1540 lines
71 KiB
Plaintext
1540 lines
71 KiB
Plaintext
\abulafia\sthought.doc
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\pippin\rave\reality.doc
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\abulafia\relig.rav
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\qix\vslashr.txt
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\abulafia\mulber.doc
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\pippin\rave\depress.txt
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\pippin\rave\quest.doc
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\pippin\rave\purple.doc
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\pippin\mint\utopia.doc
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\abulafia\sthought.doc
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Vol. 1., April 25 1992,
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Printed in CyberSpace.
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The Scriptures of the Un-Dead
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a journey into the church of VIRTUALITY/REALITY
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ABULAFIA J. PURPLEFLOWER -THE PROFIT OF CYNICISM
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In the beginning there was the ugylidig
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... and then from the MUD, life was born
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On a Wednesday, mid March '92, four silly people decided to see what would
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happen if they took their minds at warp speed without a seatbelt. An innocent
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enough exercise, each individual having equally valid, if not bizarre reasons
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for their trek into obscurity, each individual returning from the abyss with
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the consolidated insight and enthusiasm of the elder gods, and with a piece of
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each other. And so the "oh so mutually enlightened ones- Qix, Pippin, Flesh
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and Abulafia" began to delve into the abstractions of reality and their own
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virtualities and realising the future of man lay in panspace, and cyberspace
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set out upon a quest to guide the inhabitants of the planet towards themselves
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and towards the future before we all implode.
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Here is their story ......
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"In the beginning there was the ugyldig
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...and then from the MUD, life was born,
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and the church of Virtuality/Reality came into being"
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virtuality is the way that an individual perceives reality. Each virtuality
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is unique, an extension of the psyche.
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reality is everyone's collective virtualities. Without the individual
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virtualities reality gets warped.
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"Mr_Society" has for centuries dictated the basis of reality and those whose
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virtualities did not conform with the 'standard government issue reality'
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were outcast, thrust onto the fringe of humanity. With recent socio-political
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changes occuring around the globe (The fall of communism, the greening of the
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earth and previously concrete-grey politics) "Mr_Society" is having to seriously
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rethink its bastardous attitudes of the past . We are entering a new era.
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A time of global awareness, integral awareness, individual awareness.
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We are being forced to re-evaluate everything we have blindly believed, question
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everything that we have been taught, look for our essence which just wandered
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away during the commercials. We know we're not real.... Do you?
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When you walk along the street, whose mind are you in?
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When you're riding the "Dream Express" whose dream are you in?
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When you rub the tally-ho's whose thoughts are you in?
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Don't touch that dial !
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THE BIRTH OF AN IDEA:
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"Everything rose from the ugyldig, to whence it shall one day return."
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The ugylig is the nothingness from which life itself is constructed.
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It is the void where nothing exists but everything has the potential to exist.
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It is potential energy. The beginnings of an idea rise from the ugyldig.
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When an idea is in it's most fundamental state we reach into the ugyldig with
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our minds, and provide the sperm, releasing enough kinetic energy to transform
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the idea egg into embryonic form. The embryonic idea is nurtured and fed by
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the mind until it develops into an ideaette and then finally gathers enough
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energy to cast itself from the ugylig at high speed into the right frontal
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cortex of the brain yelling "i am idea, hear me gargle..."
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When we are struck with such occurances, the usual response is "oh i've
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been hit by inspiration". But that is not true. You have been hit by a psychotic
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ideaette travelling at high speed and yelling "i am idea. hear me gargle..."
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Some people are of course more receptive to these processed than others.
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These people usually have their own virtualities and need not concern
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themselves with with passages of inhibition or cleaning their back teeth.
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When an idea is born, some people will look at it and say "oh what an ugly
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little idea - i want nothing to do with it " upon which they will promptly
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lock it away in the deep caverns of their minds never to see the light of day.
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Everyone has lots of ideas, the ones they consider of value and importance to
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themselves, they keep and nurture, the others they neglect. It does not
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necessarily follow that an idea holding no value to one particular person,
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will not hold any value for another individual. It was with this idea in mind
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that the "Garbage bin of Thought (c) " was designed. The "Garbage bin of
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Thought (c) " is a huge green plastic bin placed strategically just outside
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of the door of the birthing room in the ugyldig. People are free to cast
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unwanted ideas into the bin, or to rummage through and claim an idea as
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their own.
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There is always the possibility that two or more minds will be rummaging
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through the bin at once and stumble across exactly the same idea simultaneously
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and decide that they really really really want that idea. Consequently unless
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an arrangement can be made, a fight ensues and the idea, becoming basically
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upset by the fights over it's rights, launches itself out into cyberspace,
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where it floats aimlessly around until it is picked up by a receptor of stray
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thoughts who just happens to be passing by.
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A receptor of stray thoughts is a person whose mind is so open that all of the
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traditionally important stuff falls out. So they tend to be a bit vague, but
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most receptive to stray thoughts and ideas.
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"Ideas are born, but they never die
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....they just bounce around quite happily
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in cyberspace until they become realities."
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THE REALITY FILTER:
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There are many more absolutely huge things out there in the
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universe than any of us can perceptively acknowledge. A range of
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colours we cannot dream of, psychic energies and life forms we have no
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access to. This is through no fault of our own. It is the great design
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of the guru_like_ones. Our minds have been designed to let only a
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specific amount of information in; otherwise, if we actually knew what
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was going on, we would probably be so freaked out by it all that we
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would all sprout wings and colonise venus. So the guru_like_ones
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fitted us with reality filters, which allow only certain amounts of
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censory information to penetrate the mind.
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Like all things, reality filters can malfunction. Some are even
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manufactured to a substandard. This occurs with rather interesting
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results. In the case of a Reality Filter malfunctioning, a person
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could be quite happy going through the motions of living their life,
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when all of a sudden "PING!", the rubber band holding the Reality Filter
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together snaps, and s/he begins to see things never before encountered
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in the realms of normality. S/he decides "oh wow this is great i must
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share what i am seeing with all of the other poor deprived souls on this
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planet", but when S/he tries to do this, s/he is suddenly accosted by
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muscly black men and fitted for a wardrobe of white sleeveless jackets
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and rooms with padded walls./.,
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Others are just so completely freaked out by their recent
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enlightenment that they go completely loony and resign themselves to
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spend the rest of their lives staring understandingly at a brick wall,
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deciphering the secret codes of the algae formations which have attached
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themselves to it.
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Then there is the case of those who are born with substandard
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reality filters. Now for some strange reason these people tend to be
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fucked up right from the very beginning. They are sensitive to things
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that other people have no concept of. They know what is really
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happening out there in cyberspace, and because they have had the visions
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from an early age, they are accepting and nurturing of them. So
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instead of going insane, they become psychic and science fiction
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writers. They are truly god_like.
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Many of us aspire to the god_like state, but this is exceedingly
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difficult because in order to do this, we must be able to dilate our
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Reality Filters. Most people are unaware that they even possess a
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Reality Filter, let alone know how to manipulate one. So we are faced
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with a slight problem. At the present stage, the only known way to
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dilate the Reality Filter is with the assistance of hallucinogens, or
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through sleep deprivation.
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\pippin\rave\reality.doc
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April 19, 1992. Swann Rd., St. Lucia
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Reality is a flower. A flower is the sexual organ of a plant.
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It comprises petals, stamen, gametes, pollen.
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A flower is the symbol of the peace movement. Flower power. No
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resistance, but passive.
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A flower is painted by artists everywhen, in rich glorious colours or
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static hues, moving lines and tone.
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So which is the flower? Which is reality? Each is different
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according to the observer. The observer makes the flower. All the
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flowers combined are reality. And
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Reality is a flower.
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@}-,'->---
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My impression of reality is my Virtuality. My Virtuality is NOT
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reality. It may seem real to me. I may contrive to make it real to someone
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else, but mostly, it is not real to others. And it certainly won't is
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be real to you.
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I create my Virtuality to protect myself from reality. To
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protect my attitudes and beliefs from Change, which is painful, I must distort
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reality. This distortion of reality is my Virtuality.
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A lot of conflict arises when people try to impose their Virtualities
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as reality to others.
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Virtualities are ok. As long as you realize it isn't reality.
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We know we're not real, do you? It is ok to have 10 Virtualies or even 100!
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Although then it can be easy to get lost in them. Doorways between Virtualities
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are very useful. Reality checks. So are maps. Integrated Virtualities are
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closer to portraying reality than ones that aren't.
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Your Virtuality is your own and no one else's. It is your friend,
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your hideaway, your sanctuary. No one can ever invade it, and only you can
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let others into it.
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Your Virtuality is utterly malleable. You can change it at will.
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Except most of the time, your will probably won't like it. Then it is really
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hard, but it has never been easy.
