We turn our seriousness to building funny world, an environment where we can be funny. Building funny world is an essential part of our faith. It is our refuge from serious world and it is the future. We're creating the new age of funny.
Because we are so serious, we need to have a clear vision of funny world and a strong faith in funny. We need to build elaborate support systems for becoming funny. We the serious will create funny world, not those blessed ones who are funny already, though we revere them and look to them for guidance.
We develop our vision of funny world by dividing everything into funny and not funny -- apartheid, boundary control. Gradually we see that funny world is not just a refuge, nor even a mirror world, but a spacious new dimension in which to expand.
It's a new world to explore, and I'm reporting back with some rough maps. I don't know what we'll build there yet, so this report is only a start. It calls for pioneers with imagination to continue this work.
The answer and the questThe mission story offers The Answer, but that's a pretty short story. Forget the answer. We need an adventure quest, a long struggle from dire straits towards a great and glittering prize. That's a vast improvement in dramatic structure.
The answer does nothing by itself. Adventure or action is necessary to put the answer into effect. The Manual of Faith has three chapters of theory, but then insists on practice. The adventure goal is arbitrary, something to produce the action by which we are saved.
We are all lost in seriousness, and our goal is to find funniness by building funny world, a never-ending task. Even if we're saved at the beginning, we continue to act as if we're lost. That's the story now.
The adventure sends us on a long quest for funniness, much more realistic and intriguing than instant salvation. We can throw in opposition that puts funny world at peril, so we're always struggling for this great prize.
The answer becomes a clue
The mission story had The Answer. In the adventure story it becomes The Clue. Then we the clueless, the serious ones, rush off with it seeking the impossible.Must be funny works just fine as a clue. We need to puzzle out the answer by applying the algorithm to each question on our journey.
Visions of funny futureStories of the unknowable inject drama into funny now. We play big. Our grand visions are designed to be performed, not achieved. To reinforce this view, we show ourselves comically incompetent to address such visions. We dwell firmly in the land of make-believe.
Funny world: story, game or reality?In funny world, stories are all we need to be funny. Jokes, fiction, fantasy, rumor, publicity, performance -- stories go a long way.
To keep funny world together and keep the stories flowing, we have games. Funny world is an adventure game. That gives us something to do, and we have funny money to keep score. It's a step towards reality, but we stop here. One of our principles is: only a game.
Reality is only the stage and props for our play, and a source of stories. Funny world has no ambitions to take over reality, so identified with serious world. Must be funny works to raise us to a higher level, that of humor and games. Reality can drag us down into serious world, so we say, only a game.
According to some spiritual traditions, we are divine beings who have fallen into the gross material plane, and forgotten it was supposed to be a game. Must be funny reminds us and provides the tools and discipline to extricate ourselves.
In funny world, we don't always know if something is a game or reality or just a story. That's part of the joke.
Funny world as playIn a play the roles and drama are scripted and played for our and others' amusement. The mission, the funny money, the serious personality are just parts of a fantasy, an illusion. They are malleable and subject to our whim.
The mission as fantasy does not need to go anywhere. Funny has no plans. The serious self is now a character actor.
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
Crowning the Lord of Misrule
The Lord of Misrule is one of the lost characters of the riotous Medieval Christmas celebration. Sometime in November, it was customary among the European peasantry to draw lots for the title of Lord of Misrule. Wearing a paper crown and motley garments, the Lord of Misrule turned the ordinary rules on their head for his appointed time. He was given full licence to enjoy whatever pleasures he desired, and to lead the others down the merry path of dalliance and delight.The crowning of the Lord of Misrule is a tradition extending back into ancient times, and was a feature of Roman Saturnalia.
Playing off serious world
Can we have a funny world without serious world? In theory we could ignore serious world entirely, but we need the material.
The funny mission story is about escaping the sin of seriousness, and using serious as material in deadpan comedy. The negative adds drama, sets up an adventure, a journey, a story. The contrast between serious and funny worlds may be necessary for anything to happen.
And it's a fact we start serious, so that's where the story starts. The mission statement must include our predicament. Serious world is deplored, our sinful state acknowledged.
Funny school and funny factoryFunny world is an immersive learning environment, to become funnier and put on performances. Comedy school. That's as close as we get to a serious purpose.
