Messages

1

Or Kill Me / Re: The left and the right

« on: April 20, 2018, 09:30:41 pm »

I'm reminded of that South Park episode where Cartman wakes up in the distant future

and all religions have been eradicated

and the world is now dominated by warring tribes of atheists



world is full of these misguided ghandis, like
"if we changed this ONE THING about the world, there would be peace and harmony and nobody would get hurt anymore"

"To get to that Utopia, to stop people from forming the wrong values, we have to rip them away from this thing they find meaningful."

"We have to build this new world hegemony consisting of this one kick-ass value system I came up with."


I've heard this song before, you know?

2

Or Kill Me / Re: The left and the right

« on: April 20, 2018, 09:15:01 pm »

Why would people who have abandoned "traditional abrahamic values" (whatever that means) spontaneously develop better ones?

What would keep this void of values and identity and tradition from becoming nasty, brutish, and rapey?

3

Or Kill Me / Re: The left and the right

« on: April 20, 2018, 09:05:38 pm »

Assaulting and drugging people and forcing people into involuntary servitude would still be frowned upon and illegal. Rapists are human garbage, but are ultimately the same type of human garbage as the rulers of the antebellum south, rather than a seperate category; The primary evil lies not in the fact that it's a sex thing but in the fact that people are being assaulted and forced to do things against their will.

That's just the kind of outdated social norm defense that is gonna get you sent to the the reprogramming camp

There's no room in the Golden Sphere of Possibility for your BS 21st century values

get with the program--we're trying to uphold a monoculture here

That's an appeal to consequences

so's nuclear war, and yet....

4

Or Kill Me / Re: The left and the right

« on: April 20, 2018, 01:33:53 pm »

I can see that you recognize the absurdity of the day.
I appreciate you laying it all out. It's romantic.

and you're invoking something higher than left and higher than right, so as to rise above that absurdity and spot some Deseret in the distance where we might all be free. It's worth considering!


Permit me, as a companion on this road, to reflect---

For nobody to believe in any higher power.

For what it's worth

the idea that you're part of something bigger is helpful, spiritually speaking

The idea that you're accountable to something other than yourself
that there is some ideal other than your belly and your pleasure

a lot of the world needs that

I was just listening to a James Comey interview in which he was talking about ethical leadership. He pointed out that if you look at history, the most ethical leaders have some standard, some ideal outside of themselves which keeps them honest. The worst leaders sees themselves as the highest ideal, it's all about the boss.

This goes back to the days of kings - for all the evil that the church did in medieval times, (and there was a LOT of it) one positive takeaway is that they bound the monarch to an ideal. They presented the idea of an ideal and goodly monarch, and while no king in history measured up to that ideal, it probably kept a lot of them from becoming complete fuck cannons.

For the old traditional and abrahamic values to disappear without anything taking their place.

God, what a nihilistic mess that would be

You throw out the good and the bad, and then how will people behave?

when left to their own devices, people naturally prefer to serve the lower god:
the ego, the belly
the primate urges
the lizard urges
the worm urges

For the end of sexual norms once and for all. For all cultural norms in the entire world to be eliminated and replaced with nothing.

in this new world, nobody will judge you for being a brony

or a rapist

For all distinctions between races, cultures, and ethnicities to be cast down and forgotten. For all gender expression to be eliminated due to all gender specificity of anything (clothing, bathrooms, sports teams, etc.) being eliminated. For the institution of marriage to be eliminated. For all cultures and peoples of the world to be merged into a single superculture.

you don't want norms
but you want to eliminate differences

you want individuality
but don't like how a lot of people have chosen to individuate

you don't want diveristy or difference
you prefer to imagine a harmonious monoculture





I think your vision is in self conflict.

You can't have a unifying culture with no norms. What is there to unify around?
You can't have maximum individuality while eliminating individual racial, sexuality, culture.