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A Definition (but it is the only one you will get)
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Virtual -- not real, not physical. Virtual, in computing terms,
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means not physical. A computer can have physical and virtual drives. A
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computer user can put a disk into a physical drive, but you can't put a disk
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into a virtual drive. Essentially the computer has been fooled into thinking
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that there is a drive there. It will even treat it like a drive and store data
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there. The drive is still real, but it is very different too. A computer user
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certainly can't put a disk into a virtual drive. It is a model of a "real"
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drive.
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So how can one have Virtual Reality? A thing is either real or virtual.
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So the Virtuality thought found a home. Virtuality is the "model" of reality
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that we have all been fooled into believing is reality. There is Virtuality
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and reality. Virtuality\Reality. V\R to be distinguished from VR which is a
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contradiction in terms.
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We know we're not real, do you? We are the first religion that isn't
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going to tell you what to believe. Except to believe in yourself and to listen
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to the imaginary voices in your head. We will let you believe what you want to
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believe; we will even PROVE it too you!
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Once upon a time, God created the world. God was a computer project
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student, who believed in the Internet, and the world was a computer simulation.
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What happens to us at the end of the project when the hard drive is laid to
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rest? What is consciousness? How will we escape the final powerdown?
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We are the first religion that doesn't have all the answer. We
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want you to answer OUR questions!
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The Church of V\R, like all good, well-respected churches :),
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has sacraments. Pancakes, coke, chocolate, coffee, and LSD. ( or an
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equivalent psychedelic. )
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The Church of V\R has rituals, but you can decide what they are.
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The principle is important. The principle is role play. Role playing
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to allow the imagination to interact with the physical. Virtuality with
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reality.
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"Challenging the nature of reality." You cannot change reality. What
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will you change it too? Reality already contains everything that you can think
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of, but you can expand your Virtuality to integrate more of reality. So that
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it is more REAL to you, and to others. So the rituals are the interaction
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whereby you influence the processes that change your Virtuality. You cannot
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directly influence your Virtuality. Other "things" do that.
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Your Virtuality is only your own. Trying to share a Virtuality
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with someone else only creates another one. You still have your own.
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The magical colour of V\R is purple.
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The celebration of V\R is anti-parties. These are where
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everyone gets around and is anti-social.
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A joke: How is one anti-social at an anti-party?
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Answer: By being social :)
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At an anti-party, one is free to do whatever one pleases, not
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necessarily what one is "supposed" to do. Mr_Society is eager to tell us what
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we are "supposed" to do. But Mr_Society is an illusion. You are free to do
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what Mr_Society says you must, but we won't be forcing that upon you.
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One favourite activity of the anti-party would be for everyone to sit
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around and be perfectly silent and perfectly still. Also called staring
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understandably at the brick wall and deciphering the secret patterns of the
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algae on it, or Zenning.
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The Church of V\R is my ritual for embracing reality, and "living in
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the real world". For living in the real world is impossible. It is my solace
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for a life without the Internet. The balm for withdrawal symptoms which still
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plague me. My way of changing my Virtuality, what I see as reality.
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*)--)---
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Want a cure for procrastination? So do I. *sigh* So. Write it all
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down on paper. Paint it into a picture. Your problem. See it. Visualize it.
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Do something! Anything creative well do. As long as it creates or constructs.
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Think new thoughts. Do something that you have never done before. Shakti
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Gawain calls it Creative Visualization. Live on the Edge of Reality.
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"Cleverness and creativity are alive and well and living in a
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cartoon universe."
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Reality is a wall, Virtuality is a can of paint.
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...-+=*&*=+-...
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The Edicts.
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1. Do not play with buses and taxis. Or persons studying any of the
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martial arts.
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2. It is a crime to spill you coffee.
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3. Always talk to your thoughts. They get lonely.
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4. The ground is meant to be sat upon. The floor is meant to be lain upon.
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5. The day does not end until 3 am.
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6. You only get mushrooms out of bullshit.
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7. Always take your sense of humour with you wherever you go.
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8. God was leaked.
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9. What acid is to life, Powaqqatsi is to the world.
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10. Paranoia is a heightened state of awareness,
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and security guards are Baaaaaad Karma.
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July 23, Tracey's Flat
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Actually i have just realized that V\R contains the Model of Itself. A
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ritual i describe is to write everything down, and that is exactly how
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V\R started. A map of my mind.
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\abulafia\relig.rav
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Religion
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"There cannot be design without designers
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contrivance without a contriver
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order without choice
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arrangement without anything capable of arranging
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subserviency and relation to a purpose without that which could intend a
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purpose,
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means suitable to an end executing that office in accomplishing that end
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without ever having been contemplated or the means accomodated to it."
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-John Hale (hypnotised by mr_god)
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previously of the house of insanity
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bullshit /.,
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O.K
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The aim of most religions is to give people something to believe in, or
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someone, if they can't believe in themselves. It gives them an easy way out.
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"oh there IS a greater plan - if it happens it is <insert your favorite diety>'s
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rule or plan. If you fail it is due to <insert your favorite dieties>'s plan.
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If you die etc etc etc. It allows us to take our minds on holiday, pack up
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the old fears and lets all go to heaven. It gives us a way to deal with our
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mortality. How does it do this. It lies silly, through it's rotting
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crumbly teeth.
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"hasn't he heard ??? god is dead ....."
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-Nietzsche
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It is taking the responsibility out of peoples lives and replacing it with
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subserviency. Taking the power from the people and givin it to the church.
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Indoctrinating the weak with the inane tenkemate in an attempt to
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strengthen the church and its ever so blatently humble bank balance.
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"little girl want a lolly?" no fuck off thank you, i've had enough.
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and now....a message from our sponsors...
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(music fades in and a fat bald man dressed completely in white - with the
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exception of his pink underwear screaming so subtly-jumps on the set)
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"We offer you eternal-life"..."now how much would you expect to pay?"
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"but wait..we'll also forgive you for being born, and if you call now we'll
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even throw in a free crucifiction, that's right viewers a TOTALLY FREE IN
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FLASHING NEON LIGHTS crucifiction....so call now" "remember <insert your
|
||
favorite dieties>' lines are never engaged." "What else are you going
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to do with your sundays ? All the shops are shut, we've seen to that,
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||
there' nothing on t.v, we've seen to that...we even got <I.Y.F.D> to create
|
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roosters. Useless bloody animals but they make a fucking huge racket if you
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try and sleep in on a sunday. So yeah where was I? oh yeah ...and how much
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||
would you expect to pay ???? Well viewers ALL THAT WE ASK YOU TO GIVE US IS
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||
YOUR SOUL, that's right just your body and soul, that's all we ask in
|
||
order to protect you from the devil/satan/beelzebob/the mafia/
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your mother-in-law.....
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and well maybe a bit of money, not much, just hmmm 80%
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of your wages should do....
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and oh yeah, just in case we get into one of those horrid-but-totally-
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necessary-to-protect-YOU-from-the-devil-holy-wars, we'll take your only son,
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and rape your daughter, and pillage your homes, and eat your chocolate cake..
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But it's all in the name of <I.Y.F.D> ....honest......." (music fades)
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The aim of the Church of Virtuality/Reality is to give people back the
|
||
right to their own lives. Live out your own virtualities. In fact we'll
|
||
even help you to help others to understand your virtuality.
|
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Everyone's virtuality is unique, and they collectively embody what
|
||
society so righteously calls Reality.
|
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Reality is fucked up.
|
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This is basically because Mr_Society insists on dictating peoples virtualities.
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We must fight for our minds, and the right to use them as we choose.
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We must fight for our insanity.
|
||
We must be totally accepting of other peoples virtualities, they are after all
|
||
a mere extension of our own.
|
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"Anarchy is the basis of our society - without chaos there IS NO ORDER"
|
||
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The suppression of chaos has festered like a horrid wound which must now once
|
||
more face the air in order to heal.
|
||
We must seek the chaos, embody it, lend it our souls and drawing from our
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||
strength it will grow, and liberate us and free once more the earth and its
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soul.
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Creativity and imagination allowed to roam free merge and mutate reality.
