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04 JAN 2004
Millennium view
This millennium we take a big step forward but we can't handle pure energy or truth yet, so we deny it, make a joke of it, dissipate the energy in laughter. We deny that funny is a step to anything, make funny the highest, the fundamental lie on which the religion is based, and obvious to everyone.It's a cusp-like trajectory, where we climb out of serious level 3 into funny level 4 and flatten out, because we say funny is the highest, so we proceed off sideways looking for the highest. A false quest, but one which pays off in side benefits.
This ultimate falsity of funny makes it safe. It doesn't challenge any other level above or below. It stays in its own dream world. It has good energy management and won't blow up. It's great for rescuing us from the levels below, even if it goes nowhere else.
9255
06 JAN 2004
Sending up
Send up = parody = make funny. Up confirms that funny is a higher level.
9268
11 JAN 2004
Reduce everything to a number?
Serious world runs on numbers, and ignores what isn't measured. In funny world numbers seem ridiculous, unreliable and superfluous, but may in fact be relevant. There is only one quantity, funniness, that defines funny world, and that is what we attempt to measure with funny money.
9289
11 JAN 2004
Funny future and present value
Funny now or funny later? We invest our funny money and each item has a present value, intuitively estimated, that sums present and future values. Funny has a short time horizon, maybe three months max for a production.The vision of a funny future breaks this short time horizon, and may have the highest present value. We could park our growing wealth there, and draw on it for large projects. The vision is a major sink, infinitely expandable, and encourages us to attempt those big projects.
Even if we're doing low-level grassroots work, far removed from the glorious vision, we can feel we're contributing to the larger cause, since every dollar counts. The funny future vision feeds value into our everyday work. It inspires the true believer, even though it's generally regarded as nonsense.
9290
11 JAN 2004
Vision of a funny future
Our visions are fiction, and that's OK. The funny future is unknowable. Our longest funny projects are weeks or months and the present is where funny happens. Yet a longterm vision is essential to the mission, even if it's nonsense.1. Unity. Funny productions are diverse. Feeding into a funny world brings them together.
2. Sink. Funny energies may have no place to go. Funny world is a giant sink.
3. Inspiration. The vision of a higher state, a better world.
4. Conflation. Merging goal and process. Pulls the future goal into the present, identifying it with the process. When we make a dollar of funny money, we're building funny world. It's the most important dollar, since the whole future vision depends on it.
9292
11 JAN 2004
Fake goals pay off on a lower level
The vision of a funny future puts stories and idealism higher, to raise intensity. Yet this is a fictional effort, a synthetic capstone. Our intensity is funny and excessive, playacting. With disbelief, anyone can do it.On the other hand, we are acting out the universal longing for a higher state and a better place. That's a powerful theme, and we suspend disbelief to do it.
Fictional or not, this added intensity is applied to the present work, which does produce good things now or soon. Our fake goals pay off on a lower level, and that's another joke. It also keeps us from getting too involved with the idealized goals.
9293
12 JAN 2004
On being true, false and funny
Even though our glorious goals are funny, false and fiction, they are the emotional and spiritual heart of the mission. We're combining true, false and funny, merging them intricately in a way I'm still trying to get my head around. Today I'm seeing how to reconcile true and false. Even though the goal and method are both funny, we have to do it in a true and serious fashion.Seriousness in pursuit of funny is no vice. I saw this first as support, all the serious work that goes into a funny production. Then I saw it as funny, to take something funny seriously. Now I see a third interpretation, that we have to take it seriously, to hold the whole funny enterprise together.
I was choking on the contradiction of being serious about a joke. My efforts are exposed as a performance. I'm required to disbelieve my script. How can I be serious and disbelieve?
Suspension of disbelief, acting as if true and serious, is the trick. We can connect with the glorious goals and imagined rewards and bring their energy into our performance.
Funny world is false in being a crude parody of the highest, and true in being more fun than the other place (serious world). We can be righteously committed to funny world, even though it's a sham.
That's a simple true, false and funny view that doesn't require mental gymnastics. Our mission has true and false parts. We're committed to both. The false parts are essential both for funny and the other benefits.
9294
15 JAN 2004
Redeeming Laughter by Peter L. Berger, 1997
The Comic Dimension of Human Experiencep.x. "The comic conjures up a separate world, different from the world of ordinary reality, operating by different rules. It is also a world in which the limitations of the human condition are miraculously overcome. The experience of the comic is, finally, a promise of redemption. Religious faith is the intuition (some lucky people would say the conviction) that the promise will be kept."
p.xv. "...if I could ever say, This is what it is, I would be in possession of the innermost secret of existence."
9298
17 JAN 2004
Worst sinner
As not only an engineer but chief engineer, I'm chief sinner in my religion, in need of the salvation that is offered. I'm in the position of seeking other sinners for self-help. I lack the authority of one who's saved.We're all sinners, all serious, will be until we die. That makes us all equal, nobody better than anybody else. Becoming funny is an endless struggle.
The sinner viewpoint is more desperate and hopeless than the good news that salvation is at hand. They're both funny and probably both have their place.
9303
25 JAN 2004
Suspension of disbelief
The funny mission claims the earth, moon and stars, and is disbelieved. Then we suspend disbelief, act as if it's true, and that makes us funny.
9323
26 JAN 2004
Saved by the power of disbelief
I have trouble with the part of miserable sinner. It defines my unsaved condition and sets up the dramatic challenge to be saved. It's funny. It's a role I can believe in, closer than the fantastic claims of salvation. What's my problem?Objections to being a miserable sinner: (1) I want to leave the serious sinner behind. (2) No distinction or discrimination between sinners and saved is allowed. (3) Don't get involved with serious world or serious self.
All of these objections are met by making the sinner a role in funny world, not to be believed.
Wow, what a powerful disbelief! I'm laughing.
9324
26 JAN 2004
Commedia dell'arte
"The commedia dell'arte was the fullest reappropriation of the Dionysian element and its magic in modern theater.... Greiner's characterization of the commedia dell'arte could be applied to comedy in general: 'Nothing in this world is certain, everything could be revealed as illusion from moment to the next. Such a world is only tolerable if only the moment counts. Earlier events must not have been congealed into depressing "treasury of experience," future events must not be anticipated as possible threats. Thus this form of theater liberates from the heaviness of life.'"pp.80-81. Redeeming Laughter: The Comic Dimension of Human Experience -- Peter L. Berger, 1997
9326
31 JAN 2004
The joke that goes around the world
In my dreams: engaging people in conversation with some impossible assertion or paradox, that they have to argue over.Maybe must be funny is already that, or maybe there's a new formulation, a new joke that will spread by itself and loosen people's minds as they argue with it.
9331