Introduction to the Society

The Society For Putting Things On Top Of Other Things (henceforth referred to as The Society) is an organization established in 1991 The Society has, over time and often with much overlap, served as a social club, an investigative society, a shadowy cabal, a publishing house, and a performance group. In short, the society exists to support the needs of its members, whatever they may be. As long, of course, as those needs include the putting of things on top of other things. for the purpose of investigating and reporting on the nature of reality, which is to say the nature of chaos, which is to say the apparent manifestation of order and disorder. We accomplish both investigation and reporting through our primary task and objective The shorthand "Job1" used internally to refer to job number one has morphed through common usage in society missives and meeting notes to the eponym-ish "Jobi" (often styled JOBI in all caps) which itself gone on to become a sort of sigil and shibboleth for The Society, always reminding us of our job and duty. Namely, of course, putting things on top of other things. , which is, through individual and collective efforts, maximizing the number of things on top of other things.

Putting things on top of other things is in and of itself a profound and worthwhile endeavor. To put a thing on top of another thing is to create apparent order out of apparent disorder. It furthermore has the side effect of creating potential energy. For the inevitable fate of any thing or things atop other things is for them all to topple and return to their previous state of not being on top of other things. Which is to say, to return to apparent disorder.

The inverse relationship between order and disorder is succinctly stated by the Law of Eristic Escalation: the imposition of order is nothing more than the escalation of disorder.

We build things up so that they may be knocked down.

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Both order and disorder of course are illusory aspects of chaos, which is the actual stuff of reality. One begins to see this through the applied practice of putting things on top of other things, and observing the persistence of things through the fluctuation between order and disorder.

Consider a deck of playing cards. ⊕ Do consider a deck of playing cards! A shining example of how on top puttable some things truly are. You can sort them by rank and suit. And then you can shuffle them. In neither case have you changed the nature of the deck. They're all still cards, no matter what order (or disorder) they are in.

The illusory nature of order and disorder is well documented in the Principia Discordia and is in fact a core tenant of the Discordian belief system:

The Aneristic Principle is that of apparent order; the Eristic Principle is that of apparent disorder. Both order and disorder are man made concepts and are artificial divisions of pure chaos, which is a level deeper than is the level of distinction making.

Though the repeatition of putting things on top of things, watching the things tumble, and putting the the things once more on top of other things, the practioner begins to notice the impermenance of—indeed, the non-existance of—order and disorder.

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Such does The Society, through the putting of things on top of other things, investigate and demonstrate the illusory nature of apparent order and apparent disorder. Which is to say, the inorderable nature of raw chaos. Which is to say, the nature of reality itself.

Jobi.