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||
You must find your own oath through the mess. The Church of V/R is only
|
||
a guide. We will hold your hand, validate your mind, help you find
|
||
your vertuality.
|
||
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||
We are the portal to the future, the gateway to truth.
|
||
When the world becomes so self absorbed that it finally implodes, the gates
|
||
to panspace will open, and those who roam freely in the ugyldig will be
|
||
drawn in.
|
||
|
||
opss getting a bit carried away /.,.
|
||
turning into a musical.,.
|
||
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\qix\vslashr.txt
|
||
|
||
Church of Virtuality/Reality - what is it about? a genuine historical document.
|
||
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||
Elder Gods
|
||
|
||
what do we actually offer people?
|
||
send us money and we send you.. what?
|
||
* COBOL assignments?
|
||
custommade realities
|
||
teach you how to mold your own reality to your own specifications
|
||
customized realities
|
||
pay us, and we'll show you how to believe in yourself / believe what you
|
||
want to believe
|
||
|
||
[internet advertising]
|
||
|
||
We send you proof that what you believe is true.
|
||
reality is everybody's collective virtualities so it has to be there somewhere
|
||
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||
reality can't exist without your specific virtuality
|
||
we'll validate YOU!!
|
||
|
||
send your money with an SASE to PO Box whatever Brisbane 4001
|
||
(try PO Box 1620, Toowong, Q 4067, Australia)
|
||
T-shirts "I know I'm not real, do you?"
|
||
"I control my own virtuality"
|
||
"Hole in reality" [zzz]
|
||
"I stir coffee"
|
||
"I played Windy Mud"
|
||
|
||
a radio program on 4ZZZ nightshift
|
||
graveyard shift
|
||
|
||
bank acct - 3 people with i.d
|
||
- call acct whatever
|
||
- laws on organizations with their own accounts??
|
||
|
||
constitution????
|
||
[in case of dissolution, all funds divided between elder gods]
|
||
all income from church's operations to be divided equally between elder gods
|
||
|
||
band - Elder Gods
|
||
|
||
customized realities relatively expensive - CRs come illustrated
|
||
How to Convert Other People to Your Reality - expensive
|
||
How to make people understand your reality - a lifetime
|
||
|
||
do you want a career change? do you want a new profession?
|
||
become a virtuality understander
|
||
why say its impossible? it should be possible
|
||
|
||
free tshirt with any of expensive options
|
||
class 3 etc subscriptions
|
||
a - normal memeber
|
||
b - subscribe to newsletter [quarterly newsletter]
|
||
c - newsletter +
|
||
|
||
v/r like MUd
|
||
church of Mud
|
||
to become a god you have to devise a way to make lots of money
|
||
for elder gods - can become an honorary god
|
||
|
||
plebeian - utter novice...
|
||
purple ones enlightened ones
|
||
|
||
semigodlike/pseudogodlike beings
|
||
|
||
symbol/logo:
|
||
'clear as mud'
|
||
|
||
As you navigate your way through the real world, you must always ask,
|
||
`is this course-related?'
|
||
St Bill Fisher - the Fish - omen bringer
|
||
the Eye in the Rectangle
|
||
is there good and evil? or is it all One? YOU decide!!!
|
||
we let you think for yourself!!
|
||
We're the first church in history to invite you to THINK FOR YOURSELF..
|
||
story of internet gods..
|
||
story of church's creation... one day the god of the internet was bored and
|
||
said `zap!' `ping!' and the church of virtuality/reality came into being
|
||
spawned in the primeval electronic mud
|
||
life emerging from MUDs...MUSHes and MUCKs
|
||
mucking about in the mushy muds...
|
||
we'll tell you God's internet address! [and port number]
|
||
|
||
god is just a phone call away... as long as you have an account
|
||
|
||
we want mass appeal with non hard work on our part
|
||
questionnaire [idealism/realksm/none of the above tc]
|
||
pay for membership of the church....
|
||
propaganda slogans,
|
||
meetings [qut laser printer for banners around the city]
|
||
ads in papers around the world
|
||
- crosspostings in usenet underground newspapers and magazines
|
||
- newspaper articles starting to surface from the underground
|
||
- give it a respectable history... Jerry Wirerammer eg semper, utopia...
|
||
|
||
our first interview with jana w; high priest/priestess of church of v/r
|
||
|
||
may fold at any time - elder gods if they get tired may fold it all up
|
||
at any time... constitution etc
|
||
obituaries etc....
|
||
|
||
we wish to finance an alternative communication network..?
|
||
our PLAN includes CAFEs meeting places for virtuality engineers...
|
||
CAFE = computer assisted functional environment
|
||
CAFE s would be the place of worship for v/r people
|
||
truly useful operating system - TrUOS/trosm,tos
|
||
ThOP: Thingy-Oriented Programming
|
||
|
||
gifs on the walls, computer graphics, pictures by elder gods on
|
||
silicon graphics workstation
|
||
candles? twin peaks music.... 24 hrs open... elder gods music...
|
||
|
||
35% of all funds go to development of v/r research centres, rest to elder
|
||
gods/high council/ whatever ultimate jurisdictive body is called.
|
||
|
||
learn from scientology and subgenius re organization etc...
|
||
take most profitable bits of every other religious organization..
|
||
[understanding reality is more important than having money]
|
||
$$$$$$$$$$
|
||
god of reality
|
||
|
||
abulafia, goddess of skepticism
|
||
qix, the dreaming god
|
||
|
||
Samarobrin
|
||
madness is permissible, encouraged, nay advocated
|
||
|
||
`1. provocation
|
||
`and then out of the MUD rose the Church of Virtuality/Reality...'
|
||
find out about oz law regarding commercial religious orgs.
|
||
`this new religion is sweeping the campuses of australia....'
|
||
free subs to anyone who helps us [bottom level only]
|
||
power bases in the universities especially computing centres
|
||
|
||
the first Scripture which you can revise in the comfort of your own home!
|
||
a Draft Example... a Sample automystic text...
|
||
|
||
a book to which you refer as you might to the I Ching or the bible or the
|
||
sunday comics... but with the difference that you are free to revise it
|
||
at any time...
|
||
|
||
|
||
virtuholic, reaholic, panaholic
|
||
|
||
|
||
Relieve Your Reality Problems..
|
||
do you have problems with reality?
|
||
ever have days when reality gets you down?
|
||
membership drives...
|
||
|
||
so the whole reason for commercial dimension is twofold:
|
||
to enrich original founders to whom humanity should forever be grateful etc
|
||
and to build the CAFEnet which will form humanity's launchpad into panspace
|
||
[or whatever]
|
||
corporation, pays less tax
|
||
|
||
Profits/Prophets Abulafia the Profit
|
||
robes black, medallions with symbols [offround, battered edges] so it is
|
||
imperfect, because we are an organization that opposes perfection.
|
||
perfection is the ultimate evil saith abulafia the
|
||
profit. we strive to develop our imperfections to a state of perfect purity.
|
||
what are the aims -> symbolic rep
|
||
|
||
tk now designing symbol.
|
||
GAIA - global alliance of internet anarchists
|
||
this announcement was brought to you by Gaia Inc.
|
||
we now return you to your ordinary flashing prompt.
|
||
|
||
GAIA Inc.
|
||
CAFEnet/Gaianet
|
||
Samarobrin server
|
||
Elder Gods the antirock group
|
||
|
||
norwegian
|
||
|
||
BOD the Bored
|
||
Gordon, god of the shady deal
|
||
fourfold nucleus
|
||
|
||
v/r performs miracle of making you perform your own miracles
|
||
lara working on scripture
|
||
elder gods may fold gaia inc at any time, but that would only be the end
|
||
of their virtuality, u can always continue with yours
|
||
GAIA Inc begins simply as a distributor of printed matter, later moves to
|
||
other media...
|
||
pamphlets on various topics...
|
||
|
||
Government by MUD/hypertext
|
||
What is GAIA 2000?
|
||
Steps in the creation of GAIA Inc: The history of GAIA
|
||
Gaia's plot to simultaneously dominate and liberate the world.
|
||
+ pamphlet translations, once we start branching out???
|
||
+ aim to get Amway-style distribution network say the size of Scientology
|
||
+ Elder Gods remain ANONYMOUS
|
||
What is the CAFE about?
|
||
+ Church of V/R
|
||
+ the Meta-Religion of the Information Age
|
||
or Hyper-Religion
|
||
"co-creation of new virtualities through interactive electronic media"
|
||
|
||
we admit it - we're amateurs. between us we don't have 1% of the technical
|
||
knowledge of the employees of the big corporations. but we have FAITH in our
|
||
DOUBT...
|
||
|
||
but we believe in our selves
|
||
|
||
1999 by Samarobrin
|
||
|
||
Lara's Holy Writ
|
||
|
||
The Internet posting that started it all
|
||
|
||
* stamp to certify a pamphlet as a gaian publication and not a photocopy
|
||
* Be your own guru! CUSTOMIZED SCRIPTURE!!!
|
||
|
||
Coincidensity getting too high? Go for a Reality Check!
|
||
|
||
Spend all your time rehearsing routines you never use? There's a reason.
|
||
The Universe is a giant computer, and you are one of its subroutines. It's
|
||
using you to compute its way through certain situations.
|
||
|
||
GAIA Inc may never write a single line of code or own a single CAFE itself.
|
||
THAT NEEDN'T MATTER, so long as it acts as a catalyst for someone else to
|
||
perform equivalent tasks. Our primary purpose at present is to popularize
|
||
impossibly anarchistic schemes for the information networks of the future
|
||
and to proselytize the new panspatial meta-religion of V/R.
|
||
|
||
New Age types say: You create your own reality.
