So according to the Book of Uterus (http://www.principiadiscordia.com/book/51.php), there are five seasons:
Chaos, Discord, Confusion, Bureaucracy, and Aftermath.
(http://www.principiadiscordia.com/book/images/ImpositionofOrder.gif)
And these stand for stages of Order and Disorder. We can look at any society through this model and chart the rise of Order and it's eventual shift into Disorder. As I understand it:
Chaos is the beginning - it's a stage where nothing's even started yet. It's just an idea. "In the beginning there was nothing." I think of America's Chaos stage as colonial times. It wasn't America yet - just a loose idea of America. Edith Hamilton (in her retelling of Greek Mythology) says "First there was Chaos, the vast immeasurable abyss, outrageous as a sea, dark, wasteful, wild."
Then there was Discord. And some stuff happened
Confusion comes next - it's the stage where the disorder in the system must be squashed out, and as a result, Order is imposed on high.
Bureaucracy is stage four. In numerology, doesn't Four have the connotation of Perfection? It's a stainless steel machine which - though it may not work perfectly - exists to create a sense of an ordered society.
Aftermath is what comes next. It's the decay of Bureaucracy that can lead to its replacement with something better. Aftermath is the beginning of the next Chaos. It represents a shift from the values which required / justified / reified Bureaucracy.
So here we are in Western Civilization, in the year 2008. What Season do you think we're in?
(http://www.principiadiscordia.com/book/images/HungMung.gif)
---For my part
I think there's a camp that believes that we're in Confusion, and that things are gonna get worse before they get better.
And I think there's a camp that believes we're in Bureaucracy, and that to escape from this stage we've got to learn not to ADJUST to all this mess, but to replace it with something more comfortable.
And certainly arguments could be made for the other seasons as well.
(http://www.principiadiscordia.com/book/images/ChineseLaundromat.gif)
Me? I think Bureaucracy started on September 11th, 2001.
Early stage Aftermath, just to be a jerk.
If we're in bureaucracy right now, when was confusion?
Also, I'd say late bureacracy - I'd think that bureacracy started quite a hile before 9/11 though.
I agree with Idem, I think we are in the very late stages of Bureacracy . . which I consider having started around the turn of the Twentieth Century, give or take a decade or so.
But I think you mean ages, not season, no? Or do I have that confused.
My impression was that the ages and the seasons use the same name, but ages are of indefinite length, whereas the seasons are around three of our months? Am I wrong?
I think that "seasons" is just another word for "stages" in this context.
But its kind of a comparison, in that there are 4 "seasons" and they have a tendency to repeat over and over again, in a loop.
Aftermath leads back to Chaos, supposedly, which leads back to aftermath, repeating.
I feel that there can be multiple ages happening simultaneously, depending on how far you pull back.
Chaos: 1776 - 1789 (Revolution/First President)
Discord: 1789 - 1865 (First president/End of Civil War)
Confusion:1865 - 1933 (End of Free Association of States - New Deal)
Bureaucracy: 1933-? (New Deal through the Corporatization of America)
Aftermath: Dunno, probably not yet.
This
Quote from: Cain on March 10, 2008, 03:29:26 PM
Early stage Aftermath, just to be a jerk.
And this
Quote from: LMNO on March 10, 2008, 04:39:43 PM
I feel that there can be multiple ages happening simultaneously, depending on how far you pull back.
Are both spot on.
I'm going to say that we are in Bureaucracy right now. The next presidency is going to be Aftermath, but only if McCain loses.
Quote from: LMNO on March 10, 2008, 04:39:43 PM
I feel that there can be multiple ages happening simultaneously, depending on how far you pull back.
You put this far better than I would have.
I tend to believe we're currently in late Bureaucracy, slowly seeing the first signs of coming Aftermath. The hippies, Discordianism, yippies, and punk were all first blossoms of Aftermath, in a way. But if you "zoom in" on the current stage of the cycle, the rise of these seeds of Aftermath was Discord, triggering Confusion (consider the general response of "normal people" to the 60's and 70's), and in turn Bureaucracy-within-Bureaucracy.
