The Dudeism Forum

Quote from: BikerDude on September 25, 2012, 08:47:15 AM

You disgust me.
Piss on you then.
But that's just an opinion.

Not really on my list of sexual preferences, but thanks for the offer dude.

Can't. Help. Myself......  Pfffffff......


VAGINA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Quote from: Hominid on September 25, 2012, 09:00:00 AM
Can't. Help. Myself......  Pfffffff......

VAGINA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Tourettes?

Comic relief.  I crack myself up.

Woah...guys, please stay civil, ok?
I came here hoping to find like-minded folks...not the 100000000000st flame war on the net...

Quote from: AspiringDude on September 25, 2012, 03:45:12 PM
Woah...guys, please stay civil, ok?
I came here hoping to find like-minded folks...not the 100000000000st flame war on the net...

I'm calmer than you are dude... 

Quote from: Hominid on September 25, 2012, 08:28:53 PM

Quote from: AspiringDude on September 25, 2012, 03:45:12 PM
Woah...guys, please stay civil, ok?
I came here hoping to find like-minded folks...not the 100000000000st flame war on the net...

I'm calmer than you are dude... 

Ticht Naht Hahn has a nice story about calmness. He poured himself a glass of cloudy apple juice but forgot to drink it and went out for a walk.
He came back four hours later to find the juice crystal clear and realised "shit dude, when I meditate that's exactly what happens - through calmness comes clarity".

Biker Dude! Nice to have you here. It's been too easy for too long. We need more aggressive, macho Walters with whom we can practice our Dude Jitsu and our Abiding.

This can be sort of like Bloodsport and you can be Tong Po to Jean Claude, or Bolo to Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon.

It's also interesting to see how people can interpret the movie so fundamentally differently. Biker Dude considers the Dude to be a "pussy" and says he "squeals like a bitch"! Ha ha. Oh well, we need some dissent to keep things interesting from time to time. I personally disagree with pretty much everything Biker Dude said in his rebuttal to my last post, but that's just my opinion.

Aspiring Dude - I think that whole "you disgust me" and offer to piss on Boston was an ironic gambit meant to say "hey how would you like it if I pissed on you?" Am I wrong?

Still, let's try to dial back the irony. If you're going to pretend to be fucking asshole then use a fucking smiley face.

Quote from: forumdude on September 29, 2012, 05:08:00 AM
Biker Dude! Nice to have you here. It's been too easy for too long. We need more aggressive, macho Walters with whom we can practice our Dude Jitsu and our Abiding.

right on - values grow weak when not challenged

Quote from: Hominid on September 25, 2012, 10:40:19 AM
Comic relief.  I crack myself up.

I do that a lot when drinking beer.

    Meh. It's not like The Dude ever said he was a prophet. Nothing fake about him, he just Is. And when you think about it, yeah, there are moments in the movie where he loses his cool about one thing or another, but he never fails to get back on that dudely level again. No grand scheme or philosophy to his actions though. He just strolls through life trying not to get into trouble. He's clearly not a fighter, which I guess you can interpret as being a pussy, but I guess to me, it looked like he was even too lazy to fight. Like he's thinking, "Sure, I could fight these nihlists, maybe get my ass kicked. Or, I can pay them off and try to extinguish my car somehow, maybe smoke a J."

    Sure, if it were me, I'd be fighting back, but that's me, not The Dude. I accept him as he is: An ex-hippie and a slacker with no visible aim in life. There's not much else there. He ain't a prophet, nor does he pretend to be one.

For me the point is that most of us are too easily angered by aggression and that instinctual feeling of "being wronged" which impels us to fight back to defend our "honor" or to satisfy some cultural idea about what "being a man" is results in too many broken bones, lost lives, escalation of conflict, etc. Or even just depression and feelings of worthlessness (if you lose the fight, or if you chicken out). The point is to try to be pragmatic and unegotistical about conflict. The Dude was pissed off by the Nihilists but he also recognized that they could "end this cheap" by ponying up a few bucks.

