From the Depths vol. 6 #1

[AFK]

As long as we rely on The System to fix The System, we are all going to systematically be worked further and further out of the equation.  Yeah I know, like we'll really notice a difference.

The pretenses are all around.  Democracy indeed.  It's so funny that it isn't funny.  But so many of our brothers and sisters laugh right along anyway.  This whole Democratic process has always been a game, but now it's so overly blatant, yet no one raises much of a fuss.  Well, not in any meaningful way.  The only thing that is missing is the instant, slow-motion replay.  But don't worry, it's coming. 

There's been a lot of talk about hope and change lately.  It's very, very inviting to start believing in that.  That is, it is very inviting to believe that this hope and change is going to come from someone within The System.  But when has THAT ever happened?  Really?  It wasn't until Rosa Parks said, "fuck this" and took a damned seat where she wanted to that an impetus for change started.  And that's really what it boils down to.  It's always been up to us, the individuals that make up this "democracy."  Nothing has changed for this go around.  It's quite silly really, to place so much faith in people who are pursuing self-preservation and self-advancement.  It's very tempting to think they actually are in it for "us." 

That is, until you look back upon history.  And look back upon the history of The System.  It's always worked at it's callous snail's-pace.  It belches an occassional scrap for us to fight over, and then trudges on its pre-determined and unwavering path to nowhere.  A circuitous caravan that we follow without question. 

And so we find ourselves, today, in that same old rut.  The media has tried to redress it, make it sleek and sexy, but the truth is they are just another appendage of this lumbering beast.  They are trotting out the red cloak to get us to charge to the ballot boxes, stuffing our hopes and dreams of safety, security, and prosperity into a box.  And like the bull that has been stuck and barbed over and over and over, we willingly play the game.  Thinking that THIS time we will actually get a piece of the prize. 

I tell you it is for naught.  It is time to start ignoring the bait.  To decree that we will no longer swallow their festering fallacies, nor their disingenuous delights.  The truth is, as it always has been, we are on our own. It's time for us to find find OUR own damned seats on a different bus. 

Who's driving OUR bus?

[Cramulus]

I want to make a ballot box pinata

[Roo]

Ever heard of Battered Wife Syndrome? That's what we are. That's why we keep coming back for more. Maybe not every single person, but enough of the general populous is to allow The System to keep beating us.

I came from an abusive home. I lived with a tyrannical father and a submissive, scared-shitless mother. I grew up in fear, and I grew to expect fear. I never knew what true freedom is. Shit. I didn't even know what true democracy is. I was consistently told that my opinion wasn't valid or wanted.

Yet for all the hellishness of that life, I never tried to run away. I never tried to escape.

Unfortunately, there are a hell of a lot of other Americans that grew up in households just like mine. We don't try to escape the prison, because we've bought into the idea that we are unable to defend ourselves. We've bought into the idea that we are weak, helpless and powerless. The bogeyman we're so afraid of, is right there in our homes and in our minds. The System is just the macro version.

Sure, we want change. We somehow hold on to the little slivers of hope we have left. But we don't think that we are the ones who can change things. We believe that everyone has power, but not us.

If you want to change that, you have to do more than show us the door. You have to walk through it. You have to show us that it can be done. You have to prove that we will not die without The System. You have to be willing to stand up to The System and tell it to Fuck Off. And we have to see you do that. Because Rosa Parks didn't start a movement by refusing to give up her seat. She didn't even mean to start a movement. She was just tired. Any other day, she would have stood up and given up her seat, just like any other black person. But that day, she didn't care what "they" would do to her.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

I agree with everything said here... but I think its important to keep in mind that Rosa Parks didn't "decide" and her action was "the catalyst". Five years earlier and she would likely have found herself in prison or badly beaten... or dead... and the story would have hit a couple local news stations.

However, Rosa Parks is remembered because of what she did, when the society she lived in was ripe for change. If society had not been ready, then her actions would have changed nothing. Revolutions, it seems to me, work if the revolution has already begun in the consciousness of the people. One of the founding fathers (Jefferson?) of the US was credited with saying that "the revolution took place in the minds of the people, 10 years before the first shot was fired". One of the reasons things went so badly after the French Revolution (according to many scholars) as that the people had not already accepted the concept in their minds. As soon as problems began, they wanted the monarchy back... which is tricky once you lop off their heads.

