This religion is
under construction
Funny mission fields
We're training funny missionaries in comedy school,
to go out to the humor-deprived places throughout the earth,
where children often go all day without a single joke,
and go to bed sad.
Mbf mission statement
The mission is for us all to receive and enjoy the great gift, the higher consciousness, the abundant life of funniness.
To this end we devote ourselves to building a funny world and filling it with laughter. This work is our spiritual exercise, by which we become and stay funny, while we spread our message of hope and hilarity throughout suffering humanity.
Missionary conversion
After some brief study of funny faith and science, we may enter the field as missionaries. We are still serious people, miserable sinners, without much clue how to save our own souls or anybody else's. Who could be more serious than missionaries? We don't have to change a thing. We are perfectly suited to our deadpan role.
Now if we preach the saving power of funniness, which has so obviously not worked on us, people will laugh at us. Halleluia! That means we're funny. We've been converted by our audience's disbelief.
The real purpose of missionary work is to convert ourselves. Never mind the customers. They are innocent foils for our spiritual process. The only thing we want from them is laughs. If we can do that we're funny. That's our spiritual exercise.
We have to
make fools of ourselves to be saved. The funny mission provides a foolish
enterprise to give us that opportunity.
|
"How do I save my own life?" the poet asked. "By
being a fool," God
said. |
Spreading the sacred meme
Our mission is to spread the divine commandment throughout the world, so that all may have the opportunity to be saved. Once heard, must be funny is hard to forget, and even if disbelieved it works anyway, producing laughter.
The must be funny message is passed along as a joke. If the joke is good enough it will be delivered to every last global village by Internet.
But what then?
It helps if it is a running joke. It helps if there's money involved (Ch.6)
or a game (Ch.7). We'll need parties, entertainment and activities to nurture
the funny lifestyle. And maybe we'll have to do some old-fashioned missionary
work.
|
If organized religion
is the opium of the masses, then disorganized religion is the
marijuana of the lunatic fringe. -- Kerry Thornley, Discordian Society Co-founder |
Party a lot
The standard format for every funny function is the party. Parties tend to produce laughter, which is a measure of the success of the mission. The best way to be saved is to party on.
Parties are the fast track to funny world. To a first approximation, funny world = party. As pioneers in this new world, the first thing we do is party. Then we settle down to the serious business of -- planning more parties!
The funny mission succeeds
or fails on the quality of its parties. This is the real reason
people join. One of the first duties of the faithful is to plan
and hold funny parties. This is how each local chapter of the
mission is created.
Divinity school
Everybody starts at the entry-level position as god of funny world. We get at least 15 minutes of omnipotence, and serve until we can find a replacement. Then we work our way down to our level of competence.
Ground rules for gods: Must be funny. Exploit the hell out of everybody. Reverse everything the previous god did. Use your position to enrich yourself in funny money. Your job is to entertain us.
Treat recruits as god
This game, where god is an entry-level position, lets funny people adore recruits until they're hooked, then drop them for the next batch of gods. This allows the full experience of loving someone as divine, while limiting it to a short time.
The role-reversal provides a funny context. Our exaggerated emotions are funny. Our fickleness is funny. The obvious recruiting scam is exaggerated and funny.
The important part is the license to love,
to indulge those heady and hearty emotions.
Funny sacrifice
We will be criticized for having a religion that's all fun and games. Where's our sense of discipline and sacrifice?
We make a great sacrifice in giving up our seriousness. This will be tough for most of us, and we have to exercise discipline and vigilance to escape the clutches of The Serious One.
When we are caught committing sins of seriousness, our games have provisions for forfeits of funny money. We can also have funny penalties and rituals designed to make us ridiculous. Maybe we can bring in familiar penance and sacrifices from our legacy faith -- if we can make them funny.
There's the
larger question of charity. Do we help people in need or raise money for social
projects? Later we'll cover funny money matching funds and Time Dollars. We'll
approach charity in our own way because the greatest temptation of The Serious
One is doing good. The battle for the soul comes first. Our charity will flow
from the abundance of funniness and not from serious obligation.
Funny paranoia
A major success factor for new religions is a siege mentality, us versus them, a beleaguered minority struggling for existence. If there's no actual threat or persecution, then we have to make some up.