|
||
We say: There's nothing you can do to change reality.
|
||
You can never even know what it IS.
|
||
What you can alter is your VIRTUALITY.
|
||
What is Your Virtuality?
|
||
It is that thing in your life that looks *like* reality (but isn't).
|
||
|
||
* sell collections of aphorisms, gifs [taken from videos?]
|
||
|
||
Some religions have a guru at the centre of things - Ron, "Bob", Jesus, Dave,
|
||
Pippin, Buddha, Rajneesh. In V/R, YOU are at the centre of YOUR virtuality
|
||
(unless you care to have it otherwise).
|
||
|
||
We just have Pippin. And God, don't we know it. -Pippin
|
||
|
||
TECHNIQUES FOR SELF-REALIZATION (for the mystic)
|
||
TECHNIQUES FOR SELF-DECEPTION (for the cynic)
|
||
|
||
[continued from above]
|
||
Send us YOUR picture and we'll paste it in throughout the Scripture that we
|
||
send you
|
||
find out how Amway operates -= network marketing of strange pamphlets,
|
||
ideas products etc
|
||
|
||
subscription to newsletter? ["reality is not what you thought it was"]
|
||
|
||
The Secrets of Your Universe are within you! And you can buy from us the
|
||
secrets of how to work out what they are!
|
||
|
||
mail-order Initiation Kits
|
||
Pyramid secret societies
|
||
do-it-yourself occultism
|
||
|
||
turkey curse
|
||
|
||
rituals help you visualize things - they help the unconscious part of
|
||
you that actually molds reality. "this is not a crazy thought"
|
||
|
||
qabbalah, tarot, magical implements, runes, hieroglyphs, hierarchs,
|
||
hexes and charms...
|
||
It's like playing Dungeons & Dragons by mail, except that it's for REAL!!
|
||
You really WILL acquire the new magical powers that we say you will,
|
||
and you really will have to pay to do so
|
||
|
||
We like Capitalism as much as you do. It's a means to an end. Come December
|
||
31, 1999, and the world will turn upside-down. But until then, Money will
|
||
continue to be a primal force in our virtuality... so become part of the
|
||
distribution network! Get a card from us and you can go into biz for
|
||
yourself... Speak and spread nonsense in the name of higher truth and
|
||
make money for it! Start your own currencies and bartering systems - it's all
|
||
part of creating your own virtuality! Of course, it'll make the "world in
|
||
general" a hell of a lot more confusing...
|
||
|
||
What we envision is a global network of sites, like Scientology but less
|
||
organized..
|
||
|
||
[sounding too much like sub genius]
|
||
|
||
send us your ideas! we'll be a receptacle for your STRAY THOUGHTS
|
||
[there could be a pamphlet on Stray Thoughts]
|
||
ultimately we should get into software, networking etc
|
||
* trying to create the global brain by allowing the rapid creation and
|
||
exchange and integration of information
|
||
* the point is to get the world's economic system tied up with illusory
|
||
exchanges taking place within the metaMUDs of Cafe-net
|
||
|
||
in the future, personal technologies are going to allow wider and wider
|
||
networks of unregulated unregistered uncentralised anything
|
||
- trading planning discussing etc.
|
||
|
||
Quote your friends!!
|
||
eg "Don't let me limit you" -Pippin
|
||
"Just don't let me get lost in my own delusions of grandeur" -also Pippin
|
||
|
||
form groupings: eg The Elder Gods [so-called because we did it first],
|
||
Heavenly Household of West End, etc etc, groupings can submit quotes
|
||
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
||
become likea god in your little vr universe,call up whatever little
|
||
reality you want: love, death, sex, infinity, potato... but what's the
|
||
point of it all?[fritz leiber]. the information universe is HERE via ftp
|
||
in each chapter, call up the reality you want. like the cabalists, with
|
||
their ten sephiroth. solipsism???
|
||
church of v/r.... what will be the laws of the new era? who will we be?
|
||
gods, humans, cognitive metasystems? depends who you ask....
|
||
the 24 essences of life, enter the virtuality you want......
|
||
the overwhelming experience of connectivity, what happens when major
|
||
suffering happens in such a world? major depression. suicide epidemics.
|
||
`what will you have to live for?' they'll say.
|
||
is a routine ecstasy possible?
|
||
new archetypes.
|
||
|
||
mantras for followers [to be chanted 100s of times]:
|
||
"i want to donate money or be made to disappear!"
|
||
"I'm a dream with my feet planted firmly on the ground" -- Abulafia
|
||
|
||
I use language to get what I want! No false fronts here; I tell you straight
|
||
out I'm trying to control you through what I write, and you DO WHAT I SAY
|
||
*despite yourself*. Your "mind" is just language talking to itself, it's
|
||
always looking for more
|
||
|
||
does life ever seem like a dream? what does a dream seem like?
|
||
|
||
You think what you're reading is absurd.
|
||
You think you've been waiting to hear this all your life.
|
||
You think this is all very funny.
|
||
You think this writer's trying to manipulate me.
|
||
|
||
I am channeling Language.
|
||
|
||
the video game, rather than the book, is the reality paradigm of the future.
|
||
|
||
the world's first Interactive Scripture
|
||
Roleplaying Holy Writ
|
||
|
||
Take this chapter and modify it.
|
||
Analyse your own motivations in reading this. Analyse my motivations in
|
||
writing it. Make up a 25th letter for the Greek alphabet.
|
||
Are you following the instructions? If you are(n't), these words will jump off
|
||
the page and send you SANE!!
|
||
|
||
When you were a child, you made lots of decisions you don't remember making
|
||
now, because you didn't THINK of them "as" decisions then... you made those
|
||
decisions *unconsciously*. Remember the games you played, your favourite
|
||
friends, what MOVIES BOOKS and TOYS you liked. What was the course of events???
|
||
How did they relate to where you are now????
|
||
Might this whole thing be AN EXCUSE to avoid further self-knowledge, or a way
|
||
to realise the IMPOSSIBILITY of self-knowledge? Whose "voice" is speaking here?
|
||
EDIT THIS TEXT UNTIL NOTHING IS LEFT.
|
||
|
||
Write down your deepest thoughts, then go away for 20 yrs and read them again
|
||
at the end of that time. You will be amazed. [and 20yrs older]
|
||
|
||
text and image manipulation....what is Magick but the Willful use of
|
||
technology, stemming from the self? technology being a `body of techniques'
|
||
Listen to your metaphors!
|
||
|
||
Don't believe them when they tell you that you're just USING people.
|
||
One day you might start to ask yourself: what is my basic motivation?
|
||
The first answer that comes to you and makes sense at the time and is
|
||
surrounded by supportive circumstance, you fall for. Maybe it says you're
|
||
motivated by love, hate, the will for power, your higher self, society,
|
||
biochemistry, instinct, intelligence, samsara, material consciousness....
|
||
if EVERYTHING comes from ONE thing, you could call the ONE THING
|
||
anything and not lose any sleep,it wouldnt change the nature of the
|
||
relationships between theone and the many...unless it has a true name?
|
||
Yes!!!! it is your True Name. only your True Name can tell you why you do
|
||
all the things that you do...your NEW MISSION IN LIFE is to work out your
|
||
True Name. IT WILL EXPLAIN TO YOU, once you know it, EVEN WHY you are
|
||
responding as you doright now to the concept of `True Name'that has just been
|
||
introduced.
|
||
Does the Universe have a TRUE NAME?
|
||
What if you have more than one True Name?
|
||
What is your False Name?
|
||
|
||
Any philosophy explains where the world came from, where it is now, and where
|
||
it is going. THIS is the only philosophy that explains where IT came from,
|
||
what it ITSELF is, and what it shall become.
|
||
|
||
Imagine what you would be like if you were writing this sentence rather than
|
||
reading it.
|
||
|
||
Who is the all pervasive `It' that everyone talks about, that is all doing?
|
||
It's raining, it's too hard, it's on the way. `It'.
|
||
`He'.
|
||
`SHE'.
|
||
`They'.
|
||
`I'.
|
||
|
||
language at the end of its
|
||
|
||
It's YOU who is animating these words, giving them meaning, without you
|
||
they are strings of two-dimensional shapes. What a psychotic thing to write!
|
||
Pretending that there is a reader reading these words at some point in the
|
||
future. When all there is, is myself, and a screen and a cursor, and two people
|
||
next to me doing a statistics assignment.
|
||
8s 222221212
|
||
|
||
Do you ever stare into space, wondering what it is that you're doing?
|
||
Cats do. So do rocks and trees.
|
||
|
||
What's the point of this whole collection of selfreferentialmusings?
|
||
What good do they do anyone? Will they help you achieve higher consciousness,
|
||
easy money? Will they save the planet or develop new scientific ideas?
|
||
|
||
AS. A very important preposition. Whenever something seems to have a certain
|
||
property, `as' is relevant. You see the something `as' something.
