preconceptions. So my advice is thus: Destroy the machine by creating new, better components. You tell me politics is wrong then run for office and do it right, you tell me the teevee is wrong then make your own show and make it right, you tell me education is wrong then teach something worthwhile because without politics we will have a shambles, without teevee we'll have nothing to watch, without education our kids will grow up ignorant.
Sounds like a tall order for sure but you're not alone. There's thousands of us now and more each day. If every discordian did a something positive instead of something negative then all those tiny contributions would soon mount up.
So do everyone a favour - quit fucking breaking things and do something constructive.
Or kill me
:mittens:
Nice, but a problem....
... You never completely break out of Prison. A true initiation never ends, and all that jazz.
nice theory, but most of the people that rant is addressed to do not have access to the financial resources that would allow them to compete on the CoN's playing field.
you got the money to produce a TV pilot?
you got the money to run a successful political campaign?
I ran for public office last year and lost because I couldn't afford to spend the thousands of dollars my opponent spent on advertising and banners and lawn signs.
not to mention all the help he got from other rich people who felt threatened by the prospect of someone like me being given even the tiniest amount of power.
you cannot beat the CoN at its own game. In this repsect, trying to use the media as a complicit partner to damage the CoN is no different than trying to storm the castle with torches and pitchforks.
Quote from: East Coast Hustle on November 06, 2006, 02:33:13 PM
nice theory, but most of the people that rant is addressed to do not have access to the financial resources that would allow them to compete on the CoN's playing field.
you got the money to produce a TV pilot?
you got the money to run a successful political campaign?
I ran for public office last year and lost because I couldn't afford to spend the thousands of dollars my opponent spent on advertising and banners and lawn signs.
not to mention all the help he got from other rich people who felt threatened by the prospect of someone like me being given even the tiniest amount of power.
you cannot beat the CoN at its own game. In this repsect, trying to use the media as a complicit partner to damage the CoN is no different than trying to storm the castle with torches and pitchforks.
It's usually best to think outside the box. That said I'm sure there are some high profile, financially strong discordians/sympathetics in existence. Enlightenment sneaks throught the normal media channels, like rennaissance art. You're looking for a massive flash in the pan. Wake up - that aint gonna happen but a film like the matrix will introduce a concept into the herd psyche that cannot be undone, only expanded upon.
The rich guys stranglehold on the teevee's days are numbered convergence of internet and normal media channels is almost complete. We can broadcast to a mass audience like never before. Look at Jackass - couple of skatepunks and a camcorder started that one.
Cancer spreads one cell at a time. Subversion works the same way. Wake up one sleeper and there's two of you, wake up one each and there's 4. Small steps will get you there. Sure it'd be great to wake up tomorrow and it's all fixed but, back in the real world, I'll settle for waking up tomorrow and it's better than it was, however slightly. Your defeatist attitude is how the Con controls subversives like you. Make you angry, make you desperate, make you snap and walk into macdonalds with a bomb strapped to you, make the whole thing blow up in your face.
i let the stuff you said in another thread about the demiurge and the machine-in-the-abyss pass through my mind a bit more, and that rant you just wrote spoke kind of exactly the conclusion i drew.
well, except for the "congratulations you broke out" bit, on that part i agree with LMNO, but i gathered that was just an introductory bit.
to ECH, i believe that people have in fact more power than you indicate in your post. and i think you know that, as well, otherwise you would have never tried (a lot of things).
especially with the internet nowadays, if people know how to handle it properly, they have a LOT of power (e.g HIMEOBS).
i think it's more a question of people realizing they actually have power, and taking it into their own hands. sure there are a lot of areas where you can't beat the CoN at their own game. but that doesn't mean there aren't lots of different other possibilities. thinking out of the box, or just plain persistence.
Quote from: triple zero on November 06, 2006, 11:29:56 PM
i let the stuff you said in another thread about the demiurge and the machine-in-the-abyss pass through my mind a bit more, and that rant you just wrote spoke kind of exactly the conclusion i drew.
Yeah the rant was a sort of distillation of those thoughts
Quote from: SillyCybin on November 06, 2006, 11:34:15 PMYeah the rant was a sort of distillation of those thoughts
it was pretty sudden actually, i was explaining that stuff about the machine-in-abyss to a good friend with whom i like to discuss these things (ok not in a smokey bar, more some extremely hip yet reasonbly priced lounge place), and suddenly it hit me, i even wrote some keypoints down, but your rant says it much better :)
it's basically a re-wording of "a better world starts with yourself" kind of philosophy (kind of). we need more jailbreakers, more awake people, more conscious people, more aware people ..
wait a minute, in fact this rant is pretty much the opposite of that apathy-rant you wrote a while ago! care to explain that?
