Take 2

[Fuzzymike]

Take 2.
Alright I'm gonna try this again, hopefully I will not step on any toes this time but if I do oh well.

First of all my appologies to those of you who got the wrong impression of me. Second, thank you to those of you who were kind enough to clue me in on a few things.
I have read several of the past posts and think I have 1/2 a clue about how things work here (although that may be a generous assessment).


Now on with the show!

I am new to the forum scene so I ask that you forgive me if I ask stupid questions (like what is an alt?) I really am not stupid just ignorant of the terms. I have recently begun my quest for answers to several questions that have been bothering me. I am 30 yrs old so have a pretty decent amount of life experience to draw on but it is not enough at his time in my life. I have only recently begun reading the books that many of you have moved way beyond so I will try to keep refferences to a minimum unless I need a specific clarification or a different interpretation than what I can come up with on my own. So without further ado, the questions that have been bugging the shit out of me for a while now...


1)Why do people make bad decisions that they know are bad?
Ex: traffic here sux ass, eveybody is going 2 mph and everyone is pissed cause they cant get to the lanes they want, all becuase people have to ride 6 inches off the bumper of the guy in front of him... That represents the bad decision... I have found that if you just chill and back off the guy in front of you so the other people can change lanes without slamming on their brakes or cutting off some other schmoe things move a lot smoother. Surely I am not the only one that sees this yet it feels like I am the only one that does it.

2)In this age of 'enlightenment' why do people still hold to ideals and beliefs that serve no useful purpose?
Ex: I can't think of a specific example at this time.

3)Who said it was ok to claim to follow a specific belief and then act in the exact opposite of what that belief represents?
Ex: Christians, claim to follow the teaching of christ, but I don't recall jesus ever saying start a crusade to convert the moors, or hunt down and burn all the witches, or brow beat everyone that doesn't follow him. In fact i think the bulk of his message was forgive and be kind to others. Why can't christians get that?

4)What the fuck is a fnord? I have seen it referenced and warned against but not once have I seen it outlined as to what it is. How can one be wary of something if they don't know what it is?

5)What does being a discordian mean? I have looked at it in the same light as the hippies of the 60's and thier 'freak outs', throwing a wrench into the status quo, stirring up the mix of society and seeing what kind of shit settles out, introducing something absurd into an otherwise 'normal' situation, and generally doing the unexpected or doing the opposite of the expected.

I hope some of you choose to share your insight with me about these issues. until then have a nice day or fuck off. your choice.

[Cramulus]

Welcome back Fuzzymike. I applaud your resilience and balls.

1)Why do people make bad decisions that they know are bad?

Because we're predictable monkey jerks-offs.

2)In this age of 'enlightenment' why do people still hold to ideals and beliefs that serve no useful purpose?

Because in the contemporary Western world, religion is a competition to see who can have the most cracked out batshit beliefs.

we're winning, by the way.

3)Who said it was ok to claim to follow a specific belief and then act in the exact opposite of what that belief represents?

The Wisdom Cube

4)What the fuck is a fnord? I have seen it referenced and warned against but not once have I seen it outlined as to what it is. How can one be wary of something if they don't know what it is?

It's an inside joke. If you don't get it, you're out! 

5)What does being a discordian mean?

to me it means being sexually attracted to robots.
I prefer robots which look like human females but, like, a VCR will do

[Payne]

I'm just going to "borrow" Crams quoting structure here. I'm a lazy bastard, want to make sumfin of it?

1)Why do people make bad decisions that they know are bad?

For the lulz. Or because they don't know any better

2)In this age of 'enlightenment' why do people still hold to ideals and beliefs that serve no useful purpose?

Why does your elderly female relative have very bad ornaments in the theme of cats/pig/dildos on her shelves? A lot of people like to decorate their philosophical landscape with recognisable, but ultimately meaningless symbols.

3)Who said it was ok to claim to follow a specific belief and then act in the exact opposite of what that belief represents?

Nobody actually said it, some big boys did it ran away!

4)What the fuck is a fnord? I have seen it referenced and warned against but not once have I seen it outlined as to what it is. How can one be wary of something if they don't know what it is?

A fnord is a dyslexic Norwegian landscap feature. OR you can continue reading the Illuminatus! Trilogy to find out RAW's take on it. 

5)What does being a discordian mean?

A discordian is the highest, noblest ideals of the individual, as seen in a fairground mirror. You know, the ones that make you seem fat, or tall or very very bendy.




P.S. Thanks cram, I'll give you something to badly MSpaint to legendaryness.

