This idea came from a lovely conversation I had with someone over Substack. The headline of the article was about the chaos that is going on right now. I decided to clarify and…. here I am. So, I hope you like the smell of metaphysical nonsense in the morning.

I don’t bring up my religion. If I’m writing on here, you probably figure I’m pagan of some kind. Well, I am a solo practitioner of a lesser known religion from the 60s.

In 1963, Greg Hill and and Kerry Wendell Thornley printed out the very first addition of a religious text called The Principia Discordia. This text is an esoteric little text describing the The Discordian Society, who follow (not worship, important distinction) the Goddess Eris. Those who are reading on this page should hopefully be familiar with that name. The goddess who was snubbed, and caused a war. In pop culture, she is usually a villain (Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, Sinbad) but not always, (Dungeon Crawler Carl). It goes over the basics of being a Discordian, and the structure. A long with a heaping dose of nonsense, because of course. A religion dedicated to the Goddess of Chaos needs to be chaotic.

There are others additions, all available under creative commons and public domain. The most recognizable, (and the one I started with) is Principia Discordia or How I Found Goddess And What I Did To Her When I Found Her: The Magnum Opiate Of Malaclypse The Younger, Wherein is Explained Absolutely Everything Worth Knowing About Absolutely Anything. Written by Robert Anton Wilson. Wilson is the co-author of The Illumitantus! Trilogy, with Robert Shea. If that name looks similar to The Illuminati… Yeah. Sorry about that. Our bad. I won’t go too much into the religion itself, because well, it’s different for everyone. Literally. That’s kinda the point. Basically “Don’t Be a Dick” and “Use Critical Thinking” (which we desperately need in these times). But I digress. Anyway, this is how I stumbled upon a different way of thinking about pretty much everything.

We all see what’s going on today: our government has been boosted and is now being taken to a chop shop. Headlines like “Chaos in the White House! Elon’s Meat Shield Shit on the Rugs Again!” or “Donald Trump Does “X”. Is this Constitutional, or Is He Causing Chaos?!” (Hint. It’s not and he is).

I want to say fuck that. While yes, this is a definition of Chaos, it’s destructive Chaos. Destructive Chaos is something that ruins. It does not have any purpose other than to cause harm. It’s cruel, and usually wielded like a club to obscure the real intentions. While you’re occupied by the fire, you don’t see the knife in your back until it’s too late. It serves a purpose, yes. But it’s not something that should be wielded in this way. Especially not in a way that makes everything worse.

In much the same way, Order is being twisted. Now, as a society, we are conditioned to accept Order and reject Chaos. Everything must be in it’s place. You must dress a certain way. You must look a certain way. You must think a certain way. You must fall in line. You must conform. Or else.

This little comic sums it up pretty accurately.

As someone who grew up going to Catholic School, this was even more strict. Our skirts were measured to an exact millimeter. Questions about faith were met with derision. We were not allowed to wear anything that made us stand out. No jewelry other than simple earrings and a religious necklace. No nail polish. No makeup. Hair must be appropriate for your gender. No unnatural colors. You get it. And where “A Discordian must never believe what he reads” is as close to an actual commandment as you can get, “Blind Faith” was what we were taught. Conformity in speech, in thought, in all things. If you question, bad things happen.

As someone who saw many bad things happen anyway, I figured that was fucking stupid. In both grade school and high school, I rebelled as much as I could. Which, considering I liked things that were considered “bad and would tempt me to sin” like Harry Potter, was not hard. I also read voraciously, both fiction and research papers online. I read about different opinions, different religions, psychology, sociology. The works. Part of that was necessity, consider our poor anatomy and sex-ed education, to be fair, but also I wanted to learn. So I did.

And as soon as I graduated, I got a mohawk and died my hair purple. (I also lost friends over that mohawk. Remember the picture above?) I was always the one to do whatever I wanted within reason. Did I get in trouble? Yeah, sometimes. But fuck it.

