Wednesday, September 19, 2007

They Will Cut You Some Slack

The Church of the subGenius will cut you some slack.

From the Wiki:

The central belief in the Church is the pursuit of Slack, which generally stands for the sense of freedom, independence, and original thinking that comes when you achieve your personal goals. The Church states that we are all born with Original Slack, but that Slack has been stolen from us by a worldwide conspiracy of normal people, or "pinks". The Church encourages originality and frowns on actions seen as pinkness, which happens when one bows down to authority and the accepted limits of society. Popular Church phrases supporting these goals are "Give Me Slack or KILL ME!", "The SubGenius Must Have Slack" and "Fuck 'Em If They Can't Take A Joke."

The Linux distribution Slackware is named for Slack. The card game Chez Geek uses Slack to keep score; the object of the game is to accumulate Slack counters until one player wins by reaching his or her Slack Goal.

"Slack" has a Marxist explanation: once capitalism has thoroughly "rationalised" using electronic technology, there will be no slack as the wage paid to labor is in real terms driven down to the level of the reproduction of labor. Since the product of labor is taken away from labor in alienation, people naturally are alienated from the real conditions of life and feel they have no slack, no extra energy to do other than reproduce daily existence. The Church of the Subgenius, like any other religion, promises exit from this intolerable situation.
However, until that blessed day comes when we all have enough Slack the Church is accepting donations.

You can listen to the Hour of Slack.

1 comment:

Cormac said...

And then there's the old argument that if everyone is trying to get more slack, then getting slack becomes a "pink" thing to do ;D

Nice idea though, promoting non-conformity through religion... athiests will be tempted :P