In a different way, the post-Disco era into the early eighties might have been a short Aftermath, with the 80's and 90's seeing a new cycle through advances in technology which have changed the face of Western Civilization. This somehow fits in with the sentiment that Bureaucracy started on September 11, 2001AD (which sounds right).
In the end, though, this is just the law of fives all over. If you look for this pattern on any scale, it will become evident.
I also feel that the whole seasons thing is just a more complex way to say that every action has an opposite and equal reaction. But the "seasons" metaphor is a pleasant one.
Quote from: st.verbatim on March 10, 2008, 05:35:37 PMIn the end, though, this is just the law of fives all over. If you look for this pattern on any scale, it will become evident.
There is much troof in this.
I doubt there's a truly discernable barrier in between "seasons". WHere we're at now has qualities of Bureacracy and aftermath, maybe chaos. If it was the last day of fall, and you didnt know it, could you really tell if it was earlywinter/late fall?
Quote from: Idem on March 10, 2008, 07:38:12 PM
I doubt there's a truly discernable barrier in between "seasons". WHere we're at now has qualities of Bureacracy and aftermath, maybe chaos. If it was the last day of fall, and you didnt know it, could you really tell if it was earlywinter/late fall?
Quite a good point... and (at least here in Ohio) we may end up with a snowstorm in April.
I think the seasonal metaphor is restrictive. I think that when events are patterned like this, it is only recognizable on "white paper" analysis.
Quote from: Dr. Felix Mackay on March 10, 2008, 07:50:02 PM
I think the seasonal metaphor is restrictive. I think that when events are patterned like this, it is only recognizable on "white paper" analysis.
I on the other hand think the seasonal model works really well... as long as you recognize it as a model and not Truth. We can model the US overall as I did a few threads ago. We can model 20th century social America in its own seasons... That doesn't mean the former is wrong... just that they are modeling different data.
I think it depends on which system you look at. If you look at the US, probably late bueracracy with a couple different cycles. The one with the length of the country mentioned earlier, but another can be seen with chaos and discord following the aftermath of the 50s bueracracy, confusion as nixon stamped out what he saw as the undesirables, and now a long period of bueracracy again (which always, sadly, seems to be the longest season). I do think aftermath is near, if only because the voters (some of them) seem to finally be looking for something different.
If you look at the internet, I think we're in the first cycle, at the beginning of confusion as corporations and governments and suburban housewifes try to tame it (though there is a small tiny peice of hope that maybe they'll fail this time), with the old usenet days being chaos, and the 90s and the dot com bubble being discord.
Quote from: Requiem on March 10, 2008, 07:59:18 PM
I think it depends on which system you look at. If you look at the US, probably late bueracracy with a couple different cycles. The one with the length of the country mentioned earlier, but another can be seen with chaos and discord following the aftermath of the 50s bueracracy, confusion as nixon stamped out what he saw as the undesirables, and now a long period of bueracracy again (which always, sadly, seems to be the longest season). I do think aftermath is near, if only because the voters (some of them) seem to finally be looking for something different.
If you look at the internet, I think we're in the first cycle, at the beginning of confusion as corporations and governments and suburban housewifes try to tame it (though there is a small tiny peice of hope that maybe they'll fail this time), with the old usenet days being chaos, and the 90s and the dot com bubble being discord.
I hadn't considered any of this, and I agree.
Quote from: Requiem on March 10, 2008, 07:59:18 PM
If you look at the internet, I think we're in the first cycle, at the beginning of confusion as corporations and governments and suburban housewifes try to tame it (though there is a small tiny peice of hope that maybe they'll fail this time), with the old usenet days being chaos, and the 90s and the dot com bubble being discord.
Perhaps, though I would say that we're probably much closer to Bureaucracy. When I first started on the net around 88-89, Chaos was ending and Discord began in 1991 when Tim Berners-Lee began pushing the idea of Hypertext Markup and directly viewable content. This started a huge discordant mess between the people that wanted low bandwidth access to lots of data, and other people that wanted access to pretty data that took more bandwidth. The AOL/Compuserve/Local ISP years after 93 and through 96-97 fit with the concept of confusion as companies were trying to figure out if they should have a web presence, if it would be of any value and people were trying to decipher why they wanted the Internet in their house.