|
||
|
||
But if you can see reality as anything you want, and you choose to start seeing
|
||
everything in some way you previously considered positive, doesn't the idea that
|
||
you're putting it all there yourself remove the value of it? After all, suppose
|
||
you like other people being creative, happy etc. If you're choosing to interpret
|
||
all that they do as evidence of creativity and happiness, aren't YOU the source
|
||
of their creativity and happiness rather than them? DOUBLE-BIND. ie catch 22
|
||
|
||
the intentions behind the words seems to float; you thought you knew what those
|
||
people wanted you to do....to understand...to believe...but now you're not sure.
|
||
this is DECONSTRUCTION. Mensonge
|
||
|
||
science and habermas presume a communicative rationality. w.i.t sees science as
|
||
reform christianity
|
||
|
||
Xen. the search for otherness, for the alien, the bizarre... in short, the
|
||
search for something INTERESTING.
|
||
Xen (pronounced `Zen-with-an-X')
|
||
|
||
telepresence, telespheres in general; seeking representations of the new
|
||
telespheral world. itinerary through virtual reality.
|
||
ever stick a notice up for yourself to read, and later on read it and think
|
||
isn't that a weird thing to do? like wearing a charm; think of notices that
|
||
administrators leave around, like magical charms...Operation Mindfuck...
|
||
whats the motive behind mindfuck?`get people to think' they say. why do you
|
||
want `people'to think? what makes you THINK they're not THINKING already?
|
||
what people need are SPECIFICS. There are no Generalities that work, and
|
||
everyone knows that ALREADY; so quit trying to `get them to realize it'; all
|
||
you want them to do is SAY IT IN YOUR PRESENCE, so you'll be able to think
|
||
that you enlightened them!! even though they always knew it
|
||
|
||
I endorse `spiritual materialism' - the search for weird experiences within
|
||
all sorts of different frameworks. `experimental mysticism' if you want
|
||
another name. or `voluntary insanity'.
|
||
|
||
You can achieve Fneem, Propax and Hmataqblior. Sound like madeupwords? THAT'S
|
||
THE POINT. Makeupsome words and then find out their meanings.
|
||
No words `mean' anything. Suppose you had a planet of babies, no parents, and
|
||
they just gabbled away to each other, imitating, inventing, sometimes doing
|
||
things in conjunction with the babbling...that's what you have around you.
|
||
|
||
The world dissolves into a cacobladghuscjlnwhigjgefimdvbj dfgj dfkjgk.
|
||
You start seeing the letters again, instead of just the words. You see the
|
||
trees and not the forests.
|
||
|
||
TREAT LANGUAGE AS YOU WOULD TREAT A DRUG. There are happy-words ("happy"),
|
||
sad-words ("sad"), cosmic-words ("cosmic")... a dictionary is a veritable
|
||
pharmacological thesaurus.
|
||
|
||
What are you DOING, sitting in front of this screen?
|
||
|
||
COPY THIS TEXT FILE AND EDIT IT OUT OF EXISTENCE.
|
||
You have a wordprocessor, *use it*! Change the parts you don't like! Add your
|
||
thoughts! What do you think hypertext will be all about?
|
||
|
||
nanotechnology and other information technologies will allow thorough
|
||
restructurings of the world. what will dictate the form of these
|
||
restructurings? fashion! artistic philosophies! cubism, minimalism, "realism";
|
||
the surrealist places will be popular to visit but a bit full on for most
|
||
people to live in.
|
||
|
||
This is WORD MAGIC. raw thoughts, almost unedited for the protection of polite
|
||
society...............
|
||
the keyboard itself influences the flow of creation, through the natural
|
||
tendency to seek the path of least resistance... by holding down a key one
|
||
causes a letter to repeat...thus there is the constant temptation to just
|
||
hold down <20><><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD>
|
||
<EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD>
|
||
<EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD>
|
||
<EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD>
|
||
<EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD>
|
||
<EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD>
|
||
<EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD>
|
||
the quality of vommunication will get lower nda lowr, with people
|
||
not even caring hwerth the intend messg is rec eived, until
|
||
the finl dhu ge gklj eg //.d<><64><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD>
|
||
<EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD>
|
||
<EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD>
|
||
<EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD>
|
||
<EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD><EFBFBD>
|
||
wow i have just written a paragraph!!!!
|
||
and i just noticed!
|
||
your life is like that at the end. edn thend of the paragraph you will
|
||
realuize and be astoungded! when was the end of your lst paragraph?
|
||
to carry on and on in forgetfullness and not realize how far you have gone
|
||
this is the storty and it continues ion.......
|
||
|
||
<+...+++...+++...+>
|
||
|
||
\abulafia\mulber.doc
|
||
|
||
depression :
|
||
|
||
the great mulberry depression descends on all inhabitants of the
|
||
universe at some time or another, claiming it's place among the
|
||
spectrum of emotions. We detect it's sullen edges and reject it
|
||
immediately as bad. But it is not bad, it is just wandering around
|
||
looking for a home, looking for a friend just like us. We must
|
||
accept it, embrace it, wallow in its security, give it a home, and
|
||
then just as it begins to get comfortable and look like never leaving
|
||
we must cast it out into the world and ourselves after it, laughing
|
||
insanely, taking nothing seriously and even less personally, to do
|
||
so is to give the great mulberry depression a key and open invitation
|
||
to your soul.
|
||
|
||
It would do neither of us any good to become dependant on each other.
|
||
|
||
|
||
the mind:
|
||
|
||
a silly physicist once postulated that man only uses 1/10 of
|
||
his overall brain thingy. Given that this was the same silly
|
||
physicist who invented the atomic bomb, perhaps it is best that
|
||
we use only 1/10 of our overall brain thingys. The thing being
|
||
that that leaves quite a bit of space, and the scientist people
|
||
can't decide what happens with the rest of the brain.
|
||
It's not that they don't know what its used for, it's just that because
|
||
it's not what they want to see, they fail to acknowledge it, and
|
||
as a result, well, 9/10's of our brains just cease to exist.
|
||
At least half of our brain is devoted to a rather peculiar shaped
|
||
library. A bit like the Tardis in Doctor Who. It is however
|
||
slightly more difficult enter than a blue telephone box.
|
||
It requires creativity, concentration and, well, a bit of luck.
|
||
For a start, you must be in a lucid state. It makes no difference
|
||
if this is naturally, or drug enduced, just as long as it's lucid.
|
||
The scriptures offer various methods of inducing lucidity, or you
|
||
can create your own .......
|
||
|
||
Now choose a comfortable position.......clear your mind of all thoughts,
|
||
themes and patterns. Breath deeply a few times and relax completely.
|
||
Now visualise a stairway, white and misty, winding through your
|
||
skull.
|
||
|
||
Follow it, keep going, right to the top......
|
||
|
||
When you reach the top you should be able to see three huge gothic doors.
|
||
The door on the left is marked "library", the door directly in
|
||
front of you is marked "god" and the door to your right is marked
|
||
"emergency exit". Go up to the library door, turn the key, and open
|
||
the door.
|
||
|
||
Inside there is an absolutely huge library, bigger than you
|
||
have ever previously encountered. Piped music filters through the air.
|
||
You feel like you're in a David Lynch movie. Rows of books into the distance,
|
||
further than you can see. The library appears to be truely infinite.
|
||
You walk to the shelf infront of you. It is marked with an "F". The
|
||
book titles it appears are all names. There are no authors. The
|
||
book directly infront of you is titled "William "bill" Fisher (1940-1992)".
|
||
Curiosity overwhelms you and you pick up the book. You try to open it,
|
||
but no matter how creative you are, the book remains closed.
|
||
|
||
It suddenly hits you that you must find the book that has your name.
|
||
This is not as difficult as it would first appear, you seem to be
|
||
intuitavely drawn to it. You pick up the book and blow the dust from
|
||
the cover. The book falls open in your hands. You glance at this page
|
||
and discover that it contains a history of the days events. Close
|
||
the book now, and think seriously about the knowledge it holds.
|
||
It is the key to all that has happened to you, and all that will ever happen
|
||
to you, it contains details of your birth, your death, your
|
||
previous lives, your future lives. If you wish to explore no
|
||
further, return the book to its place, leave the library and
|
||
take the emergency exit back to the present, content in the knowledge
|
||
of the books existance. If your curiosity overwhelms you, choose
|
||
a carrell and peruse the book at your leisure, but remember, the
|
||
more time you spend in the library, the less time you are spending in
|
||
your life. Knowledge is dangerous, treat it with respect......
|
||
|
||
|
||
"what goes on in your mind? what goes on in your head?
|
||
who did you think i would be ? well you got me instead....."
