Crisis In Dudetopia.

[forumdude]

Meekon, you are indeed the prodigal son of Dudeism.

Let's kill the fatted spliff tonight. Slack around. There's gonna be some mellow music, solid whales of sounds.

Seriously, thanks for riding in and laying it all out so clearly.

One thing I get continually from people is that Dudeism should either be serious or silly but the mixture is jarring. I think that's bullshit. It's precisely the mixture of serious and silly that makes Dudeism so meaningful.

I emceed at a Lebowski screening in LA a couple of nights ago, played a preview of the upcoming documentary (I'll post it here soon) and afterward said "For those of you who think that Dudeism is a joke, rest assured...it's totally a joke. However, we don't consider the silly and the serious to be mutually exclusive."

Or hopefully I said something reasonably like that. I had scored a "free white russians all night" wristband.

[Tommy the Cat]

'Admittedly I do see the arguments that at times we do appear to be a bit anti-christian, and perhaps we may start to expand some of our terminology to include things like Dudmitzvahs. It is difficult being in christian western society the first point of our venom tends to focus on christianity.'

Don't worry about it at all. I'm a practising Christian and a Dudeist priest and, to quote an entirely different movie, 'so is my wife'. The sort of people who call themselves Christians, 'with their wide lapels and their narrow minds' but get snotty about Dudeism (while also being homophobic, misogynist and full of hate and blame) have, to my mind, forgotten all the good stuff about love and compassion, inclusiveness and care and rile with me as much as you. Given a choice between the Dude and Pat Robertson I am sure which side JC would be on. Hell, remember he hung around with people the establishment of his time defined as miscreants, outsiders and rebels. There's a classic t-shirt that says, 'Dear Lord, protect me from your followers' and most Christians I know applaud that.

[Rev. Ed C]

Nicely said, Tommy.  There's a difference in Christians who follow what Christ said, and Christians who follow what they want him to have said!

Welcome to our fold.  Glad to have you onboard

Actually, my point was "when life tosses you a lemon, make lemonade."  That could definitely be a tenet of Dudeism IMHO.

Being of a the breadatarian persuasion, my mantra has always been:
"When life leaves you with stale bread, make toast"

[Rev. Gary (revgms)]

Hi Tommy, welcome to our little resort, take any rug in the joint.

I have argued against the "false Christians" you mention so often that I purposely take time to remember what a cool Dude JC was, real or imagined that was one cool cat. I have a term for the ones like you, followers of Jesus.

The Jesus of my imagining is all about love(another word for abiding IMHO), and so much of what Christianity is today is not at all that loving.

Peace Dude.

[Rev. Ed C]

When it comes to JC, be he the man, the Jew, the Messiah, the Buddha or the Dude... whichever one or more of these he may have been there's a lot of speculation we'll just never know the answer to.

I think an interesting take that arrived recently in my newspaper is displayed here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/aug/26/jesus-judgmental?INTCMP=SRCH

And my other half was recently reading The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, buy British uber-athiest author Philip Pullman.

I think what we need to remember, as per usual, is the good message that any man/dude/buddha leave behind as a legacy, which is bigger than the life of the man, which, like all of ours, is flawed beyond all reason

Although we learn from our own flaws and mistakes, it's often the best inspiration to take only the good bits from the lives of others, whilst still realising their humanity.  Afterall, the more human someone seems, the more likely we are to take comfort in the message as a genuine one, and not just some fancy poetry.  Christ, Siddartha, Lao Tzu, be they fact or fiction, there's some good stuff to take away, let us never dwell too long on the downers

[Rev. Gary (revgms)]

Fuckin amen

[meekon5]

...I think an interesting take that arrived recently in my newspaper is displayed here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/aug/26/jesus-judgmental?INTCMP=SRCH...

Bloody Guardian readers get everywhere

[meekon5]

...One thing I get continually from people is that Dudeism should either be serious or silly but the mixture is jarring. I think that's bullshit. It's precisely the mixture of serious and silly that makes Dudeism so meaningful...

So seriously silly, or sillily serious?

Oh no another schism!

[Pancake Waitress]

One thing I get continually from people is that Dudeism should either be serious or silly but the mixture is jarring. I think that's bullshit. It's precisely the mixture of serious and silly that makes Dudeism so meaningful.

