The Discordian Problem

The Discordian in the room is not hard to spot. They're the one sitting in the corner by themselves laughing at everyone else.

I think that's the core of the Discordian problem. In my every day life I am about to start work on a "very important project" this is a project that could have a big impact on people's every day lives and improve the quality of life for many. When you're a member of the big bearded sky daddy club doing something of merit is consolidated by your laminated pass to the holy of holies. You integrate the spiritual with the mundane via the instrument of religion.

So when you have a joke religion that's not a joke, or is it? No. Only joking it's serious. Seriously joking.

Is it a joke or is it serious?

Yes.

It becomes enough of a problem working out how you feel about your ambivalent membership of this church in the first place. I mean, you're the frickin' pope of this so-called (no, definitely is) religion and you don't even know whether it's real. Also, you're probably not a joiner. You know that the guy saying "Hey, follow me!" is probably leading you off a cliff. The guy that says "You can trust me" just wants to clear out your bank account. People who make promises are the kind of people who fail and break promises.

Basically, you're a pope alone, you're not going to encourage anyone else to sign up.

The wisdom of this is that most religions don't help you to keep perspective, or, at least, they should but they are very, very bad at it. Most religions have a propensity to bypass their safe guards and fuel dangerous amounts of self-serious egotism and destruction.

Actually Discordianism is not exempt from this, a lot of Discordians are insecure, cynical trolls who exist to gross you out, point and laugh, not necessarily in that order. What Discordianism does right is that it points you towards the more rewarding parts of its own practice equally badly.

Don't get me wrong Discordianism is really hard. Other religions are built to be user-friendly by asking you to surrender, Discordianism is not user-friendly and reminds you to never surrender.

All of which leads to the biggest problem of all. How does Discordianism come into practice? Posting cool memes and laughing at stuff is fine, but how do you actively do things in a Discordian manner?

Sacredness is essential to faith practice, but in Discordianism sacredness is pretty stupid. The best way to worship Eris is to be deeply suspicious of worshipping anyone, especially that crafty looking goddess juggling apples in the corner and laughing at everybody.

The first practice of Discordianism is confusion. So if you're confused right now, feeling I've left a bunch of questions and no real answers, you are doing it right.

Which is just as well, because never forget, you're the pope.

If You Can Read This, You Are A Pope!

My favourite Discordian Facebook page lead me to this little gem recently. Some rando asks what's with this Discordianism thing? He even admits to being a bit confused. Confusion is the catnip of the Discordian, latent or active. And in they come all seeking to help by contradicting each other wildly. It makes my heart swell with pride.

There's a mixture of different approaches to thoroughly failing to assist with the confusion in any way. The very first answer begins "a) five tons of flax" the next one helpfully signs off "If you can read this answer, you are a pope!"

Thereafter we are treated to further jewels of the Discordian art such as:

• "an 'objective summary' of the religion could never be accurate"
• "Objectivity isn't really a Discordian value; the common failure mode of the practice is 'dire assholery.'"
• "It's a joke religion taken seriously to various degrees by various people that sprang out of the proto-hippie and New Age scenes by both mocking them and absorbing their more interesting elements."
• "The world is chaos. Order is self-deception."
• "If it's any consolation, you get the same fictions once you're initiated. I'd ask for my money back, but I initiated myself, and have no one else to blame."
• "I have no idea what an earnestly practicing Discordian would even look like -- probably one of those homeless people you see yelling at themselves on the street."
• "...if you don't understand the point of a religion that is a joke you will not understand it either"
• "It *is* a joke. It's a lot of jokes. But, as stated above more than once, it's also serious."
• "I found it very difficult to refrain from just posting a simple FNORD and leaving it at that."

To increase the fun, some answerers are answering as if they are not Discordian, but this merely serves to increase the confusion, so they're probably latent. Hell, all people are really latent Discordians, the question is to what extent you accept that, like all religions. I mean, that's a religion-y type thing, isn't it?

Discordians tend to be poor at identifying what's religion-y and what's just pure control-mania. Like the rest of the world then, I suppose.

Were I to take issue with any of it. And, hell, as a Good Discordian® it is my duty to take issue with the whole by-gosh-darn-it lot. It's in the misidentification of Discordianism as being pro-chaos in the same way it is anti-order.

That's not nearly complicated enough to be the truth.

We like to view things, as human beings, in these neat little dualities, night and day, love and hate, good and evil, order and chaos, salt and vinegar, death and taxes, lions minus tigers equals the root of bears divided by "Oh My!" squared,

The truth of this illusory conundrum is exemplified by the description of "Eristic" (pro-chaos) and "Aneristic" (pro-order) principles that give us lenses through which we can all view the universe. The problem is they're both as false as each other. The universe is a single eternal moment of unending uber-chaos.

Fiddling with either of the illusory constructs just equalises the amount of "chaos" and "order" that are perceivable. So, attempt to make something ordered and it will just increase apparent chaos, go out of your way to cause apparent chaos and order will kick back. The reason for this is that all you're doing in such circumstances is putting greasy finger marks over the lens through which you're viewing the world.

What you really want to do is rip the concept-lenses off your eyes altogether and stare into the joyous face of true chaos.

Actually, don't. It's probably scary, likely it will leave you in a bad place. Instead find a hot dog vendor and ask them to make you one with everything, basically that's almost the same thing.

The Modern Discordian

This is a sort of advertisement, but also information. TFA is below.

I am not a religious type of guy, really. As this is true Discordianism, The Church of the Subgenius and Pastafarianism all hold some sort of appeal to my sense of the inherent ridiculousness of religion as a concept. These satirical church-like entities are all echoes of one another, with Discordianism being the first original point of the paradoxical religion-that-denies-religion.

In addition there is a kind of funnel of meaning in the three movements. Pastafarianism was a reaction to a single event in the history of Western lunacy, Subgeniuses exist to be silly, but Discordianism had its roots in 60s counterculture and that counterculture was a far more complex thing than just a vehicle for poking fun at religion.

Discordianism, and the things it produced, such as The Illuminatus Trilogy included a general disdain for the mechanisms of organised religion but were not limited to such. I think that the problem with fitting something like Discordianism into your head is that it is hard to seriously adopt any kind of dogma, or spiritual path that resists itself in its basic precepts.

Not that people haven't tried and even succeeded, Ken Campbell and the KLF are two examples of modern Discordians who spring instantly to mind. The problem remains. You have to have a special mind to hold forth on a philosophy that says anyone holding forth on a philosophy is a) wrong, b) possibly evil and c) almost certainly trying to sell you something.

But Discordianism endures on a level that the Subgenii and Pastafarians just cannot attain. I think it's something to do with a true Discordian understanding that they are a) wrong, b) possibly evil and c) almost certainly trying to sell people something.

More on this again. In the meantime think about buying my book in two months time. Cheers.