Antero Ali on Chapel Perilous

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I agree that I never really understood Chapel Perilous, only thought I did. It's actually rather ordinary, and the language used to describe it makes it out to be extraordinary.

I think there is nothing ordinary about the quest for the self

it is heroic and transformative in the most profound sense


Intense internal experiences always sound mundane when expressed in language. For example, I have no ability to accurately describe Taoism. If I wrote a smart book about, it would still be a distraction. I think matters of spirituality are better handled through metaphor and symbolism, they lose something when they're described in sterile material terms.

It's interesting to me that we have this vague term "chapel perilous", and we can't agree on a definition, therefore we have to come back to the question - how can you can find your individual free will if the self is a confused collective of networked agents?

Yes, yes; you are a unique and special snowflake, just like everyone else.

One of the things I like about Taoism as I understand it is that it doesn't rely on occultism; it points out that there is value in the mundane. Not only that, but that there is profundity in simpleness. Part of that is breaking complex concepts down to simple sentences.

If you cannot summarize something, do you really understand it?

One of the things I am starting to suspect from this conversation is that nobody here actually understands the Chapel Perilous, and that in fact it may be a rather incomplete and poorly thought-out navelgazing concept. It appears to be an attempt at making complex a simple and not-uncommon experience for the purposes of making people feel like magical unicorns.

Can anyone seriously believe that the quest for self is a rarity? That only a few brave souls seek self-knowledge? I beg to differ with you on that one. I think that almost everyone seeks self-knowledge at some point in their lives. The only difference is that most people, once they believe they have found it, stop looking unless something shakes them up real badly, like a death or a divorce or a close call. This is why almost everyone who gets a divorce has a crisis and often completely changes their lifestyle.

Attempting to reinvent it as something rare and unique that only a precious few experience seems self-indulgent. Sort of the same line of malarkey as "Native Americans used to treat mental illness as a sacred gift".

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I agree that I never really understood Chapel Perilous, only thought I did. It's actually rather ordinary, and the language used to describe it makes it out to be extraordinary.

I think there is nothing ordinary about the quest for the self

it is heroic and transformative in the most profound sense


Intense internal experiences always sound mundane when expressed in language. For example, I have no ability to accurately describe Taoism. If I wrote a smart book about, it would still be a distraction. I think matters of spirituality are better handled through metaphor and symbolism, they lose something when they're described in sterile material terms.

It's interesting to me that we have this vague term "chapel perilous", and we can't agree on a definition, therefore we have to come back to the question - how can you can find your individual free will if the self is a confused collective of networked agents?

Yes, yes; you are a unique and special snowflake, just like everyone else.

One of the things I like about Taoism as I understand it is that it doesn't rely on occultism; it points out that there is value in the mundane. Not only that, but that there is profundity in simpleness. Part of that is breaking complex concepts down to simple sentences.

If you cannot summarize something, do you really understand it?

One of the things I am starting to suspect from this conversation is that nobody here actually understands the Chapel Perilous, and that in fact it may be a rather incomplete and poorly thought-out navelgazing concept. It appears to be an attempt at making complex a simple and not-uncommon experience for the purposes of making people feel like magical unicorns.

Can anyone seriously believe that the quest for self is a rarity? That only a few brave souls seek self-knowledge? I beg to differ with you on that one. I think that almost everyone seeks self-knowledge at some point in their lives. The only difference is that most people, once they believe they have found it, stop looking unless something shakes them up real badly, like a death or a divorce or a close call. This is why almost everyone who gets a divorce has a crisis and often completely changes their lifestyle.

Attempting to reinvent it as something rare and unique that only a precious few experience seems self-indulgent. Sort of the same line of malarkey as "Native Americans used to treat mental illness as a sacred gift".

http://www.principiadiscordia.com/forum/index.php/topic,31297.15/msg,1134963.html

[Don Coyote]

I am still confused by all of this.

I don't think I'm confused anymore.

I think the idea is to fill your head with bullshit to counter the bullshit society put there.

But what that really means is, your head now has twice as much bullshit in it.

It's the same kind of stuff that got into the occult, only to because I wanted to understand the underlying principles, which lead me to understanding that it is all mostly....wait, I think I've been here before.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Sounds more like "Chapel Nervous Breakdown".

This made me lol. 

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I am still confused by all of this.

I don't think I'm confused anymore.

I think the idea is to fill your head with bullshit to counter the bullshit society put there.