Quote from: LMNO on November 06, 2006, 02:32:03 PM
Nice, but a problem....
... You never completely break out of Prison. A true initiation never ends, and all that jazz.
...I was gonna say...
OH, and, good rant. Very locker-room-go-get-emish!
Quote from: Jenne on November 07, 2006, 12:22:47 AM
Quote from: LMNO on November 06, 2006, 02:32:03 PM
Nice, but a problem....
... You never completely break out of Prison. A true initiation never ends, and all that jazz.
...I was gonna say...
You can never completely break out of prison, but you can hannibalize the warden.
Quote from: Benaclypse on November 07, 2006, 12:36:44 AM
Quote from: Jenne on November 07, 2006, 12:22:47 AM
Quote from: LMNO on November 06, 2006, 02:32:03 PM
Nice, but a problem....
... You never completely break out of Prison. A true initiation never ends, and all that jazz.
...I was gonna say...
You can never completely break out of prison, but you can hannibalize the warden.
Mind the chianti bottles and fava bean shells, then.
Quote from: Jenne on November 07, 2006, 02:29:48 AM
Quote from: Benaclypse on November 07, 2006, 12:36:44 AM
Quote from: Jenne on November 07, 2006, 12:22:47 AM
Quote from: LMNO on November 06, 2006, 02:32:03 PM
Nice, but a problem....
... You never completely break out of Prison. A true initiation never ends, and all that jazz.
...I was gonna say...
You can never completely break out of prison, but you can hannibalize the warden.
Mind the chianti bottles and fava bean shells, then.
:bacon:
Quote from: Benaclypse on November 07, 2006, 02:46:57 AM
Quote from: Jenne on November 07, 2006, 02:29:48 AM
Quote from: Benaclypse on November 07, 2006, 12:36:44 AM
Quote from: Jenne on November 07, 2006, 12:22:47 AM
Quote from: LMNO on November 06, 2006, 02:32:03 PM
Nice, but a problem....
... You never completely break out of Prison. A true initiation never ends, and all that jazz.
...I was gonna say...
You can never completely break out of prison, but you can hannibalize the warden.
Mind the chianti bottles and fava bean shells, then.
:bacon:
Yes, good flavor for the beans.
Nice rant, but some of the things you mentioned are to impractical. When it comes to politics, your not going to win with your "enlightened" ideals as your campain platform. Even if somehow you do win (you could always cheat), you'd have to deal with the other shit that comes along with politics, plus, you can't think as an individual when you get involved with politics, you can think for the individual, but this means different things for different indivduals, which is why it's best to avoid politics altogether, not go against them, but just ignore them(damn that was alot of commas).
I agree new mediums such as youtube and other websites could serve as a crippling blow to the mass media, but the trick is turning the masses on to such an extreme, or at least different, type of program.
Like Pete Carrol said (or mabey it was phile hine) the biggest, most impenatrble belief in todays modern culture, even more the non-pagain religions, is the material cauality. By destroying this you are left with a, um, non-material casuality. I'm not entirly sure what that means ("material casuality," wtf), but it seems very important in this discussion and hopfully someone smarter can tell me/us how it applies.
EDIT: BTW, cool title.
Quote from: triple zero on November 06, 2006, 11:49:46 PM
wait a minute, in fact this rant is pretty much the opposite of that apathy-rant you wrote a while ago! care to explain that?
Balance :-D
Quote from: Dr. Cow Ass on November 07, 2006, 05:14:12 AM
I agree new mediums such as youtube and other websites could serve as a crippling blow to the mass media, but the trick is turning the masses on to such an extreme, or at least different, type of program.
I disagree. I think the trick would be to keep any sort of "underground" medium from being co-opted by the CoN (and their money) the minute they sense a potential threat. All the truly successful "media revolutionaries" just get bought out. Who amog us is willing to turn down that kind of wealth in favor of continuing to advance our agenda in the face of increasingly stiff resistance to our attempts at "spreading the message"?
Quote from: East Coast Hustle on November 07, 2006, 01:04:07 PM
Who amog us is willing to turn down that kind of wealth in favor of continuing to advance our agenda in the face of increasingly stiff resistance to our attempts at "spreading the message"?
Me for one and prolly a whole bunch of others too.
Bullshit.
