Narcissus, by Caravaggio

from the Black Iron Prison

You know how a virus works? It goes into a cell and changes the code so that the cell only produces more virii. In a way the virus steals the cell’s identity, making it a part of a viral system.

If you ask me, the worst phase of being sick is when you’ve been sick for so long you forget what it’s like to be well. In a way, you’ve lost a bit of yourself and become the virus.

People catch and spread memes like viruses. They’re contageous, self-replicating little buggers. Like any virus, their goal is to spread themselves, to become a large, healthy, self-sustaining colony. We have to be careful how we handle memes because at a certain point its difficult to tell the difference between when we’re using the memes and when the memes are using us.

This is not to say that memes are harmful diseases. But some of them can be if you get infected, infested, obsessed and invested.

One of the most pervasive and prevalent memes in this modern world is the meme called I Am. We live in an overpopulated era, floating in a sea of interchangable people. In this ocean our biggest life perserver is a sense of individuality – the notion that each and every one of us is unique, distinct. One wants to say “I am not the crowd. I am not the group. I am not just another cog in the machine.”

We jump through personal hoops to distinguish ourselves from the others. We customize our identities so as to retain a sense of self, a buoy bobbing in the tide of the collective.

But this ego meme can become a disease. In moderation, it helps us understand ourselves. In excess, we define ourselves. In time, these definitions become rigid, inflexible.

Consider, for example, the “C student”. In his attempt to understand himself, he internalizes “I am a C student.” Armed with that identity he has no drive to do better. He accepts “who he is”. Or consider the average voter. He identifies with a political party and probably agrees with them about many things. The party tells him which sides of any given issues to support – no need to think for oneself there!

It can be a sickness.

The Machine, of course, is programmed to capitalize on this sickness. There are a variety of memes available to customize your identity. What color iPod do you want? Which TV shows are YOUR TV shows? What brand of cologne smells like YOU?

I am not suggesting that people abandon their sense of self. But I do think that people get addicted to self-definition and it leads to inflexibility.

Quote from: Journey to Ixtlan, Carlos Castenada
(Don Juan speaking to Castaneda) “Your father knows everything about you”, he said.

“So he has you all figured out. He knows who you are and what you do, and there is no power on earth that can make him change his mind about you”.

Don Juan said that everybody that knew me had an idea about me, and that I kept feeding the idea with everything I did. “Don’t you see ?”, he asked dramatically.

“You must renew your personal history by telling your parents, your relatives, and your friends everything you do. On the other hand, if you have no personal history, no explanations are needed; nobody is angry or disillusioned with your acts. And above all no one pins you down with their thoughts.”.

(…) “But that’s absurd”, I protested. “Why shouldn’t people know me ? What’s
wrong with that ?”; “What’s wrong is that once they know you, you are an affair taken for granted and from that moment on you won’t be able to break the tie of their thoughts. I personally like the ultimate freedom of being unknown. No one knows me with steadfast certainty, the way people know you, for instance”.

“But that would be lying”. “I’m not concerned with lies or truths”, he said
severely. “Lies are lies only if you have personal history”.

Don Juan, speaking to Castaneda
“You see”, he went on, “we only have two alternatives; we either take everything for sure and real, or we don’t. If we follow the first, we end up bored to death with ourselves and with the world. If we follow the second and erase personal history, we create a fog around us, a very exciting and mysterious state in which nobody knows where the rabbit will pop out, not even ourselves.”

some more discussion was here

For this reason certain fine forms of asceticism are developing quite naturally. This asceticism does not slander love, does not blaspheme against it, does not try to convince itself that love is an abomination from which it is necessary to run away. It is Platonism rather than asceticism. It recognizes that love is the sun, but often does not see its way to live in the sunlight, and so considers it better not to see the sun at all, […]

—P.D. Ouspensky, Tertium Organum

Pirate Pass Off is a very simple game by Professor Cramulus. All you need to do is print out the PDF, and hand the cards to others. The game practically plays itself!

This version can be printed off on Avery Business Cardstock:

Pirate Pass Off for Avery Business Cards

This one prints larger “magic” style cards, and features a bonus NINJA card. The Ninja card is best when introduced to people who are already familiar with Pirate Pass Off.


Pirate Pass Off Cards Large (With Ninja Card)

While admittedly not the most effective attack on religion I have ever seen, failing both to be funny or make effective points, I’m not sure that it bombed so badly to deserve prison time.  I mean, that’s a seriously tough crowd.

Edit: now updated with the correct link!

Aeternus Ille Discordia

by LHX, from the Black Iron Prison

they thirst for knowledge
i teach but hold heat
’cause some savage niggas are lost beyond reach
-masta killa – high price small reward

there is a segment of the population of this planet that has stopped learning

there is also a segment of the population of this planet that has lost the capacity to learn

what have these people become?

it has been established over and over again that our way of life has become suicidal on the large scale

and though there are some who are able to change and are on the look out to change their ways

it is becoming frightfully apparent that there does exist some form of being that is – at this point – unable to change its ways

what does this imply?

i’m not sure really

years and decades and centuries of moving in a particular direction, and at the culmination of it we have these ‘living’ things that are able to take from the earth use these materials and in the process create by-products that we cannot use

we call it pollution

toxicity

it takes many forms

and it is increasing rapidly

it just keeps building up in our cities, and in our guts

and from time to time it’s necessary to purge

are you moderating your toxicity? or is your toxicity moderating you?

as individuals, we need to develop our immune systems. a healthy immune system makes you more resistant to toxicity. when you’re all sick and toxic, pregnant with poison, you’ve gotta develop tools to flush your system out.

we need mental laxatives

we need a social enema

they say one shouldn’t shit where one eats. but there are more types of shit than feces. and we consume much more than food.

Paracelsus, the father of toxicology, once wrote:
“Everything is poison, there is poison in everything.
Only the dose makes a thing not a poison”.

In the majority of poisonings the mainstay of management is providing supportive care for the patient,

i.e. treating the symptoms rather than the poison

but if the toxicity comes from one another

purging the symptoms will cure each other too

The One Line Meme Bomb is like memetics in haiku form. One tries to refine down an idea until it’s as dense and provocative as possible. They often end up somewhere in between an adage and a non sequitur. A good one line meme bomb provokes a change, charge, or ripple in the person who thinks about it. Perhaps it’s the straw that makes the camel say “I’ve had enough!”, quit his job, and become a butterfly on fire. Or perhaps it’s something you scrawl on bathroom walls with a sharpie. Or shout it from a moving car. Or get it tattooed to your balls.

The One Line Meme Bomb database was coded by Triple Zero, a dashing Discordian hypersultan from the Netherlands. It aggregates input from Spags Like You, ranking them by popularity. This exercise was developed at The Pee Dee Forums, where there are well over 200 pages of these things, with discussion.

If you’re curious, a few people have talked about their goals for one line meme bombs, here. There’s also a few poorly organized “best of” lists here.

To this day, neither Ho Chih Zen himself nor any other Discordian apostle knows for sure who is or is not involved in any phase of Operation Mindfuck or what activities they are or are not engaged in as part of that project. Thus, the outsider is immediately trapped in a double-bind: the only safe assumption is that anything a Discordian does is somehow related to OM, but, since this leads directly to paranoia, this is not a “safe” assumption after all, and the “risky” hypothesis that whatever the Discordians are doing is harmless may be “safer” in the long run, perhaps. Every aspect of OM follows, or accentuates, this double-bind.