Tag: discordianism

The Prankster and the Assassin

Kerry Thornley was born on April 17th, 1938 in Whittier, California, the very same conservative bastion of Orange County blandness that bestowed upon us the honorable Richard M. Nixon, who some consider the physical embodiment of the Curse of Greyface.1

In 1958 – as an apparent counterbalance to Nixon’s ascension into the office of Vice President – Thornley and his teenaged pal Greg Hill (while sipping coffee in a Whittier bowling alley) inadvertently invoked Eris, the Greek goddess of chaos and discord. In the aftermath of their caffeine-induced vision, Hill and Thornley founded the so-called spoof religion Discordianism, as well as its disorganizational branch, The Discordian Society.

Initially an in-joke between Hill and Thornley, by the late 1960s the Discordian Society began to attract a loose knit group of writers, artists and free spirits who often adopted comical Pope names. Thornley embraced the Discordian persona of Lord Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst while Greg Hill became known as Malaclypse the Younger.

Other Discordian Popes included Playboy editors Robert Anton Wilson (Mordecai the Foul) and Robert Shea (Josh the Dill), who in tandem co-authored the counterculture classic, The Illuminatus Trilogy, with the first book in the series dedicated to none other than Hill and Thornley. Throughout Illuminatus are numerous references to Discordian memes such as The Law of Fives, The Sacred Chao, and the John Dillinger Died For You Society.

Many Discordian activities concerned pranks designed to not only poke fun at organized religion and uptight people, but also as a means of illumination through the use of surreal and irreverent humor. In recent years, the Discordian Society has grown into a worldwide underground phenomenon, although the only thing that its Popes and Momes can generally agree upon is that tried and true Discordian maxim: “We Discordians must stick apart!” For further information/confusion refer to Principia Discordia or How I Found Goddess And What I Did To Her When I Found Her.

During Thornley’s junior year of high school in the spring of 1956, he enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserves, attending boot camp that summer, then returned to high school in the fall of 1957 for his senior year. The following year he attended the University of Southern California as a journalism major, but quickly lost interest in pursuing the academic life.

A budding writer intent on traveling the world, Thornley figured the most immediate way to do so was by fulfilling his two-year active duty in the Marines. Kerry enlisted in the spring of 1959, and his first stop was El Toro Marine Base, located near Irvine, California. It was here that his life was forever altered when his path crossed that of Lee Harvey Oswald.

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The Problem Isn’t Human Nature, The Problem Is A Few Manipulative Sociopaths

The Principia Discordia is the primary text of Discordianism, which has been described as either an elaborate joke disguised as a religion or a religion disguised as an elaborate joke, depending on who you ask.

One section describes a short dialogue between the Principia‘s author “Malaclypse the Younger” (Mal-2) and “the Goddess”, who speaks to him through a radio:

One day Mal-2 asked the messenger spirit Saint Gulik to approach the Goddess and request Her presence for some desperate advice. Shortly afterwards the radio came on by itself, and an ethereal female Voice said YES?

“O! Eris! Blessed Mother of Man! Queen of Chaos! Daughter of Discord! Concubine of Confusion! O! Exquisite Lady, I beseech You to lift a heavy burden from my heart!”

WHAT BOTHERS YOU, MAL? YOU DON’T SOUND WELL.

“I am filled with fear and tormented with terrible visions of pain. Everywhere people are hurting one another, the planet is rampant with injustices, whole societies plunder groups of their own people, mothers imprison sons, children perish while brothers war. O, woe.”

WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH THAT, IF IT IS WHAT YOU WANT TO DO?

“But nobody Wants it! Everybody hates it.”

OH. WELL, THEN STOP.

At which moment She turned herself into an aspirin commercial and left The Polyfather stranded alone with his species.

“WELL, THEN STOP.” As you would expect from a joke disguised as a religion (or religion disguised as a joke), this is both funny and profound.

Because doesn’t it kind of feel like that’s the message we’ve been getting? From the divine if you like, or from the universe, or just from the mundane reality of our situation? Humanity’s leading problems at this point in history are not due to sabre-toothed tigers or deadly plagues whose nature we don’t understand, but are instead generated by humanity itself. War, tyranny, exploitation, ecocide–these are human-generated problems.

So it kind of feels like the message we’re getting here is, “WELL, THEN STOP.” If we don’t like how things are, we should knock it off. Stop waging wars. Stop exploiting and impoverishing each other. Stop killing the ecosystem. Don’t do those nutty things.

And of course the joke is that while this is true, it’s much easier said than done. It’s one thing for some lofty deity to tell us “WELL, THEN STOP” from on high, and quite another for us to actually do it.

But for those who care about our world, it’s still a question that needs to be taken seriously. Really, why don’t we stop?

One answer you’ll run into a lot is that this is just human nature. That it’s human nature to be selfish, competitive, predatory, exploitative, tyrannical, vicious, brutish, and violent. Some people strongly believe this, and get quite defensive if you challenge that belief.

Personally, I never turn my back on such people. Someone who says it’s human nature to be selfish, competitive, predatory, exploitative, tyrannical, vicious, brutish and violent isn’t telling you about human nature, they’re telling you about their own nature. I look within myself and find none of those things, but if you tell me that’s what you find when you look within yourself, I believe you.

The self-destructive behavioral patterns we’re seeing play out in our species are not the result of some unalterable feature inherent in our nature. This is evidenced by the existence of many human beings whose behavior is kind, gentle, generous, and collaborative. Humans are not inherently self-destructive, it’s just a behavior we see exhibited to varying degrees in some humans.

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THE PRANKSTER AND THE ASSASSIN

Kerry Thornley was born on April 17th, 1938 in Whittier, California, the very same conservative bastion of Orange County blandness that bestowed upon us the honorable Richard M. Nixon, who some consider the physical embodiment of the Curse of Greyface.1

In 1958 – as an apparent counterbalance to Nixon’s ascension into the office of Vice President – Thornley and his teenaged pal Greg Hill (while sipping coffee in a Whittier bowling alley) inadvertently invoked Eris, the Greek goddess of chaos and discord. In the aftermath of their caffeine-induced vision, Hill and Thornley founded the so-called spoof religion Discordianism, as well as its disorganizational branch, The Discordian Society.

Initially an in-joke between Hill and Thornley, by the late 1960s the Discordian Society began to attract a loose knit group of writers, artists and free spirits who often adopted comical Pope names. Thornley embraced the Discordian persona of Lord Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst while Greg Hill became known as Malaclypse the Younger.

Other Discordian Popes included Playboy editors Robert Anton Wilson (Mordecai the Foul) and Robert Shea (Josh the Dill), who in tandem co-authored the counterculture classic, The Illuminatus Trilogy, with the first book in the series dedicated to none other than Hill and Thornley. Throughout Illuminatus are numerous references to Discordian memes such as The Law of Fives, The Sacred Chao, and the John Dillinger Died For You Society.

Many Discordian activities concerned pranks designed to not only poke fun at organized religion and uptight people, but also as a means of illumination through the use of surreal and irreverent humor. In recent years, the Discordian Society has grown into a worldwide underground phenomenon, although the only thing that its Popes and Momes can generally agree upon is that tried and true Discordian maxim: “We Discordians must stick apart!” For further information/confusion refer to Principia Discordia or How I Found Goddess And What I Did To Her When I Found Her.

Keep reading