:lol:
Seriously, I like to think that I'd be all righteous and stuff, but honestly...
I just don't know.
Quote from: LMNO on November 07, 2006, 03:13:01 PM
Bullshit.
Theoretically perhaps. I'm already ludicrously wealthy. What do I need money for? Gave that shit up years ago.
Quote from: SillyCybin on November 07, 2006, 01:58:52 PM
Quote from: East Coast Hustle on November 07, 2006, 01:04:07 PM
Who amog us is willing to turn down that kind of wealth in favor of continuing to advance our agenda in the face of increasingly stiff resistance to our attempts at "spreading the message"?
Me for one and prolly a whole bunch of others too.
Oh, you say that now, but then you'll start arguing with yourself about how if you take the money, if you sign their contracts, whatever, you'll suddenly have the power to take your message to people you couldn't reach before.
If I were to somehow become this songwriting genius with reams of jailbreak lyrics, and someone were to promise me national exposure and decent compensation if I would just change one line here and a couple of words there, I know that it would be a very hard decision for me. I would be sitting there quite honestly wondering if I'd finally found my way into the guts of the Machine, and if it might really be possible to still spread the message I want to spread while making the PTB happy.
Sitting where I am now, I "know better". I know that if I were to try and strike such a compromise, it would require burying my true meanings under a layer or two of metaphor and poetry, which would make them completely inaccessible to 90% of my potential audience (and that's probably a low estimate). But sitting where I am now, I am under no illusions of possible success. Put me into that illusion and things get a lot less certain.
Quote from: SillyCybin on November 07, 2006, 03:26:11 PM
Quote from: LMNO on November 07, 2006, 03:13:01 PM
Bullshit.
Theoretically perhaps. I'm already ludicrously wealthy. What do I need money for? Gave that shit up years ago.
Hey, I've got a paypal account. Why don't you send me $500?
Quote from: LMNO on November 07, 2006, 03:37:08 PM
Quote from: SillyCybin on November 07, 2006, 03:26:11 PM
Quote from: LMNO on November 07, 2006, 03:13:01 PM
Bullshit.
Theoretically perhaps. I'm already ludicrously wealthy. What do I need money for? Gave that shit up years ago.
Hey, I've got a paypal account. Why don't you send me $500?
What bit didn't you get? I have no money. Don't need it. Wealth is material and spiritual. Sounds like you're still caught up in that paper collecting thing - get into crack, it's less addictive.
We all have our temptations and we all either overcome or succumb to them. I think it's fairly bizarre that so many of you can be convinced of how I would react to a large cash incentive without even really knowing me. Speak for yourselves guys.
Personally I had a shitload of cash at one point, big house, fast car, drugs on tap. Lost the lot and never felt motivated to get it back. Happier without. Also I don't really care about changing the world beyond the fact that I find the concept amusing right now. This aint a holy crusade I'm on.
Bits of paper help me get what I really need. Unfortunately, most people I know aren't into the barter economy and hitting people until they give me what I want is distasteful.
Quote from: LMNO on November 07, 2006, 03:37:08 PM
Quote from: SillyCybin on November 07, 2006, 03:26:11 PM
Quote from: LMNO on November 07, 2006, 03:13:01 PM
Bullshit.
Theoretically perhaps. I'm already ludicrously wealthy. What do I need money for? Gave that shit up years ago.
Hey, I've got a paypal account.  Why don't you send me $500?
Please to be using past tense if currently living like a bum.
Quote from: Cain on November 07, 2006, 03:50:24 PM
Bits of paper help me get what I really need.  Unfortunately, most people I know aren't into the barter economy and hitting people until they give me what I want is distasteful.
I'm still involved in currency to that extent but that's a lifestyle choice. I'm more than capable of hunting, clothing and housing myself without having to resort to capitalism. The tricky bit for me is like pontoon - stick or twist. It's easy to earn enough to satisfy my needs but wants have a way of spiralling out of control. I try to limit myself to having nothing in the bank at the end of each month otherwise it becomes a real problem for me.
My point is I honestly feel that if I had a million dollars I would have a whole world of shit on my hands. This impression is based on how much worse my life was when I was earning about a 10th of that. It was an incredibly hollow existence. All I ever wanted was more. Now I have far less and all I ever seem to want is what I got.
Quote from: SillyCybin on November 07, 2006, 04:08:34 PM
I'm still involved in currency to that extent but that's a lifestyle choice. I'm more than capable of hunting, clothing and housing myself without having to resort to capitalism.
O RLY?
SRSLY?
