Purposes
There is a disagreement among Discordians as to whether or not, through OM, they should seek to improve society, topple it or claim that the practice is in fact only for entertainment. Because much of Operation Mindfuck itself involves hyperbole and exaggeration in regard to discussing the Discordian Society, it is difficult to determine the actual scale of the campaign, be it large or practically non-existent.
In The Illuminatus! Trilogy and its sequels, Operation Mindfuck is epitomized by a protagonist named Markoff Chaney, an anti-social dwarf who engages in subtle practical joking, in a deliberate attempt to cause Discord, as a protest against his mistreatment by society. One such joke involves the forging of signs that are signed by "The Mgt." (leading people to believe they're from "The Management" instead of "the Midget") that contain absurdities, and placing the signs in stores and other establishments.
Read more about this topic: Operation Mindfuck
Famous quotes containing the word purposes:
“A culture may be conceived as a network of beliefs and purposes in which any string in the net pulls and is pulled by the others, thus perpetually changing the configuration of the whole. If the cultural element called morals takes on a new shape, we must ask what other strings have pulled it out of line. It cannot be one solitary string, nor even the strings nearby, for the network is three-dimensional at least.”
—Jacques Barzun (b. 1907)
“I find that the respectable man, so called, has immediately drifted from his position, and despairs of his country, when his country has more reason to despair of him. He forthwith adopts one of the candidates ... as the only available one, thus proving that he is himself available for any purposes of the demagogue. His vote is of no more worth than that of any unprincipled foreigner or hireling native, who may have been bought.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“To be President of the United States, sir, is to act as advocate for a blind, venomous, and ungrateful client; still, one must make the best of the case, for the purposes of Providence.”
—John Updike (b. 1932)