With the advent and growing popularity of Broadband, access to the Internet is quickly fading into the hands of a few major corporations, post-911 the government is now actively involved in Internet snooping and things like debates over Net Neutrality threaten to turn the whole thing in to Pay to Play. Thus I would argue that we find the internet in a Bureaucratic slump right now.
Quote from: Ratatosk on March 10, 2008, 08:38:53 PM
With the advent and growing popularity of Broadband, access to the Internet is quickly fading into the hands of a few major corporations, post-911 the government is now actively involved in Internet snooping and things like debates over Net Neutrality threaten to turn the whole thing in to Pay to Play. Thus I would argue that we find the internet in a Bureaucratic slump right now.
Bureaucraticy is stagnant, or close to it, there's too much change, too much uncertainty on where it'll be in two years for it to be a bureaucracy. The state of confusion, now, is them creating it. (defaulting to definition in OP)
I think I agree. The Internet already smells of Bureaucracy, but we haven't hit that point of stagnation yet.
I think it really depends on 1) where you're looking and 2) how closely you're looking.
Take the internet example a little further. With regards to file sharing we're definitely somewhere in between Confusion and Bureaucracy. The blagosphere and Webcomics are in Discord. Wikipedia is solidly into Bureaucracy, although there are enough intelligent people on there for it not to stagnate completely - yet.
As far as the US, I don't think we're anywhere close to Aftermath. Sure, people are grumbling, but they always have been. Our government has been very good at telling everyone that all this security is an inconvenience that just has to be dealt with, and that all the due process and search warrants flying out the window only apply to the Bad Guys. Are there subversives? Yeah, always have been and always will be. But they're confused, and most of them are actually Sheep who just found a more interesting sheperd to follow. The people are too good at pointing to stuff as the work of 'lone nutters' and 'evil.' It's going to to get a LOT worse before there is a critical mass of people willing risk everything for change. Voting for the Change Candidate isn't going to cut it - unless Obama really is as awesome as he sounds. Hopeful, but not counting on it; I've been hearing too many whispers of a Chicago Politician.
Quote from: Requiem on March 10, 2008, 09:16:57 PM
Quote from: Ratatosk on March 10, 2008, 08:38:53 PM
With the advent and growing popularity of Broadband, access to the Internet is quickly fading into the hands of a few major corporations, post-911 the government is now actively involved in Internet snooping and things like debates over Net Neutrality threaten to turn the whole thing in to Pay to Play. Thus I would argue that we find the internet in a Bureaucratic slump right now.
Bureaucraticy is stagnant, or close to it, there's too much change, too much uncertainty on where it'll be in two years for it to be a bureaucracy. The state of confusion, now, is them creating it. (defaulting to definition in OP)
I think it may depend on one's perspective then... we may be on the cusp of change and to those of us that have been on since 88 and before, the beuracratic imposition is simply more obvious... hrmmm. Things like Webcomics and Wikipedia (imo) don't tell us what state the Internet is in, they tell us what state those particular projects/communities are in. When I speak of the Internet falling to bureaucracy, I'm referencing the Internet, as opposed to the various projects connected to the net. The Internet as a system has stagnated. IP V4 still sticks around while v6 languishes in College labs. Decisions about what tools to use no longer are based on "What tool is best?" but rather "What tool is the Standard?" On top of that, more and more of the decisions being made about the Net are no longer happening among engineers or even the companies that developed it, but by fiat, by judicial decree and by legislation from the feds.
From the perspective of Shiny New toys, the net hasn't stagnated yet (though that argument would also hold for television and the rise of Reality TV... ick!), but from the perspective of the Net as a system... I think Bureaucracy has at least made a pretty decent showing.
Could it be this metaphor is so fractal as to be nearly useless? It's like you could point at any random thing and, if you try, place it in any of the five seasons somehow.
Quote from: st.verbatim on March 10, 2008, 09:59:24 PM
Could it be this metaphor is so fractal as to be nearly useless? It's like you could point at any random thing and, if you try, place it in any of the five seasons somehow.