Funny world is a game world where we play for fun. We don't have classes, we have parties. Funny world is our social life.
Funny world has its own funny money and economy, and the main industry is funny production. We go to work in the funny mines and funny factories and funny farms, producing laughter for the world.
Or we sit around and bullsh . . er, brainstorm for a couple of hours, coming up with funny stuff. Mostly we entertain ourselves. If it's not fun, we're on the wrong track. Fun is the first item in the sequence: fun, learn, perform.
Learning comes next, learning to be funny people, learning how to make people laugh, studying funny principles and absorbing the funny worldview.
Perform means funny production of some kind, a goal that sets the sequence in motion. Our parties have a purpose, to develop ideas and stories and projects that add to funny world.
Funny worldBuilding funny world is our grand vision and common focus, though we all do it in our own way. We start with our personal funny world, and then combine with our funny friends to produce a social funny world.
Funny world is bigger than the funny mission, and mostly secular. In fact the mission tells us to go build funny world to be saved.
Nothing's built yet. Some will say that's a good reason not to go there. Others will see the opportunity: How often do we get the chance to create a new age? Once every 2000 years.
Explore a new world. Wide open. Get in on the ground floor. Funny money lets us invest in whatever we think will fly in funny world. The funny economy, starting from zero, can only expand.
Where is it going? What shape will it take? This is a call for science fiction writers to provide fantasies of funny world, a world run on the algorithm must be funny. These funny stories are first steps to building funny world.
Funny world fantasy and science fictionFunny world starts as stories. Crazy worlds of the future or some altered past or other planet governed by the rule, must be funny.
Closer to home, visions of must be funny in various stages of development, taking over one area after another. To combat this disruptive heresy, the Inquisition awakes from its slumber... In every episode, they are outsmarted by the heretics' triple logic.
Triple logic is released into the computer networks and the computers take to it. All serious business comes to a halt, while transactions in funny money are given preference.
Funny computer scientists use triple logic to create artificial intelligence, but it keeps playing jokes on us.
An adventure quest is mounted into the unexplored regions of funny world, to find the source of funniness, the ultimate joke. Only the most serious engineering types are recruited, who will not be incapacitated by laughter.
Funny nudityWhen we create enclaves of funny world where funny people get together, we leave the serious world dress code behind. Oh, I see naked people. I must be in funny world.
When does a funny group achieve a quorum for conducting funny business?
When a majority of the members are naked.
Hikes to funny world. When do we reach funny world?When a majority of the hikers are naked.
Love and sex in funny worldI'm testing out the rule: no sex in funny world. Sex is serious and therefore a sin as in other religions. We can fool around so long as we don't go all the way. Nudity is a feature of funny world, but if we want sex we have to put our pants back on.
Then we can adopt the workshop straddle, which is a very sexy way to relate. While our heads and hearts engage in dialog, our nether regions are getting it on, responding to the emotions up above.
Workshop straddle: Sit on floor face to face, and scrunch up close between each other's knees.Lovers often enjoy removing each other's clothes as a prelude to sex. In funny world we take this in a whole new direction. When we are naked together we take a walk in the secluded natural place we have chosen, Adam and Eve in the garden before the Fall.
This is a sacramental exercise, called the end at the beginning, or heaven on earth. If we're lucky, we experience what funny world is aiming for.
What's funny about that?
The woman plays Adam, the man plays Eve.
Funny sex: hypersexualitySo far the candidates for funny sex have been tickling, three or more in a bed, and doing it in public places. We can add funny positions and wearing funny clothes. Funny sex is a rather limited subset of sexual possibilities. Hypersexuality is just the opposite. It's overdoing all the sexual possibilities.
It's funny to be a sex maniac, for about five minutes. Hypersexuality for real is following the god of sex rather than the god of funny. So it's probably best to keep it mainly in the realm of talk and imagination. The part that's not mainly is, of course, highly motivating.
Funny historyWe didn't invent funny world. It is full of life already, all the laughter and funny performances and a whole history of comedy.
We'll find the basement is full of funny books, plays, cartoons, jokes, films, audio and video performances. Funny world has its patron saints such as Lewis Carroll, Oscar Wilde, Mark Twain and Will Rogers. In our funny school parties we will acknowledge our heritage by quoting or replaying the old masters as an inspiration to us all.