Actions and Words together are absolutely necessary... and words before action seems important. We need a Thomas Paine of the 21st Century, we need someone who can place the seeds of revolution and change in the minds of individuals. Once those ideas are there... once they are infected with Revolutionary Memes... THEN one act in the right place at the right time WILL spark a revolution.

I think... I may also be full of shit.

[Jenne]

Ratatosk, you're not full of shit.  And Roo is right--the first step to change always comes from within.

Me?  My revenge is to raise and be an example to 2 little varmints who are independent thinkers.  Within the confines of the system so that they'll know it so well, they can fuck it up in their own way.

I'm not sure the system will do anything but absorb whatever gets blasted at it.  But tinker with its insides and make it implode from within through education and unrest and whatnot?  Hell yes.

[Jack of Turnips]

When has a System not ruled? Not in the place-and-time of Czar Nicholas nor of Stalin. And neither under the Qing Dynasty nor under Mao Zedong.

The government Tom Paine helped form allowed white male landowners to vote. But they could only vote on which upperclass white male landowner would represent them. They still couldn't vote directly on matters of national concern.

Oh hell, we all know this shit.

The great machines of Nationalism and Religion have been thousands of years in the making. They were forged in the smithies of Hell, and designed for the scything of manflesh. Their scythe-blades are ancient, pitted and crusted with blood, and refined by centuries of Darwinian honing.

They do not sleep. They live forever.

The only reason they ignore you and me is because we do not matter. The moment we become a serious annoyance to these mechanisms is exactly when our blood will become the oil that lubricates the cogwheels.

In the Northwest the Earth Liberation Front has been accused of burning some empty "McMansions" and a few useless "recreational vehicles". The System has noticed. The rebels who actually challenged the System will be caught, and will be sent to prison.

In a discussion of the ELF arsons an FBI apologist said, "America is a nation ruled by law, and if you want to change something you have to use the System to change the law." But we all know that the law is routinely broken by government officials at the highest level, by corporations, and by the very agencies which are supposed to enforce it. It is only the little people who are bound by the law. Likewise, creating and changing the law is almost exclusively the province of corporate lobbyists, and the very rich and powerful.

We already know this: The powerful make the laws but are not bound by them. The rest of us are bound by the laws and have no real power to change them.

Yes, there have been a few cases where popular enlightenment has powered large social changes. But usually only in the face of widespread injustice and human suffering: American slavery in the 1850s, the degradation of French peasants under Louis XVI, the apartheid of America in the 1950s and of South Africa in the 1980s.

According to Saint Cormac, in 1833 a child was born in the southern USA during a meteor shower. "Thirty-three. Night of your birth. The Leonids  they were called. God how the stars did fall. I looked for blackness, holes in the heavens. The Dipper stove." The child's mother died in childbirth, his father was a drunkard. He grew up illiterate, and wandered the Southwest in the company of murderers, lawless paramilitaries, and amoral scalp-hunters. He witnessed massacres and horrors. He moved in a milieu of unmitigated evil. The only moral victory possible was to hold a small part of himself separate from the universal evil.

The only moral victory possible is to hold a small part of oneself separate from the universal evil.

Is that too dire? Too pessimistic? Applicable only to the worst societies in the worst of times?

Reverend Roger has implied a positivist view that seems to deny the ultimate power of the nationalistic-religious social mechanisms: "With the setting of the punishing sun, the freaks come out and the party starts...from the bistros and sex shops of 4th Avenue, to the dirty boys on Grant road, from the hookers of Miracle Mile to the pool sharks on 12th Street, the city pulses with life. Degenerate and mutated life, but life all the same."

Anyone else want to affirm the power of life -- degenerate, mutated life -- to confront mechanistic evil?

~~ Jack of Turnips

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

All systems are ruled by something, true... even a truly democratic "everyone votes on everything" system, still doesn't allow for individual freedom, but rather a sort of mob rule. Freedom exists, if anywhere, in our minds.

Where is Freedom bred?
In the heart or in the head?
Or at Rourke's bakery instead?

Heinlein, in "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress", laid out what I consider to be the best example of self-rule. Professor Bernardo de la Paz called himself a Rational Anarchist and states that: "I accept any rules you think you need for yourself. I will continue to live by my own."

