How I Found Eris, and What I Did to Her When I Found Her

I found Discordianism, and therefore Eris, in 1994. I had turned 21, and was in that awkward transition between "too old to be a teenager" and "too young to be an adult". Plus, it was the Nineties, so I spent most of my time wearing black, listening to Sisters of Mercy, and when I wasn't reading Anne Rice or playing Vampire: the Masquerade, I was depressed and wondering What Was The Point Of It All.

I'm not going to tell you that my life was instantly changed the moment I found a copy of Steve Jackson Games' Principia Discordia -- I had a lot of ingrained uptightness to overcome -- but it did take a turn for the weird, and my life has been richer for that weirdness.

See, I'm the kind of person who obsessively looks for patterns. I seek meaning in way too many things. I like to attribute this to my artistic leanings, and truth be told it's served me well in life, both in discerning literary symbolism and in helping me unearth the motivations of those around me. (Yes, we brainy introspective types with English majors and Psychology minors can double as FBI profilers and Lit Critics. Be afraid.)

However, sometimes this passion for pattern recognition borders on OCD. Don't tell us that a pattern isn't there! We just haven't dug deeply enough. Give us time, by golly by jingo, and we'll find it. You just wait and see.

Next thing you know, we're starring in a sequel to A Beautiful Mind.

Into this frothing mass of post-teenage aaaaaaaaaaangst fell Eris. At first, I thought it was something silly, a vaguely coherent-sounding rant that I could use when I LARPed my Malkavian. Then I re-read it. And re-re-read it. Again. And again.

I had to keep reading it because, well, I sensed something. A pattern, a greater truth... as Polonius said, Though this be madness, yet there is method in 't.

And then, finally I got it. It took me a long time to get not because the truth was particularly hard, but because I had to shatter my own paradigm of reality to understand it.

I'm going to try to share it with you. If you don't get it, that's okay. Some people get it instantly; some never do. Some, however -- and I sincerely hope to count you, dear reader, among this number -- read it; don't quite get it; read it again; spend days puzzling it out; and then, at an inopportune and potentially embarrassing moment, you GET IT and have a falling-down case of the giggles.

Paraquoting:

We look at the world through windows on which have been drawn grids. Different philosophies use different grids. Through this window we view chaos, and relate it to the points on our grid, and thereby understand it. The order is in the grid.

Disorder is simply unrelated information viewed through some particular grid. But, like "relation", non-relation is a concept. Male, like female, is an idea about gender. To say that male-ness is "absence of female-ness," or vice-versa, is a matter of definition, and thus unmeasurable, and therefore wholly arbitrary. Pick a grid, and through it some reality appears ordered and some appears disordered. Pick another grid, and the same reality will appear differently ordered and disordered.

Western philosophy is traditionally concerned with contrasting one grid with another, and amending grids in hopes of finding a perfect one that will account for all reality and will, hence, be True. This is an illusion, because it is based upon the notion that Order is inherently good and Disorder inherently bad. This causes man to endure the destructive aspects of order and prevents him from effectively participating in the creative uses of disorder.


To choose order over disorder, or disorder over order, is to accept a worldview composed of both the creative and the destructive. But to choose the creative over the the destructive is to choose an all-creative worldview composed of both order and disorder.

The human race will begin solving its problems on the day that it ceases taking itself so seriously: LIFE IS THE ART OF PLAYING GAMES.

If you can master nonsense as well as you have already learned to master sense, then each will expose the other for what it is: absurdity. From that moment of illumination, a man begins to be free regardless of his surroundings. He becomes free to play order games and change them at will. He becomes free to play disorder games just for the hell of it. He becomes free to play neither, or both. And as the master of his own games, he plays without fear, and therefore without frustration, and therefore with goodwill in his soul and love in his being.

If you didn't get all that, don't fret. Eris has a way of fucking with you when least expected.

It's really only proper that I end this mostly quoted blog with another quote, this time from Kerry Thornley, one of the co-founders of Discordianism.

[...] before I was a Discordian, when I entered my room only to be reminded by its disarry that it was a mess, I felt a sense of defeat. These days when that happens I just say, "Hail Eris!" - our customary salute to any embodiment of chaos - and then I cheerfully carry on, secure in the knowledge that the constellations look no better.

I'm still uptight in a lot of ways. I still obsess over patterns. I am still a work in progress. But instead of getting upset by disorder, by absurdity, by chaos which doesn't fit in my little grid I call reality... I can laugh at it, and get on with the far more important task of living my life as I wish.

Hail Eris.

Aiming to Misbehave

Joss Whedon's Firefly was, and still is, the most perfect television show ever.



I will not tolerate argument about this. I cannot express how deeply I love this show. If I ever have the chance to travel back in time, I am taking my boxed set of the series and the motion picture and I will find a way to get into the Fox Network boardroom circa 2002 and, if logic fails, I will re-enact Dogma on their asses if that's what it takes to get them to un-cancel it.

