"The sky above changes. The land below changes. Animals and people are born, grow old, get sick and then die. Why is it surprising that the heart changes?"
-Taoist saying
"The Christians claimed that only their magic, which they called miracles, was the only true magic and that all other forms were superstition or of the Devil. The scientists today claim that only their magic, which they call technology, is the only true magic and all other forms are superstition or illusion. In short, heresy and plurality is always a threat to monotheists, whether of the theist or of the atheist variety."
-In Defense of Polytheology (an anonymous Pagan tract from the seventies)
"Multivalence is a threat to serious defenders of narrow-mindedness everywhere."
-Soror Nyx
"Until now all human history has been only a perpetual and bloody immolation of millions of poor human beings in honour of some pitiless abstraction -- God, country, power of state, national honour, historical rights, judicial rights, political liberty, public welfare."
-Michael Bakunin
Are you sick of no one agreeing with you? Are you tired of always being misunderstood? Have you reached the point where you have had it with trying to persuade people around you to lift their heads up for once and see the greater world beyond their prejudices and preferences? Too bad. It is the way it is, and perhaps you were only wasting your breath anyway. Suck it up and move along. No one else was put here on this planet to experience or see things the way you are now seeing them anyway. No amount of persuasion, coercion or shouting, is going to help. You can get angry and lash out by attacking the people around you, but how is that any different from any other purityrannical authoritarian?
Stop rallying around the flag of freedom. Better yet, stop rallying around any flag. Who cares what symbols or banners or sayings there are to help you avoid your lack of independence? Slavery is slavery, whether you call yourself a servant of a master or a servant of "freedom." Free yourself and let the rest go to hell or heaven or chaos, whichever of the three they fear most. You no longer have to ingest and assimilate their three-headed mind pollution.
Three-headed mind pollution is everywhere. Many people will tell you that this world, or society, or the "system," is wrong, corrupt, and/or evil...a machine that must be smashed. But that is nothing more than Fundamentalism talking. The Christian Fundamentalists consider the world to be under the thrall of Satan and thus the entire complex of cultures, societies, and economics is evil. They got the idea from one or more of the competing religious sects that are now known as Gnostic which were popular in the Roman world after 100A.D. In this dualistic idea, the spiritual world is pure and good, while the material world of flesh and desire is evil and nothing but slavery. You can see this same idea, lock stock and barrel, in much of the atheist or non-religious Marxist-based revolutionary socialist movements (and let's face it, the majority of non-religious revolutionary movements are Marxist-based), except that the Devil is replaced with Capitalism and the "pure and good" spiritual world is replaced by the future society of "worker councils" and socialist economic planning. There are good ideas in both. Even the religious version of this theme has some ideas of merit. But Fundamentalists of either version- or from some newer version that claims to not be influenced by either yet is just as predictable and dualistic as all of them- will not accept any other possibility but their own side of the story.
Hell, even those pitiful few who are Discordian Fundamentalists have infected themselves with the disease. You know the verbal symptoms: "Who the hell are you to tell me I am wrong? Discordians don't tell anyone they're wrong." (Hah! Guess again, sucker!) "You got angry. Nah, Greyface!" "Life is shit. Why are you wasting time talking about pie?" or "Can't we all just get along?" or even the latest "You think Erisianism is about balance?" (which is sort of the thing that defines Erisianism as distinct from those who prefer the term Discordian, except when it isn't) and other such nattering. It goes on and on and around and around. Sort of like the merry-go-round back in third grade, sometimes it can even be funny or fun.
It is more important for some people to prove their ideas correct than to help alleviate any misery or to change anything for the better or to help someone grow up. But that's okay, why waste your energy on hate for them when you can tap into an endless source of pity or laughter? (Fun for hours, satisfaction guaranteed. Perhaps the Tibetan Buddhists have got it right.) What does it matter? So long as you are curing yourself of three-headed mind pollution and are actively avoiding any further infections, you'll figure enough out to do what you need to do when you need to do it...and all that feel good self-help cliched junk. Just remember that if you really do wish to buy bottled air, there are multitudes of brands you can choose from....some of them are even satisfaction guaranteed.
So now some of you are whining about the mess, the blood and the smashed eggs and the cat piss all over the living room...pointing your little fingers all over at everyone else but yourselves (which is okay if you are just putting us on, or if you actually might not have contributed to the mess). But the mess is still there. Who wants to clean it up? (I'll wait for hands to raise....)
Yeah. See what I mean. As long as it is not in your backyard, right? But it is your backyard, and even if it isn't, what are you going to do when the zombies come looking to eat your brains? You can laugh and say that it will never happen, but look at who is running the US government. Not as impossible as you thought now, is it? (Sorry, wrong rant and wrong crowd.)
Yeah. See what I mean. Some of the loudest whiners and complainers about whatever messes they find or find themselves in are exactly the ones who made the messes (or contributed to them) in the first place. Are you willing to be crazy enough to exist and perhaps put something back on this planet from which you have sucked life and resources from, or are you just going to wait until Eris calls in your debts and gets at least some use from your body as fertilizer? Resistance is fertile. Few are called, many are chosen. And the cloud of three-headed mind pollution pathogens is hanging in the air like the hordes of gnats that infest the lakefront every summer. And I already asked you to stop picking your nose in public, freak. So stop it already before you get savagely mauled by a team of Jehovah's Witnesses who want you to buy their magazines and donate all of your gonads and strife to the Lord's Kingdom. It's a fate I wouldn't wish on even the vilest person. (There are much better methods of punishment anyway.) We Erisians are getting sick of cleaning up the messes that everyone else has created (we have our own damned messes to worry about and just wait until you see the cleaning bill) so why should we give a damn about every new fool who seems to think that making another mess is a great way to change things? Hah! Sucker! Keep doing the Lady's work even as you claim to not believe in Her. Keep crediting your destructive angstiness to the Discordian Society even though we told you that Discordianism is no excuse. If you want to make a name for yourself and your three-headed mind pollution infected mentations, go join a cult or something. You might as well. (There may be more money and perks involved in that sort of enterprise anyway. Hell, do it just for the fun to be had.)
Now, I know some of you wanted me to clearly spell out some symptoms of three-headed mind pollution, the etiology, and treatment options to round out this rant. But you all can do that for yourselves, don't you think? (Besides, what fun would it be to spell it out clearly, especially as all the clues to the above are in the previous paragraphs?)
-Irreverend Hugh, KSC
(Driving under the influence of Salsa music and drums.)
August 9th, 2005