Now if the Nihilists were really threatening something dear to them (Maude, Cynthia, the Pomeranian) then it would have made sense for the Dude to fight back. But the idealistic notion that "what's mine is mine" only means that people are going to fight over what hardly matters.

I'm a fan of Ethiopian culture, visited when I was in my teens and then wrote a novel about it. When I was researching the book back in 98 I was visiting the Tigre area in the north. At the time Ethiopia and Eritrea were going to go to war over a few square miles of totally barren disputed territory. I was chatting with some Ethiopian dudes about how crazy I thought it was and they said, "Yes, but if they take away our land, we have to fight them to the death."

The point is, it's a bullshit heroism thing imposed upon us by our cultures, and our genes. The urge to defend territory is so fundamental that we often don't realize how outdated it is. That's why no country in 200 years has effectively been invaded and conquered - because people would rather die than give up "what's theirs." Even if what is in dispute is a piece of shit (or a few bucks). Robert Ardrey's The Territorial Imperative discusses this quite clearly.

But we shouldn't be slaves to our instinct. Overcoming our baser impulses is a big part of what Dudeism is all about. Status anxiety, jealousy, desire, greed - these are all natural parts of our evolutionary heritage. But they were designed to help us fend off alien tribes looking to rape and kill us, or to establish a pecking order in times of scarcity. So in this day and age when we have so much, to be so hung up on machismo and codes of honor and sloganeering is positively anachronistic.

The Dude is not a prophet. Dudeism has no prophecy. But he's an example which we all could do well to follow because he's supernaturally immune to the parts of our brain that make us feel inferior, violent, and ultimately dangerous. I won't call that a heero, 'cause what's a heero? (See, the Stranger was making that very point - heroes are those who fight for honor and ego and status) But he's the man for his time and place. We all should try to be.

Okay, getting down off the soapbox now.

Quote from: forumdude on October 01, 2012, 05:00:32 AM
For me the point is that most of us are too easily angered by aggression and that instinctual feeling of "being wronged" which impels us to fight back to defend our "honor" or to satisfy some cultural idea about what "being a man" is results in too many broken bones, lost lives, escalation of conflict, etc. Or even just depression and feelings of worthlessness (if you lose the fight, or if you chicken out). The point is to try to be pragmatic and unegotistical about conflict. The Dude was pissed off by the Nihilists but he also recognized that they could "end this cheap" by ponying up a few bucks.

Now if the Nihilists were really threatening something dear to them (Maude, Cynthia, the Pomeranian) then it would have made sense for the Dude to fight back. But the idealistic notion that "what's mine is mine" only means that people are going to fight over what hardly matters.

I'm a fan of Ethiopian culture, visited when I was in my teens and then wrote a novel about it. When I was researching the book back in 98 I was visiting the Tigre area in the north. At the time Ethiopia and Eritrea were going to go to war over a few square miles of totally barren disputed territory. I was chatting with some Ethiopian dudes about how crazy I thought it was and they said, "Yes, but if they take away our land, we have to fight them to the death."

The point is, it's a bullshit heroism thing imposed upon us by our cultures, and our genes. The urge to defend territory is so fundamental that we often don't realize how outdated it is. That's why no country in 200 years has effectively been invaded and conquered - because people would rather die than give up "what's theirs." Even if what is in dispute is a piece of shit (or a few bucks). Robert Ardrey's The Territorial Imperative discusses this quite clearly.

But we shouldn't be slaves to our instinct. Overcoming our baser impulses is a big part of what Dudeism is all about. Status anxiety, jealousy, desire, greed - these are all natural parts of our evolutionary heritage. But they were designed to help us fend off alien tribes looking to rape and kill us, or to establish a pecking order in times of scarcity. So in this day and age when we have so much, to be so hung up on machismo and codes of honor and sloganeering is positively anachronistic.

