Messages

Which is better, the new world order, or total human extinction?
I'm ready to flip a coin.

No such dichotomy. Occasionally we change the wallpaper, but it's still the same shitty house...

"against stupidity the very Gods fight in vain." 

I hate starting off a piece of writing. I can never come up with pithy first sentences. Or final sentences, for that matter...
But I can do middles. Here's a middle I'm writing for a friend's comic, which will be compiled from various shorts by a number of people. There are illustrations, but they're still in pencil because I'm too lazy to ink them just yet.

Please suggest changes, if any occur to ya.

Our parents and teachers taught us what they themselves knew. They inform us still, bound as we are by invisible, unbreakable ties to their worldviews, to the symbols and lessons they instilled in us during the summers when we were young enough to believe them infallible, and accept without question that along with incidental instruction in history or science came the true curriculum: punctuality, obedience, and the acceptance of tedium. These we learned and internalised a little better on each dark, October morning when our mothers tied around each of our necks a cheerfully-striped halter, and sent us along with the other lambs to graze. How proud we were when we learned to tie it ourselves!

How afraid we became of being singled out. School uniforms tweaked to give a sense of individuality became uniformly so – forbidden trainers or haircuts spread, became universal, we set ourselves apart, together - forged new forms of conformity to replace the old.


In adulthood, we replaced the striped polyester tie to which we objected with a silk version we picked out ourselves and, so attired, make ourselves indistinguishable from those with whom we avoid eye contact on the hot and rattling cattle-trucks which rush in breathless, pointless circles in the bowels of the cities where we live; a visual signifier of our oneness with those we profess to despise, those we unselfconsciously imagine we are in a position to pity, for they, like us wear that silken noose with which we hang ourselves a little each morning.
The Underground spews us, sweaty and crumpled, onto the streets from which we aim to arrive, punctually, at the Office in which our obedience is rewarded and tedium endured - after all, it is no worse than anywhere else. We imagine the alternatives – unemployment, homelessness, bankruptcy; the only thing worse than existing within society is being spat from its mouth.


We talk about politics over our sandwiches at lunch, and each expound upon our particular delusion, imagining Systems where there is only a stew of self-interest. We imagine that there is a Shepherd, that He has a purpose, and loves and cares for us, or if we are so inclined, we believe instead that there are only farmers to whom we are merely assets. Rarely do we entertain the thought that that the responsibility is ours.


We imagine there is Progress.
We make planned purchases.
We wonder if we are happy.

"Some is truth, some is crap. Both mean the same thing, and are as subjective as the world around you. that is to say the thing we call reality."

I rather like this bit.

Has anyone had a go at "automatic writing" as described? Crowley reportedly had some weird successes with the technique - all I've ever come up with is gibberish.

Yeah, it's not really valid to call Discordianism a religion, is it - the word implies adherence to prescribed ideals and patterns of thought, and it doesn't really apply. I guess my drunken, three-A.M. "point" was that the downside of lacking definate common concpets is very loose group cohesion. I supposed that it might be a good idea to develop a sort of conceptual "introductory pack" for people who are interested. That, and I wanted to write "crack-maddened squirrels." 

Thanks for the thread link - interesting reading.

POW! I have no idea what you're talkin' 'bout but I award you the Horsey of Trying Really Hard. 

You mean, we now have a hugely increased number of channels through which we continue to fail to communicate... 

When I was growing up, my opinions were definite, unshakable - I knew them to be The Truth with a certainty that only experience undermines, but I found as time wore on - as many here have doubtless found - that all truths were conditional, and that it is almost impossible to defend any particular position on an issue that one actually understands. A degree of acquired empathy, and the ability to see more than one point of view completely buggered my ability to construct and defend Truths.

I was left, eventually, with no particular truths to believe in, just an ever-changing present, an experiential existence which initially lacked, and then did not require them - it was enough simply to exist and inquire, and no longer necessary to accept as entire and perfect the partial or conditional truths that even the most liberal or informed belief systems sold. Snake-oil memes and naked emperors - I saw them as sets of blinkers through which to see the world. I wondered if anyone else saw them similarly, and I wanted to read what they had written.

I eventually found myself amongst a collection of intellectual bus-masturbators as compulsively and publicly fervent as I am myself, and indeed this may be the reason for and the sum of any connection to them. I'd like to think that wasn't true, but I also recognise that the problem with a philosophy that favours an individualist, anarchist approach is that it is very difficult to address the issue of which central convictions or objectives bind the group together - it seems to be that the direction and method of approach are more important than the conclusions reached, and whilst this is entirely valid and quite remarkably wise, it puts us at a measurable disadvantage.

The many happy months I spent trolling on fundie Christian forums convinced me that it is not the strength of a group's arguments which make it formidable but the strength of each member's tie to a common set of values - the Discordian socio-belief structure resembles a knife-fight between twenty-six vaguely defined factions of crack-maddened squirrels, and whilst this may be the product of both the philosophy and the sort of people who are attracted to it, and whilst I'd be the first to point out the total subjectivity of Truth and What A Load Of Old Bollocks Organised Religion Is, we are nevertheless put at a second disadvantage.

