...and the walls came tumbling down.

Taken from today’s Times:

US THREAT TO PEACE, SAYS VICAR

A vicar is being investigated by the police after writing an article in his parish magazine that denounced the US President as more of a threat to peace than terrorism.
The Rev Nigel Cooper, 48, a Church of England clergyman at St Mary’s and All Saints in Rivenhall, Essex, was reported by a parishioner, apparently for inciting racial hatred against Americans. The magazine has a circulation of about 500 copies.

The vicar’s complaints against the US involved its response to September 11. He criticised conditions in which Taleban prisoners were kept in Guantanamo Bay, capitalism generally, and Christian fundamentalism in the US. He wrote of Americans: “They have not been fighting for civilisation but for empire, power and the American way of life: luxury in a world of poverty.”

A police spokesman said: “I can confirm that a complaint has been received concerning the contents of an article in the February issue of the Rivenhall parish magazine. This complaint is currently being investigated.”

HVD says…
And it was so written in the well known neo-Nazi novel “The Turner Diaries” that in the years to come, the governments of the west would declare all their enemies “racist”, and having so branded them, they would be ignored by the cattle of society, who would still rally to the banners of their corrupt masters.

Seriously though, When I first read the Turner Diaries I though the author was a racist nutcase, but then, more than a year later I read this article, and that part of the book where the FBI declares everyone who dosent agree with them “racist” and has them ocked up sprang right back to mind.

I found the article quite funny, but is it a sign of things to come.

It most certainly is HVD. And what’s more, my friend’s uncle IS the reverend Nigel Cooper of Essex.
Are you aware of Hegel’s system of dialectic. I always chose to interpret the system by applying it to the direction of power, or religion.
For example, a thesis:God is omnipresent, antithesis:nietzsche-‘God is dead’, hypothesis:life of brian.?!?
OK, a shit example, but the one I used to think about.
Basically, when there is a given way in the world, capitalism, US imperialism, competition>cooperation, then small pockets of antithesis start sprouting out of a frustration at the extremist thesis. No world order is sustainable. We live on a closed earth (at the moment). Eventually the antithesis will become so strong, that it will become the hypothesis, then the thesis, and so on. The thesis (usa) trying to snuff out its antithesis (communism), will one day become overwhelmed by the sheer matter of antithesis out there, that it will be removed from its pedestal, be it by slow process, or by revolution. (This is why Trotsky’s revolutionary communism was a great opportunity, missed). Constant change is needed. There is boom and bust everywhere.
The amount of antithesis out there will only increase following america’s paranoid and authoritarian stamp on the rest of the world.
It’s likely to materialise in the shape of the EU. Movements like the firstthings or the POEE (which i noticed you advertising, good man) will become more and more popular.
This is not black and white. It’s just that when I see somebody talking of the usa’s belated downfall, even hypothetically, or humourously, I hear Hegel’s shrill voice screaming down my ear to act.

God, please God tell me I have found another discordain here. Anyway, what you said is definately true, basically it is Celine’s nth Law, (I cant remember which one)
Imposition of Order=Escalation of Chaos

PS, more info on firstthings please

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hiren, its leo. god if people just used their normal names then everyone would understand much better.

[This message has been edited by alex (edited 02 April 2002).]

Don’t be so dull alex. It’s pangloss.

The reason it initially attracted my attention, was because of Nigel Cooper, who really is my friend Claire Cooper’s uncle.
But what you wrote evoked the Hegel inside me. Am I a man possessed by the great minds of the past? No.

Hiren, I’m gonna dissapoint you. I’m not a discordian. I haven’t read the Illuminatus trilogy. I’ve been ‘less-than-an-armchair’ fan of Robert Anton for a while, so I’m aware of the POEE, but nothing more. And firstthings used to be rebellious until the FBI ‘hit them where it hurt’ (I don’t know the full story. Aparently the activities of the FBI are STRICTLY confidential). They still have a website firstthings.com and a magazine. It shows mainly political and religious articles, with other features. Still quite interesting, but not quite the ‘antithesis’ it used to be, and highly filtered. They even write pro-US govt stuff which is a bit of a u-turn.

Can you explain Celine’s nth Law, and
Imposition of Order=Escalation of Chaos. It’s a bit above me right now.


And also, to alex as well. I accused Flamin’redJJ of being sam williams, the violin player from our school. Can you confirm that this is a true accusation to make, otherwise I will have to bury my head in a dungheap of embarrassment.

Hagbard Celine was a pirate who founded the discordians. He is an alter ego of R.A.W. or Malaclypse the Younger, author of the Principia Discordia.
I said Celine’s nth Law because he had a few and I can’t remember which one stated “Imposition of order=Escalation of Chaos” which is basically what you said, “Imposition of Thesis=Escalation of antithesis” or in more words, as more and more order, thesis, yin, whatever you call it, are imposed on people; then more and more chaos, antithesis, yang springs up among the population.

Repressive regimes create revolutionaries, yet in free democracies people are indifferent to politics. Compare the first free elections in South Africa to 2001 in this country. in SA, people queued for hours to vote. but give it a few centuries of freedom and the rot of complacency will set in.

Is it a coincidence that nowadays with the media hiring lycra clad nazis to implore us to excercise and keep healthy that record numbers of children are overweight?

If drugs are illegal, the govt and media tells us they are “bad, mmmkay” and more and mopre people use them. Legalise, and it loses some of its allure.

To quote the Illuminatus “Prisons are built with the stones of Law, brothels with the bricks of Religion.”