But what that really means is, your head now has twice as much bullshit in it.

It's the same kind of stuff that got into the occult, only to because I wanted to understand the underlying principles, which lead me to understanding that it is all mostly....wait, I think I've been here before.

It is my belief - let me stress that, my belief - that you don't see reality by cluttering your brain up with mumbo jumbo.  You see reality by looking at the world around you and saying "What if I'm completely wrong about what this shit means?  What else could it mean?", and then running scenarios in your head, discarding the ones that don't fit the available data.

The fun part about that is that little details of connected events that don't seem to mean anything can mean a great deal, indeed.  Alan Moore wrote about that, called it "Anomaly Theory".  So if you're paying attention, and really making an effort to look at shit the way it really is, rather than the way Coyote would like it to be, you find some really neat, sometimes funny or horrible, details that connect similar events.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I'm gonna have to elaborate on that a bit.

Spiders, etc, has some sort of meaning for people here, as many participated in the design of the mental model.  Same with BIP, same with The Machine™.  The HGA and all that other shit was someone else's mental model, someone in fact known for being quite the hoaxer.  Good on him, but I make a distinction here.

I mean, it's no different than if we used the Subgenius term "The Conspiracy" rather than "The Machine™".  It's borrowing from sources that have already had time to gel into dogma.

And if we tell a story to illustrate a point, to get people to think, that's a little different than performing hokey rituals to get OURSELVES to think.  I don't need rituals, that's what I have other Discordians for.

This.

By dressing up commonplace experiences in new terms and refusing to use the pre-existing terms, we're basically pretending that we have identified a new human experience, which is indulging in self-deception.

It's fine to use the Chapel Perilous metaphor; it's the insistence on pretending it (as a common human experience) hasn't already been described, named, and defined in other words that is pure straight-up occultist wankery.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

I am still confused by all of this.

I don't think I'm confused anymore.

I think the idea is to fill your head with bullshit to counter the bullshit society put there.

But what that really means is, your head now has twice as much bullshit in it.

It's the same kind of stuff that got into the occult, only to because I wanted to understand the underlying principles, which lead me to understanding that it is all mostly....wait, I think I've been here before.

Yes.

[Cramulus]

And if we tell a story to illustrate a point, to get people to think, that's a little different than performing hokey rituals to get OURSELVES to think.  I don't need rituals, that's what I have other Discordians for.

eh, different strokes for different folks

Once upon a time, I was a young christian flirting with atheism
then I was a young atheist flirting with paganism
then I was a bad taoist who met Eris on the Internet, then later in a dream...

at each of those stages, I needed different language to make sense of the experiences I was having.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

eh, different strokes for different folks

Well, yeah.  This isn't communism, after all.   

But I personally prefer the regular way of saying shit.

1.  To err is to be a primate.

2.  To ADMIT error is to be a human.

3.  To admit error in the back of a squadcar, with weird lumps all over you and no pance is to be TGRR.

[Don Coyote]

And if we tell a story to illustrate a point, to get people to think, that's a little different than performing hokey rituals to get OURSELVES to think.  I don't need rituals, that's what I have other Discordians for.

eh, different strokes for different folks

Once upon a time, I was a young christian flirting with atheism
then I was a young atheist flirting with paganism
then I was a bad taoist who met Eris on the Internet, then later in a dream...

at each of those stages, I needed different language to make sense of the experiences I was having.

I think that's cool, but it does make having discussions on certain topics hard, if not impossible, due (artificial) language barriers.
I think a good parallel would holist's thread on homeopathy.

By using new, or different, terminology, you get people discussing the map instead of the territory.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

And if we tell a story to illustrate a point, to get people to think, that's a little different than performing hokey rituals to get OURSELVES to think.  I don't need rituals, that's what I have other Discordians for.

eh, different strokes for different folks

Once upon a time, I was a young christian flirting with atheism
then I was a young atheist flirting with paganism
then I was a bad taoist who met Eris on the Internet, then later in a dream...

at each of those stages, I needed different language to make sense of the experiences I was having.

I think that's cool, but it does make having discussions on certain topics hard, if not impossible, due (artificial) language barriers.
I think a good parallel would holist's thread on homeopathy.

By using new, or different, terminology, you get people discussing the map instead of the territory.

And you start thinking of the map as the territory.

I knew we were in for a raft of shit the moment Rat mentioned the HGA.