Discordianism and its tenets seem to be discussed comparatively rarely. Unlike the Big Monotheisms, which are largely theological legislature, allowing nothing better for its adherents to do than discuss their varying interpretations of the same, Discordianism has no rules to speak of, and this is A Good Thing, but neither does it have any mutually agreed certainties, and discussion around the issue is relatively uncommon. It's difficult to "pin the tail on the fog."

Perhaps because there are few agreed-upon, monolithic Laws and Principles, although this is in many ways quite admirable, we are left in a position inferior to that enjoyed by those who follow the most moronic, the most infantile creeds - in any forum we each could take on a legion of Seven-day Literalists, dismantle their arguments with a casual flick of logic, make a brutal observation about the original poster's dubious family history and photoshop an amusing image to commemorate the moment, but it would do no real good - their agreed-upon set of common beliefs are too strong to sustain much damage from reason, however expertly delivered. The group-identity carries its own remedy and defence which is part of that same belief-set - in the case of Christianity, the bible-passage which states that the believer can expect ridicule wherever he attempts to spread the Word is a superb psychological bunker.

Stupid? Undeniably. But also quite formidable - not something to be emulated, but that level of cohesiveness in the cause of spreading iconoclastic, eye-opening philosophy would be quite something.

I don't mean to suggest that Discordians should carve a manifesto into a bunch of stone tablets, just that it would be interesting, useful and fun to actually discuss it more, rather than just sharpen our wits against each others' furniture, and debate points raised rather than instinctively flame the poster - even if he's talking bollocks - with a view to fostering the right conditions for a more concerted and considered mass-flaming of asshats, fluffy pagans, blinkered religious lunatics, grey-faced conservatives, and other wankers.

Anyhoo... Please to flame me now thx.   

Hands up if you thought Kaienne was a girl?
I award him the horsie of slightly sinister gender ambiguity.

I reckon the Watchmen film is one of those apocryphal, intractable projects which everyone likes but which is almost impossible to make - it'd have to be a four-hour marathon to do justice to the story. Mind you, the same criticism was leveled at LOTR, which I rather liked...
But who'd play Rorschach?

V is unquestionably one of the greatest inventions of fiction - a true anarchist, iconoclast and remorseless bastard. Must also confess that Dostoevsky bored the very arse off me.
I got my copy of V signed by Alan Moore... he lives three streets away from me. *Ahem*
Name-drop 

They're monkeys who've inexplicably learned to dress themselves in grubby sportswear. Hell, I once actually saw one throwing faeces.

I know that the law holds that all men are equal, which is a fine and noble delusion to hold, but some form of social cleansing - alright, alright, genocide - would make my street a nicer place to live...   

The problem I see here is that it continues the idealogy of the last 2000 years that we (as a species) are seperate from nature. We aren't. If nature has had its time, then so have we. Not even close to being a part of the "airy fairy" wicca, tree-hugger shit ... simply that any increase in the opposition of order equals an increase in disorder. Is current global warming an example of this? Human's have tried to control nature and now nature is cranking up the chaos.

Some would say the problem is one innate to consciousness - the human ability to build "fences" around elements of the All, using words to define actions or states and thereby form concepts,  is what allows us to manipulate our environment. We see "objects" rather than functions of chaos, and divide the primeval forest of the universe into tame, useful fields. This ensures our short-term survival but also means that only the most exceptional individuals are capable of comprehending the "big picture," the unfiltered, non-conceptualised "All" and we are surprised when the balance of the system re-asserts itself.
Our many cruelties could be the result of our cheerful willingness to impose divisions where none exist, to make the distinction between "Us" and "Them" as boneheadedly as we made the distinction between ourselves and the world of which we are a part...

Perhaps it,Äôs not so mechanistic, depending more on prior conditioning. Someone who was not desperately needy, confused, lonely and afraid would be an unlikely victim of the Christian Fundamentalist meme - more like seeds than viruses, needing exactly the right kind of conditions to take root, an organic system rather than a rigid, electronic one might be an interesting model.

Besides, the idea doesn,Äôt generally instil itself in each person in exactly the same way even if, for example, a group of people were all exposed to the same sermon ,Äì each would understand and receive it tailored slightly to his own needs, depending on his requirements. Ideas evolve as they spread, they diversify and specialise in the same manner as creatures evolve. Like an ordinary river fish which has evolutionary descendants in subterranean lakes, in isolated rock-pools, and in the sea.

Well, the enemy to fight is the evil powers that be.  Whether they be personal or impersonal. 

The Enlightenment thinkers believed that the greatest enemy was unreason, but they never took their propositions to their logical conclusion, because they were - for the most part - theists, having a literal belief in an Angry Sky-Daddy.

I've got some sympathy with the idea that the "evil powers," if they truly exist, are the vestiges of superstitious thought that still cloud judgement, fill people with worthless guilt, afflict the imagination and hamper creativity. People should free their own minds before attempting to free others, particularly since attempts to free those who do not believe themselves to be slaves, or are content in their slavery to their own preconceptions and neuroses, will not free anyone but only worsen the situation...

The government is composed of shortsighted, lying arseholes, that much is true, but the best you can do is set a fucking brilliant example.

It would be so much fun to break out the pitchforks and flaming torches though...