We've written this into funny world as heretics vs. Inquisition, where we play both parts. We are also vigilant against the pervasive forces of seriousness, which can strike at any moment and grab funny people back to serious world.
Warning: Must be funny challenges the very basis of society. We can expect opposition. We have to stick close and be careful who we bring in. Our meetings are disguised as house parties, a different house each time.
The funny police
We can train some funny police, and if there's any outbreak of seriousness in funny world they jump on it. Freeze! Don't anybody move. Who's the source of this seriousness? Take them away.
They haul their victim into the nearest bedroom, for a strip-search and thorough tickling. By the time they're through, the miscreant has not a serious thought left, and has reformed into a funny and productive member of society.
Serious cases may be quarantined: Oh, he used to be such a fun player, but then he started to take it seriously. Well, we tried getting him on medication (laughing gas), but he was stubborn.
|
Tis easy to make baptisms
funny: Just add soap. -- Donald Roth |
How to stay funny
Rule one is: must be funny. We just throw out anything that isn't funny.
But is there anything left? As serious people, we are faced with the terrible humor shortage in our lives and in our world. If we gather all our jokes together we may stay funny for about two minutes.
We can try to improve our miserable condition in support groups, known as parties. By pooling our material we can stay funny for fifteen or twenty minutes. Then we can cheat and watch funny videos.
The mbf mission is devoted to the daunting problem of how to stay funny. Remedial comedy classes are an option, but make only a small dent in the problem. Jokes are perishable. We'll never fill the humor shortage with jokes. What's funny and lasts?
Running jokes and sitcoms. These set up a situation and characters that may last for years. They generate a constant stream of humor. What we want is a role in our own sitcom.
The mission to build funny world and save our souls from seriousness is our sitcom. Just by participating in this ridiculous faith and practice we are instantly funny.
| Are we funny yet? |
And now for something completely serious
The mbf mission is a joke. If it succeeds, it's just a bigger joke. If it follows the rule, must be funny, it can never be serious.
The goal is more funny people, more funny production, growth of funny world. We can be serious about that. Seriousness in pursuit of funny is no vice. We're serious about making a bigger joke.
That's a common goal, a single purpose to unite us, yet we're free to do it any way we desire. The mission maintains its funny focus on building the joke, all efforts going into growth.
We may be tempted by serious
goals: money, fame and, worst of all, doing good. These will
all keep us captive in serious world. We'll do better as funny
people.
Mbf as obvious
After a while, must be funny is proved so many ways that it simplifies down to obvious. All those arguments lead to seriousness, so good riddance. Mbf as obvious is something even the last can learn.
Funny is as funny does. Never
explain. They'll figure it out. It's not a teaching but a doing.
Goal is funny production, not consumption
When we say production, we think of a few producing funny for the masses. Isn't that the most efficient laugh factory?
No, the goal of the mbf mission is everybody funny, not just a few. Which means everybody producing funny, not just consuming it.
Funny production is the main industry of funny world. As we earn funny money we're saving our souls, growing the funny economy, and building funny world.
|
Funny
forever! Multiply funny through time. Funny comes and goes. Our goal is to get it forever. |
Funny performance shows how funny we are. Our goal is to make people laugh, which means we're in the entertainment business. We're in the theatrical realm. We'll want to share what we create as widely as possible. Funny performance is outreach, spreading the word, attracting new converts.
Funny promotion of bliss
Mbf condemns love and happiness in Chapter 2, or so it seems at first. We want to tear it down and make it funny. That makes all this forbidden stuff food for funny. We put it to use, look for more of it.
Take it another step: We can
afford more bliss if we can make it funny. Mbf is actually an
enabler and promoter of love and happiness, before tearing it
down.
Funny is a safe outlet for our energy
We like raising energy. That's abundant life, spirit flowing through us.
Normally that energy goes into serious world, feeding the insanity. Then we tend to shut the flow down and turn to medication.
Funny is a safe outlet or sink. We can distribute our sacred spirit
as laughter, or put our surplus energy to work building funny
world.
Energy and funniness
We want the pure energy of spirit, but it would burn us up. We have to evolve through funny, which limits the energy to what we can handle.