The Machine makes the laws, the machine sets the standards the machine has a free "responsible" press... and defines what irresponsibility is. The Machine does as it Will, but its Will is really the Will of every good cog and screw that helps it run. Every monkey that thinks "That Law is unfair, but I don't want to miss American Idol" is stating that his Will is to be free to watch American Idol and by extension, changing the unfair law is not his Will.

The only freedom truly available to any of us, is individual liberty. As individuals, we are free to break every Law that the machine knows about. If we're smart, we pick and choose which laws are opposed to our Will and which are immaterial to our Will. For people that like laws, let them follow the laws... for ourselves, we have the freedom to choose which laws we will and won't follow. The down side to this view is that it doesn't make the world a better place for everyone... just a better place for you. Of course, as mentioned by JoT, the revolutions of the world haven't made things better anyway.

Autarchism, or Rational Anarchism is the political implementation of the famed maxim:

Think For Yourself, Schmuck

Laws are for the people that follow them.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

All systems are ruled by entropy.

Where we go from there is up to us.

[Jack of Turnips]

Well, that's a realistic rejoinder, Ratatosk.

But of course one is "free to break every Law that the machine knows about" only as long as the machine does not notice you. Once it notices you breaking laws you will most definitely not be free.

Is the statement "[the Machine's] Will is really the Will of every good cog and screw that helps it run" really true? I tend to think that the will of the Machine is mostly the will of Phillip-Morris, Lockheed-Martin, Pepsico, Exxon-Mobil, and other corporations. Not to mention Focus on the Family and Pat Robertson.

In the United $tates, maybe 5% of legislation reflects the will of the people. Maybe less.

Ha, ha! OK, ok, ok. Let's flip-flop.

The people infesting the strange old mansion we call Western Civilization have never been so free.

We are free from having to stagger along behind a wooden plow and die at age 35 from abscessed teeth and/or starvation. We can read Tom Paine and the Principia Discordia and Cormac McCarthy, because we can fucking READ! In the year 1126 nearly nobody could do that.

We can shout and holler and bust a gut expressing our opinions, because nearly all Western nations put individual rights such as free speech at the forefront of their constitutions. Nearly all outlaw torture and imprisonment without charge or trial.

By the curious carbuncles of Cthulhu, the Machine grips us less tightly now than it ever has before! We may be winning!

If that's the case, why are we posting this gloomy System/Machine/Greyface horseshit? Why are we not celebrating the fact that we are freer than ever?

Feathers or lead?

~~ Jack of Turnips

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Well, that's a realistic rejoinder, Ratatosk.

But of course one is "free to break every Law that the machine knows about" only as long as the machine does not notice you. Once it notices you breaking laws you will most definitely not be free.

And therein lies the Freedom of Choice. Freedom doesn't mean Do As Thou Will with no consequences. Consequences must be weighed, choices must be considered. However, rather than blindly following the laws, we can be free to choose to follow or not follow. If we do not follow, then it would seem smart to limit the exposure of the act to the machine. Look at the Earth Liberation Front. If it burned down those houses, it wasn't simply an act of freedom, but an act of agression... a highly visible act of agression. It breaks the most basic rule when dealing with primates (Don't go into the other primates territory) and it breaks the most basic rule of personal freedom or Realistic Anarchism (Don't be frickin obvious, KYFMS). If a whole shit load of houses burned and there was never a note, never a 'claim of responsibility' the machine would be in far worse shape.

Is the statement "[the Machine's] Will is really the Will of every good cog and screw that helps it run" really true? I tend to think that the will of the Machine is mostly the will of Phillip-Morris, Lockheed-Martin, Pepsico, Exxon-Mobil, and other corporations. Not to mention Focus on the Family and Pat Robertson.

Abdication of responsibility. We elect the poeple in office, we can demand the removal of people in office. We choose to buy Pepsi, to watch the 700 Club, to send money to Pat and Oral and everyone else. The Will of the American people has not been hijacked. Most Americans (at least in my experience) were extremely happy to send our boys to war, they were more than happy to see us invade Iraq. Most Americans like where they live... they like this lifestyle and their Will seems to be the protection of that lifestyle, though there may be costs associated with it. We can bemoan Wal-Mart and Starbucks, but they wouldn't exist without patrons. Patrons that choose those places over a local Mom and Pop shop.

Ha, ha! OK, ok, ok. Let's flip-flop.

The people infesting the strange old mansion we call Western Civilization have never been so free.

