The New Wave

[Cramulus]

Discordians have spent generations writing and chattering about the freedom of this disorganized irreligion. In a lot of our writings we talk about how you can make it about anything you want, there is no true Discordia there is only My Discordia and Your Discordia and they don't have to connect because we're all popes.

So in comes baby 2017, the year of "fake news", "alt-right", pepe & kek, the new flowing of Nationalism, extreme polarization. Out goes old man 2017, in comes baby 2018, the year of Trump, the cats and dogs, living together, mass hysteria.

There's a new Discordian out there now. Mmmm, maybe they're not 'new'; there have always been jackasses -- but today, if you scroll through a Facebook Discordian group, or search the depths of the chans for Discordian presence, you'll find this dark type of Discordian...

We're talking about the right wing trolls. We're talking about the unrepentant racists. We're talking about bad faith arguments that stick it to the libs. We're not really about improving the world we live in so much as pissing off the enemy, breaking the foundation of their house, and then pissing on it. We're celebrating pain and suffering as long as it's hitting people on the other team.

It's true, Trump rides chaos, a defiance of the previous order -- I can't deny that. And Discordia has always had some libertarianism in its DNA. (Robert Anton Wilson identified as a libertarian, but more as a european-style libertarian because he thought the Ayn Rand-style libertarians are not nearly cautious enough about corporate power). But I still find it so weird that these anti-authoritarian/libertarian type Discordians have gotten on board with authoritarian demagogues. I don't sense any joy or playfulness in this crowd, nor curiosity and creativity - their lulz are meme warfare. To talk to them is to war.


So they may be shitheads, fine.


Are they "Bad Discordians"?


Does "Bad Discordian" have any meaning? I know we owe nothing to Eris, being a 'bad discordian' is not like being a 'bad christian' where you're violating some shared communal values or a moral code written on a stone tablet.  And it's not our style to pull out some book written a long time ago and point to a line and say "See? This book says you're doing it wrong."

does the new wave represent a change, or was this Discordia all along?


It falls on us, in 2018, to answer the question ---

Discordia can be anything you want it to be... Are there limits? Is there an edge?


"What you want" is probably tied up in egoistic shit and tribal warfare

As the increasingly old guard of Eris' treehouse, how should we relate to that? do we have any grounds to preach against it? (not that it would help, because most popes are all Send and very little Receive)



and to be clear, I'm not talking about political ideology.



I'm asking... Can Discordia be saved? Should it be saved?

[Ziegejunge]

There are bad Discordians, there are bad Christians... there are bad people in each and every religion, methinks. It's when the (vocal) majority under the label give the rest of us a bad name.

It is a quandary.

Especially in a permissive religion like Discordianism, it does allow for, and indeed sometimes encourages misbehavior. A wise Discordian has a better idea when it's appropriate to misbehave than does the initiate, or those who think Chaos is the opposite of Order, confusing it with Disorder (it seems to me that quite a few new "Discordians" miss the point of the philosophy entirely and just want an excuse to spew word salad and incite "chaos.")

At the end of the day, I think religions should enhance life in some way. Discordianism certainly has the potential to do this when it's not being co-opted by destructive / self-destructive asshats, many of whom have fascist agendas. The rest of us, whether we label ourselves Discordian publicly or whether we practice in private, must strive then to be creative / self-creative asshats, with inclination for harmonious-individualist agendas.

I'm not certain that is enough to "save" Discordianism, nor do I suspect it's the only way, or the best way. But it's a way.

YMMV KYFHD FNORD ETC.

[Doktor Howl]

Let's qualify the question.  Jonathan Bost, from TDS - at least back in the day - had been going on about wanting Prince William's children to be raped because they were born wealthy.

This was, mind you, when one of them was 3 months old.  And Bost was NOT joking.

Is Jonathan Bost a bad Discordian?  I guess what I'm asking is, is it possible to be a bad Discordian?  By definition, EVERYONE is a Discordian, even some real pricks, so IS everyone a pope, even if I don't like them?  Trump and his voters are low-rent Nazis, and there's not much denying that, but on the other hand, they are causing all manner of chaos AND - and this is the part that keeps me interested - they are a collection of WALKING SNUBS that keeps me on my toes, ready for pretty much any chance at all to fuck them over.

Also, "what I want" is to watch everything burn merrily as it careens over the staircase.

You can't save Discordia.  You can't kill Discordia.  Discordia will exist as long as the species.

