Discordianism is a modern, Chaos-based religion or pseudoreligion founded in either 1958 or 1959. It has been described as both an elaborate joke disguised as a religion, and as a religion disguised as an elaborate joke. Some of its followers make the claim that it is "a religion disguised as a joke disguised as a religion." It can be viewed as a simple rejection of reductionism and dualism, even falsifiability — not in concept different from postmodernism or certain trends in the philosophy of mathematics. It has also been described as "Zen for roundeyes," and converges with some of the more absurdist interpretations of the Rinzai school.
Discordians worship Eris, the Greek goddess of Discord. You know, that hoochie who caused so much grief by supposedly causing the Trojan war. Legend has it that she is some serious badass and mean like you wouldna believe. We Discordians maintain that she is merely misunderstood.
Discordians live by the following two rules, or not:
(1) There are no rules anywhere.
(2) The Goddess Prevails.
To add to the confusion, we also have a law of Fives that we strictly follow, or sometimes ignore depending on mood:
(1) ALL THINGS HAPPEN IN FIVES, OR ARE DIVISIBLE BY OR ARE MULTIPLES OF FIVE, OR ARE SOMEHOW DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY APPROPRIATE TO 5.
(2) The Law of Fives is never wrong.
I've been told that we also have a Book. Not a book, stupid. A Book. It is yay big and brown in colour. Of course, I may be wrong about the colour. It is called the Principia Discordia and contains within its pages--about 523 pages cover to cover not including the preface--absolutely everything worth knowing. And some stuff that is outright pornographic...no wait, that's a different book.
The Principia Discordia is organized along the lines of the Bible.
Well, don't hold me to any of this, I sure haven't read it.
Oh, by the by, the Principia Discordia is based heavily on and steals liberally from an earlier source called the Honest Book of Truth (HBT), which is lost to us forever. Legend has it that the HBT was taken by a garbage collector who refused to return it.
Here's some philosophy from the Book that I found useful, and I am saying that only to get you to read this stuff:
The Aneristic Principle is that of APPARENT ORDER; the Eristic Principle is that of APPARENT DISORDER. Both order and disorder are man made concepts and are artificial divisions of PURE CHAOS, which is a level deeper than is the level of distinction making. With our concept making apparatus called "mind" we look at reality through the ideas-about-reality which our cultures give us.
The ideas-about-reality are mistakenly labeled "reality" and unenlightened people are forever perplexed by the fact that other people, especially other cultures, see reality" differently. It is only the ideas-about-reality which differ. Real (capital-T True) reality is a level deeper than is the level of concept.
We look at the world through windows on which have been drawn grids (concepts). Different philosophies use different grids. A culture is a group of people with rather similar grids. Through a window we view chaos, and relate it to the points on our grid, and thereby understand it. The ORDER is in the GRID. That is the Aneristic Principle.
Western philosophy is traditionally concerned with contrasting one grid with another grid, and amending grids in hopes of finding a perfect one that will account for all reality and will, hence, (say unenlightened westerners) be True. This is illusory; it is what we Erisians call the ANERISTIC ILLUSION. Some grids can be more useful than others, some more beautiful than others, some more pleasant than others, etc., but none can be more True than any other.
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