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04 NOV 2004
From funny money to Time Dollars
Funny money starts off worth whatever's written on it, and gets some added impetus from spreading the good news. We're free to experiment with personal expression and games.Next, a distribution game to be determined, that helps spread and recruiting.
Next is the project group, for parties, events and performances. The funny money game introduces matching labor, materials and money, as well as deciding what we do and who does it.
Next is ongoing projects and groups, moving into nonprofits. The funny money game is institutionalized.
Next we use the same mechanism for serious projects, sinks for our funny energy. This is Time Dollars, which can grow the nonprofit economy and make it more efficient, an alternative currency for the have-nots of serious world.
9956
07 NOV 2004
Multilevel marketing
MLM is a possibility, parodying pyramids while using their structure, which appears to fit funny money perfectly. We can use the readymade format, a comic contrast to the content. The structure is a reality sink. It says this is more than fantasy, it's happening in the real world. People look for this reality sink before participating. They demand it. They're smart.MLM stretches to the religious mission easily. That's optional. It's a theme, one of the story lines, one of the funny businesses looking for customers, and if they buy it, fine.
9970
07 NOV 2004
Making funny money is top goal
That's a radical decommissioning of grand goals. Though they remain as story, they have no power. If they don't make money, they're out. Making funny money is a relentless bottom line. We're staying close to the reality we know, where fantasy has to pay off or yield to making a living.Ironically, funny money enforces fantasy, preventing us from taking our fantasies seriously and trying to make them reality. Instead, funny money treats them as entertainment and keeps them in the realm of fiction and play-acting. Serious ideas of spiritual or revolutionary change are defused. They survive only as entertainment.
9972
09 NOV 2004
Superman and Bizarro World
Superman is a reenactment of the grail myth, as proposed in The Once and Future Grail, Chapter 8. I found grail theory dangerously incomplete and completed it with must be funny and funny world. Now I find that the Superman creators went on to invent Bizarro World, where everything is reversed!I was looking for existing cultural analogs of funny world, and Bizarro World still occupies that position after forty years. It's been on an upswing lately. Justin Raimondo says we entered Bizarro World on 9/11/2001.
9975
15 NOV 2004
Defining the new age as funny
That's funny enough. The normal reaction is to see this as beyond fringe religion, impossible, a joke. Then we've started off in the right place.The rest is zeal in pursuing this false religion, creating a whole alternative worldview and some good parties.
Once we start off on false and funny, that becomes our premise for everything. We never take it seriously again.
9994
15 NOV 2004
Make funny money to be saved
The funny mission rapidly directs all religious zeal to making funny money and making converts. There's plenty to do. A whole economy of funniness. If we make funny money, we are saved.That's a funny feature: Our wealth is the sole measure of our virtue! Our funny religion is not only false but corrupt! Joke nature reinforced. When we make funny money we are confirming our fake religion is worthless.
9998
18 NOV 2004
Must be funny
That's the new rule for the Aquarian Age. Must be funny. Funniness is the next level of consciousness. Ain't that a joke? Everybody expected something higher. So the new age starts off with a joke. At least it's consistent.The funny mission is to convert everybody to funniness to save our souls. We can have some fun parodying religion, but the funny mission is a joke, since how could it make people funny?
Instead it sends us out to make funny money as a measure of virtue. This is a close parallel to the real religion of the serious world, which is making money. We couldn't save our souls, so we settled for following the almighty dollar.
The funny mission says funny is as funny does. If we make people laugh we're funny. If they give us funny money we get rich in proportion to our funniness. This is the basis for funny money, as a measure of laughter. Make funny money means make people laugh.
10008
20 NOV 2004
To move ahead we need a new set of lies
We all expected that the truth would make us free in the new age. Wrong. The truth will still get us killed. Must be funny is a pack of lies. We should not dismiss it for that minor flaw, which has never stopped all the other religions. The funny mission says, to move ahead we need a new set of lies.Therefore disbelief is required in the funny religion, which means we don't have to convert anybody. Another reason: belief is serious, not allowed.
Now you might ask: Why would we follow a religion we don't believe in?
Well, it still provides everything we could want in a religion. Clear moral guidance, for example. Whenever we are faced with a dilemma, we choose whatever's funniest. Our sexual morality is governed by the maxim: "Fooling around is OK, but couples who get serious are living in sin." Strict observance requires three in a bed, so each can keep the other two from getting serious.
10017
20 NOV 2004
Productive algorithm
Applying the rule "must be funny" generates a rich alternative reality. It's produced a whole Manual of Faith and Practice -- 64 pages, and it can produce a whole funny fantasy world.Now we're coming down to what it's all about: art. Must be funny generates a new artistic space and gives us a tool that creates new art. I've had fun generating a new fake religion, and I'm working on funny money games. There's room for any number of artists to fill out funny world, which is still mostly virgin territory.
The closest thing to funny world was Bizarro World in Superman comics forty-odd years ago. There everything was reversed. That was a brilliant start, and bizarro world has become a generic concept for a world turned upside-down.
Think adventure game. Building funny world is like a Sim City. There's funny money to earn and invest in new construction.
Think theater. Funny productions. Think sitcom, or running joke.
10018
21 NOV 2004
Heretics vs. Inquisition
Of course must be funny and funny money pose a grave threat to the established order. Funny people are heretics, and we have the Inquisition to stamp them out. Since disbelief is required, every heretic should also be a secret agent of the Inquisition. Besides creating drama, the Inquisition has a useful function tracking down and eliminating seriousness. If any real agents show up, they can walk right into the role and script we've prepared for them.
10020
26 NOV 2004
Algorithm as art
Must be funny is turning out to be an amazingly productive rule or algorithm. We've seen what Benoit Mandelbrot did with a simple algorithm, repeated a million times to produce something complex and maybe beautiful. Must be funny repeated generates a whole funny world whose only function is to entertain us.I'm entertained by the beauty of the unfolding. I've lived with this algorithm for a while, and it keeps on revealing new depths and subtleties of funny world. It looks a lot like an adventure game, which is a highly prized artform. And it plays that way for me, as first player finding his way through the maze of funny world.
I have to discover the basic rules and structure of funny world, so it's good that I'm an engineer. The artists can follow and build on that. Yet I'm seeing art and beauty in that structure already.
10038
8177 Funny world adventure game