We are free from having to stagger along behind a wooden plow and die at age 35 from abscessed teeth and/or starvation. We can read Tom Paine and the Principia Discordia and Cormac McCarthy, because we can fucking READ! In the year 1126 nearly nobody could do that.

We can shout and holler and bust a gut expressing our opinions, because nearly all Western nations put individual rights such as free speech at the forefront of their constitutions. Nearly all outlaw torture and imprisonment without charge or trial.

By the curious carbuncles of Cthulhu, the Machine grips us less tightly now than it ever has before! We may be winning!

If that's the case, why are we posting this gloomy System/Machine/Greyface horseshit? Why are we not celebrating the fact that we are freer than ever?

This is also true in some sense. We as a group have more freedom to communicate,  more freedom to loudly disagree,  more freedom to make choices about how we live, where we live, what we do for a living. For most Americans, those freedoms are enough. They like the laws that give 'freedom' while ensuring 'stability'. They want the laws that protect their little cardboard cutout of a home in the new development. They like the laws that ensure you and I don't burn down every Starbucks from here to California.

For people that like Laws, law exists. For those of us that prefer Freedom, we can choose to ignore Law, but we must do so wisely and with caution.

Feathers or lead?

Both, depending on the individual.

[Jack of Turnips]

The Noble Ratatosk: "And therein lies the Freedom of Choice. Freedom doesn't mean Do As Thou Will with no consequences. Consequences must be weighed, choices must be considered."

Oho! But who defines the consequences of these choices, and why?

Let us say that a coal-fired powerplant trades pollution credits in order to avoid cleaning up its mercury emissions. (Perfectly legal.) Let us further say that children downwind of the plant show decreased IQ, slowness in walking and talking, and other health effects commonly associated with poisoning by methyl mercury.

Let us further say that parents protest outside the plant, breaking trespassing laws, obstructing access, and perhaps even blocking coal trains from reaching the plant.

Existing laws protect the corporation owning the powerplant, not the people damaged by its pollution, and certainly not the people who protest that damage.

Why are the consequences for actions stacked to favor big business over individuals? Who says the consequences for aggressive action in defense of human health are dire, while the consequences for damaging human health in the pursuit of profits are nil?

Something is wonky. Something is skewed. And who is responsible for rigging the game so nastily? Cui bono? Corporate America. Not individuals.

What if I do not accept that the determination of consequences for actions is fairly stacked? Certainly I can move to Iceland and hope for the best, but is it not also valid to subvert a system which has become skewed and wonky?

Why not sabotage the works? After all, the American Constitution says that it's  the right of the citizens to alter or abolish their government if that government has become destructive of their best interests.

Yeah, right. We all know that no government allows its own abolition. It's a pipe dream.

----

To argue the other side again: All actions which benefit some population have the possibility to harm someone else. In a wobbly, uncertain, imperfect world we can only make our best shot at the greatest good...and hope that not too many children fall under the wheels.

The laws are a compromise. America's law-order is not perfect, but it is the best shot at societal harmony. That American laws work is evidenced by the fact that one out of every hundred adults is behind bars. One out of every fifteen black adults is in jail. And the rate is increasing.

That's success, right? That's the profile of a just and reasonable law-order.

Well, maybe.

----

Rev What's-His-Name: "As long as we rely on The System to fix The System, we are all going to systematically be worked further and further out of the equation."

Did the good Rev write that because the holders of power know that they have already twisted the political order so that their grip cannot be dislodged by anything the common man does? The wise Rev's initial post seems to claim that the status quo is not really a fair compromise. That "lumbering beast" in America will go wherever the Republicrat symbiont tells it to go, and the Republicrat symbiont is itself only a leech on the money-machine.

Paine and Rousseau may be as obsolete as Marx and Engels.

What say the discordians to this?

~~ Jack of Turnips

[Reginald Ret]

The Noble Ratatosk: "And therein lies the Freedom of Choice. Freedom doesn't mean Do As Thou Will with no consequences. Consequences must be weighed, choices must be considered."

Oho! But who defines the consequences of these choices, and why?

Let us say that a coal-fired powerplant trades pollution credits in order to avoid cleaning up its mercury emissions. (Perfectly legal.) Let us further say that children downwind of the plant show decreased IQ, slowness in walking and talking, and other health effects commonly associated with poisoning by methyl mercury.