(culture, by the way, usually grows from the bottom up... somebody starts using slang, the people around them adopt it, fast forward, you've got a new language... people naturally separate and individuate, culture is a fractal and when you lean in real close, there is always a rough edge containing infinite complexity and diversity)


It reminds me of the libertarians that want freedom from government authority
and therefore support corporate tyranny

the bathwater and the baby fly into the wild blue yonder

5

Featured / Re: I've been gone awhile but now I am back, I guess. I come bearing gifts however!

« on: April 18, 2018, 01:16:53 pm »

  have you presented this? How did it go over?

6

Bring and Brag / Re: Who the fuck does Discordia Merchandising think they are?!?!

« on: April 12, 2018, 07:27:59 pm »

yo that's a pretty badass pin

7

Or Kill Me / Re: The left and the right

« on: April 10, 2018, 03:19:49 pm »

Inspired by that I came up with a handy chart and posted it as a response

I guess the important thing is that you found a way to feel superior to everybody without exposing your own obviously better values to potential scrutiny.

8

Apple Talk / Law & Order: Animal Unit

« on: April 09, 2018, 02:48:04 pm »

In the future, dolphins, elephants, and several primates with advanced cognitive capabilities will be classified as "non-human persons". This legal definition entitles them to rights above and beyond what most animals have, ideally to protect them against environmental destruction and inhumane treatment.

It also opens up those entities to lawsuits. Legal teams will be appointed to represent the interests of these species. This has the result of exposing environmentally destructive groups to lawsuits from dolphins and elephants.

This legal definition of some animals as "non-human persons" also creates a slippery slope. Which specific behaviors or biological features make one entitled to rights? After a long and complicated debate, the Supreme Court ruled that bee colonies do use "symbols" in their inter-bee communication dances, which constitutes language, which entitles them to personhood and therefore legal representation. Now bees have lawyers too. Bee lawyers take action against companies that produce bee-harming pesticides and agricultural practices harmful to bees. Among other things.

While some lawyers represent elephants and parrots (and other animals) pro-bono, this also ends up being a lucrative way to practice law. In order to fund these legal escapades, accounts are set up to receive donations from the public, resulting in some animals, (mainly "cute" ones) amassing large amounts of resources. PR campaigns promise that funds donated to animals will be spent on desirable causes. "Cats" and "Dogs", consequently, become powerful and highly litigious entities.

Due to climate change and other forms of environmental upset, animal territory and migration zones have shifted. This results in tension between wildlife populations - which are also pursued in court. One notable case involves a legal dispute between dolphins and hammerhead sharks - but things don't get really weird until animal-lawyers start forming publicly traded corporations. Eventually, cats and dogs, as collective legal entities, now control a significant portion of the economy.

9

Techmology and Scientism / Re: Discordian Transhumanism?

« on: April 05, 2018, 08:33:16 pm »

Please tell us about your burgeoning¹ movement







^{1. turtle-heading}

10

Bring and Brag / Re: Fly on the Wall of Death

« on: April 02, 2018, 02:31:06 pm »

I dig

11

Or Kill Me / Re: Two Steps Away From a War Zone

« on: March 26, 2018, 08:42:13 pm »

Thank you for that, QGP, for all of that -- from, everyone

12

Think for Yourself, Schmuck! / Re: Meaning

« on: March 22, 2018, 03:38:27 pm »

Solid.

Still thinking about it.

To provide a little more context about my question -- and at the risk of coming off as one of "those people"... years ago, I had a mystical experience. I personally felt something ineffable, something I have trouble describing verbally. I've been trying to understand what happened to me for a long time now. I've found lots of evidence that other people have had this experience. The closest language I have for it is Atman. 

Without getting too deep into it (becuase I will sound even more like a crazy person) I experienced something which I believe is inside of all of us. It is ancient, and it has an intention. The nature of "meaning" is part of my inquiry into what this thing is, what it does inside of us. Within this ... certain something ... there is meaning, there is purpose. Maybe it's not universal, like some fundamental property of the universe, but I do think it's a quintessential part of organic life on earth.