LMNO
-Here we go again...
So long as my basic needs are looked after, I'm pretty sorted. Broadband access, a second drive for music, enough shelf space for books and being able to eat and sleep are pretty much all my needs. It would be nice to have a 5 bedroom house and two cars, but I'm not going to work myself to a heart attack in pursuit of that.
That said, I'm not adverse to creating revolutionary groups to overthrow precarious regimes and being gratefully thanked by the populace with a state pension and lodgings for the rest of my natural life either.
Quote from: LMNO on November 07, 2006, 04:13:25 PM
Quote from: SillyCybin on November 07, 2006, 04:08:34 PM
I'm still involved in currency to that extent but that's a lifestyle choice. I'm more than capable of hunting, clothing and housing myself without having to resort to capitalism.
O RLY?
SRSLY?
LMNO
-Here we go again...
Is that so hard to believe?
Quote from: Cain on November 07, 2006, 04:13:58 PM
So long as my basic needs are looked after, I'm pretty sorted. Broadband access, a second drive for music, enough shelf space for books and being able to eat and sleep are pretty much all my needs. It would be nice to have a 5 bedroom house and two cars, but I'm not going to work myself to a heart attack in pursuit of that.
That said, I'm not adverse to creating revolutionary groups to overthrow precarious regimes and being gratefully thanked by the populace with a state pension and lodgings for the rest of my natural life either.
Good Man - That's what I'd describe as wealthy.
in the sense that without "resorting to capitalism" you would be devoid of running water, electricity, and technology; that you would have to grow and hunt your own food, or be able to provide some sort of desirable service to be bartered; and that you woul dnot have access to medical services... then yes, it is that hard to believe.
Have fun spending the rest of your life on "Survivor", minus the TV cameras.
Actually, we have the NHS over here. And I've never been asked for ID or proof of paying taxes, ever.
NHS = a product of capitalism.
Or is this a parallel of a vegan who wears leather?
Troof, point made.
Quote from: LMNO on November 07, 2006, 04:22:03 PM
in the sense that without "resorting to capitalism" you would be devoid of running water, electricity, and technology; that you would have to grow and hunt your own food, or be able to provide some sort of desirable service to be bartered; and that you woul dnot have access to medical services... then yes, it is that hard to believe.
Have fun spending the rest of your life on "Survivor", minus the TV cameras.
But aint all these things you mentioned constructs of the machine or the con? Wasn't life better before all this crap happened? I holiday on remote islands, there is running water - it runs down the side of hills. It's how you choose your campsites. Hunting and gathering is a lot more fun than a trip to the supermarket. Sure yea - I'm a tourist, a bubblegummer, I can go back to my comfy 3 bed semi and medical plan if it gets to rough. But I also know I can survive without them. And I know for a week or two every year that I prefer to. And that thought comforts me. Being dependant on all this shit is disturbing.
Use of tools and developing more efficient technology is, to me, not the CoN or the Machine,Ñ¢.
Lack of recognition of your perceptual limitations, and the manipulation of human behavior for selfish gain, to me, are aspects of the CoN and the Machine,Ñ¢.
Personally, I don't want to spend my entire mental and physical energies devoted purely to phsical survival. I feel my brain is too big to foolishly waste it like that.
LMNO
-knows that growing and hunting my own food, making and reparing clothes and shelter, and staying warm and disease-free would literally use every waking hour.
Quote from: LMNO on November 07, 2006, 05:11:46 PM
Use of tools and developing more efficient technology is, to me, not the CoN or the Machine,Ñ¢.
Lack of recognition of your perceptual limitations, and the manipulation of human behavior for selfish gain, to me, are aspects of the CoN and the Machine,Ñ¢.
Personally, I don't want to spend my entire mental and physical energies devoted purely to phsical survival. I feel my brain is too big to foolishly waste it like that.
LMNO
-knows that growing and hunting my own food, making and reparing clothes and shelter, and staying warm and disease-free would literally use every waking hour.
I think its a fine line. I mean you pretty much waste most of your life doing some dull, repetitive job in order to get clothing, food and shelter anyway. The way I see it you're just trading one method for another. Bottom line - you gotta work to survive, regardless. The thing that bothers me about modern life (A thing - not everything - I'm a fan honestly) is the propensity for laziness to be rewarded with life. ie useless slobs who would last 10 mins in a back-to-basics scenario, end up breeding a whole line of sluglike spawn.