The funny path is both an aid and a limitation. It increases the energy over the old serious state, and it limits it to the funny realm. We follow a middle way.
The higher the energy, the stronger our religious discipline must be, to maintain our commitment to funniness.
Our middle way is an optimum
path between the serious side of too little energy and the dangerous
side of too much energy. We need brakes as well as boost. We
have to maintain a balance. Funny is truly the highest for us
at our stage of development.
Two kinds of disbelief
After disbelieving the future (Chapter 2) we're free to turn the funny mission into an arbitrary pack of lies. We manipulate it to our advantage and see what we can get away with. This is a simpler form of disbelief, that of the liar and cheat and con man.
Of course we present our stories with perfect sincerity, and maybe they're even true, but that makes no difference, since nobody will believe them. We're free to play for our own amusement and immediate pleasure. Our true believer act quotes funny scripture to justify our excesses and exploitation. We have to do what we love to do.
That's funny. It would be dangerous if we believed in it. Now it's transparent and false. Disbelief required.
Side benefits of missionary work
The script focuses on saving souls, building funny world, and getting laughs. It gives us conversation. It's a way to meet people.
For advanced students, the missionary role has an emotional dimension. The precious soul we're talking to must be saved. We can't bear to see them lost in seriousness forever. We love them so much and want them to find funniness.
This love is a powerful attractor and recruiter. We would be shocked to hear of missionaries using it for sexual purposes.
Quantum thought
The joke lives on ambiguity, maintaining multiple possibilities. Must be funny is the consciousness of the new age, the key to heaven on earth, or it's a bogus parody of same.
My problem as a serious person is I demand to be certain of the truth in my own mind. This is death to comedy, and violates the principle that there is only one message for me and for others.
Can I maintain both possibilities in my mind? Must be funny is true, and it's a false and funny joke. Both are possible success stories, and the joke comes first. It doesn't have to be true. My life is not ruined if it's only a joke.
The gambler accepts both possibilities, of winning or losing, and believes in winning, though also prepared to be wrong. I'm a gambler with two winning outcomes.
I've been too invested in the truth. I need to embrace the joke possibility, where mbf is just a story, made up for entertainment. If nobody believes it, then my truth is indeed irrelevant, and the joke is everything. As a gambler, I should invest in the joke, believe in the joke, live the joke.
The truth is there as material and ambiguity, but should never prevail, since that would end the joke. The truth can be spun with energy and passion, as fodder for the joke. In that sense my investment in the truth is OK. My own mind now embraces both possibilities, that my message is believable and that it will turn out to be a joke.
What if mbf is believed, with sincere followers,
laughed at by the world? Mbf as truth will always be a minority position surrounded
by disbelief. Even as truth, it tells us our highest purpose is to play jokes
on the world. We also have a self-serving internal corruption joke, where
the core players disbelieve and take advantage of the believers.
Triple joke
The first joke is the funny mission, which we pursue seriously, deadpan.
The second joke is that we don't believe in it, and we're taking advantage any way we can.
The third joke is parts of it may be true after all, but we don't know which.
Let us pray
Scripts may help us be funny, but ultimately funny comes from the funny gods, and all we can do is pray for the divine spirit to make us funny tonight. How do we know when we're funny? We make people laugh.
This gives mbf a great advantage over other religions, where nobody knows if you're saved or not, no quality control, no way to measure results.
When we're funny, the results come back instantly, and if we earn funny money the results are measurable.
Funny as higher consciousness
Funny is a third logic value besides true and false. Funny adds a new dimension of thought and possibility. Adding a dimension offers unlimited expansion of whatever we had before. Hence funny as higher consciousness, followed by the expansive possibilities of funny world.
The other religions will say they have expanded dimensions too, much classier ones, and funny doesn't count, too downmarket. Anybody can be funny.
Right. Mass market. "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public." (H. L. Mencken)
The cut-price super-easy path to salvation. Wretched upstart invading the religion market. "For higher consciousness you chose funny!?"
Yes. Because we can. Those other paths are just too hard.
|
All you earnest
young men out to save the world -- please, have a laugh. -- Reinhold Niebuhr |