I know how it sounds, like--"yeah guys I totally met god and he told me his plan, trust me. Now help me justify that this was real and not some imaginary jagoff experience". I'm not trying to sell anybody on this or convert anybody. It's just that my experience doesn't entirely jive with my philosophical frame, and I'm experienceing some cognitive dissonance around that. And I'm still trying to understand.


no replies needed, just wanted to clarify that I'm still in flavor country

13

Techmology and Scientism / Re: Are Filter Bubbles a real thing?

« on: March 22, 2018, 11:39:12 am »

Not a position I'd considered! -- I mean, filter bubbles exist, that's not debatable, I think the question is to what degree they actually influence us?

I'd like to read some of those papers.

14

Think for Yourself, Schmuck! / Re: Meaning

« on: March 21, 2018, 03:48:32 pm »

Since we're going down the definition route, I hope we can start at a common place of agreement, Merriam Webster.  The first definition is conveying a 'thing' using language.  This appears to be the Objective definition, in that it is conveying the physical rules in which a thing exists in this universe.  The second definition is something that is intended; this can be taken to mean the Subjective definition, as it implies the thing has a purpose.

^{(I'm not going to go down the path of defining "purpose" in the same manner, save that its definition is subject to the same dichotomy, and so on)}

So Objectively, the feet behave in this physical manner; they evolved to behave in this manner because of these biological principles; those principles exist because of these macro physical laws; those exist because of quantum laws (I skipped a few steps there - you get the picture).  Subjectively, you can speak about the feet needing a destination, or that since shoes have a purpose to fit feet, is there a similar purpose for feet?  We're going to need to specifically announce which definition of purpose we're going to use, or things get confused.

That's a good slice of the analytical knife (cleaving 'purpose' into two parts, the physical laws surrounding the object and its its utility in service to intention)
 
I wonder if that cleft still works when we're talking about things with no human agency anywhere near them?

like, the 'purpose of shoes' is clearly bound to subjective motivations in the human world, but does it make sense to talk about the purpose of Saturn's rings? The purpose of the sun's radiation? The spine has a purpose, no? is it the same kind of 'subjective intention' as 'what shoes are for'?

Is it a big leap to view these cosmic principles and forces in the same light as 'intention'?

This is leaping from
"when you drop an object, it falls"
to
"the universe intends dropped objects to fall"


When we say "it falls", it's a passive-voice occlusion (ie "mistakes were made) -- something's making it fall, right?


Maybe I'm anthropomorphizing too much--but in an incorrect way?



If an asteroid collides with a lifeless planet in deep space, does that event have any purpose or meaning?




(thank you for indulging my semantic experiments today)

15

Think for Yourself, Schmuck! / Re: Meaning

« on: March 21, 2018, 01:46:07 pm »

I'm going to crawl out on a limb
and postulate (to test the strength of this branch):

that there are "natural laws" of the universe which describe general trends

and that because these trends are visible in the larger cosmos
and also isomorphically,
within the microcosmos of self,

they could be part of this 'meaning'.



What I'm talking about is a little more abstract than F=ma.
To give an example-----

As Above
So Below

Which is saying

Structural similarities exist in all parts of nature. There is an isomorphic correspondence between big and small.
The individual exists within the collective, and the collective exists within the individual.

As I said, it's abstract, it's not testable by STEM sciences like F=ma, and it's easily conflated with aphorisms like "early to bed, early to rise". It requires a subjective call about what's above and what's below.

But look---
the way veins and arteries branch into capillaries
the way leaves have similar patterns on them
the way roads branch
the way rivers branch

there seems to be an underlying structure for certain kinds of distribution
and I don't think that's just a function of my pattern-finding mind



Maybe I could call these things "Fractal Truths". Because every time they are expressed, they come out slightly differently, they are colored by circumstance.