Struggle creates strength, lack of struggle - weakness. I do feel that we're shitting in our own genepool but I don't tend to dwell to much on that thought since I'm sure there's nazi symapthies waiting to be discovered down that particular hole. I really would recommend you try back-to-basics, even once for a week or two. You might be surprised how fulfilling it is eating something you caught or sleeping in something you built. It's a real zen trip and it makes you realise just how boring going to work everyday and doing some meaningless, repetitive bollix really is. And it doesn't use every waking hour, it uses significantly less than the 8 you're used to, once you get the hang of it. I'd rather spend 3 hours chasing a deer with a crossbow than 8 hours chasing a line with a pen.
I won't bother dealing with the fact that there seems to be a hidden technophobic/Luddite aspect to your argument.
Instead:
3 hours to chase & kill deer.
2 hours to hang, bleed, skin, gut, and carve deer meat.
1 hour to get back to camp.
1 hour to collect wood and build a fire.
1 hour to roast meat for evening meal (oops, no veggies).
2 hours to prep leftover meat for smoking.
5 hours to smoke remaining meat.
Entire process ~ 15 hours.
Now, make time for bathing, reparing the lean-to, gathering vegetables, and making/reparing clothes.
Please keep in mind that the average day is 10 hours, and other than candles, there is no artificial light source.
Quote from: LMNO on November 07, 2006, 05:48:37 PM
I won't bother dealing with the fact that there seems to be a hidden technophobic/Luddite aspect to your argument.
Instead:
3 hours to chase & kill deer.
2 hours to hang, bleed, skin, gut, and carve deer meat.
1 hour to get back to camp.
1 hour to collect wood and build a fire.
1 hour to roast meat for evening meal (oops, no veggies).
2 hours to prep leftover meat for smoking.
5 hours to smoke remaining meat.
Entire process ~ 15 hours.
Now, make time for bathing, reparing the lean-to, gathering vegetables, and making/reparing clothes.
Please keep in mind that the average day is 10 hours, and other than candles, there is no artificial light source.
You forget - 1 deer will feed 4 people for more than a week. That's less than 4 hours work, per person, per week. There's more to it than that but all in all we tend to spend about 2-4 hours per day involved in tasks I would describe as work. The rest of the time is leisure. 1 large meat kill will do for a fortnight the rest is made up of fish and rabbits which basically want to be eaten, very little hunting involved.
The technophile/luddite issue really isn't me, like I say I do this as a tourist. I like playing video games and watching dvd's as much as the next guy. It's the best of both worlds as far as I'm concerned.
But you mentioned doing this alone, didn't you? Seperation of duties involved in such things implies a much more complex social and economic base than an individual would create. And as duties are further divided and more jobs are dependent on maintaining the social order or regulating parts of it, the more complex the economic base becomes and the larger the social unit becomes.
Marx ftw. Communism may have been a crock of shit, but he analyzed Capitalism better than Adam Smith (who incidentally is now on £20 notes, wtf?)
He also has said that he does it for a "vacation", which identifies it as a bourgeois hobby rather than a way of life. I'd like to see you live that way for five years, and then let me know how liberating it is.
Cf: "Common People" by Pulp.
Quote from: LMNO on November 07, 2006, 07:31:31 PM
He also has said that he does it for a "vacation", which identifies it as a bourgeois hobby rather than a way of life. I'd like to see you live that way for five years, and then let me know how liberating it is.
Cf: "Common People" by Pulp.
Be liberating in the sense that I'd prolly still be alive after 5 years. My whole existence is a bougeois hobby. I never denied it. Seems somehow this gives you the right to look down your nose at me. Must be nice.
I'm not looking down my nose so much as I don't believe you.
There's a difference.
Quote from: LMNO on November 07, 2006, 07:39:35 PM
I'm not looking down my nose so much as I don't believe you.
There's a difference.
Fair enough. I'll cease to make extravagant claims about hunting and camping holidays. It aint really making much of a point anyway. Truth is I go on package holidays to hotels in places like spain and italy and stuff. Just like everyone else. Happy now?
Not really, you capitalist pig.
LMNO
-spends summers in Montana, hearding cattle on horseback and firing shotguns.
Quote from: LMNO on November 07, 2006, 07:51:35 PM
Not really, you capitalist pig.
LMNO
-spends summers in Montana, hearding cattle on horseback and firing shotguns.
Touche :-D
Quote from: SillyCybin on November 07, 2006, 04:08:34 PM
I'm still involved in currency to that extent but that's a lifestyle choice. I'm more than capable of hunting, clothing and housing myself without having to resort to capitalism.
