THE GOBLIN NEWSLETTER: DISCORDIANISM TODAY

 I thought I'd pontificate on the question, "What place does Discordianism have in today's post-truth society?” As far as I understand, Discordianism is all about Chaos Magic, or Magick if you are inclined. Which is acknowledging that chaos is just as important as order & that a certain amount of power can be pulled from the chaos.

That is the crucial thing, the finding of patterns in the chaos. Whether this is through concepts like Jungian Synchronicity, obsessing over conspiracy theories as displayed by Robert Anton Wilson or following the 23 Enigma as popularized by William Burroughs, it doesn’t really matter, I think the point is that in the chaos, there is an attempt to find an order.

One of the things that has really changed is that there was an abundance of order & structure in the post-war period, even up until 2014 or so. There was a steady decline in the order starting in 1964 probably, exacerbated by the VietNam war. Then the order was declared eternal by Francis Fukuyama with his 1992 “End of History” declaration. This came hot on the heels of George Bush’s “New World Order” speech. (which is such an important idea that it’s basically on our money “Novus Ordo Seclorum” or "A New Order of the Ages".

I might be misinterpreting the Fukuyama statement, but I always saw it as a Baby Boomer expression of wishful thinking. To someone 10,000 years from now, being told about “The End of History” being declared in 1992 would be far more ludicrous than it sounds now, or will sound in ten years.

In researching the statement, it means what I thought. "The End of History" argues that with the fall of the Soviet Union, liberal democracy & free-market capitalism became the final, "unsurpassable" form of human government, resolving major ideological conflicts. It means the end of evolution in political ideology, not the end of events, wars, or daily news.

The thing about the world is that time keeps marching on & things keep changing. For better, for worse, for no reason, except that they do & that has been what has happened forever. People keep talking, new problems pop up & old problems get solved or ignored.

Just because a generation is self-absorbed, detached from reality & short-sighted to think that things won’t change has absolutely no bearing on the fact that they will. Not to engage in the all-too common Gen X vs. Baby Boomer generational warfare, I’ll stop.

So my point in all this is that Discordianism was developed when there was a surplus of order in this country & now there is a surplus of chaos. While Discordianism isn’t just the plain old Punk “Cause Chaos & Destroy” ethos, it certainly was part of it.

I’m saying this as someone who came to Discordianism through the Subgenius & Chaos Magick through Genesis P. Orridge’s various projects. I called myself a Chaos Punk & have thrived in the destruction of the rigid American order & the chaos that has followed.

However, I also am the father of three teenagers & have been reduced to a much needier, disabled self after suffering a massive stroke in 2018. What I have seen first hand is that the strong thrive in chaos & the weak get plowed under.

In all of the calls for anarchy & chaos as a youth I started to think about what would really happen if there really was this liquefication. It became clear to me that the world would not be handed over to the weak, instead the most powerful & organized would take over, probably the US military.

All in all, Discordianism is just fine. It’s that calls for chaos should be understood as a problem & that this chaotic world craves order in this moment. In this way, I approach things as a Taoist, looking for balance. 

X SEAN