It's exactly this and this:

Life is short and complicated and nobody knows what to do about it. So don't do anything about it. Just take it easy, man. Stop worrying so much whether you'll make it into the finals.

(from the "What Is Dudeism" section)

that made me realize that Dudeism was for me. After having waded into such involved spiritual practices as Irish Reconstructionist paganism, Druidism (not really an ism, but you get the idea of what I mean, yeah?), Hinduism... On and on... where the people I encountered were awesome, but very serious, and very very brainy, I just threw up my hands a couple years back and said "Fuck it. Whatever is, is, and whatever happens, happens. I don't know jackshit, and I'm done guessing." When I stumbled on Dudeism totally by accident (OR WAS IT? dun dun dun), it just felt like a nice, comfy robe. I didn't have to think about it, I just put it on and got on with it.

I don't need Dudeism to have structure. Don't particularly want it to. But if others do, that's totally cool, as long as no one's forcing it on me (which, from what I can see, no one is). So I don't really see why so many people are fighting and throwing hissyfits. But then that's just like my opinion, and so on and so forth.

[Rev. Ed C]

...I think an interesting take that arrived recently in my newspaper is displayed here:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2011/aug/26/jesus-judgmental?INTCMP=SRCH...

Bloody Guardian readers get everywhere

Wait, are we on Have I Got News For You?

When I got my kindle I was going to subscribe to The Independant, but it was ?3-4 a month more expensive than the Guardian, so... my e-paper I guess does now make me a "Guardian Reader"

ps, I'd like to complain about this site.  It won't accept the symbol for sterling!!!  You fucking Americans and your micky-mouse currency, always ragging on the great british pound!  Damn thing ends up a ? no matter what I do.  Paraquats!!!

[forumdude]

the symbol for pound is right there: just type lbs.

ha ha.

sorry, no idea why this software is so xenophobic. i'll have my mechanic look under the hood.

[Andrea Da Fino]

'Admittedly I do see the arguments that at times we do appear to be a bit anti-christian, and perhaps we may start to expand some of our terminology to include things like Dudmitzvahs. It is difficult being in christian western society the first point of our venom tends to focus on christianity.'

Don't worry about it at all. I'm a practising Christian and a Dudeist priest and, to quote an entirely different movie, 'so is my wife'. The sort of people who call themselves Christians, 'with their wide lapels and their narrow minds' but get snotty about Dudeism (while also being homophobic, misogynist and full of hate and blame) have, to my mind, forgotten all the good stuff about love and compassion, inclusiveness and care and rile with me as much as you. Given a choice between the Dude and Pat Robertson I am sure which side JC would be on. Hell, remember he hung around with people the establishment of his time defined as miscreants, outsiders and rebels. There's a classic t-shirt that says, 'Dear Lord, protect me from your followers' and most Christians I know applaud that.

Fucking A, Tommy, mark it 8.

[Andrea Da Fino]

So can we agree to agree that as Dudeists one of our main goal is to be seriously silly? Can we think of this as one or the only dogma we can have? Is this what the Dude would do?

Anyway the real JCD is the Buddy Christ. Far out!


Great british pound? Like Britannia Imperat? 

PW, as for the structure thing, probably because the fact that, just like the seriously silly attitude, we can find a way to have a basic flexible structure has been underestimated. But we are masters in finding Columbus' egg, or the square of the circle, or whatever you call it in english.

A structure doesn't have to be complicated per se, because we all know what happens when things get complicated. Just like a religion or a church are not to be a bunch of uptight assholes automatically. We are the kings of oximorons.

No need to worry about anything here, the Dudely Llama knows pretty well his "job". 

[meekon5]

??

Simply hold down the ALT key and type 0163.

I was trying ascii but that doesn't work. It previews perfectly then replaces it with the default "?".
Bum I'm sure I've already solved this problem.

As for structure, we probably need something for communication and support, but loose enough for individuals not to feel we are forcing them to do something a certain way.

[ascii]0163[/ascii] doesn't work.

[DigitalBuddha]

'Admittedly I do see the arguments that at times we do appear to be a bit anti-christian, and perhaps......

TC, welcome to our esteemed beach community. Good to have you. Pull up a rug and abide. Oh yeah, bar's over there.