Discordianism, Dialectics and Parody:

There is always someone who ruins it for the rest of us.


Is this meant to be a holy (wholly) text? Nay, it is but a compilation of truths dredged from the depths of religiosity so that one may obtain an A grade and feel good about the knowledge bestowed upon one for money.

As such an immediate and truthy measure of intelligence, it is necessary for one to produce the paper academia, and mine shall encompass an explanation of the Explanation [of] Absolutely Everything Worth Knowing About Absolutely Anything. Together with the tenants of Discordianism, examinations of chaos paganism and the occasional ramblings of my pineal gland, herein lies research that will utterly confuse you, and in the process, bring enlightenment.

The first asked the second who the man was sitting there was. The second replied “Some say he is a holy man. Others say he is a shithead.”
Hearing this, the man was enlightened.

A Discordian is Prohibited of Believing what he reads: An Introduction

It may not be uncommon that contemporary religions start out as jokes. One simply has to purvey popular culture to witness the numerous religious spoofs. It can be argued that religions of parody and general tomfoolery have an important position in contemporary western society, and, in fact, that is precisely what I am set out to do.

New religions, and especially the occult, have a specific rhetoric surrounding their activities. Malloy observes that “Possibly because they are small and different, new religious movements are sometimes looked down upon by members of larger and older religions.” These new movements are written off as trivial or accused of being threatening and dangerous to society. Parody religions are particularly ripe for this rhetoric, as they don’t take themselves seriously, and thus gain a large amount of criticism as being trivial or irrelevant. When Margot Adler wrote her chapter on Religions of Paradox and Play, she postured that trivial was the exact opposite of what these religions meant to western society. In the process of modernization, we have distinctly separated serious activities from playful ones, valuing the serious as orderly, important, and adult while writing off the playful as chaotic, trivial, and childish. Adler quotes Dutch Historian Johan Huizinga on how the great archetypal activities of human society are all permeated with play:

You can deny, if you like, nearly all abstractions: justice beauty, truth, goodness, mind, God. You can deny seriousness, but not play … Play only becomes possible, thinkable and understandable when an influx of mind breaks down the absolute determinism of the cosmos.

Eris, to the Greeks, was known as Discordia to the Romans and is the matron deity to the contemporary Discordians. She embodies the chaos and schizophrenic nature of this parody religion, as she has been envisioned as a multi-faceted being. Hesiod, in Works and Days describes that Eris is to different people, different embodiments. A man would praise her when he came to understand her, but the other is blameworthy: and they are wholly different in nature.

The primary text of this parody religion is the Principia Discordia, or How I Found Goddess and What I Did to Her When I Found Her, written by Malaclypse the Younger, with segments by Omar Ravenhurst. The introduction to the fourth edition states that in 1970, hundreds of people were asking about the identity of Malaclypse the Younger (often referred to as Mal-2), rumouring that he was Alan Watts, the Sufi Order, or Richard M. Nixon (writing the Principia during a few moments of lucidity). The rumours were put to rest in this edition by Robert Anton Wilson (sometimes known as Mordecai the Foul), as he revealed that the author of the Principia was a time-travelling anthropologist from the 23rd Century named Gregory Hill. Wilson warns readers that Hill will contradict, in his afterward, everything Wilson has stated in his forward and that we should take it on faith that Hill is, in fact, a time traveller.

The Principia is composed of just less than 200 pages in its fourth edition (it’s first edition was 5 photocopies), and encompasses the Sacred Chao (singular for chaos, and the symbol of the religion), the Five Commandments or the Pentabarf, a variety of anecdotes and epistles set up in a similar manner to the Christian New Testament, charts, philosophies, cosmology and a variety of certificates for practicing Discordians. It records the birth of the Erisian movement and sets up the conditions of the Pagan Paradox Cult, the Paratheoanametamystikhood of Eris Esoteric (POEE), who published the Principia Discordia. The Principia described POEE as such:

POEE
is one manifestation of
THE DISCORDIAN SOCIETY
about which
you will learn more
and understand
less
We
are a tribe
of philosophers, theologians,
magicians, scientists,
artists, clowns,
and similar maniacs
who are intrigued
with
ERIS
GODDESS OF CONFUSION
and with
Her
Doings

The Principia also makes several references to an earlier Erisian source, The Honest Book of Truth (HBT). This text, from what is quoted in the Principia, seems to be arranged similarly to the Bible. There is a chapter of “The Book of Explanations” in the Principia, wherein Omar Ravenhurst receives The Honest Book of Truth in a parody of how Joseph Smith received the Doctrine and Covenants in Mormonism. Ravenhurst’s encounter with a garbage collector and the subsequent loss of The Honest Book of Truth is chronicled in the second chapter of “The Book of Explanations”

3. And though Omar did bid of the Collector of Garbage, in words that were both sweet and bit- ter, to surrender back the cigar box containing the cards designated by the Angel as The Honest Book of Truth, the Collector was to him as one who might be smitten deaf, saying only: 'Gainst the rules, y'know.

HBT; The Book of Explanations, Chap 2

The Lucid Karl Marx Cabal

In contrast with most other religions, Discordianism values chaos, disorganisation, dissent and discord as fundamental ways to gain an understanding of “reality” and the universe. Discordianism, while most of the time a good laugh, has deeper roots in dialectics and social critique. When one idea is taken far enough, it reveals the absurdity of all ideas, and this is the primary motivation behind Discordianism. Moments of this philosophizing and general motivation for social change are sprinkled through out the Principia. On page 00047, there is a lengthy discussion on entropy and the second law of thermodynamics, and on page 00074 it discusses Nonesense as Salvation:

The human race will begin solving it's problems on the day that it ceases taking itself so seriously.

To that end, POEE proposes the countergame of NONSENSE AS SALVATION. Salvation from an ugly and barbarous existence that is the result of taking order so seriously and so seriously fearing contrary orders and disorder, that GAMES are taken as more important than LIFE; rather than taking LIFE AS THE ART OF PLAYING GAMES.

Through out the Principia, there is the constant hint that it is taking a dialectical approach, and that it is still heavily critical of the dialectical process. Dialectical Materialism, and Marxism are positions that would see the actions, such as the ones taken by Discordians, as immaterial to social change, and propagating the internalisation of social emancipation rather than focusing on changing the economic base that create reality. Mal-2 takes his stab at dialects and Marxism on page 00047, “DOGMA III - HISTORY #6, ‘HISTORIC CYCLES’, which states that social progress occurs in five cycles, the first three ("The Tricycle") of which are THESIS, ANTITHESIS and PARENTHESIS; and the last two ("The Bicycle") of which are CONSTERNATION and MORAL WARPTITUDE.”

Regardless of this criticism, many of the Discordian writings, and subsequent Discordian action, have been to specifically counterpoint rhetoric from the 1960s onwards. Omar Ravenhurst invented a Do-It-Yourself Conspiracy Kit, complete with stationary bearing dubious letterheads. Omar would send a letter, on this letterhead, to the Christian Anti-Communist Crusade saying, “We’re amused you’ve discovered that we’ve taken over the Rock Music business. But you’re so naïve. We took over the business in the 1800s. Beethoven was our first convert."

Many religions that begin as jokes or parodies eventually start to become serious when it is realized that something can be contributed by them. Discordianism, through the Principia and the various counter-culture actions taken by its proponents, has a built in check from taking itself seriously. The original doctrines, while they reveal the contemporary contradiction between seriousness and play, are created to be so absurd that one could never take them seriously. One example of this dual meaning can be found in the Curse of Greyface, the force which all Discordians work to combat:

GREYFACE

In the year 1166 B.C., a malcontented hunchbrain by the name of Greyface, got it into his head that the universe was as humorless as he, and he began to teach that play was sinful because it contradicted the ways of Serious Order. "Look at all the order around you," he said. And from that, he deluded honest men to believe that reality was a straightjacket affair and not the happy romance as men had known it.