Yes, just like any other model... which is why its true in some sense, false in some sense and meaningless in some sense. The metaphor appears useful in a limited way. Just like the BiP, the LAWOFFIVES, the 23 Enigma or pretty much any other model humans put together.
And that assertion is itself an abstraction that is true in some sense, false in some sense, and meaningless in some sense (etc). But my point is, could the seasons metaphor be so fractal that its /only/ real use is symbolic -- like when calling out that "times of Aftermath be upon us"?
Quote from: st.verbatim on March 10, 2008, 09:28:31 PM
I think I agree. The Internet already smells of Bureaucracy, but we haven't hit that point of stagnation yet.
It's just not so, I'm afraid. To one who is adept with computers, the internet is Chaos or even Aftermath. To your dear old grandmum on AOL, it probably is a lot more Bureaucracy-scented.
(continuing the post above:)
That is to say, is this model really any good for understand things? Superficially it explains a great deal of things, but once you start to apply it to actual events you end up with so many fractal manifestations of the metaphor that you end up left with the abstraction you started with.
Or maybe, that's precisely what makes this metaphor useful as a model.
@Felix:
How is the Internet in Aftermath?
And AOL etc are at most just islands of Bureaucracy, themselves still changing to adapt to the flow of rapid change around them.
Quote from: Professor Cramulus on March 10, 2008, 02:45:43 PM
(http://www.principiadiscordia.com/book/images/ImpositionofOrder.gif)
holy crap this looks so much like my own handwriting, it's scary.
Also, i just want to point out the symbology of the word "Aftermath", in the Illuminatus Trilogy, the German translations of the five seasons are given, and "Aftermath" was translated as "Grummet" (or Grummit, i forgot).
Since I know German reasonably well and I had never heard of this word, i looked it up in an old German dictionary.
Turns out it is an old agrarian/farming term, that indeed translates to "Aftermath", but not in the sense that "Aftermath" is generally interpreted in current day english, as in "the aftermath of [some big disaster]", or "that which comes after something big".
the meaning of the word Grummet is related to this, but has the specific farming-related meaning of "second reaping" or "second harvest", i suppose relating to some sort of crop that you can plant twice a year, or perhaps even just harvest twice, i dunno.
so it is like the second, (smaller ?), benefit you get from planting your seeds.
and of course the aftermath happens somewhere in the end of the year, so yes it marks the beginning of a new cycle, but you still need to get through the winter.
Whoa, thanks 000, I was wondering about that. I like the symbolism.
Quote from: Dr. Felix Mackay on March 10, 2008, 10:29:12 PM
Quote from: st.verbatim on March 10, 2008, 09:28:31 PM
I think I agree. The Internet already smells of Bureaucracy, but we haven't hit that point of stagnation yet.
It's just not so, I'm afraid. To one who is adept with computers, the internet is Chaos or even Aftermath. To your dear old grandmum on AOL, it probably is a lot more Bureaucracy-scented.
I was thinking more in terms of the Internet
Providers, the ones who are doing their best to eliminate Net Neutrality, and to impose myriad Orders and Rules on bandwidth. Which would serve to turn the internet into a sort of Download Bureaucracy.
Quote from: st.verbatim on March 10, 2008, 10:32:33 PM
(continuing the post above:)
That is to say, is this model really any good for understand things? Superficially it explains a great deal of things, but once you start to apply it to actual events you end up with so many fractal manifestations of the metaphor that you end up left with the abstraction you started with.
Or maybe, that's precisely what makes this metaphor useful as a model.
Well, I think that's precisely why the model can be useful. Indeed, I would argue that the fractal manifestations tend to appear when we don't remain focused. My first post in this thread modeled the US, from a political perspective. Someone else might come up with different dates based on the social perspective. With the Internet, I modeled it above from a technology/control perspective, whereas others seems to have modeled based on the social perspective. No model tells you the truth, at best it provides you with a useful way of ordering data, which (if you're really lucky) might give you a wee bit of predictive power.
Some models are good at very broad views, some are good at very myopic views and some (very few) can model both at the same time. The "Seasons" model seems useful when modeling a System (or a subsystem), but not particularly well if you're trying to model the system/subsystems all together.