No, you aren't.
Just saying.
Is any one person capable of indefinite self-sufficiency without a socety to provide?
Tomas Paine ftw.
Quote from: Felix Mackay on November 11, 2006, 06:40:11 PM
Is any one person capable of indefinite self-sufficiency without a socety to provide?
Tomas Paine ftw.
Even Thoreau couldn't do it, and that was nearly 200 years ago.
I spent 10 years in the infantry, living outside about 45% of that time (LI sucks), and I couldn't do it.
But every dumbass who has seen an episode of Grizzly Adams thinks they're the next fucking Davy Crockett.
:lol:
Truthery.  I'd need at least a ten-person group to be really content with my lifestyle.
Edit: Make it twenty.
Quote from: Felix Mackay on November 11, 2006, 07:35:31 PM
Truthery.  I'd need at least a ten-person group to be really content with my lifestyle.
Edit: Make it twenty THOUSAND plus.
Fixed.
TGRR,
Knows that medical supplies, for example, don't make themselves.
/Agree
I'd vote twenty as suvivable, though. I prefer my hundred of thousands, thanks.
Quote from: Felix Mackay on November 11, 2006, 07:52:31 PM
/Agree
I'd vote twenty as suvivable, though.  I prefer my hundred of thousands, thanks.
Historically speaking, 20 is FAR too low to be a viable community.
Then what is your proposed minimum?
I say around 30,000. To keep it at a modern level. You're going to have to have basic supplies of energy, food, water etc, a viable economy, medical supplies, sanitation, doctors, transport, a judiciary, civil authority, defense, builders, etc etc. Thats why the development curve for states is phenomenal when compared with cities or princedoms, feudal territories etc Athens, for example could not have developed in the way the USA did, as fast as the USA, even if the threat of invasion had been removed totally. It was too small, had too little in resources, was dependent on other cities for vital resources.
Quote from: The Good Reverend Roger on November 12, 2006, 04:57:11 AM
Quote from: Felix Mackay on November 11, 2006, 07:52:31 PM
/Agree
I'd vote twenty as suvivable, though.  I prefer my hundred of thousands, thanks.
Historically speaking, 20 is FAR too low to be a viable community.
You could do it, if you had the prehistoric knowlege of the world around you and culture of how to survive in it; but thats been all but lost for this part of the world, so scratch that.
This is why suicide is the answer.
Suicide is for quitters.
And suicide bombers.
For anyone whose survival at the top of the food chain in an anarchical situation is not highly assured, I would think.
Aah, you're no fun.
I swore I'd never play Monopoly again after realizing I've never won a game of it in my life.
Neither have I, but it's still worth my time frustrating the people who focus more on winning than enjoying themselves.
Monopoly ruins relationships!
There is no possible way to enjoy Monopoly.
Quote from: Rabid Badger of God on November 13, 2006, 11:26:05 PM
There is no possible way to enjoy Monopoly.
Only if you follow the rules.
Thurnez, welcome to teh jungle.
I love Monopoly.
and I sometimes emerge victorious. It's a beautiful feeling.
I prefer the likes of scrabble, upwords, and ninja burger.
Quote from: SillyCybin on November 07, 2006, 01:58:52 PMQuote from: East Coast Hustle on November 07, 2006, 01:04:07 PMWho amog us is willing to turn down that kind of wealth in favor of continuing to advance our agenda in the face of increasingly stiff resistance to our attempts at "spreading the message"?
Me for one and prolly a whole bunch of others too.
KLF kind of did that right? and .. well .. i dunno where it went wrong actually.
also, once you keep your leg stiff and do not accept the "offer you shoulnd't refuse", i'm pretty certain the CoN will start with the next level of threat-management. of course, at first we seem free and we seem to have these possibilities but nobody's taking them, but
that only holds as long as we play nice puppies. as soon as we refuse to take the puppy-treat in return for playing the game, the CoN will stop playing "nice".
first step will probably be all kinds of legal action (see for example the lawsuits against filesharing companies, REAL worldwide free filesharing would be an unimaginable free media market, real hard to "buy out", so it needs to be killed in the budding).
next step will be slander, it will be dubbed as "conspiracy nuts", "tinfoil hats", "extremist", "activist" or just plain "terrorist" (or some other negative connotations, depending on the medium/subject/topic/realisation). then, it will be perceived "dangerous", "illegal underground", "unhealthy", associated with all kinds of bad things.
if your underground network/media thing will get past these stages, you have accomplished quite a bit. you got a solid grounding, and this is probably the moment you can and should get out of view, unless you want to be a martyr, because then the CoN will really get dangerous. fortunately at this point, if you played it right, the movement should continue regardless of that.
disclaimer: i'm just thinking this up from the top of my head. cain seems to be actually studying this kind of stuff, so compared to that, i might be deadwrong in my guessings :)
Character assassination, followed by legal action, followed by intimidation, followed by infiltration of instigators, followed by more legal action, followed by explicit threats, followed by attempts at killing you.