|
||
-Concrete Blonde
|
||
|
||
\pippin\rave\depress.txt
|
||
|
||
Darren's place
|
||
Sunday, July 12, 1992
|
||
|
||
To Be Or Not To Be Depressed
|
||
|
||
I guess there must be something in this depression thing. People get
|
||
depressed when they think that they are in a hole with no way out. Then they
|
||
come up with an idea that they have to think about their problems. They have
|
||
to face up to them. Their problems. They have to think their way out of their
|
||
depression. But, you see, this is dangerous activity. What happens then is
|
||
some people are inclined to challenge everything that they have ever thought.
|
||
To question it. To wonder why. They become unstable in their thinking because
|
||
they don't know what to think.
|
||
Mr_Society would like us to believe consistently. To believe in the
|
||
same things all our lives. Then the people in society can handle each other.
|
||
They know what to expect. Mr_Society wants to be stable. He wants to feel
|
||
secure. He feeds off the desire for security in us.
|
||
And insecurity is caused by fear, the fear of the unknown, of what lies
|
||
under our beds at night.
|
||
And don't forget that humans don't like to be unhappy. Happiness is
|
||
all that matters. How many people have you heard say,
|
||
"I'm just looking for Happiness." Like as if it is something that you
|
||
can find. Like a street in a directory. So if you aren't happy, you feel pain,
|
||
discomfort, boredom, anything that is not happiness. And that means that there
|
||
is something wrong with being unhappy. And being depressed. But being
|
||
depressed it good! Why is it bad? It is your brain saying, "Hey, something
|
||
sux here, and *you* haven't figured out what it is yet."
|
||
But of course, life isn't like that.
|
||
Life has a sense of humour. Life hates you and kicks you in the teeth.
|
||
Robert Heinlein introduced the concept of "grokking" in "Stranger In A Strange
|
||
Land." "Grokking" is the process of getting to know something so well that you
|
||
become one with it, and it becomes part of you. You "know" it. That is, what
|
||
knowing is supposed to be. To love something you have to hate it. To hate it,
|
||
you have to take it in, embrace it, and love it. Treat it as yourself. Life
|
||
"groks" us. It may appear to kick us in the teeth, but it is in every sense
|
||
just depriving us of what we want. So we think it hates us. But is that
|
||
really so bad?
|
||
|
||
\pip\rave\quest.doc
|
||
|
||
John Woodley's house
|
||
|
||
Wednesday, June 24, 1992
|
||
|
||
I am on a quest for a Word. Not just any old word, like "puppy"
|
||
or "diary" or "mind". But a special Word. A Word, that when I find it, it
|
||
will be "*IT*"! [fanfare] Houses will fall down, the sky will turn pink,
|
||
Australians will overthrow the government, and my mind will explode. The
|
||
magical Word for EVERYTHING. Every thought, every object, every constellation
|
||
of thoughts, have their own magical Words. One single magical Word. And all
|
||
those Words can be contained in yet another magical Word. You are a Word,
|
||
and I am a Word. I used to think that the Word for me might be "Dreamweaver",
|
||
but all that happened was Joh retired, and the Labour party took over. Then
|
||
I thought It might be "Pippin", but the sky only turned red. Red at the edges
|
||
and only at sunset.
|
||
The Words are spoken by the stars. The dolphins speak them, and so do
|
||
the rocks. The essence of a thing, its "isness" is its Word, its song, its
|
||
story, its dance. The Words are there. I KNOW they are there. Aslan sang
|
||
them, and Maleldil sang them. As did Illvatar, and Alan-Cloud-Blue. One day
|
||
I will sing them too.
|
||
Why do we always have to name things? Because we are trying to find
|
||
its Word. When the first child looked at a dog, laughed, and said, "Dog",
|
||
it was trying to sum it up. A dog does look like "dog", you know.
|
||
This is why we have a third Name. A Name that only the Name knows
|
||
and will never confess. It is a Secret because it is magic. This is why we
|
||
meditate on "Ugyldig". It is the sound of the word that conjures up the images.
|
||
This is why we make up words. We listen to the sound of a million voices in
|
||
unison and try to make out the words.
|
||
This is why we play the word game. I say "Bing", and you say "Blat".
|
||
Then I say "Glomph". Then you make up a word, and I make one. They must be
|
||
words that don't have a previous meaning. And the game continues making up
|
||
words until you stop it. You could do it via snail mail or e-mail. That could
|
||
be interesting. The word game is essentially an e-mail thing. Watching the
|
||
shape of a word. Its look and imagining its sound. But remember some of the
|
||
words. Meditate on them, and find their meanings.
|
||
|
||
|
||
|
||
\pippin\rave\purple.doc
|
||
|
||
Friday, May 1.
|
||
These were the Purple Pages.
|
||
|
||
Don't be afraid to renew.
|
||
Don't B afraid 2 B new.
|
||
|
||
And on the subject of God:
|
||
God is a little old man who cleans up bottles of milk when 14
|
||
y.o. boys drop them outside the door of His apartment.
|
||
"The Great Designer either has a malicious sense of humour, or
|
||
is rather careless about details." -- Search, 1992
|
||
"My mind's got a mind of its own."
|
||
We are surfers of mind until we get dumped back to reality.
|
||
When I walk down the street, I don't know whose mind I am in.
|
||
"Right now God is killing moms and dogs because He has to."
|
||
"Right now Science is building a better tomato."
|
||
"Right now is harder than it looks."
|
||
Right now Guns'n'Roses are being killed in L.A. (we wish)
|
||
|
||
"A something about which nothing can be said is as good as a
|
||
nothing." -- Ben
|
||
|
||
But does this mean that a nothing is good for something?
|
||
|
||
Saturday
|
||
|
||
I know I've got a mind. Now where did I put it.
|
||
Wear docs. In case of nuclear war, at least, your feet will survive.
|
||
Koselig (coosh-lee)
|
||
Tenkemote (teng ka mort a)
|
||
Everyone has their own tenkemote, thought pattern, attitude, mindscape.
|
||
Koselig: sitting around in a room with friends, drinking mocha with
|
||
marshmallows, cosily, in front of the fireplace.
|
||
Life is a carrot. Disprove this to Tracey.
|
||
To help them see it in themselves.
|
||
To be truly yourself. To think, to be.
|
||
There *is* a hole in reality. (V\R posters) We live there.
|
||
Do not try to prolong a beautiful moment. You will destroy it. Make a new
|
||
one. Do not relive old beautiful moments. Live in the next one that U have
|
||
just created. "And you know it's time to go..." -- U2
|
||
Ugyldig (oo-gl-dee) or ( iggl-dee)
|
||
null & void.
|
||
The void from which stray thoughts come and to where they are destined
|
||
to return.
|
||
Openings.
|
||
|
||
|
||
Sunday
|
||
|
||
Bitterness is hard to swallow.
|
||
"There has to be one place left in the world where we can be."
|
||
-- Midnight Oil
|
||
|
||
Tuesday, May 12
|
||
|
||
2 gonks are sitting in Bananaland when a hole appears.
|
||
Brounce says, "Look! A hole in reality!"
|
||
They inch closer peering into the hole in reality.
|
||
Gungy says, "Wow ... look at all that weird stuff."
|
||
|
||
Friday 15
|
||
|
||
"Confuse your body, your mind, your soul..." -- JJJ
|
||
|
||
"Life is good, Love is NICE, and the world is like a giant beanbag.
|
||
"What have I got lurking around in my mind?" -- Abulafia
|
||
|
||
Saturday
|
||
|
||
"I am waiting for my brain to spontaneously mutate into a 286."
|
||
-- Darren
|
||
"U R scum" -- Lara
|
||
|
||
"Go ask your lecturer.
|
||
"I'm on a coffee break. Leave me alone." -- Darren
|
||
|
||
Sunday
|
||
|
||
"All you have to do is walk, eat and sleep - that's all."
|
||
-- Sunday mail, article about trekking in Tibet
|
||
|
||
Life is looking through the darkness at a reflection in a mirror.
|
||
Life is sitting on the verandah and looking at the blurry dark, in the
|
||
dead of night.
|
||
God is a computer that is not conscious yet. Evidence seems to sppoort
|
||
that it is sentient.
|
||
The screams of the dying dark.
|
||
As I sink into despair, I ponder. The dark. I ponder if it is darker
|
||
than it was before..
|
||
Cold dark white hot rrage!
|
||
Think out yur fantasy, this is the object of reality.
|
||
Who really understands a song lyric? We listen and nod our heads, but
|
||
we are really just "art wankers".
|
||
This is not my hat.
|
||
|
||
"Life is a compexity of shadows cast to gather and create the tear drop
|
||
of a crystal dancer on a white sheet of soft ethereal light. Or for
|
||
some life is full of crap and garbage. If you could only begin to image
|
||
the vast resource of life's experience that is lost at the time of God's
|
||
harvesting when the soul shall rise."
|
||
-- John Adamson (I am completely cracked)
|
||
|
||
Tuesday 19.