[LMNO]

I THINK

Chapel Perilous and similar expressions/metaphors started out from the experience of WEIRD SHIT™ going on, so much so that you start to wonder if everything you've ever believed is completely and utterly WRONG.

Emotionally, you're lost, and terrified -- there is no foundation, you don't know what you know, or how you know it. 

WEIRD SHIT™ you can't explain keeps happening.  You can't help starting to make connections which are batshit crazy, but you can't think of any other way to explain it.

Reality as you perceive it has turned upside down.  You have the wrong map, and you realize that the map is just that, a MAP, and it isn't actually reality. 

And then the WERID SHIT™ stops for a while, and you either have a better understanding of how your brain works, or you suffer long-lasting emotional trauma.

I THINK

We have better language for what's happening than we used to, so we don't have to use vague metaphors anymore -- we can use more precise metaphors.  But that's not to say that Chapel Perilous was always bullshit.  It was a start, and it represented something that has happened with enough regularity that someone decided to try to label it.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

I THINK

Chapel Perilous and similar expressions/metaphors started out from the experience of WEIRD SHIT™ going on, so much so that you start to wonder if everything you've ever believed is completely and utterly WRONG.

Emotionally, you're lost, and terrified -- there is no foundation, you don't know what you know, or how you know it. 

WEIRD SHIT™ you can't explain keeps happening.  You can't help starting to make connections which are batshit crazy, but you can't think of any other way to explain it.

Reality as you perceive it has turned upside down.  You have the wrong map, and you realize that the map is just that, a MAP, and it isn't actually reality. 

And then the WERID SHIT™ stops for a while, and you either have a better understanding of how your brain works, or you suffer long-lasting emotional trauma.

I THINK

We have better language for what's happening than we used to, so we don't have to use vague metaphors anymore -- we can use more precise metaphors.  But that's not to say that Chapel Perilous was always bullshit.  It was a start, and it represented something that has happened with enough regularity that someone decided to try to label it.

What's wrong with "identity crisis"?

I mean, I realize that I'm totally wrong about shit all the fucking time.  Sometimes it's pretty major shit, usually it's fairly mundane.

Even when it's horrendous...Like, say, when you visit a doll factory, and you learn what the REAL world is REALLY like, that the universe is NOT as advertized, then there's no need for mumbo jumbo.  Just a big injection of something that makes you not care until the shock passes, and then maybe a decade or two to process it a bit at a time.

It really seems to me that in fact dressing it up in mumbo jumbo would be HARMFUL, because when your worldview is completely blown to pieces, the last thing you want floating around in your head is some weird pseudo-religious crap.  No, you need coffee and cigarettes and poor behavior.

Anyway, that's one of the only two times in my life that my worldview was seriously altered, so it's the only experience I have on the matter.

[Cramulus]

By dressing up commonplace experiences in new terms and refusing to use the pre-existing terms, we're basically pretending that we have identified a new human experience, which is indulging in self-deception.

It's fine to use the Chapel Perilous metaphor; it's the insistence on pretending it (as a common human experience) hasn't already been described, named, and defined in other words that is pure straight-up occultist wankery.

I'm missing how using an established metaphor is a claim that nobody's had that experience before.

I mean, when the BIP stuff was being hashed out, I don't think anybody thought they were original thoughts, they were just a way of describing this concept to a Discordian audience. Maybe that was wankery of us for not using somebody else's established terms, or sufficiently tipping our hat to Phillip K Dick, but I honestly don't think it matters.

I think that's cool, but it does make having discussions on certain topics hard, if not impossible, due (artificial) language barriers.
I think a good parallel would holist's thread on homeopathy.

By using new, or different, terminology, you get people discussing the map instead of the territory.

There's no accurate "map" of internal or spiritual experiences, no "correct" way to describe how to discover the self, so we have to use different metaphors. Every religion is an effort towards this end.

If we are discussing something material, (like whether or not homeopathy works) it's really useful for everybody to be on the same linguistic page. I feel that spiritual matters shouldn't be held up to the same standard. There's no objective "right" and "wrong" when you're deciding which myth is most meaningful to you.

[AFK]

I think it's like any other metaphor or phraseology or symbology that has come and gone around here.  Some of it clicks with some people, some of it clicks with a lot of people, some of it clicks with very few people. 

Which is little different from the world writ large. 

I think it is interesting at probing around this existence using different tools every now and again.  Sometimes it can open up new possibilities that perhaps still may have come around eventually, but sooner rather than later is nice.