Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Pagan
Police Violence: Seeing the Fnords

Police Violence: Seeing the Fnords

Last updated on: June 10, 2020 at 2:44 pm by Tom Swiss

Police Violence: Seeing the Fnords 2020-06-10T14:44:06-04:00 Tom Swiss

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Imposition of Order = Escalation of Disorder

Regular readers of The Zen Pagan are probably familiar with Discordianism. But a brief summary for those who came in late: Discordianism is a spoof religion created in the 1950s by a few teens who liked to hang out at bowling alleys drinking beer. It holds that God is a crazy woman named Eris, the ancient Greek goddess of chaos — after all, someone had to put all of this chaos here.

By accepting the role of chaos in the universe, in just a few decades it has proven itself to be the most true of all of the One True Religions.

Its primary holy text is the Principia Discordia, which spread through the 1960s counterculture via one of the first experiments in copyleft (it bears the instructions “ALL RIGHTS REVERSED – Reprint what you like”) and helped inspire Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea’s psychedelic science fiction classic The Illuminatus! Triology.

Discordian Society co-founder Kerry Thornley was credited by Margot Adler as being one of the first to use the word “Pagan” in the Neopagan sense, though Thornley later downplayed the connection.

One line from the Principia Discordia is the key text for today’s sermon. Among its marginalia, the Principia bears the following entry:

“And, behold, thusly was the Law formulated: Imposition of Order = Escalation of Disorder”

Thornley later dubbed this the “Law of Eristic Escalation”, and added, “Fenderson’s Amendment adds that the tighter the order in question is maintained, the longer the consequent chaos takes to escalate, BUT the more it does when it does! Armed with the Law of Eristic Escalation and Fenderson’s Amendment any imbecile – not just a sociologist – can understand politics.”

I don’t know if George Lucas had ever heard of it, but the Law may be more familiar in the form that Princess Leia spoke it to Grand Moff Tarkin: “The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.”

This provides a useful light to consider the escalation of chaos in this present moment, how cities across the United States are finding that after years of tightening their grip with oppressive policing, the hearts and minds of citizens are slipping through their fingers.

The order which has prevailed for the past few decades was maintained only because most citizens managed to keep themselves under tremendous delusion: that our policing and criminal justice systems were fundamentally fair. People actually believed that the system worked, that any abuses or injustices were rare exceptions.

And before we had video cameras in every pocket and social media to spread the footage around, people could dwell in that ignorance.

To use a metaphor from Illuminatus!, they could not see the fnords.

By DeviantArt user thsgys. Fair use.

In that novel, citizens are hypnotically conditioned as children to be unable to consciously see the word “fnord”. The word is then scattered liberally in the text of newspapers and magazines — but not in the advertisements. The news thus provokes an irrational and unidentifiable unease, which is relieved by consumerism. One of the story’s heroes breaks his conditioning and sees how the fnords are a form of social control:

Of course, the essence of control is fear. The fnords produced a whole population walking around in chronic low-grade emergency, tormented by ulcers, dizzy spells, nightmares, heart palpitations and all the other symptoms of too much adrenalin. All my left-wing arrogance and contempt for my countrymen melted, and I felt genuine pity. No wonder the poor bastards believe anything they’re told, walk through pollution and overcrowding without complaining, watch their sons hauled off to endless wars and butchered, never protest, never fight back, never show much happiness or eroticism or curiosity or normal human emotion, live with perpetual tunnel vision, walk past a slum without seeing either the human misery it contains or the potential threat it poses to their security…Then I got a hunch, and turned quickly to the advertisements. It was as I expected: no fnords. That was part of the gimmick, too: only in consumption, endless consumption, could they escape the amorphous threat of the invisible fnords.

In “real life”, of course, the fnords are not a single word. They are the cliche phrases and stock tropes that obscure the truth without actually lying. They are whatever black magic has led to Americans seeing accounts of police violence and other crimes of the state in newspapers and on TV news for decades, yet somehow looking past them.

The fnords are what cause my well-intentioned liberal friends here in Baltimore to be surprised when I mention the killing of Robert Johnson Jr. by Baltimore County police just a few days before the notorious killing of George Floyd. My friends undoubtedly saw the news; it impinged on their ears and eyeballs — but somehow skipped off of their brains.

But now the fnords are in large print, circled in blood-red. Even heavily conditioned citizens are finding it impossible to reconcile what they see in viral videos of cop violence with what they’re been told about their country.

People have seen the fnords. The lies are obvious and citizen’s conditioning is falling apart.

It’s no longer just radical goofball bloggers who nobody reads calling for the abolition of the police. Perfectly nice suburban moms and dads are talking about alternatives to putting a group of armed bureaucrats above and outside of the law in the name of promoting public safety.

The imposed order is falling apart, and we are due for a time of chaos.

To prepare yourself spiritually, I suggest getting to know Our Lady Eris.

I presented an introduction to the literature of Discordianism at Starwood a few years ago, which might be a good place to start. (I never did post the video, I will try to dig it up and will link to it here if I do.)

Am I saying that a joke religion is the best way to understand these times? Yes. Yes I am. Do not let your heart get so heavy that you cannot see the humor in tragedy — or so frivolous that you cannot see the tragedy in humor.

To again quote Wilson and Shea: “It’s not true unless it makes you laugh, but you don’t understand until it makes you weep.”

Kallisti.

(In proper homage to Eris, Our Lady of Chaos, I should note that I started to write a piece about the Law of Eristic Escalation back in March when the world was “only” being disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. That draft was lost due to a disk crash, with Our Lady apparently wanting me to wait until the shit really hit the fan to discuss the topic. All hail Discordia!)

Discordianism

Ethics, Virtue, and Right Living

Previous Post

May 28, 2020

Making Magic and Change During COVID-19

Next Post

June 15, 2020 Honeysuckle and Fireflies

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category 2017 52 Makeup 2020 52 Makeup Always Roaming With A Hungry Heart Art Because I Could Not Stop For Death Caught On Video COVID-19 Culture Discordianism Ethics, Virtue, and Right Living History Magic(k), Ritual, and Mysticism My Blogging Life and Times Philosophy Podcast Poetry Random Wednesdays Religion & Politics Seasonal Musings Techno-Pagan Theology Uncategorized Warrior Path Zen

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 March 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 September 2024 August 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 December 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 October 2022 September 2022 June 2022 April 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Who was Noah's father?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Abel Seth Lamech Enoch