Yari? WHAT YARI?
Until recently, the Church's (un)official position on the identity of Yari
has been "We don't know, and we don't care". Now, however, all that has
changed. With a claim to Yaridom which went nonunheeded by Half-Mad, who
asked for a phone number for Feb '91 and checked it against the system logs
from his BBS, the identity of Yari has now finally and truly been settled.
The most unsetting thing about this fact is the claims by Yari (whose real
name will not be revealed - partly to protect the innocent, but mostly to
protect US) that the Church of MOO is a stupid waste of time, and it doesn't
now, nor did it ever, exist.
For a less robust religion, this might come as a crushing blow, since it
was Yari who first issued the call of the Cow, Yari who inspired the Church's
formation, and Yari who wrote the very first scriptures, still a treasured
core of the Book of MOO. Imagine if Christ appeared in his Second Coming
and called the Pope a bonehead! If the Dalai Lama announced his conversion
to Jehovah's Witness? How about if Yahwqeh himself descended from heaven
and told the Jews to get a life?
Ah, but here's another example... When Genesis P. Orridge announced that
the ten year experiment to see if he could create a religion out of a band
was OVER, and the Temple of Psychick Youth no longer existed, the response
from TOPY members worldwide to their founder and "leader" was a resounding
"So what?" TOPY continues unabated, even though Psychick TV no longer
has anything to do with it.
Or how about this one: when a million dominoes have fallen over, set off
their rockets, snapped mousetraps, and triggered complex Rube Coldberg
devices, lighting sticks of dynamite, blowing up a foundation wall and
collapsing a building, the building can't be restored by pulling back on
the first domino. If a butterfly's wings in Tokyo cause a tornado in
Kansas, Dorothy won't be magically transported home from Oz if the
insect in question stops flapping.
The point is that MOOism isn't close-coupled to its causes. It
exemplifies a chaotic system: a small cause can have a big effect, but
the withdrawal of the cause won't undo the effect. Just as removing the
husk of the original seed from a plant, or stealing back a month's supply
of baby-food from a full-grown adult won't lead to an untimely death,
withdrawal of the INSPIRATION behind MOO won't affect its growth.
When I heard that Yari thought MOO was stupid and a waste of time, I
thought back on the Book of Floyd, chapter 3, verse 27. "MOOists were
vexed by many who claimed that their religion was stupid and a waste of
time, but Floyd said unto them: Yep, verily it is so. And they didn't
know what to say to that, so they buggered off."
Why bother with a religion that's stupid and a waste of time? Good
question. It doesn't seem to bother that many MOOists, though. Or, for
that matter, many Catholics, Taoists, Jews, Shintoists, Hindus, Buddhists,
Mormons, Jains, Muslims, Pagans, Lamaists, Protestants, Sikhs, Discordians,
SubGenii, Santerians, Secular Humanists, Scientologists, Physicists, or the
devotees of any of a million other idiotic human pastimes. After all, in
SOME point of view, anything you could possibly do is stupid and a waste of
time. You don't do it because it makes sense, or because you're
accomplishing something. You do it because you WANT to, and Do What Thou
Wilt is the Whole of the Law, unless Thou Aren't Heavily Into Laws, In
Which Case Just Do It Anyway and Maybe Nobody Will Notice.