On The Elusion of the Straight Line (From The Discordianist Manifesto)

Post date: 12-Sep-2018 02:28:03

On The Elusion of the Straight Line

If you’ve been paying attention, which you should if you don’t want a service interruption, then you may have noticed that everything in the illusion commonly known as reality may be separated into two general categories: Straight or Woozy.

The Straight category contains all the shapes of Order (lines, corners, walls, cubicles, edges, ledges, hedges, and wedges), and the Woozy category is filled all the squirrely shapes of Disorder (squiggles, scribbles, loops, hoops, poops, and the ampersand). We can acknowledge this distinction in many ways: man-made vs natural, organized vs disorganized, adult vs childlike, and so on and so forth and onward, forward, toward, and Edward. Although seemingly surrounded by the Straight, I submit that all Straight things are actually Woozy. True Straight lines are either an elusive illusion, or an illusive elusion. Or both, or neither. Or something else.

Consider the standard space-wasting hallway found in man-made environments like schools, homes, offices, and train stations. Straight (and narrow) lines abound, delineating floors, walls, ceilings, doors, signs, furniture, and where to stand if you need to wait for something (although the people lines are always dotted). However, are any of these lines truly Straight? Or are they simply less Woozy than the outline of a leaf or the tunnels of an ant colony?

If Earth’s surface curves, then so does every line running along it, no matter how slightly. If there are no True Straight lines, then what are we left with? Woozy lines are unaffected, though they may be just a hair woozier than we previously thought. Straight lines must then become Lesser Woozes or Sub-Arcs, which makes the whole world intrinsically subarctic.

Write down your name in any way you please. Is it not a glorious mash of Sub-Arcs and Woozes? Does not your own meat-filled body consist of Wooze-like shapes? So, shirk off any penchant for straightening things out. Don’t straighten up your room, straighten out your finances, straighten that tilting picture frame, or any of that mumbo-jumbo. Re-Woozify them instead!

After all, a pentagon is closer to a circle than you might think.