[IDEA] Deconstructing Discordianism

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Interesting... of course, if we all 'TYF,S!' is doesn't necessarily mean that journalists couldn't write editorials etc. After all, they are allowed to TYF,S! as well and there's no law against telling other people what you thought for yourself

Perhaps it would put an end to journalists that survive only because of the True Believers... Bill O comes to mind. If all of his listeners would TYF,S! the majority would likely find too many inconsistencies in his views to think he was worth listening to. On the other hand, someone like HST, is being read explicitly for his opinion (and for recreation ).  That is, people that read HST aren't looking for the Truth, but rather a view of experiences.

I think. So perhaps it would make journalism much more difficult because your audience would expect either 'Just The Facts' (and context for LMNO), OR some unique perception of experiences, ideas etc.

They wouldn't disappear because they would be outlawed, they would disappear because there wouldn't be a market for them if they didn't have an audience of people willing to believe what they were told and take on the opinion of the teller.

[LMNO]

Or opinion writing would be recognized as 100% subjective, and not meant to influence people towards a particular way of thinking.

[fomenter]

or as much opinion writing but heavily eprimed and citationed,  there would still be interested in peoples opinions but the market would tend to expect them to be self aware of there own status as opinions.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

or as much opinion writing but heavily eprimed and citationed,  there would still be interested in peoples opinions but the market would tend to expect them to be self aware of there own status as opinions.

Or, opinion writing would come across much more as data analysis, with lots of citations.

[AFK]

So what is the point of this exercise again? 

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

So what is the point of this exercise again? 

For everyone to share their opinion of what would happen if Discordianism as they perceive it was taken to its logical extreme

in other words, a bunch of pointless wankery.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Yes to all of the above. I think that is exactly what would happen. FOX, MSNBC and other obviously biased news orgs would dry up from lack of viewers. Opinion pieces that are obviously opinions may well survive. Journalism that covers experiences (Nat Geo etc) would probabkly continue without problems... I see no reason Andrew Zimmern would have to stop eating cheese with maggots in it, just because he audience was smart enough to use their brains

Indeed, Planet Earth, Bizarre Foods, Myth Busters etc as a genre might flourish because they aren't making claims, but rather they are relaying experiences... which they present to the audience with evidence. (Here's me eating maggot cheese. Here's me blowing up 600 pounds of C4. Here's a flock of migrating frogs.)...

If one read a book where the author said "Cheese with maggots exists and I ate it and liked it" TYF,S! might doubt such a claim. If however, there is a video, where we see cheese and maggots and we see the individual stick it in his mouth and say "Oh, this is really yummy!" it gives us more information to examine.

TYF,S! would probably stop us from claiming that maggty cheese IS yummy, but it might inform your choices if you ever get presented with a piece of maggoty cheese.

Mostly I like saying maggoty cheese.

[AFK]

Okay, because what I'm reading sounds like you guys went from TFY,S and went to such an extreme that you've ended up back on the other side of the spectrum at assembly-line opinion making.  

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Okay, because what I'm reading sounds like you guys went from TFY,S and went to such an extreme that you've ended up back on the other side of the spectrum at assembly-line opinion making.  

Well, anything taken to an extreme would generally get you back the the opposite side, wouldn't it?

[AFK]

Yes, which gets me back to my initial question. 

[LMNO]

Taken from the Watchmen and Philosophy thread:

Moore did not need Jean Baudrillard (perhaps the greatest of the postmodern philosophers) to tell him that "the idea is destroyed by its own realization," that the "extreme" development of an idea (which takes that idea beyond its own limits, end, or terminus, into "a state of ex-termination") can thereby destroy it—as, for example, sex is destroyed by "porn,"which is "more sexual than sex"; the body by "obesity,"which is "fatter than fat"; violence by "terror," which is "more violent than violence"; information by "simulation," which is "truer than true"; time by "instantaneity," which is "more present than the present," and as, in Watchmen, the hero is destroyed by the superhero, who is more heroic than any hero, but whose extreme "heroics" are no longer recognizable as heroics.  Moore seems instinctively to know (or else he has, like Watchmen's Ozymandias, studied "a hundred different philosophies") that one of the most powerful deconstructive strategies involves provisionally accepting an idea, thesis, position, or worldview, then working from inside it to extend it beyond its limits until it is eventually made to collapse under its own weight, like a plant forced to bear  fruit too heavy for its own branches.  I would call this strategy  hypertrophic deconstruction (after Nietzsche, who recognized that "a hypertrophic virtue  ...may bring about the decay of a people as much as a hypertrophic vice.").  Watchmen deconstructs the hero by developing its heroes—extending traditional hero fantasies beyond their limits—to the point where the reader comes to understand that these fantasies, realized, become nightmares.

I would suggest instead that when a genre seems to commit suicide—as philosophy did (with Kant, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein) and as the super-hero comic did (with Watchmen)—this apparent suicide is usually better understood as an attempted martyrdom, that is, a sacrifice with a redemptive intent, a would-be rebirth (even if in a different form).When the greatest representatives of a genre seek to end it, this is perhaps because they sense (on some level) that no field can long survive without being periodically revitalized by such sacrifice and rebirth. It is no coincidence that many of the comics which followed Watchmen sought to respond to its challenging deconstruction of the hero, and that the result greatly enriched the comics medium as a whole.More than fifteen years later, mainstream comics continue to occupy a post-Watchmen landscape, one in which Watchmen's ambivalence about the hero has become nearly ubiquitous.  Even in the darkest of contemporary comics, however, a careful reader can still recognize the sparks from that ongoing struggle to imagine and create the kinds of heroes who will prove themselves capable of inspiring the denizens of this complex and morally ambiguous world, a struggle which seeks to keep alive (as the dream of the hero, with all its risks, has always done) our hope for a better future.

Perhaps deconstructing Discordianism - or all irreligions - would be a worthwhile project?

Just an idea I'm throwing out there.

Just to remind everyone why this thread was started.

[ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞]

Uh, where do you guys get the idea Deconstruction = Reductio Ad Absurdum?

My impression is that it's more subtle and insidious than that.

[LMNO]

I'm fascinated by this idea... But I don't have much practice with Deconstructing ideas (I wish I could go back to college again).

For now, I'll just stay off to one side and watch.  If I get the feel for it, I'll jump in.

Bump for why I should have kept my mouth shut.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Uh, where do you guys get the idea Deconstruction = Reductio Ad Absurdum?

My impression is that it's more subtle and insidious than that.

Where do you get the idea that that's everyone's (or indeed, anyone's) idea of deconstruction? Reductio ad absurdum is, in my opinion, one tool useful in desconstruction, and a perfectly fine place to start.

Have you read Derrida's definition of deconstruction? 

[ñͤͣ̄ͦ̌̑͗͊͛͂͗ ̸̨̨̣̺̼̣̜͙͈͕̮̊̈́̈͂͛̽͊ͭ̓͆ͅé ̰̓̓́ͯ́́͞]

Uh, where do you guys get the idea Deconstruction = Reductio Ad Absurdum?

My impression is that it's more subtle and insidious than that.

Where do you get the idea that that's everyone's (or indeed, anyone's) idea of deconstruction? Reductio ad absurdum is, in my opinion, one tool useful in desconstruction, and a perfectly fine place to start.

Have you read Derrida's definition of deconstruction?  

When asked "What is deconstruction?" Derrida replied, "I have no simple and formalisable response to this question. All my essays are attempts to have it out with this formidable question" (Derrida, 1985, p. 4).

That doesn't mean you can just make up whatever you want and call it deconstruction.