"Still, the Damned Thing will not fit into their slots."
-Hagbard Celine
"She is your Goddess!"
-Ancient Scrawl found in ruins of Melos
"Discordians don't drink to escape problems. They drink to create problems."
The ancient Greeks snubbed Eris repeatedly and for this, they eventually found a loss of the freedom that was theirs. First to tyrants, despite the best efforts of those Athenian democrats who tried to get their fellow citizens to rally around the idea of personal freedom. (Now Eris, already had a longstanding miff with the Greeks because they instituted patriarchy. "Men," She said to me once "know nothing about the true joys of poptarts.") Then to the Romans, because they forgot who maintained them against the earlier war against the Persians. Then, even then, they would not acknowledge Eris. Even if they had tried to, by this point, Eris decided to play in other games, and just to really rub it in She punished them with Christianity for hundreds of years. Hell, even the disgrace of being conquered by the Turks wouldn't shake their masses out of their torpor, so that was that. "They were victims of indigestion, you know," as Eris has pointed out. The Greeks, not surprisingly, had (and have) no lost love for Eris, so they always wrote about Her as being this malicious chaotic troublemaker who would bring ruin on anyone's head just for the spite of it. But we modern Erisians know better, especially since even if we get indigestion from time to time, we have medicine to help us out. (And don't count the Greeks out, they have done no worse than other ethnic groups.)
Humankind is forever trying to find deities or ideas (which may as well be deities, even the atheist ideas) that will take care of them and explain all of those Damned Things that somehow refuse to fit into the neat and ordered cosmologies or political theories or economics or religious doctrines. Eris doesn't demand nor expect that sort of attitude from Her "followers." In fact, co-conspirators is a better descriptive term for those who worship and/or revere Eris. With a knowing wink and a laugh She turns on the pineal gland to get you to learn how to do it for yourself. She gives us all sorts of wonderful rites and rules and catmas knowing full well how trained we are to receive such "scriptures" and religious or ideological effluvia. But Her revelations are irreligious and irreverent in ways that make us open up and never trust anything ever again but our senses and our own minds. (Some of you already know this and if you are one of those sorts, you should probably seek out some elder Discordians for your next illumination.)
In this day and age it is different however. It seems that neophiles are popping up more often than ever before and Eris is watching. (Does that make you feel better, or does that frighten you? Or does it make you laugh? Or some other thing? None of the above is also a valid choice.) Humankind has somehow developed Damned Thing freethinkers by the thousands. (Don't get ahead of yourselves, those of us on the freethinking side are still outnumbered...vastly.) Yet there is still this matter of the Prettiest One and the Golden Apple.
Neophile thinkers and doers are popping up all over the place. By all gods, look around. Who would have thought that polytheism would have ever made a comeback? And then there is quantum physics and the lunacy of cognitive therapy. Explain those things. Despite this, the neophobes are fighting harder than ever to maintain their hold over the way things are. If reality is what we can get away with, those fuckers have been getting away with the appearance of controlling reality for far too long now. Thankfully, the neophobes mostly attack and kill one another, but never forget that you neophiles are their ultimate target. They see your nice shiny apples and they want some of your pie. So....what is to be done about that? Throw your apples to them. Let them have it. (But you already know this.)
The stupid people who run this planet's major predator bands (the corporations, the governments, the monotheist religious groupings, etc.) have not stopped fighting over the first bobdamned apple in the first place. Read up on your Homer. It's all there. Then read one of the international newspapers. Then read them both simultaneously. Now....I'll wait.......
Do you see now how they fight and squabble and attack and whine and cuss and all that? Just like all those idiot Olympians, huh? Maybe the Pagans were onto something there. (Or maybe they were just victims of living in that barbaric age before the internet was invented by Thoth and his pals Prometheus and Mercury. Of course you know that She What Done It All gave them the idea in order to tip the world's balance to the Aftermath.
She told me her reason. "Hot dogs become really cheap during the Aftermath," She said. I don't know if I can buy that story but I'll let it stick because who doesn't like cheaper hot dogs?)
They (the neophobes, not the hot dogs, though I suspect both categories anyway) have never learned that we are all Prettiest Ones. And Eris is the Prettiest One. Their jokes are no longer funny and we demand compensation for having to endure centuries of their maladaptive behaviors and self-perpetuating learning-disability loops (also known as "beliefs"). The apple is your own damned mind. The Prettiest One is what you do with it. Don't miss out on the symbolism and start worshipping and groveling beneath the finger that points out the ways. Walk the ways. (And we have many silly ways to help you figure out the most lunatic styles of walking, if you wish to be enlightened that way.)
Our Goddess has never demanded you follow any sets of rules or dogmas (unless She is fooling you, of course). Hell, She doesn't even mind if you don't believe She exists, unless you snub Her. (A too thin line to walk upon, but only for those who aren't Discordians.) And She believes you exist, regardless. Now, does knowing that She exists make you feel more or less secure? Liar!
-Irreverend Hugh, KSC
July 18th, 2005
Rant 96
Rants Vol. 2 Index