Pardon me. I seem to be foaming at the mouth.

A brief summary for those unable or unwilling to follow links: 500 years in the future, humanity has colonized a new solar system. In the wake of a civil war called "Unification", the Central Planets (think typical high-tech sci-fi society) has imposed its will upon the Rim Worlds (think hardscrabble pioneers, miners, and settlers). In the midst of all this is Malcolm Reynolds, captain of the Firefly-class mid-bulk transport Serenity. Mal fought on the Independent (i.e., losing) side of Unification, and now lives a shadowy and frequently illegal existence wherein his main goal is to exist outside the control of central authority.

Mal doesn't know it, but he lives the Discordian dream. He has a ship, and that means freedom. He has a crew who are loyal to him, and that means family. His plans, brilliant as they are, never ever go smoothly, and that's because he's blessed by Eris Herself. Heck, he even shares a name with one of the founders of the Discordian movement: Malaclypse the Younger, aka Mal-2.

In fact, the entire show can be seen as a giant Discordian Manifesto. I never realized it until I saw the picture on Monday, and then found this jewel of a quote in my well-worn Principia:

There is Serenity in Chaos. Seek ye the Eye of the Hurricane.

DUDE.

Serenity, the ship, travels the Chaos of space. But at the same time, there is Chaos within Serenity, as the crew squabble and fight with each other as families are wont to do. They are all seeking that center of calm within themselves, that unconquerable feeling of "I am me; I have done the impossible; that makes me mighty" which, though the world surrounding them may thrash and wail, cannot break them. And all of this is done aboard Serenity.

There is Serenity in Chaos. Seek ye the Eye of the Hurricane. It's practically a syllogistic koan.

An oft-recurring quote within the series is, "No power in the 'Verse can stop me." This is a fierce statement of independence and empowerment, and was taken up by the fans when the series was cancelled back in 2002. It worked: when the series was released on DVD in 2003, it shot to the top of Amazon.com's bestsellers, and as of today -- four years later -- it is #12 on the Top 100 Bestseller List. Because of this voracious demand, Serenity was released as a major motion picture in 2005.

Failed TV shows don't get made into movies. But the fans didn't listen. No power in the 'verse could stop them.

So let's look at the picture again:

• Gold, for faithfulness.
  
• "No power in the 'verse can stop us."
• Why an apple? Well, in the episode "War Stories", reference is made to "griswalds", tiny pressure-sensitive grenades that were embedded in apples by enemy troops.

Faith. Stubbornness. Hidden power. These are the qualities of a Firefly fan (aka Browncoat), and they are also the qualities of a Discordian (aka Erisian).

Tomorrow: Tying it all together, aka 'Tis an ill wind that blows no minds.

Conventional Chaos

Pop quiz, hotshots: How many planets does our solar system have?

Prior to September 13, 2006, the correct answer was nine. Nowadays we have either eight or eleven, depending on how literally you parse the word "planet".

Yes, Eris had managed to toss another golden apple into our solar system back in 2005 with this little bowling display, and the astronomers and scientists and people-who-make-names-official promptly fell all over themselves arguing about her. Three Letter Acronyms, such as TNO, were bandied about. Eventually, after much brouhaha, she was classified on 9/13/06 as a dwarf planet, along with Pluto and Ceres.

To reiterate: Eris got Pluto demoted from planet status, and a glorified asteroid promoted to "dwarf planet".

That, my friends, is what we call a display of pure, unadulterated, Erisian power.

So back to the picture again:

• Golden Apple
  
• Roughly spherical... one might say almost planetoid in appearance
• "No power in the 'Verse [universe] can stop us."

Indeed, no power in the universe can stop Eris.. including the lawyers and bureaucrats who name the silly things.

Καλλίστη

Close the shades and hide the children, dear readers, because today we're talking about Greek Mythology. And when we talk about Greek gods, we're talking about sex.

Kinky sex.

Freaky sex.

Positively copious amounts of sex.

And as you can see, most of the sex is being had by Zeus. If you're Freudian, you can of course see the phallus inherent in Zeus' symbol, the bolt of lightning: a thing of potence, a sign of kingship, and tool of aggression. So when I say that Zeus had a thing for smiting people with lightning....

... nudge nudge, wink wink...

... well, you get the idea.

One of Zeus' many, many children was Eris, goddess of Discord. Interestingly enough, she wasn't a bastard, instead being one of the five legitimate children Zeus had with his wife, Hera. Of further interest is that Eris' thematic opposite -- Harmonia, goddess of Concord -- has far muddier origins. Harmonia's father is questionable; some say Ares, some say Hephaestus -- but her mother, Aphrodite, was Zeus' granddaughter. For those having trouble, let me lay it all out:

Eris

Chaos

Legitimate

Daughter of Olympus' ruler

Harmonia

Order

Questionable Legitimacy

Daughter of Olympus' biggest tramp, who is herself a bastard

Order's pedigree begins to look a wee bit suspect, wouldn't you say?