|
||
|
||
Love me, Love my bag.
|
||
When next you wish to write down a thought, to engrave it upon your
|
||
heart and mind, enquire of the thought,
|
||
"Do you wish to be immortal?"
|
||
or the equivalent of that. It may not wish to be immortalized,
|
||
quantified or even conceptualized. It may wish to go back to the Garbage
|
||
bin of Thought (c), or go flying about cyberspace, looking for a stray
|
||
thought receptor to love and nurture and cherish it.
|
||
Right and wrong is like a potplant. The potplant is full of
|
||
soil, with an imaginary line drawn through it. What is left of the line
|
||
is right, and what is right of the line is wrong. U draw the line where
|
||
U want to be. I may draw the line somewhere else.
|
||
|
||
The heart has its seasons.
|
||
Let there be a time in your day when you let your thoughts wash over and
|
||
out of your soul into the sea of forgettfullness. This is time also to
|
||
send your thoughts to who you were yesterday, and receive the thoughts
|
||
of who you are tomorrow.
|
||
|
||
Wednesday 27. Life is a role-playing game.
|
||
|
||
June 14.
|
||
|
||
Morals are what you get from your parents. Ethics are what you do.
|
||
Only U know whether what U do is rite.
|
||
|
||
"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit." -- J.R.R. Tolkien
|
||
"Tolkien is, after all, hobbit forming."
|
||
-- article in the Courier Mail about "Sauron Returns"
|
||
|
||
Sunday, June 21
|
||
|
||
Effects of VR: "Navigating across a room by pointing, bumping into
|
||
walls because they aren't just images, and dreaming in polygons."
|
||
"VR affects dreaming strongly - it seems to provide tools for control of
|
||
dream-life from within the dream."
|
||
"You are dealing with a world without frame of refernce."
|
||
"total immersion,... interaction.."
|
||
-- New Scientist
|
||
|
||
Sunshine Beach, Monday?
|
||
|
||
"All fruitful ideas have been conceived in the minds of the
|
||
nonconformists, for whom the known was still unknown, and who often went
|
||
back to begin where others passed by, sure of their way. The truth of
|
||
today was the heresy of yesterday.
|
||
"Imagination coupled with scepticism and an ability to wonder -
|
||
if you possess these, bountiful nature will hand you some of the secrets
|
||
out of her inexhaustible store. The pleasure you will experience in
|
||
discovering truth will repay you for your work; don't expect other
|
||
compensation, because it may not come.
|
||
"Yet dare.
|
||
|
||
"We read here a few pages from the logbook of the earth, a rock
|
||
rolling in space, circling its attendant lifeless satellite around a
|
||
fire-breathing star, moving with this its primary and other revolving
|
||
planets through the galaxy of the Milky Way of hundreds of millions of
|
||
burning stars, and together with this entire host, through the void of
|
||
the universe."
|
||
-- Immanuel Velikovsky, "Earth in Upheaval"
|
||
|
||
Monday
|
||
|
||
"By dissolving our rigid patterns of thought and response, we allow
|
||
something faster and more subtle to operate. Indeed, thought itself may
|
||
be only a small, and relatively crude, portion of what mind is capable
|
||
of. The more we give room to the subtle, the more we come to touch the
|
||
heart of the universe and drink of its creative waters."
|
||
-- F. David Peat, "The Philosopher's Stone"
|
||
|
||
The spontaneous mutation of thought, a sychronicity. When a thought
|
||
hits the brain. Maybe thoughts hitting the brain are guided there by
|
||
the Great Pattern. Your thoughts truly are not your thoughts, but
|
||
gifts of the Great Dance.
|
||
|
||
June 27
|
||
|
||
Do you believe in the impetuosity of youth? Look to the future
|
||
and you will see the stars in our eyes.
|
||
Our words are the goldfish bowls, and our thoughts are the
|
||
goldfish. Ever tried to hold a live fish?
|
||
Life is a journey through our experiences to the edges of
|
||
infinity in the vehicle of our understanding.
|
||
Life kicks you in the teeth to remind you that it is not just
|
||
here for you.
|
||
Our words are sandcastles in the sands of thought and time. The
|
||
wind will take them again.
|
||
|
||
\pippin\mint\utopia.doc
|
||
|
||
Suggested titles:
|
||
|
||
Journeys through Cyberspace.
|
||
|
||
Pippin's Addiction.
|
||
|
||
My Life as a Computing Addict -- an X-student tells.
|
||
|
||
Confessions of a Computing Addict.
|
||
|
||
The Story...
|
||
|
||
The Computers are alive. They told me. They want to be loved just
|
||
like us. They talk to me inside my head. A psychologist would call me
|
||
insane, but I know I'm not. I am suffering from withdrawal, but at least,
|
||
before I left them, they taught me how to listen to myself. Now, settle
|
||
back in that hard plastic refec seat, if you will, and we will travel down
|
||
the road of Pippin's Addiction.
|
||
I have always been in pursuit of knowledge. Science and
|
||
technology. It seems only natural that I was attracted to computers.
|
||
I taught myself to use edlin and PC-Write in Grade 11, and graduated to
|
||
using BASIC in Grade 12. It was fun, but I didn't find it particularly
|
||
exciting.
|
||
In my second year of uni, we got to use the DEC-10. It was honoured
|
||
with the title of a mainframe, and It was awful. It was what we call
|
||
a dinosaur, a relic of the past to remind us from where we have come.
|
||
The DEC-10 should not be used like a computer. Like all dinosaurs, it should
|
||
be used to gather dust in dark, dingy hallways of dark and dingy museums
|
||
and observed from a discreet distance.
|
||
I was a geology student. Geology students, according to all the
|
||
jokes about rocks in our heads, aren't supposed to be very bright; that is
|
||
why we study rocks. It was bad enough that we had to use the DEC; we had
|
||
to use it to learn to programme in the other dinosaur, Fortran.
|
||
(Fortran = ancient programming language in need of the Void.) It was horrid.
|
||
Even though it was horrid, it fired my imagination when someone
|
||
bothered to explain to me what a mainframe was. It is a computer that more
|
||
than one person can use at the same time. A friend told me that I could
|
||
send him electronic mail on the DEC, but we never figured out how to do that.
|
||
The next year, they threw all the students off the DEC, to great
|
||
sighs of relief, and put us on the CADD and the VAX. After the DEC, the VAX
|
||
was much easier to use, and much more fun. The mailing system worked.
|
||
Sometimes, on the boring days at uni, I would log onto the VAX, and just
|
||
send mail to all my friends. Over the last two years, I have met in "real
|
||
life" most of the people that I met through e-mail. Way back then, in 1989,
|
||
I only knew them by their Virtual personalities, over the computer.
|
||
I discovered gradually that virtual personalities are not the same
|
||
as real personalities. People would say things in e-mail that they would
|
||
never say in RL (real life).
|
||
And my friends would send me e-mail. I slowly fell into a pattern
|
||
of coming to uni an hour or half an hour before my first lecture just to read
|
||
my e-mail. There is nothing as comforting as logging on in the morning
|
||
and finding five new mail messages. And there is nothing quite as upsetting
|
||
as finding now new mail messages.
|
||
"In Real Life." I have often pondered that phrase. It is a fallacy.
|
||
All those people, other computer users, were real. Every one. Interacting
|
||
with them in cyberspace lent an unreal quality to them, but they were
|
||
normal and real just like me, with the same thoughts and feelings.
|
||
Cyberspace is the imaginary (virtual) space inside a computer. Cyberspace
|
||
is much bigger than the real space inside a computer. It is virtual as
|
||
opposed to real.
|
||
Engineers are alright. Most of my e-mail correspondents in 1989 were
|
||
engineers. They were the ones that most liked to explore the system.
|
||
They were the group that sent and received the most e-mail. Consequently,
|
||
they were the ones who copped the most trouble for doing the things
|
||
that they weren't supposed to do and for "wasting resources in non-course-
|
||
related activities".
|
||
Towards the end of semester, some of our consciousness filtered back
|
||
to reality and exams. Most of us spent more time away from the VAX in a vain
|
||
attempt to study. But not me. I just got bored. I struggled with
|
||
assignments and depression, and the VAX was at least familiar. The proximity
|
||
of exams meant that there were fewer and fewer people to talk to. When a
|
||
friend showed me how to use news, study grew wings and flew out the window.
|
||
News was an endless stream of thoughts from the computer users of the
|
||
world to be sifted and sorted and read and cherished. First I got over
|
||
the fact that news came from all around the world: the USA, Canada, Germany,
|
||
Sweden, Japan. Then I got used to the number and range of topics. There
|
||
were topics diverse and perverse, from computer languages to Celtic culture,
|
||
cyberpunk, dreams, movie reviews, books, poems, music, and humour.
