Post by egodiabolus on Feb 13, 2009 14:08:27 GMT -6
First of all, I am looking forward to reading Liber A:O. It is on my "to-do" list. I have a feeling that much of what I will be discussing here today will have been touched upon in that text.
Venger has mentioned that the CoC is to be a Fourth Way School. Those of you who have read "The Fourth Way" know that it basically documents a conversation between the author and a group of students discussing a "new" philosophical approach to "reality". You are also aware that it reads like stereo instructions; the author builds slowly on each idea and the material has to be sifted very carefully.
In order to form a school, we need to have a group of people who are experimenting and discussing their experiments. In order to have a good, comparative survey, these experiments need to be relatively the same; we need to agree upon the problem, the ideal solution, and the means with which to go about achieving our goal.
"The Fourth Way" describes the problem as akin to being in a prison. In this prison, were are lulled into a complacent "sleep-state" by routine. We are told what the "reality" of this prison is, and on what rules this "reality" operates. We are discouraged from exploring these ideas for ourself, both by being actively told that our questions, concerns, and theories are non-sense and passively by having our experience flooded with distractions, "entertainment", and unimportant events. This sleep-state is a conditioning that encourages us to believe what we are told and not to think for ourselves.
Mark Pesce explores the same issues as an aspect of his "Church of the Motherfucker". The problem, as he points out, is language. Once we as human beings began talking to one another, "reality" began to crystallize. We are "in each others heads", thus "reality" becomes defined by the idiot masses and the brokers of power. Whether this crystallization, the creation of this prison, was the act of human beings our forces outside or species...whether the initial process was intentional or accidental is irrelevant to the issue at hand. Those who find there way free will be untouchable by those who might wish that we remain asleep.
As described in "The Fourth Way", one cannot wake up on there own...one cannot break free of the prison without the assistance of others. As Pesce points out, this is because of language. We need the language of others, the re-enforcement of our beliefs and perspectives, in order to combat the droning of the masses and the system. The challenge we face is more daunting than what was faced when "The Fourth Way" was written; nearly a century of successful patterns have been crystallized and the idiot masses are no longer isolated; they can log in and repeat what they have been told right along with everyone else in the world. Thus, we have this conversation, much in the manner that was described in "The Fourth Way". We ask questions and make proposals, seeking the solution that is the key to the freedom beyond the walls of ideas, values, and morals established by general "reality".
The first step is to agree upon our goal. Each of us, I am confident in saying, is here because something about our nature will not accept the "reality" that is foisted upon us. We sense the "more" that is out there; the Call of Cthulhu, the sense of Other, the splinter in the mind that will drive us mad if we do not address it. We are here because we cannot find contentment in this "reality". We must define our "reality" on our personal terms. Define your motivation as you will; the lust for power, the search for enlightenment, the need to know...in the end it is all the same. Our goal is to be as unfettered by general "reality" as possible. Our goal is to engineer our own "reality", unique to each of us and shared only with those who can tolerate the experience.
The first step, I suggest, is the measurement and testing of the prison. We must test the walls, looking for weakness. This comes naturally to most of us, it seems; we challenge authority and explore ideas that others reject. My favorite tool happens to be words; I challenge the status quo by voicing ideas and opinions that others consider disruptive, crass, sarcastic, cynical, unorthodox, subversive... we each must find our tools and use them. We are above all us generally more creative than the average person. We must use and share our creativity to shock the senses and fracture the walls of ideas and values that are a prison around our minds. Those of you who are still unproficient at this should test your skills, often, on the mainstream. Be a provocateur, rattle some cages, shock some blue-hairs...Those of us more experienced should consider focusing our efforts in directed social and political acts...social hacking.
My only warning in this is that each of us be mindful of the discordian principle that suggests any act of order is responded to with increased chaos, and any act of chaos results in increased order. Act with wisdom, be subtle, and find a way to benefit both from the act AND the backlash. You will do us no good other than as an example if you burn out in a glorious blaze of chaos.
The next step involves effort to improve the self, to awaken. This effort should actually be in tandem with measuring and testing the prison. The CIA suggests that any successful mind control effort begins by forcing the individual into a state of "childhood" and then through behavioral control allowing them to mature into an "adult" based on the pre-delineated value set. Is this not what mass "reality" is? As babies, our potential is unlimited, but our facilities are finite. We hunger, and in our suffering from hunger, we work. Our work, wailing, is instinctive. The universe responds, and we have food. This cycle continues and we learn...the wailing becomes less instinctive and more conscious. We seek to control our "reality" with the tools available to us.