The Dude is not a prophet. Dudeism has no prophecy. But he's an example which we all could do well to follow because he's supernaturally immune to the parts of our brain that make us feel inferior, violent, and ultimately dangerous. I won't call that a heero, 'cause what's a heero? (See, the Stranger was making that very point - heroes are those who fight for honor and ego and status) But he's the man for his time and place. We all should try to be.

Okay, getting down off the soapbox now.

Awsome post dude. In terms of defending one's honour etc' I believe that the best response is to transcend an attack. But if it hits you and it hurts you there is no point in pretenting to be the Dalai Lama. Here I like Nietzche's advice "if someone does you a great wrong go out and do seven small wrongs straight away, for a man who bears great wrong is fearsome to behold."

Sometimes we are so sensitive, that little things feel like great wrongs and so self-righteous that our 'small wrongs' escalate. So hey I gotta put my hand up - sorry about the 'Vagina' joke Caesar Dude. It was way over the line.

Quote from: BikerDude on September 24, 2012, 07:43:07 PM
I consider myself fundamentally Dude. That is to say that I have always put the taking it easy (or in my case more specifically work in order to party) ethos foremost.

But I have to admit that I have an ongoing difficulty with the idea of a philosophy based on the character of the Dude.
I can't get past a lot of stuff about the character.

...

Walter was the real Dude.

He doesn't have a philosophical commitment to taking it easy. He's just lazy.

...

Everybody has to have some Walter to them when the chips are down or there just is no white washing it.

I'm not too serious about my analysis of the holy media (notice that lack of a capitalization back there?), but the Dude didn't exist in a vacuum.  His actions were mediated through those of Donnie and Walter.  The Dude wasn't a literal person, he was a concept, balanced by other concepts.

Walter is part of the Dude, Dude.  Am I wrong?

I mean, shit, I could be. 

Quote from: BikerDude on September 24, 2012, 07:43:07 PM
I consider myself fundamentally Dude. That is to say that I have always put the taking it easy (or in my case more specifically work in order to party) ethos foremost.

But I have to admit that I have an ongoing difficulty with the idea of a philosophy based on the character of the Dude.
I can't get past a lot of stuff about the character.

...

Walter was the real Dude.

He doesn't have a philosophical commitment to taking it easy. He's just lazy.

...

Everybody has to have some Walter to them when the chips are down or there just is no white washing it.

Quote from: NobleElement on October 01, 2012, 11:37:01 AM
I'm not too serious about my analysis of the holy media (notice that lack of a capitalization back there?), but the Dude didn't exist in a vacuum.  His actions were mediated through those of Donnie and Walter.  The Dude wasn't a literal person, he was a concept, balanced by other concepts.

Walter is part of the Dude, Dude.  Am I wrong?

I mean, shit, I could be.  

For me the Dude is never the issue.

We're not meant to be emulating the Dude, the Dude is an example, a path one could tread, a direction one could take.

But you don't need to "Be like the Dude" to be Dudeist.

...

As I keep saying, stop trying to be the Dude and just get on with being.

...

On the point of aggression.

Last week I had a bit of a problem here at work. Someone got in touch with my Head of Department and complained because I didn't instantly answer her e-mail.

I cannot express how angry this made me.

I took Friday off and just boiled with bile (boil-in-the-bag Database Admin anyone?).

I got in today and my head of department requested a "word".

Expecting the worst, I was surprised when he thanked me for rallying round the previous Thursday.

The point I am trying to make.

Whilst I was answering her aggression with my own, she actually owned me, to the extent of actually spoiling some of my extended weekend with getting wound up by the incident.

...

A lot of individuals here and on facebook quote the "For all us sinners", but Dudeism is a philosophy without sin, unless of course you want to spend you're life chastising yourself.

Unfortunately a lot of focus is placed on "The Dude" in the film. He is not our jesus, he is not our god, he is not our Buddha. I don't think anywhere there is any inference that we should all become "The Dude". In fact I fully believe we should hold the attitude (taken from Zen)

Quote

If you see the Dude on the street, kill him.

All in my humble Dudeist Opinion of course.