American Dream in Chaos

Out of the darkness, the chaos of time,\The whirlwind gave birth to the Mother sublime -Jean M. Auel, The Land of Painted Caves


There seems to be a great deal of anxiety when people's lives' take a turn for the unexpected. We have been taught that there is a particular pattern that one's life should follow and that following the pattern is "success" is its purest form. However, the trip to the suburban lifestyle is not always an easy one, and, as it turns out, it's not supposed to be.

Following the expected path to picket fences is the surest way to be knocked off the path by someone more ambitious. Success is a war, and the people who share the battlefield are no longer allies, if they ever were. Despite the continued expectation that people go to college to get a good job, there are still high school dropouts who become successful business owners. The corporate buzz-phrase "thinking outside of the box" is, in fact, a Discordian idea. Of course, in the corporate context, they are comfortable knowing that there is a box, and prefer to just pop their heads outside once in a while to make sure things are moving in the desired direction.

If you are an individual who wants to succeed outside the corporate structure, the most effective way is to burn the box. If taken literally, that pretty much involves re-enacting the movie Fight Club to its conclusion. This may not be the best approach as it involves putting yourself in considerable danger. You should, however, be willing to take a risk. The current state of the American Dream has so many people going for the same goal in the same way that it is propping up a disproportionate amount of order in the universe. Chaos wants to have its chance, and if you take a big enough risk doing something unconventional enough, with a unique goal, Eris may very well reward you with success.

Of course, Eris doesn't define success in terms of suburban dreams, so it's best to truly have a unique goal. Best to close your eyes, spin in circles, then just start walking, because an object in motion will remain in motion, and you don't want to get stuck at a red light at the intersection of life.

Baby causes chaos for public transport

Suffice to say that Eris is not hateful of malicious. – Principia Discordia

A bizarre bit of news caught my attention today. Apparently a woman and her child in Australia were kicked off of a bus because the baby was laughing too loudly. The situation is pretty fascinating to anyone who has ever ridden public transit: of all the things that have ever happened to justify kicking someone off a bus, this driver had to pick on a happy baby.

Sometimes, I guess people just have to find some way to impose order and this baby was an easy target. It is, after all, difficult to find more evidence that people are predisposed towards chaos than by observing small children and babies.  They will laugh, cry, wet themselves, and demand to be fed, without regard for cultural standards, where they happen to be, or what anyone will think of them. For someone who has dedicated themselves to order, a baby is an easy target. 

The driver didn’t even target a crying baby, which everyone knows is beyond anyone’s power to quiet reliably without causing serious injury. Instead, the target was a happy baby, and it is easy to make a baby unhappy, so this mother was targeted for not using her power to make her child unhappy. It certainly makes me wonder what kind or narcissist this bus driver must be to think that her whim should be enough for a mother to interfere with a child’s happiness. 

By trying to keep some extreme version of order on her bus, the driver has probably thrown her own life into chaos: the kind of uproar that has resulted after this incident usually sees results. The predictable result will be that the driver will lose her job. This is usually the easiest way for an organization to deal with high-profile complaints.

Changing tone for a moment, I would like to explore some scenarios in which the bus driver may have been in the right:

1. The bus was being high-jacked and the driver wanted to protect the child without drawing dangerous attention to the high-jacking.
2. The bus had failed to pass an emissions check and the passenger’s area of the bus was found to be filled with a level of toxic fumes dangerous to children.
3. It was not a baby at all, but a bomb concealed in baby clothes.
4. The baby had a sonic-based super power, and the laughing was causing glass to break and ears to bleed.