Let us further say that parents protest outside the plant, breaking trespassing laws, obstructing access, and perhaps even blocking coal trains from reaching the plant.

Existing laws protect the corporation owning the powerplant, not the people damaged by its pollution, and certainly not the people who protest that damage.

Why are the consequences for actions stacked to favor big business over individuals? Who says the consequences for aggressive action in defense of human health are dire, while the consequences for damaging human health in the pursuit of profits are nil?

Something is wonky. Something is skewed. And who is responsible for rigging the game so nastily? Cui bono? Corporate America. Not individuals.

What if I do not accept that the determination of consequences for actions is fairly stacked? Certainly I can move to Iceland and hope for the best, but is it not also valid to subvert a system which has become skewed and wonky?

Why not sabotage the works? After all, the American Constitution says that it's  the right of the citizens to alter or abolish their government if that government has become destructive of their best interests.

Yeah, right. We all know that no government allows its own abolition. It's a pipe dream.

----

To argue the other side again: All actions which benefit some population have the possibility to harm someone else. In a wobbly, uncertain, imperfect world we can only make our best shot at the greatest good...and hope that not too many children fall under the wheels.

The laws are a compromise. America's law-order is not perfect, but it is the best shot at societal harmony. That American laws work is evidenced by the fact that one out of every hundred adults is behind bars. One out of every fifteen black adults is in jail. And the rate is increasing.

That's success, right? That's the profile of a just and reasonable law-order.

Well, maybe.

----

Rev What's-His-Name: "As long as we rely on The System to fix The System, we are all going to systematically be worked further and further out of the equation."

Did the good Rev write that because the holders of power know that they have already twisted the political order so that their grip cannot be dislodged by anything the common man does? The wise Rev's initial post seems to claim that the status quo is not really a fair compromise. That "lumbering beast" in America will go wherever the Republicrat symbiont tells it to go, and the Republicrat symbiont is itself only a leech on the money-machine.

Paine and Rousseau may be as obsolete as Marx and Engels.

What say the discordians to this?

~~ Jack of Turnips

are you sure you mean defining consequences instead of causing consequences? because if you mean defining i don't understand what you mean.

if the parents want the factory to stop polluting they should talk to all their friends about how their children suffer, and get the ones who use the services(or even better those who work there) to stop supporting the factory, then they wont get the police beating them up and they might actually accomplish something.

[Requia ☣]

The government Tom Paine helped form allowed white male landowners to vote. But they could only vote on which upperclass white male landowner would represent them. They still couldn't vote directly on matters of national concern.

Utter bullshit (except for the part about men), the federal government has never levied a poll tax or discriminated on race (and a black man has been able to vote in northern states from the day the US constitution was signed).  Individual states have done both of course, but even then, needing to own land was not, anywhere I can find, a restriction.

if the parents want the factory to stop polluting they should talk to all their friends about how their children suffer, and get the ones who use the services(or even better those who work there) to stop supporting the factory, then they wont get the police beating them up and they might actually accomplish something.

How exactly are you supposed to avoid using the product of a power plant?  I don't seem to have any choice with my power company (there is only one after all) over which power plants I get my electricity from.

[Reginald Ret]

well you have a point there, i have to read more carefull next time .
in that case i advice violence, just realize that its risky and you are responsible for what you do. saying that they forced you is a weak excuse.

Take your police brutality like a man!

[Golden Applesauce]

I think it's very tempting to think of this in terms of us and them, the freedom-loving people vs. The Machine.  But when you get right down to it, all these big businesses that everyone complains about are run by individuals and supported by individuals.

Take the Iraq war for example.  At the time, a lot of people were in favour of it.  Did Bush and the media sell it to the people?  You betcha.  But the people bought it, and that's the important bit.  The US Government does exist at the mercy of the American People, and the people have chosen not to abolish it - because it works.

Now when I say the US Government works I don't mean it works the way Discordians or intellectuals would like it too.  It works the way the American People, as a whole, would like it too.  We got the Alien and Sedition Act and Japanese Internment and McCarthyism and the Patriot Act and all that other bullshit because the people liked the idea at the time, and the ones who didn't didn't care enough to really do that much about it.

It isn't that the System has made individuals like you powerless; on the contrary, all the power in the world is held by individuals.  The problem is that there are about 300 million other Americans and 6 billion other earthlings who are about as powerful as you are.