[hunter s.durden]

1. All humans are insane.
2. All humans are insane. Srsly. Even you.
3. People do not require permission to do what they want.
    You already knew that.
4. See They Live starring Rowdy Roddy Piper. Or read those RAW books.
5. Not a goddamned thing.

[Deepthroat Chopra]

1) I cannot rationally explain fnord irrational behaviour.

2) The ideals you speak of do hold a useful purpose. One of my favourite examples is Armageddon (anti-enlightenment). Belief in the return of a messiah who is fnord going to "wipe away the tears from our eyes' and take everyone to live happily fnord everafter in a New Jerusalem allow people to disengage with the horrors that can be encountered in the world, because everything's going to be alright in the end, and there's no fnord need to actually do anything to make things better.

3) That's the whole fnord basis of Christianity. In practice, you can do whatever the F you want, as long as you feel bad about it later. People make gods in their own image, and it doesn't matter what any book says.

4) There's no fnord such thing as a fnord. I haven't seen any Rowdy Roddy Piper films, so I can't recommend them. Illuminatus trilogy, Robert Anton Wilson.

5) It means bugger-all, but for me, it's a recognition that the fnord organised institutions of society are not a positive thing, and we should be shagging madly on their ceilings.

Thank you for this opportunity to answer questions as if I fnord know what I'm talking about.

[LMNO]

1.  Monkeys.
2.  Monkeys not knowing they are monkeys.
3.  Monkeys again.
4.  Placeholder for conspiracy.
5.  Trying really fucking hard not to be a monkey.

[AFK]

1)Why do people make bad decisions that they know are bad?

The same reason people play the lottery.  Thinking they are going to beat the odds somehow, because they are special.

2)In this age of 'enlightenment' why do people still hold to ideals and beliefs that serve no useful purpose?

Because they have not been enlightened to the uselessness of their ideals and beliefs. 

3)Who said it was ok to claim to follow a specific belief and then act in the exact opposite of what that belief represents?

Those who promote and preach the specific beliefs.  Preachers, TeeVee, Talking heads, Op-eds, Presidents, Senators, Representatives, Judges, tell me when to stop...

4)What the fuck is a fnord? I have seen it referenced and warned against but not once have I seen it outlined as to what it is. How can one be wary of something if they don't know what it is?

This is Discordians' version of #2.

5)What does being a discordian mean? I have looked at it in the same light as the hippies of the 60's and thier 'freak outs', throwing a wrench into the status quo, stirring up the mix of society and seeing what kind of shit settles out, introducing something absurd into an otherwise 'normal' situation, and generally doing the unexpected or doing the opposite of the expected.

It means a certain awareness, or trying to maintain a certain awareness of aspects of the world and universe that others knowingly or unknowingly shun.  It means taking seriousness humorously and humor seriously.  It means still being able to enjoy the joyous anarchy of Games and Fun like you did when you were a kid.  It means reading what I just wrote and saying, "Bullshit!"

[LMNO]

4)What the fuck is a fnord? I have seen it referenced and warned against but not once have I seen it outlined as to what it is. How can one be wary of something if they don't know what it is?

This is Discordians' version of #2.

[Fuzzymike]

4. See They Live starring Rowdy Roddy Piper. Or read those RAW books.

Are you reffering to signs and shit that say 'drink coke' till looked at through a special filter then they say 'obey, go back to sleep, etc'?
If so i think I get it. Psudo-subliminal control of the masses through distraction.

[Payne]

Technically, "Fnord" was a literary device conceived by RAW and RS in the Illuminatus! trilogy.

It was a set of words that you were conditioned not to even see since the earliest schooling you receive.

When reading something, anything, a fnord could be placed on the page and you would read it without remembering what it was, or even seeing it.

As it is only a literary device, most have lost any love for it long ago, and have moved on to more interesting memes.






Or so I believe.

[LMNO]

From Illuminatus!:

I saw the fnords the same day I first heard about the plastic martini. Let me be very clear and precise about this, since many of the people on this trip are deliberately and perversely obscure: I would not, could not, have seen the fnords if Hagbard Celine hadn't hypnotized me the night before, on the flying saucer.

"Very nice," I said. "But why did you bring me up here?"

"It's time for you to see the fnords," he replied. Then I woke up in bed and it was the next morning. I made breakfast in a pretty nasty mood, wondering if I'd seen the fnords, whatever the hell they were, in the hours he had blacked out, or if I would see them as soon as I went out in the street. I had some pretty gruesome ideas about them, I must admit. Creatures with three eyes and tentacles, survivors from Atlantis, who walked among us, invisible due to some form of mind shield, and did hideous work for the Illuminati. It was unnerving to contemplate, and I finally gave in to my fears and peeked out the window, thinking it might be better to see them from a distance first.