However, the general "reality" responds to our efforts. Patterns begin to emerge; feedings occur at certain times, and only at those times. We are forced to adapt to this schedule. We work, by wailing, when we are hungry, but we are ignored until the other-defined appropriate time. We learn; our work is wasted unless the time (determined by another) is correct. We conform, now working (wailing) only when the programming we have learned tells us our work will be effective.
The result is a society that eats three meals a day; morning noon and evening, hungry or not. We gorge ourselves, cleaning our plates, hungry or not. We ignore the indicators of our bodies...indeed those indicators have been subverted by the social pattern. As the cost of food rises, we eat less and less healthy foods, until we as a society are fat, befuddled, and healthy enough just to exist as a slave to another.
This, I suggest, is where we should begin. We should use the CIA brainwashing techniques on ourselves. We need to recognize that, spiritually, we are infants that society refuses to let "work". Every little need can be gratified instantaneously for the most of us. Do you thirst? Drink this concoction of dyes and corn syrup. Do you hunger? Eat this mass of chemicals and protein. Are you bored? Watch this pointless program for distraction. We must CHOOSE! Observe yourself, the patterns that you succumb to without even thinking! Resist them! Begin with the simplest and first patterns... eat when you are truly hungry, when your body tells you it must eat. Drink when you are truly thirsty, when your thirst grabs you and demands to be satisfied. Eschew the products foisted on the masses for the satisfaction of these needs; drink water, eat in the manner you instinctively know is best for your body. Turn off your televisions and be bored! Let the ideas come the way they did when you were a child; the games the mind played and the wonders the mind saw need to reveal themselves again to each of us.
Forcefully break the patterns in your life that you can. "The Fourth Way" is a process of developing the self while managing a life within this prison. Giving up our material "things" is not required, only the recognition of what we have as a matter of choice and what we want as a matter of programming.
The next step is then to share. This is our conspiracy. If we struggle with something, we need to make the others aware of it. We need the encouragement of others to bolster our mental armor. When one of us finds a crack in the wall, we need to share it and we all need to test it. When one of us starts to wake, we need to shake the others. We need to do what we can to make all our temporary existences in this prison manageable. We live in a common dream and seek an uncommon "reality".
Wake up!
IA!
-Ego
Venger has mentioned that the CoC is to be a Fourth Way School. Those of you who have read "The Fourth Way" know that it basically documents a conversation between the author and a group of students discussing a "new" philosophical approach to "reality". You are also aware that it reads like stereo instructions; the author builds slowly on each idea and the material has to be sifted very carefully.
In order to form a school, we need to have a group of people who are experimenting and discussing their experiments. In order to have a good, comparative survey, these experiments need to be relatively the same; we need to agree upon the problem, the ideal solution, and the means with which to go about achieving our goal.
"The Fourth Way" describes the problem as akin to being in a prison. In this prison, were are lulled into a complacent "sleep-state" by routine. We are told what the "reality" of this prison is, and on what rules this "reality" operates. We are discouraged from exploring these ideas for ourself, both by being actively told that our questions, concerns, and theories are non-sense and passively by having our experience flooded with distractions, "entertainment", and unimportant events. This sleep-state is a conditioning that encourages us to believe what we are told and not to think for ourselves.
Mark Pesce explores the same issues as an aspect of his "Church of the Motherfucker". The problem, as he points out, is language. Once we as human beings began talking to one another, "reality" began to crystallize. We are "in each others heads", thus "reality" becomes defined by the idiot masses and the brokers of power. Whether this crystallization, the creation of this prison, was the act of human beings our forces outside or species...whether the initial process was intentional or accidental is irrelevant to the issue at hand. Those who find there way free will be untouchable by those who might wish that we remain asleep.
As described in "The Fourth Way", one cannot wake up on there own...one cannot break free of the prison without the assistance of others. As Pesce points out, this is because of language. We need the language of others, the re-enforcement of our beliefs and perspectives, in order to combat the droning of the masses and the system. The challenge we face is more daunting than what was faced when "The Fourth Way" was written; nearly a century of successful patterns have been crystallized and the idiot masses are no longer isolated; they can log in and repeat what they have been told right along with everyone else in the world. Thus, we have this conversation, much in the manner that was described in "The Fourth Way". We ask questions and make proposals, seeking the solution that is the key to the freedom beyond the walls of ideas, values, and morals established by general "reality".