Thats the normal way. Incidentally, if you ever get a phone call saying "we can no longer guarantee your safety", don't worry. It means MI5 are going to botch an assassination on you.
Thats why I think the Hagbard Celine point about saying no and taking the consequences is important. You are given alot of chances to back off, because the fear of the threat is a powerful weapon. People who don't care, don't back off. And that makes them dangerous.
cain: character assassination = calling a group "nutcases" etc?
also,
Quote from: LMNO on November 07, 2006, 05:11:46 PMknows that growing and hunting my own food, making and reparing clothes and shelter, and staying warm and disease-free would literally use every waking hour.
hmm from what i read about people who actually tried this (http://www.f4.ca/text/possumliving.htm)* they were working 20 hours a week or something, depending on the season of course.
as far as i know, the number one problem about this way of living is that - especially if everybody did it - there might be no medicin/healthcare.
for the rest, there's not nearly as much problems as you envision. we've come a long way since the historical farmers. even without electricity, there's a whole lot of (seemingly simple) technology that would make life a lot easier.
also, i would see getting decent healthcare in such a society more as a
challenge than a straight-out impossibility. i will ask a friend of mine about this, she recently came back from a few months working as a doctor in Malabi (africa). (most of the medical difficulties according to her story were not because of lack of equipment or technology, but of care. a different lifestyle. she witnessed a baby birth probably getting permanent braindamage because nobody had prepared sterilized equipment for cleaning out the nostrils resulting in two minutes of oxygen deprivation.)
* (the people in this book didn't quite actually completely did *without* capitalism or the rest of society for that matter)
Yes. You may not have that idiom, but it basically means to call into doubt that person's credibility. In Christian dominated parts of America, for example, showing that they had an affair, or sex before marriage may work. In the UK, show that they belonged to some nutcase group etc etc Its essentially the ad hominem attack.
ok. it would makes sense that that would happen before the legal action. since it takes less resources.
although, probably all the phases would partly happen synchronously, i guess.
Quote from: triple zero on November 14, 2006, 11:57:05 AM
next step will be slander, it will be dubbed as "conspiracy nuts", "tinfoil hats", "extremist", "activist" or just plain "terrorist" (or some other negative connotations, depending on the medium/subject/topic/realisation). then, it will be perceived "dangerous", "illegal underground", "unhealthy", associated with all kinds of bad things.
if your underground network/media thing will get past these stages, you have accomplished quite a bit.
I should think that's mission accomplished as far as I'm concerned. When you get to the stage where government inc are picking up your advertising tab and placing you in the mainstream media then you're on the map. It's how punk worked back in the 70's they were the boogeymen and the anti punk propaganda came thick and fast. Result - a whole bunch of rebellious kids found an alternative to society, as advertised by society.
If we go about this with our eyes open we stand to exploit this factor a lot more deliberately than it generally is, in that we can actually help fuel the outrage, even engineer some of it by making wild accusations and reinforcing them to a point. 'Discordians eat babies!'
Which reminds me:
Dear Sir or Madam
I am sorry to have emailed you "out of the blue" as it were with this, but it was felt that the matter was serious enough to resort to mass emailing. I was wondering if you knew anything of a quite frankly insane and dangerous religious cult calling themselves the Discordians? After having studied them and their "religion" for a long time, we feel the true nature of the threat should be made known, to all decent citizens, good people and those who believe in the rule of law.
Their cult is based around an ancient Greek goddess, a minor member of that pantheon called Eris. If you look to Homer and his Iliad, he describes Eris as a goddess of strife among men, a war goddess who reveled in the blood of mankind, the sister of the war god Ares and she unleashed demons of all sorts to plague mankind.