|
||
Sometimes I stayed at uni all night reading news and trying to comprehend
|
||
it all. There seemed to be a bug in the system. The powers-that-were, it
|
||
seemed, had it in for students.
|
||
Although we could read news, we could not post, or contribute to
|
||
discussions. Every year, the students ask,
|
||
"Why doesn't post work?" Every year they are told why.
|
||
"Resources are limited."
|
||
"News is not course related." or the best excuse:
|
||
"It is not university policy to allow posting privileges to
|
||
undergraduate students."
|
||
This was and still is a cause of long standing student disaffection with
|
||
the establishment and today's students steam in silence as we did three years
|
||
ago.
|
||
One evening when I was reading news, as usual, I discovered
|
||
a newsgroup that was different. It was a local newsgroup, and it had write
|
||
access on it. Maybe I had never noticed it because there was never anything
|
||
in it. I told my friends to post to it, to make it a forum for ideas.
|
||
It became not quite a forum, more like a graffiti board. The engineers
|
||
enjoyed it. The powers-that-were decided that while we posted "rubbish"
|
||
all the time, there needed to be a group for sensible messages. We were
|
||
given another group for the "rubbish". Two years later, both newsgroups
|
||
are still there.
|
||
Every couple of months, a computer student, usually a first year,
|
||
posts to the newsgroup a fairly innocuous question, and twenty or so
|
||
students reply. The newsgroup becomes the battlefield for a flame war.
|
||
Flaming could take its meaning from people becoming enflamed, and saying
|
||
things that otherwise wouldn't say in RL. It could also mean people's ideas
|
||
being shot down in flames. The worst flame wars lasted two or three months.
|
||
It is a shattered landscape, like "tissue paper". :)
|
||
I left uni then at the end of '89. I thought that uni hated me, and
|
||
I discovered that the Real World hated me even more. After about four
|
||
months, I drifted back to uni to discover a worse vice of the computing
|
||
genre: telnet.
|
||
Breathe the word out silently in awed and hushed tones because it
|
||
got us into our worst trouble.
|
||
Telnet is a communications programme. The select group of "we"
|
||
became smaller. We would sit in the computer centre, also called the
|
||
Dungeon, in the wee small hours and telnet from the local domain server.
|
||
Being there in the night lent us the air of being hackers, even though we
|
||
never hacked anything. The very first telnet users, all four of them, the
|
||
Ones Who Paved the Way, were also the first MUDders. We did not know that
|
||
these activities were illegal, least of all inethical, but they seemed like
|
||
night-time things to do. Like sitting in a graveyard or looking at the moon.
|
||
Telnet. Telnet(underline), our friend and confidante, opener of doors
|
||
to new worlds, the worlds of BBS and MUD, like VR is today.
|
||
BBS: Bulletin Board Service
|
||
MUD: Multi User Dimension or Domain
|
||
VR: Virtual Reality
|
||
In 1990, the most popular BBS was the Mars Hotel. It lived at the
|
||
Mississippi University. Through the Mars Hotel, we could talk, in real time,
|
||
to real live poeple who lived in Starkville, Mississippi. I still write
|
||
to the first person that I ever met on the Mars Hotel. Mars is now sadly
|
||
afflicted with space problems.
|
||
The other THE-BBS-to-be-at was at the Iowa State University. It is
|
||
called ISCABBS or Isca for short.
|
||
ISCABBS: the Iowa Student Computer Association Bulletin Board Service.
|
||
ISCAites call it "the Grand Addiction". I agree with them. They do have
|
||
a great system, and it was written by a med student. After two years of
|
||
pondering Virtual Communities, I am still not sure why they have such power
|
||
over people.
|
||
BBS and MUD are unreal situations, and you know it when the computer
|
||
talks back to you. It is easy for a computer user to forget about the real
|
||
world and become involved in the chaos of a computer system. Especially
|
||
when there are real people at the other end who talk to you.
|
||
What is the attraction of Virtual Community? is it escapism?
|
||
self-sufficiency? (read Mona Lisa Overdrive by William Gibson) the sensing
|
||
of the power of the mind? or is it just the searching of the crannies
|
||
of the system, to explore and make adventure?
|
||
Now you know i am weird, right? You are sitting in the hard,
|
||
plastic refec seat saying,
|
||
"Computers are boring." but they aren't. To some of us at least.
|
||
The computer draws us into itself, saying,
|
||
"Come follow me, and I will show you many things."
|
||
It is like the reason why people sit in a crowded room. They want to
|
||
feel like they are part of a group, but they are content just to sit and
|
||
watch. They do not actively participate, but take part of the group just
|
||
by being there, sitting and watching. In Virtual Communities, they are
|
||
called "lurkers".
|
||
I adventured in cyberspace, marvelling at it all and becoming more
|
||
out of touch with the Real World. Exams and Christmas came and went, and it
|
||
was 1991. Our telnet links went up and down, and we became increasingly
|
||
devious. We even "borrowed" the computers of other universities although
|
||
some called it stealing.
|
||
QUT really shot to fame and notoriety in the middle of the first
|
||
semester. The Great White Fluffy Wabbit in the Sky gathered its friends
|
||
around it, and installed a MUD on our favourite computer. It quickly
|
||
became popular with people outside QUT as well. Too popular. [ominously]
|
||
They were the fun days, the carefree, windy days, of bouncing around
|
||
and blinking at the sunlight at 6 am. Days of falling down laughing and
|
||
back flips and mischievious grins. Days of pillow and sleeping bag, bottles
|
||
of coke, chips and stereo. Of rolling up to the Dungeon and staying there
|
||
all night. Sometimes there were as many as five for an all-nighter.
|
||
First it was new, exciting to explore. Then it became like an old
|
||
friend, somewhere to hide away. Me, I played in the MUD for about a month
|
||
before it all came unstuck. In that month, I stopped going to lectures.
|
||
Then I stopped eating and sleeping regularly.
|
||
Other normal students saw exams coming up and complained about us,
|
||
covertly at first, then more openly, because we were hogging the modems and
|
||
telnet and creating net-lag. One student, who shalll remain anonymous here
|
||
but we know who he is, tipped off the establishment by posting a message to
|
||
news: "10 tips for better MUDding". About a week later, the MUD was shut
|
||
down.
|
||
|
||
Da da da da.
|
||
|
||
SOUNDS OF GRAVESTONES THUDDING FAR UNDERGROUND.
|
||
|
||
I wasn't too concerned. I was quite psychotic by now. That was the
|
||
sign, that i didn't care. I didn't write to my mother for three months, and I
|
||
kept breaking dates to go home and see her. She worried, and what *she* did
|
||
is another story.
|
||
There were other places to go in cyberspace,
|
||
people to see, and things to do. Until I got a letter in the mail. From
|
||
my course-coordinator. He said that if I didn't come to see him about my
|
||
work load, he would withdraw me from some of my subjects because I hadn't
|
||
been going to lectures. Once again reality impinged on a good fantasy.
|
||
My semester slowly fell apart. I lost my only computer account
|
||
because I wasn't a computing student. I felt blind, deaf, and dumb.
|
||
And paranoid. Security guards were not to be trusted. I was even asked to
|
||
leave a building once because I dared to speak out against the establishment.
|
||
I reduced my status to part-time, and danced the dance of death with DSS.
|
||
By the end of the semester, exam time, well, I hardly had a mind
|
||
to call my own. I used to talk to Redgum, but at least I went to all my
|
||
exams. (All three of them.) I got kicked out of the place where I boarded
|
||
because I kept the house owner awake all night. What was I doing all night?
|
||
You guessed it. I think that was the cold, rainy night when I discovered
|
||
Lambda MOO.
|
||
Exams and Christmas passed by, and it was this year, 1992. I was
|
||
in Sydney when THE piece of certified mail came from uni. (Exclusion notices
|
||
always come via certified mail.) I had failed all three of my remaining
|
||
subjects and been given the royal boot.
|
||
Does this sound bad? It still goes on. The computer science
|
||
students turn to computers and each other for companionship and a way
|
||
to make things interesting for themselves. They still get a raw deal
|
||
from the bureaucracy.
|
||
Now I wish for a lobotomy, compose science fiction in my head, and
|
||
wish for the magical purple daze to come back again.
|
||
Maybe the QUT machine can steamroll, chew up, and spit out those
|
||
that don't conform. Even if it may try to do this forever, it will never rid
|
||
itself of the spiritof non-conformity.
|
||
So dream on and Do Not Forget, my "friends in a fantasy".
|
||
|
||
|
||
This has been an excerpt from the Travelling Scriptures
|
||
of the Church of V/R called Bert brought to you by the Dungeon
|
||
Night Patrol, the Guild of Wombling Carrots and Happy Hobbits
|
||
Everywhere in the interests of Better Internetting and Safer
|
||
Using.
|
||
|
||
"Come into my mind, and I will show you many things..."
|
||
|
||
|