The 23 Apples of Eris

The original Trickster Goddess is back. She’s been sleeping for a long time, but the discovery of the Planet Eris marks her full force return. Eris isn’t the kind of God who rules the world from a mountain like a king. She changes the world by rolling a golden apple into the midst of a party. People’s true colors come out when they dive dive for it. Our culture can’t stop squabbling for those golden apples. Turn on the news, it’s most of what you see. Somewhere, Eris is snickering to herself.

There’s a little western Zen parable there. The Buddha says that suffering comes from desire. But if you can enjoy things without being attached to them (and avoid things without fearing them), you won’t be as likely to enter batshit feral grabass territory when you see the golden apple. Eris is like a trickster Buddha, rolling apples and watching the show (BTW, I know firsthand that Eris rides bikes with Lao Tzu). And I like that because Buddha isn’t a god, he’s a symbol that even us shitty mortals can find Nirvana. And Eris is a symbol too. For what, that’s up to you.

Discordianism was founded by two stoned teenagers in a bowling alley. Normally, “Hey let’s start our own religion dooood” conversations become stupid after about 25 minutes, but this one actually worked and has been going on for over 50 goddamn years. (If you think about it, this is actually much less silly than how Mormonism began.)

Listen, truth isn’t a contact-high you get by hanging out with wise people. We’ve been brainwashed by millennia of cultural conditioning to think that holy men are an elite group we don’t belong to. But you don’t need a designated driver to talk to God (or the Higher Self or whatever you call it) Jesus, Buddha, and the Flying Spaghetti Monster are within all of us. You can be the pope if you want. The fucking pope! Anybody can. 

Seriously, we have a cultural bias towards “the wisdom of the ages”. People are living their lives based on some rules written by some ancient spags in a desert who didn’t even have text messaging on their phones. People treat them as a moral authority even though that culture would have been totally awful to live in. (Unless you like public stonings and dying at 35) We live in a world the ancients couldn’t have even imagined. Instead of living in their model, it’s often better to think for yourself, or at least use advice from this century.