THE ELEMENTS OF NEW DISCORDIA - Principia Discordia

Barbed Wire
by Payne
"We came here, not only to help John [Sinclair] and to spotlight what's going on, but also to show
and to say to all of you that apathy isn't it. We can do something. Okay, so Flower Power didn't
work, so what? We start again."
~John Lennon (at a benefit concert for John Sinclair)
There are many Discordians out there who still slavishly follow the original Principia Discordia, a
ragged tome written by a couple of stoned hippies, filled with 60's humour but with a serious
message running through it like barbed wire hidden in a heap of cotton wool. This humour was
already dated by the early 70's, but even today we have aspiring Discordians who will parrot the
jokes ad infintum. They don't even believe that there IS barbed wire in there.
Which is fair enough, a person is allowed to believe what they will. They also have to take the
consequences when they shread their hands unexpectedly on the "true" message of the PD.
Flower Power did not work. It became less a philosophy and more a fashion statement, less a
movement and more a profitable exercise. With this in mind, is the packaging of the original
message of PD really appropriate? Can we expect an audience of today to find any truth hidden in
hippy rhetoric? While the answer is obviously "yes" (many of us were able to see some form of
"The Truth" in it), shouldn't we also consider the number of people who have completely missed it,
and set it aside as an interesting yet ultimately dated and dead piece of literature?
I personally think that the meat of the PD is a stark reminder that we are all monkeys, we are all
subject to simian behaviour, regardless of our "civilisation", "humanity" and other such concepts. It
tells us to 'Think for yourself, Schmuck!', and that we are all susceptible to trying to impose our
own ideas of what should be onto situations where no such concept can exist, and then call it
"reality"!
This is a timeless idea, as applicable today as it was in the 60's, and probably all over human
history.
When we seem dark, stark and bitter, we are only relating what we believe is the true tone of the
PD. When we are hateful, impatient and arrogant, we are reacting to the context of the time that
the message now finds itself in, stripping the cotton wool of the 60's off of it and clothing it in the
flak jacket and utilitarian fatigues of our time.
Nonsense as Salvation, whats more non sensical than taking the
scribblings of a couple hippies and turning it into a personalised
philosophy where these things can happen, without contradiction?
So spare us the "ZOMG23PINEALFNORD" crap, the hippies are dead.
The new age requires new action, the activist today needs a suit and a
tie, not a tie­dyed shirt.
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