So, bona fides having been firmly established, I'm going to quote wholecloth for you the story of The Original Snub, as originally laid forth in the seminal Principia Discordia:

It seems that Zeus was preparing a wedding banquet for Peleus and Thetis and did not want to invite Eris because of Her reputation as a trouble maker.

This made Eris angry, and so She fashioned an apple of pure gold and inscribed upon it Καλλίστη ("To The Prettiest One") and on the day of the fete, She rolled it into the banquet hall and then left to be alone and joyously partake of a hot dog.

Now, three of the invited goddesses, Athena, Hera, and Aphrodite, each immediately claimed it to belong to herself because of the inscription. And they started fighting, and they started throwing punch all over the place and everything.

Finally Zeus calmed things down and declared that an arbitrator must be selected, which was a reasonable suggestion, and all agreed. He sent them to a shepherd of Troy, whose name was Paris because his mother had had a lot of gaul and had married a Frenchman; but each of the sneaky goddesses tried to outwit the others by going early and offering a bribe to Paris.

Athena offered him Heroic War Victories, Hera offered him Great Wealth, and Aphrodite offered him the Most Beautiful Woman on Earth. Being a healthy young Trojan lad, Paris promptly accepted Aphrodite's bribe and she got the apple and he got screwed.

As she had promised, she maneuvered earthly happenings so that Paris could have Helen (THE Helen) then living with her husband Menelaus, King of Sparta. Anyway, everyone knows that the Trojan War followed when Sparta demanded their Queen back and that the Trojan War is said to be The First War among men.

And so we suffer because of the Original Snub. And so a Discordian is to partake of No Hot Dog Buns.

Verily! Now, with this story fresh in your minds, look once again at yesterday's picture.

Apple? Check.

Golden? Checkity-check.

Cryptic inscription? CZECH!

Verily I say again! This is an honest-to-goddess, no fooling, Erisian Artifact.

"Great," I hear you all thinking -- and I can hear you thinking other things too, and for those thoughts you should be very, very ashamed -- "I get the dealie-o with the apple, but what does this have to do with yesterday's post? And what, for blogfodder's sake, does this have to do with Joss Whedon?"

Tomorrow, dear children. I want to blow your minds gently.

Seek Ye the Eye of the Hurricane

I've been teasing you for a week now with my references to Discordianism. Some of you are apt pupils and have studiously followed the links I have provided. To you I say, "That which binds us together like a nutshell counts only as one act." Those of you who don't immediately see the inherent parallel that has with act 2, scene 2 of Hamlet had better keep reading.

I could spend several pages talking about Discordianism. Odds are excellent that you'll see more essays about it on this blog, usually on a Friday. But just this once I'll go easy on you, dear readers, and boil it down to basics, because otherwise you'll have no clue what I'm talking about. And I usually find expressions of abject bafflement quite adorable, so you'd better appreciate this gift.

People spend inordinate amounts of time and energy trying to counteract entropy, which basically says that the Universe likes taking the path of least resistance. This means that the contents of a spilled box of cornflakes will not arrange themselves into a nice little pile, because nice little piles are orderly, and order takes energy. It requires vastly less energy to spill across your kitchen floor in a haphazard pattern. Path of least resistance is taken, and you have a mess first thing in the morning. You then spend time and effort to clean up said mess -- in other words, restoring order. In other other words, you're fighting entropy, and getting less out of the deal because of the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

Discordianism is, at its heart, a philosophy that says: "So what if things fall apart? Who says chaos is bad? Sometimes it's good. Maybe while you're on your hands and knees cleaning the kitchen, you find something you dropped last week. Maybe the pattern on the floor gives you artistic insight. Or maybe it makes you late for work, you lose your job, and then you find a better one." In many ways, Discordianism is Rinzai Zen Buddhism filtered through modern Western absurdist principles:

1. Things screw up.
   
2. You can't keep things from screwing up.
   
3. You get really worked up and tense from fixing screwed up things.
   
4. Wouldn't you really rather not have to fix screwed up things?
5. Embrace the screwup -- i.e. chaos -- as a necessary part of your life, and chill.
   

(For those paying attention at home, I've just linked Zen, Thermodynamics, and Søren Kierkegaard to the same subject in three paragraphs. If ever you wondered why you loved me, here's your proof: I can be geeky in three separate disciplines simultaneously. Go me.)

Today, according to the Official Discordian Kalendar, is Day 50 of the Season of Chaos. The 50th day of every season is special, and today is known as Chaoflux. On the day of Chaos, in the season of Chaos, I found this image on Whedonesque:


(Photo courtesy of The One True b!X)

Trust me when I tell you that this could not be laden with more symbolic imagery than if it were an 18-wheeler with the words "Symbolic Imagery" on the side. In fact, it's going to take me all week to describe this metaphoric goldmine.

So strap in. Things get crazy from here on out.

Well... crazier, at any rate.