All Hail Eris! Or Don’t, Whichever.
A while ago I stumbled across the Discordianism article at wikipedia, but never actually read the whole thing. I seem to remember that at the time (a few years ago now), it was not quite so well written and apparently in the middle of an edit war. In any case, I was intrigued by it then, and earlier I found myself looking at the article again, and with nothing better to do (other than attempting to bring my faltering motivation to heel and do some work) I ended up reading it.
Just recently I actually remembered my previous brief introduction to Discordianism when I found myself thinking about the fact that order is generally given preference over chaos in society. I forget why I was thinking about that but that’s moot really, and I spend large amounts of my time thinking about things that aren’t really as important as things like “Do I have any food?” so it’s not very surprising either. In any case, I have never really been a particularly ordered person, although I don’t deliberately tend to disorder either, just do whatever comes naturally. If I wake up at 4PM and don’t sleep the following night, then so be it. And it’s probably because of that that I find Discordianism quite brilliant, in places.
If you can’t be bothered to read and make sense of the wikipedia article, the central tenet of Discordianism is essentially that there is no such thing as order and disorder, there is only chaos (which is considered entirely distinct from disorder). As people, we interpret this chaos as either order or disorder. I don’t necessarily like the choice of words, nor the doctrine (as I understand it) that a focus on order is inherently harmful to people and society, but the basic concept is good. Personally, I would prefer to formulate it thusly;
There is only what there is, but what that is depends on what you make of it.
I think that has more neutral wording (specifically, I think that the fact that the term ‘chaos’ is used on the original is a problem because it is generally associated with disorder.). Anyhow, I kind of like that idea, since it’s inherently true in a few ways; experience is entirely subjective and thus open to interpretation, and also you can make pretty much anything an important truth if you try hard enough. This is actually illustrated by Discordianism’s Law of Fives, which bizarrely seems to encourage followers to do precisely what Discordianism tries to illustrate as potentially being a problem for thought (that is, the imposition of order and truth on reality.)
All that said, I’m not about to convert to Discordianism or anything, I just find it interesting. As much fun as it would be to be a pope who could claim infallibility at any point, even retroactively. I’m not even sure it was ever intended as a religion*. A lot of it seems to just be satirical swipes at existing religions, and it seems to have acquired a fair amount of drugs culture over the years too. I might follow that bit about going out and partying this Friday night though.
*Edit: I’m not even sure it is a religion even now- it’s been suggested that it’s anything from a general outlook on life to the most elaborate in-joke ever. The ‘followers’ have a deliberate propensity for spreading misinformation too, so it’s all rather confusing and probably quite fun.