The other sources are barely better:
"To one place Eris (Strife incarnate) drew them all, the fearful Battle-queen, beheld of none, but cloaked in clouds blood-raining: on she stalked swelling the mighty roar of battle, now rushed through Troy's squadrons, through Akhaia's now; Phobos (Panic) and Deimos (Fear) still waited on her steps to make their father's [Ares'] sister glorious. From small to huge that Fury's stature grew; her arms of adamant were blood-besprent, the deadly lance she brandished reached the sky. Earth quaked beneath her feet: dread blasts of fire flamed from her mouth: her voice pealed thunder-like kindling strong men. Swift closed the fronts of fight drawn by a dread Power to the mighty work." - Quintus Smyrnaeus, Fall of Troy 10.51
"Not long since that first of goddesses [Dike goddess of Justice] had no throne even among men, but noisy riots and raging ruin of destroying Ares (War) and Eris (Strife), giver of pain, nurse of tearful wars, consumed the unhappy race of the creatures of a day." - Oppian, Halieutica 2.654
"But abhorred Eris (Strife) bare painful Ponos (Toil), and Lethe (Forgetfulness), and Limos (Starvation), and the Algea (Pains), full of weeping, the Hysminai (Fightings) and the Makhai (Battles), the Phonoi (Murders) and the Androktasiai (Man-slaughters), the Neikea (Quarrels), the Pseudo-Logoi (Lies), the Amphilogiai (Disputes), and Dysnomia (Lawlessness) and Ate (Ruin), who share one another's natures, and Horkos (Oath) who does more damage than any other to earthly men, when anyone, of his knowledge, swears to a false oath." - Hesiod, Theogony 226
There were never many Discordians, or Erisians as they were known, back in the old times of Ancient Greece. They were mad, glorifying chaos, disorder and strife wherever they went. One would expect such a cult to die out after Christianity took hold in Greece and Europe. Not so, sadly.
In the late 1950s, two American men resurrected the cult. Writing a book called the Principia Discordia (which, among other things, contains incitments to plant marijuana and disobey moral and legal laws, advocacy of pornography and blasphemy. They preach the destruction of all governments, religions and other "symbols of order". Covering it in an apparently nonesensical sytem of Dadaist nonsense, they taught their cultists to believe in nothing whatsoever other than chaos and strife, much in the way the Hashishim of Syria were indoctrinated. These aren't apparent to the casual observer, but Discordianism has layers of initiation to it. Links were even made by an infamous Discordian writer between their group and the way the Arabic Hashishim worked, his arrogance clearly showing.
As ludicrous as this may sound, it should be taken seriously. A piece of evidence of how well connected and willing they are to go to achieve their aims is in order, I imagine. One of the two founders of the modern cult, a wretch by the name of Kerry Thornely, was definitively involved in the Kennedy assassination plot. He knew Oswald intimately from serving with him in the Marines, and he involvement is a matter of record from DA Jim Garrison's files.
They prefer infiltration to overt action, as this shows. Rumour has it they are prominent in many leftist and anarchist groups and are often recruited from there, as well as some militias. Once indoctrinated, they often return to those groups, shaping their actions in order to further Discordian ends.
We hope that you do whatever you can to warn others of this threat. You don;t have to believe me, please, research for yourself and you will find out everything I have said is true. I can only hope that by warning the public at large and gaining their help we can somehow stem these madmen. Please forward this email to everyone on your contact list, to help stem the problem before it gets any worse.
Yours sincerely
The Coalition Against Eris and Discordianism
That needs to be spammed to fundamentalist groups.
:lulz: One step ahead of yuo. But I need more lists and contact info, so I can basically do it as one big spam. BCCing them of course.
How about a coalition against discordianism website? I'll see about authoring some testimonials from parents who's kids have attempted suicide or eaten the pet dog and stuff.
Could be done.  Probably should be one of those free sites I mentioned before, for that extra "crazy Christian cultists" effect.
However, I may rewrite it to look like a more sane Cult Awareness style release.
[copy editor]
QuoteIn the late 1950s, two American men resurrected the cult. Writing a book called the Principia Discordia (which, among other things, contains incitments to plant marijuana and disobey moral and legal laws, advocacy of pornography and blasphemy. They preach the destruction of all governments, religions and other "symbols of order". Covering it in an apparently nonesensical sytem of Dadaist nonsense, they taught their cultists to believe in nothing whatsoever other than chaos and strife, much in the way the Hashishim of Syria were indoctrinated. These aren't apparent to the casual observer, but Discordianism has layers of initiation to it. Links were even made by an infamous Discordian writer between their group and the way the Arabic Hashishim worked, his arrogance clearly showing.
Missing a close parenthesis.
[/copy editor]
Thanks. I was going to put it through a more thorough check anyway, as I think some of the grammar is dodgy in places.
I'll give it another once-over, as well.