It is not presently understood why men were so gullible at that particular time, for absolutely no one thought to observe all the disorder around them and conclude just the opposite. But anyway, Greyface and his followers took the game of playing at life more seriously than they took life itself and were known even to destroy other living beings whose ways of life differed from their own.

The unfortunate result of this is that mankind has since been suffering from a psychological and spiritual imbalance. Imbalance causes frustration, and frustration causes fear. And fear makes for a bad trip. Man has been on a bad trip for a long time now.

It is called THE CURSE OF GREYFACE

Five Tons of Flax

GP: Is there an essential meaning behind POEE?

M2: There is a Zen Story about a student who asked a Master to explain the meaning of Buddhism. The Master's reply was "Three pounds of flax."

GP: Is that the answer to my question?

M2: No, of course not. That is just illustrative. The answer to your question is FIVE TONS OF FLAX

While Discordianism takes on the elements of joke and parody, it should not be mistaken as inauthentic. Greg Hill describes his experiences to Margot Adler as quite profound.

“Eris is an authentic Goddess. Furthermore, she is an old one. I characterized myself as Malaclypse the Younger. But if you do this type of thing well enough, it starts to work. In due time the polarities between atheism and theism became absurd. The engagement was transcendent. And when you transcend one, you have to transcend the other. By the end I had learned that it’s up to you to decide whether gods exist, and if you take a goddess of confusion seriously, it will send you through as profound and valid a metaphysical trip as taking a god like Yahweh seriously.”

As would be expected of the Discordians, the religion is quite open. All one has to do to become a member of the Discordian Society is (1) decide it exists and (2) include yourself in it. In order to become a priest in Discordianism, you merely have to declare yourself so. POEE even has wallet sized =POPE= cards meant to be in the possession of every individual in the world.

Additionally, many members have taken to writing the following on the back of the card:

The Rights of =POPE= include, but are not limited to:

1. To invoke infallibility at any time, including retroactively.
2. To completely rework the Erisian Church
3. To baptise, bury and marry (with the permission of the deceased in the latter two cases).
4. To ex-communicate, de-ex-communicate, re-ex-communicate and de-re-ex-communicate (no backsies!) both his-/her-/it-/them-/your-/our-/His-/Her-/It-/Them-/Your-/Our-self/selves and others (if any).
5. To perform all rites and functions deemed inappropriate for a Pope of Discordia.

Many of these tenants, the creation of the =POPE= card and the dedication of Hill’s Joshua Norton Cabal are recognitions of Emperor Joshua Norton, who lived in San Francisco in the 1800s and declared himself Emperor of the World.

For Now…

The power of laughter and play can not be disregarded from religion, or any other faucet of society. The founders of Discordianism observed that our tendency to take ourselves too seriously has left us psychologically and spiritually imbalanced. Parody is an important aspect of Post Modernism, and has seen a significant influx of popularity in a variety of arenas. Within the last decade, America has witnessed the rise of the Politics of Humour, where comedy professionals like Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert have used their parody ideas to attempt to instigate a shift in social perception. Colbert’s speech at the 2006 White House Correspondent’s Association Dinner was considered a political touchstone for 2006, and New York Times columnist Frank Rich responded that it was the defining moment of the United States 2006 Midterm Elections.

Now, when parody, play and discord are important concepts to include in everyday perception, one must remember that all statements are true in some sense, false in some sense, meaningless in some sense, true and false in some sense, true and meaningless in some sense, false and meaningless in some sense, and true and false and meaningless in some sense.

Bibliography

Adler, M. Drawing Down the Moon. New York: Penguin Group, 1986.
Malaclypse. Principia Discordia. USA: Exposure Publishing, 2007.
Malloy, M. Experiencing the World’s Religions. New York: McGraw Hill, 2005.
Rich, F. “Throw the Truthiness Bums Out.” The New York Times. November 5, 2006.
“Discordianism.” Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. 2007. 10 Jul. 2007 .