Nothing. Just ordinary sleepy people, heading for their buses and subways.

That calmed me a little, so I set out the toast and coffee and fetched in the New York Times from the hallway. I turned the radio to WBAI and caught some good Vivaldi, sat down, grabbed a piece of toast and started skimming the first page.

Then I saw the fnords.

The feature story involved another of the endless squabbles between Russia and the U.S. in the UN General Assembly, and after each direct quote from the Russian delegate I read a quite distinct "Fnord!" The second lead was about a debate in Congress on getting the troops out of Costa Rica; every argument presented by Senator Bacon was followed by another "Fnord!" At the bottom of the page was a Times depth-type study of the growing pollution problem and the increasing use of gas masks among New Yorkers; the most distressing chemical facts were interpolated with more "Fnords."

Suddenly I saw Hagbard's eyes burning into me and heard his voice: "Your heart will remain calm. Your adrenalin gland will remain calm. Calm, all-over calm. You will not panic. You will look at the fnord and see it. You will not evade it or black it out. You will stay calm and face it." And further back, way back: my first-grade teacher writing FNORD on the blackboard, while a wheel with a spiral design turned and turned on his desk, turned and turned, and his voice droned on,


IF YOU DON'T SEE THE FNORD IT CAN'T EAT YOU, DON'T
SEE THE FNORD, DON'T SEE THE FNORD . . .
I looked back at the paper and still saw the fnords.

This was one step beyond Pavlov, I realized. The first conditioned reflex was to experience the panic reaction (the activation syndrome, it's technically called) whenever encountering the word "fnord." The second conditioned reflex was to black out what happened, including the word itself, and just to feel a general low-grade emergency without knowing why. And the third step, of course, was to attribute this anxiety to the news stories, which were bad enough in themselves anyway.

Of course, the essence of control is fear. The fnords produced a whole population walking around in chronic low-grade emergency, tormented by ulcers, dizzy spells, nightmares, heart palpitations and all the other symptoms of too much adrenalin. All my left-wing arrogance and contempt for my countrymen melted, and I felt genuine pity. No wonder the poor bastards believe anything they're told, walk through pollution and overcrowding without complaining, watch their sons hauled off to endless wars and butchered, never protest, never fight back, never show much happiness or eroticism or curiosity or normal human emotion, live with perpetual tunnel vision, walk past a slum without seeing either the human misery it contains or the potential threat it poses to their security . . . Then I got a hunch, and turned quickly to the advertisements. It was as I expected: no fnords. That was part of the gimmick, too: only in consumption, endless consumption, could they escape the amorphous threat of the invisible fnords.

I kept thinking about it on my way to the office. If I pointed out a fnord to somebody who hadn't been de-conditioned, as Hagbard deconditioned me, what would he or she say? They'd probably read the word before or after it. "No this word," I'd say. And they would again read an adjacent word. But would their panic level rise as the threat came closer to consciousness? I preferred not to try the experiment; it might have ended with a psychotic fugue in the subject. The conditioning, after all, went back to grade school. No wonder we all hate those teachers so much: we have a dim, masked memory of what they've done to us in converting us into good and faithful servants for the Illuminati.

[Discord]

I really am not stupid

I am 30 yrs old so have a pretty decent amount of life experience to draw on

These two sentences make you an asshole.
Just sayin'

[Fuzzymike]

I really am not stupid

I am 30 yrs old so have a pretty decent amount of life experience to draw on

These two sentences make you an asshole.
Just sayin'

So be it

[Suu]

1)Why do people make bad decisions that they know are bad?

You can't have fun if you always make the right, good, honest choices. Life would be very fucking boring.

2)In this age of 'enlightenment' why do people still hold to ideals and beliefs that serve no useful purpose?

As an excuse.

3)Who said it was ok to claim to follow a specific belief and then act in the exact opposite of what that belief represents?

George W. Bush.

4)What the fuck is a fnord? I have seen it referenced and warned against but not once have I seen it outlined as to what it is. How can one be wary of something if they don't know what it is?

There is nothing more to see here, move along.

5)What does being a discordian mean?

That's easy, just break it apart:

Disco/Dia, or god. We're disco gods. Srsly. You should see Hunter and Cram bust some moves.

[LMNO]