Zonark
Well-known member
Oh I got lots to say on Eris!
Around the time of this fine planetoid's discovery Greg Hill with Kerry Wendell Thornley published a book called the Principia Discordia, intended to be the er, tome of reference for their religion which was the worship and veneration of Eris as the Goddess of Divine Discord. Sort of. You see they had to stress the nature of Eris as essentially a nonsensical deity engaged in a sort of eternally sarcastic yet mystically serious hyperlogic.
The entire book reads like a bunch of goofy hippies who took one too many tabs of acid and decided to talk about metaphysical stuff. Naturally.
Reading it to even begin to understand the religion is a must, but the history of these characters, who went under the pseudonyms Malaclypse the Younger and Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst respectively is also important. Their friends, notables such as Robert Shea, Robert Anton Wilson, Charles Manson (maybe), the Weather Underground, the CIA, Cthulhu, Audrey Hepburn, Stephen Colbert, Bill O'Reilly and just a handful of anarchists all show the unusual background of the "religion" and perhaps reflect on the nature of Eris as a planet.
I myself purchased a later edition of the Principia Discordia at age 14 (or 15, maybe, honestly can't remember). I read it and the humor was very 70s-80s hippie-ish stuff that seemed designed to make its readers feel very smart and stupid at the same time. I fell in love with the philosophy and its principals (everyone is a Pope, reality is composed of creative order, destructive order, creative chaos and destructive chaos, all are essential and then some, all followers of Eris are the penultimate prophets and leaders of the religion ((I can proudly say I have been banned from several Discordian 'communities', one of which claimed not to ban people for any reason)) and that seriousness is essentially a curse, a mental illness, THE mental illness that drags humanity down)
My own reflecting on Eris is that she may manifest just as much as a terrorist as she might a groan inducing cliche banana peel primed for your inevitable downfall.
The Joker comes to mind, but not as much as Harley Quinn. Deadpool too. She teaches one to laugh at death, treat life as a joke of divine proportions and that seriousness is keeping you from the good stuff in life.
On a serious note there is evidence that the founders were involved in MK-ULTRA and the religion may have actually been part of the brainwashing experiments. Kerry Thornley in particular fits the personality and lifework profile of a counterrevolutionary, of which we know the CIA still goes to great lengths to implement voraciously. There is evidence that he may have been involved in the assassination of JFK, a real, serious revolutionary who planned to shut down the Federal Reserve before leaving office.
If one inspects the religion of Eris closely it does seem to be just that. Counterrevolutionary. Killing the Bolsheviks with jokes and parties. Isolating potential group efforts by canonizing all individuals prematurely.
But perhaps that is the point and lesson of Eris. That you don't need an ideology, or following, or "the truth" to be a real revolutionary, you don't even need to be a revolutionary. The true struggle is with you alone.
However I do think some amorphous communities, such as the internet as a whole, are very much in the flavor of Discord.
Eris the planet, I like to interpret by this way. She is anything but predictable.
Around the time of this fine planetoid's discovery Greg Hill with Kerry Wendell Thornley published a book called the Principia Discordia, intended to be the er, tome of reference for their religion which was the worship and veneration of Eris as the Goddess of Divine Discord. Sort of. You see they had to stress the nature of Eris as essentially a nonsensical deity engaged in a sort of eternally sarcastic yet mystically serious hyperlogic.
The entire book reads like a bunch of goofy hippies who took one too many tabs of acid and decided to talk about metaphysical stuff. Naturally.
Reading it to even begin to understand the religion is a must, but the history of these characters, who went under the pseudonyms Malaclypse the Younger and Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst respectively is also important. Their friends, notables such as Robert Shea, Robert Anton Wilson, Charles Manson (maybe), the Weather Underground, the CIA, Cthulhu, Audrey Hepburn, Stephen Colbert, Bill O'Reilly and just a handful of anarchists all show the unusual background of the "religion" and perhaps reflect on the nature of Eris as a planet.
I myself purchased a later edition of the Principia Discordia at age 14 (or 15, maybe, honestly can't remember). I read it and the humor was very 70s-80s hippie-ish stuff that seemed designed to make its readers feel very smart and stupid at the same time. I fell in love with the philosophy and its principals (everyone is a Pope, reality is composed of creative order, destructive order, creative chaos and destructive chaos, all are essential and then some, all followers of Eris are the penultimate prophets and leaders of the religion ((I can proudly say I have been banned from several Discordian 'communities', one of which claimed not to ban people for any reason)) and that seriousness is essentially a curse, a mental illness, THE mental illness that drags humanity down)
My own reflecting on Eris is that she may manifest just as much as a terrorist as she might a groan inducing cliche banana peel primed for your inevitable downfall.
The Joker comes to mind, but not as much as Harley Quinn. Deadpool too. She teaches one to laugh at death, treat life as a joke of divine proportions and that seriousness is keeping you from the good stuff in life.
On a serious note there is evidence that the founders were involved in MK-ULTRA and the religion may have actually been part of the brainwashing experiments. Kerry Thornley in particular fits the personality and lifework profile of a counterrevolutionary, of which we know the CIA still goes to great lengths to implement voraciously. There is evidence that he may have been involved in the assassination of JFK, a real, serious revolutionary who planned to shut down the Federal Reserve before leaving office.
If one inspects the religion of Eris closely it does seem to be just that. Counterrevolutionary. Killing the Bolsheviks with jokes and parties. Isolating potential group efforts by canonizing all individuals prematurely.
But perhaps that is the point and lesson of Eris. That you don't need an ideology, or following, or "the truth" to be a real revolutionary, you don't even need to be a revolutionary. The true struggle is with you alone.
However I do think some amorphous communities, such as the internet as a whole, are very much in the flavor of Discord.
Eris the planet, I like to interpret by this way. She is anything but predictable.