The principle of Order above all is directly harmful, just as harmful as destructive Chaos. Authoritarianism and strict societal confines are destructive. Ask the LGBTQ community. You see it in strict theocratic societies like Iran (This puts a lot in perspective, and it's not good.) We’re seeing it right before our eyes. Fascism wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross. And if you think that if you stay in line and comply that you’ll be in a better spot? Nope. Look at all of the pro-life women who were harmed by the politicians they voted for.

And that’s part of the issue. We see all order as Good, and chaos as Bad. When in reality, both order and chaos are a false dichotomy, unnecessary labels on forces of nature that coexist. There is a balance. In looking at the forces of Order and Chaos as a balance, rather than two opposing forces, we can begin to re-examine other false dichotomies.

Actually, if you’re creating, that’s creative chaos. Art is the most immediate form of creative chaos. Writing, drawing, poetry, painting. Making things. Birthing into existence something that has never existed and never will again.

I am lucky enough to have access to a ton of independent artists. I have multiple pieces of one-of-a-kind jewelry, ranging from laser-cut pieces to bone and metal. I have beautiful prints, independently published books that would never be commercially successful enough for a corporate publisher. If you’re creating, that’s chaos. That… spark.

Destructive chaos destroys for destruction’s sake. What Elon is doing is counter to the glorious creativity that Chaos can bring. And it’s not just in humanity, it’s in everything. Chaos is part of the fundamental mechanics of reality. The Big Bang, from where we surmise all of creation and the universe came from. A random spark and then here we are. Evolution is just a form of chaos. A random event can cause a species to adapt and change. And even throughout the universe, every star, every planet, every galaxy formed from a random act of physics.

Elon has created nothing. He bought or stole his ideas. He spreads misery and stacks a body count while we slip further and further into a world where creativity and joyful chaos will be crushed under the weight of crushing debt and poverty. We will be too busy trying to survive to create anything. In addition, the forces of destructive order are working to force conformity and compliance out of us. The rise in theocratic control based on millennia-old rules.

We see destructive order in all of the authoritarian regimes, North Korea being a very strong example. Uniformity in speech, thought, music, clothing choice. We’re seeing it now in the recent laws that seeks to ban gender non-conforming haircuts. (Which, by the way, is shit we made up. Like everything else in society. Including money). If this sort of thing is allowed to happen, then we will start seeing the same happening here. State sanction uniforms and state sanctioned entertainment. State sanctioned “free-speech”. The same, mundane bullshit popped out every year. We’ve seen a downgrade already in the quality of our art as it becomes more and more commercialized. There is no risk. Everything is just made to be easy-to-consume, microwave fair.

But as I said, chaos and order are two sides of the coin. Attempting to separate them causes problems.

Nature, in all its glory, is a prime example of how meaningless the differentiations of order and chaos are. Take for example, a star. A star is birthed in chaos, yet is powered by a precise chemical reaction that keeps it going. Mathmatics, physics, the hard sciences. Perfect examples of meaningful order. These imutible laws of the universe work in tandem with the raw chaos of random chance.

So, when looking at it this way, we can start to think about how we can use these elements in big and small ways to resist.

We need to fight this cancer, and a good way is using the opposing forces to continue to push. We’re seeing this movement continue to grow. All of the protests, all of the writing and reporting the real news, all of the petty vandalism. It’s all creative chaos. It’s all art for the sake of humanity. Not to mention those in science and law experts coming out of the woodwork to step up and speak out.

I try to remember that we’re all fighting, and we grow more and more every day. Even writing newsletters and boosting information is a form of resistance. Protecting your neighbors by knowing the law? Creative order and disorder. Organizing a protest? That is too. Whether it’s something we’ve noticed or not, continuing down this path and getting creative with our means of resistance has an added benefit of obscuring intentions until it’s too late. These tactics work for our oligarchy, so we should start using “Shock and Awe” on our own. Nothing insane (yet). You can join activist or hacktivists groups and think outside the box to bring attention in ways that make it impossible to look away.

It’s absolutely imperitive that we recognize the difference, and use these forces for good to counteract the evil. Continue to create, study, and collaborate with your fellows, and we might actually survive this.

Thanks for reading! Be safe in these dark times.

~Ana