[Doktor Howl]

For reference:

http://www.principiadiscordia.com/forum/index.php/topic,2080.0.html

[Doktor Howl]

I mean, it's not as if being a Discordian protects you from other Discordians.

[Vanadium Gryllz]

A wise Discordian has a better idea when it's appropriate to misbehave than does the initiate, or those who think Chaos is the opposite of Order, confusing it with Disorder (it seems to me that quite a few new "Discordians" miss the point of the philosophy entirely and just want an excuse to spew word salad and incite "chaos.")

I think that this is the crux of the question - do you limit Discordianism to the PD-version (and is PD Discordianism really that?) or are we all Discordians like Dok suggests..

I would posit with very little experience (having spend no time examining Facebook Discordianism) that the flavour you get over here is a more developed and introspective (?) version. It's hard to make value judgments on the whole thing though.

[Doktor Howl]

A wise Discordian has a better idea when it's appropriate to misbehave than does the initiate, or those who think Chaos is the opposite of Order, confusing it with Disorder (it seems to me that quite a few new "Discordians" miss the point of the philosophy entirely and just want an excuse to spew word salad and incite "chaos.")

I think that this is the crux of the question - do you limit Discordianism to the PD-version (and is PD Discordianism really that?) or are we all Discordians like Dok suggests..

I would posit with very little experience (having spend no time examining Facebook Discordianism) that the flavour you get over here is a more developed and introspective (?) version. It's hard to make value judgments on the whole thing though.

Humans are one of the great apes, but try to get a random American to admit to it; they'll go into full primate mode and kill you.

Which is of course both an admission and a demonstration that they are in fact apes.  Some apes realize that they are apes and try to mitigate their behavior.  Some realize they are apes and use that as an EXCUSE (yo!), and the rest are still apes, whether or not they like it.

Same exact thing applies to Discordianism.

[Faust]

The kek pepe god emperor false religion was fun, at least at the start. It distilled anger and the illusion of counter establishment into Trump; the perfect symbol to promise fun: just enough Alzheimer's blended with Kim Kardashian, with ridiculous outlandish claims, and the best part was everyone hated him.

Chaos and its iconography has its seasons, it currently belongs to people who backed a shitty joke candidate into office who is trying to fulfill his promises to the people who wanted weak xenophobic anxiety to be policy.

Eris's favourites are likely chosen by butt dialing, and this time she gave favour to the nazi's.

The best way to take back the flame of chaos is to make it FUN again, to be the walking glitch, to be rediculous, because at the moment it belongs to a group who dance to the awful tune of that orange one man band

[LMNO]

Nonsense As Salvation, then?

Is Pinealism the answer?

[Faust]

Nonsense As Salvation, then?

Is Pinealism the answer?

It has more power if it is funny, not the same old jokes retread, though nonesense applied in the correct doeses at the right time has its place.

[LMNO]

I get you.  It's tough to have have a genuine sense of humor, these days.

Other than Horrormirth, of course.

[tyrannosaurus vex]

Think of the entire human race (and Discordians in particular because they are maybe a little more conscious of the fact) as embarking on a massive, century-long piece of performance art wherein we illustrate all the extremes of our nature and the way those extremes enforce a kind of futility of attempting to build any permanent structures either physically or culturally. The fact that more than half of the artists involved do not know they are artists or that they are doing art only adds to the power of the ultimate work.

Discordianism violently abhors being named or labeled, and I don't think it does any good to classify some people as "good" or "bad" Discordians. What does that accomplish -- even if you manage it -- other than giving us one more group to be in that others aren't, and one more cause whose purity must be maintained?

I've been thinking a lot lately about labels and categories of people and the way everyone seems to be scrambling to put names on everything, even more than usual. "Millennials" and "hipsters" and "proto-Fascists" and "alt-Right" are all words that mean different things to different people. We have no shortage of words to use for ourselves and each other, but the flexibility of definitions allow us to hilariously misunderstand and talk past each other. The gut reaction is to establish a semantic universe where, when I say "I am a Discordian", that people understand I am one of the "good" Discordians. But... why, tho? My being "a Discordian" isn't important enough to me or my own self-definition to bother with drawing wavy lines in the sand.

[Doktor Howl]

Nonsense As Salvation, then?

Is Pinealism the answer?

No.  Being a walking glitch is the answer.

Make the system work too well.

[Doktor Howl]

I get you.  It's tough to have have a genuine sense of humor, these days.

Other than Horrormirth, of course.

What else do you NEED?

[rong]

I used to be a "confusion is a healthy state of mind" discordian, but now I'm more of a, "only truth survives chaos" discordian.