The first step is to agree upon our goal. Each of us, I am confident in saying, is here because something about our nature will not accept the "reality" that is foisted upon us. We sense the "more" that is out there; the Call of Cthulhu, the sense of Other, the splinter in the mind that will drive us mad if we do not address it. We are here because we cannot find contentment in this "reality". We must define our "reality" on our personal terms. Define your motivation as you will; the lust for power, the search for enlightenment, the need to know...in the end it is all the same. Our goal is to be as unfettered by general "reality" as possible. Our goal is to engineer our own "reality", unique to each of us and shared only with those who can tolerate the experience.
The first step, I suggest, is the measurement and testing of the prison. We must test the walls, looking for weakness. This comes naturally to most of us, it seems; we challenge authority and explore ideas that others reject. My favorite tool happens to be words; I challenge the status quo by voicing ideas and opinions that others consider disruptive, crass, sarcastic, cynical, unorthodox, subversive... we each must find our tools and use them. We are above all us generally more creative than the average person. We must use and share our creativity to shock the senses and fracture the walls of ideas and values that are a prison around our minds. Those of you who are still unproficient at this should test your skills, often, on the mainstream. Be a provocateur, rattle some cages, shock some blue-hairs...Those of us more experienced should consider focusing our efforts in directed social and political acts...social hacking.
My only warning in this is that each of us be mindful of the discordian principle that suggests any act of order is responded to with increased chaos, and any act of chaos results in increased order. Act with wisdom, be subtle, and find a way to benefit both from the act AND the backlash. You will do us no good other than as an example if you burn out in a glorious blaze of chaos.
The next step involves effort to improve the self, to awaken. This effort should actually be in tandem with measuring and testing the prison. The CIA suggests that any successful mind control effort begins by forcing the individual into a state of "childhood" and then through behavioral control allowing them to mature into an "adult" based on the pre-delineated value set. Is this not what mass "reality" is? As babies, our potential is unlimited, but our facilities are finite. We hunger, and in our suffering from hunger, we work. Our work, wailing, is instinctive. The universe responds, and we have food. This cycle continues and we learn...the wailing becomes less instinctive and more conscious. We seek to control our "reality" with the tools available to us.
However, the general "reality" responds to our efforts. Patterns begin to emerge; feedings occur at certain times, and only at those times. We are forced to adapt to this schedule. We work, by wailing, when we are hungry, but we are ignored until the other-defined appropriate time. We learn; our work is wasted unless the time (determined by another) is correct. We conform, now working (wailing) only when the programming we have learned tells us our work will be effective.
The result is a society that eats three meals a day; morning noon and evening, hungry or not. We gorge ourselves, cleaning our plates, hungry or not. We ignore the indicators of our bodies...indeed those indicators have been subverted by the social pattern. As the cost of food rises, we eat less and less healthy foods, until we as a society are fat, befuddled, and healthy enough just to exist as a slave to another.
This, I suggest, is where we should begin. We should use the CIA brainwashing techniques on ourselves. We need to recognize that, spiritually, we are infants that society refuses to let "work". Every little need can be gratified instantaneously for the most of us. Do you thirst? Drink this concoction of dyes and corn syrup. Do you hunger? Eat this mass of chemicals and protein. Are you bored? Watch this pointless program for distraction. We must CHOOSE! Observe yourself, the patterns that you succumb to without even thinking! Resist them! Begin with the simplest and first patterns... eat when you are truly hungry, when your body tells you it must eat. Drink when you are truly thirsty, when your thirst grabs you and demands to be satisfied. Eschew the products foisted on the masses for the satisfaction of these needs; drink water, eat in the manner you instinctively know is best for your body. Turn off your televisions and be bored! Let the ideas come the way they did when you were a child; the games the mind played and the wonders the mind saw need to reveal themselves again to each of us.
Forcefully break the patterns in your life that you can. "The Fourth Way" is a process of developing the self while managing a life within this prison. Giving up our material "things" is not required, only the recognition of what we have as a matter of choice and what we want as a matter of programming.
The next step is then to share. This is our conspiracy. If we struggle with something, we need to make the others aware of it. We need the encouragement of others to bolster our mental armor. When one of us finds a crack in the wall, we need to share it and we all need to test it. When one of us starts to wake, we need to shake the others. We need to do what we can to make all our temporary existences in this prison manageable. We live in a common dream and seek an uncommon "reality".
Wake up!
IA!
-Ego