And the Principia, "The Aneristic principle is that of Order, the Eristic principle that of Disorder. On the surface, the Universe seems (to the ignorant) to be ordered; this is the Aneristic illusion. Actuallywhat order is there is imposed of the primal Chaos in the same sense that a person’s name is draped over his actual self. It is the job of the scientist, for example, to implement this principle in a practical manner and some are quite brilliant at it. But on closer inspection, order appears to dissolve into disorder. this is the Eristic illusion.

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Does
sign language have silent letters?
When coloured people shower, is that ethnic cleansing?

Fascinating. Genuinely fascinating. That sounds sarcastic but I’m really sincere. What you wrote was like a revelation. A moment of true clarity.
I have a big musky theory which I’d like to add to this (I touched on it in the Perfect World posts). But I can’t do this until I fully understand one bit you wrote.

‘Actuallywhat order is there is imposed of the primal Chaos in the same sense that a person’s name is draped over his actual self. It is the job of the scientist, for example, to implement this principle in a practical manner and some are quite brilliant at it. But on closer inspection, order appears to dissolve into disorder. this is the Eristic illusion.’
Especially the analogy with a person’s name being draped over his actual self. I’m not 100% sure that I’ve understood that as well as I should.
Is the primal Chaos, the inner antithesis, or the need to see things critically that we all have.

I ilke the POEE/discordian thang. It’s not just some iron theory detached from human experience. It can laugh at itself. And at order. Making it even more appealing.

is it me or has this turned into a Merchant Taylor’s tea-party?

it’s Merchant Taylors’ (achem). And anyway I thought you called it Merchant Bankers.

I do! But I didn’t think anyone would get the joke…because…well, it’s not funny really, except in my sad little mind. er…ok…spoiling the post a bit here…

Welcome to Quantum psychology 101 (with basic E-Prime)

E-Prime is a language used by many discordians (oops, slipped up there) which is (shit, did it again) identical to English but without ever using the Verb “to be” (get it now?)

The reasoning for this is as follows. (The following contains horrible science)

Light is transmitted as photons. A photon is a particle is a wave. By this nonsense I mean in some situations it is a particle and in others as a wave. This is an apparent contradiction, and is one of the main reasons that people get confused about quantum mechanics.

1) The photon is a wave
2) The photon is a particle
3) The photon behaves as a wave when constrained by certain instruments, and appears as a particle when constrained by other instruments.

Notice how (3) neatly removes the contradiction in (1) and (2) and yet is just as true. Notice also that this is nearly impossible to acheive using the word “is”

some more examples:

John is unhappy and grouchy
John appears unhappy and grouchy in the office

John is bright and cheerful.
John appears bright and cheerful on holiday at the beach.

Beethoven is better than Mozart.
In my present mixed state of musical education and ignorance Beethoven seems better than Mozart to me.

Lady Chatterly’s lover is a pornographic novel.
Lady Chatterly’s lover seems like a pornographic novel to me.

The car involved in the hit-and-run accident was a blue Ford.
In memory, I think I recall the car involved in the hit-and-run accident as a blue Ford.


Taking John’s example. If we remain constrained in aristotelian logic, The only conclusion we can draw is that John has multiple personalities. Unless we remove ourselves from the “isness” and “what ness” of thinking.

Taking the Ford example, If the witness states the first sentence, believing it to be true, and later in court it turns out to be a green Toyota in the accident, is he lying? Has he commited perjury? If he states the first sentence then, logically, yes he is. However, if he uses the E-prime alternative, he is not.

Let us now consider the Transsubstantiation, a great miracle whice millions of people believe turns a piece of bread into a piece of the body of a man who died 2000 years ago.

To your eyes or taste buds or electron microscopes the bread has undergone no change at all. It doesn’t even weigh as much as a human body, but retains the weight of a small piece of bread. Nonetheless, to Catholics, after the Miracle (which any priest can perform) the bread “is” the body of the aforesaid dead man, one Yeshua ben Yusef, who the priests of the Vatican call Jesus Christ. In other words, the “essence” of the bread “is” the dead man.

It appears obvious that, within this framework, the “essence” of the bread can “be” anything, or can “be” asserted to “be” anything. It could “be” the essence of the Easter Bunny, or it could “be” Jesus and the Easter Bunny both, or it could “be” the Five Original Marx Brothers, or it could “be” a million other spooks happily co-existing in the realm outside spacetime where such metaphysical entities appear to reside.

Even more astounding, this Miracle can only happen if the priest has a Willy. Protestants, Jews, Zen Buddhists etc. have ordained many female clergy-persons in recent decades, but the Vatican remains firm in the principle that only a male – a human with a Willy – can transform the “essence” of bread into the “essence” of a dead body.

See how things change with perception? Now, onto the point. Are you Leo, or Pangloss? Or both? Or is it that in real life you are Leo, and on this board you are Pangloss? I am HVD, Hiren Desai, Beta (Gujarati for darling) to my parents, and Herring to Mike Peel’s mum; all depending on the circumstances. None of these lablels explain me completely, none exclude any part of me. They just are, as I just am, all and none of them.

What year is it? 2002AD christian, 81 psU wilsonian, 1423aH islamic, 2525 Buddhist?<P

… so nothing is monolithic, there is no essence to anything, all is in flux?

Where something can be defined, or objects/subjects given features, there lies essence. We are all born, brought up, and loosely believe the consensus reality that surrounds us. A lamp-post is a lamp-post. Leo is Pangloss is me. There is always one truth, and contradictions or multiple truths simply reveal that recieved knowledge is incoherent. I am not a relatavist.

Is anyone here a relitavist when it comes to the truth/bold facts?

I’m sort of a relativist… I don’t believe in truth, but I do acknowledge that some opinions are more useful (for me at this time, for my particular actions and goals) than others.