Archive-name: goat-faq
Posting-frequency: monthly
Last-Modified: 01-Jul-99
alt.fan.goat FAQ:
Introduction to the Goat
Archive name: Frequently Answered Questions (FAQ) about alt.fan.goat
FAQ Name: alt.fan.goat FAQ
Author: AFG Historical Society (afgfaq@yahoo.com)
Copyright: Copyright 1999 afgHIST
Table of Contents
I. About the Goat
1. Who is the Goat?
2. Where did the name come from?
3. Why don't you identify his "real name"?
4. Why did the Goat arise?
5. What is the Goat's mission?
II. Understanding the Goat
1. Why I must approach the Goat as academic subject
2. Why I must always bring drugs for the Goat
3. What the Goat hopes to bring to the world
4. What the Goat does when he likes you
5. When to avoid the Goat, and Why
III. Historical Context
1. Postindustrial materialism
2. Moralistic politicism
3. Postmodernism counters
4. Heavy Metal as postmodern science
IV. Goat Contact/Resources
1. Web site
2. Email
3. Sightings
GOAT FAQ
I. About the Goat
1. Who is the Goat?
The Goat is an entity which posts regularly to alt.fan.goat,
alt.rock-n-roll.metal.death, alt.music.black-metal, alt.thrash,
alt.music.slayer, and alt.postmodern.
2. Where did the name come from?
The Goat has this to say about it: "Demons below -- 666
ABORTCHRIST"
3. Why don't you identify his "real name"?
I can't claim to know there is one, or that it's important. He
is strictly an entity, a persona, a character.
4. Why did the Goat arise?
Disaffection with the brutality and stupidity of society
combined with its hypocrisy, seen as arising in a collective
pessimism derived from negative conditioning ("control"
"discipline" "government" "industry" "religion") through
vestiges of evolution carried through to today by social memory.
5. What is the Goat's mission?
The Goat's mission is to create a new form of thinking that
transcends postmodernism through objectivism as visualized in
the conceptualization, and deconstruction, of music as a form of
planetary human communication.
II. Understanding the Goat
1. Why I must approach the Goat as academic subject
The Goat is an academe who took too many drugs and had to leave
his academic home, but he is still a high-level abstract thinker
in the sense that academia encourages. Therefore, for
theoretical, philosophical and highly technological questions,
he is highly useful, but for everyday concerns he is almost
totally useless.
2. Why I must always bring drugs for the Goat
It appeases his sense of brutal vengeance upon the rest of
humankind.
3. What the Goat hopes to bring to the world
Peace, love, happiness, DEATH.
4. What the Goat does when he likes you
He will probably try to convince you to smoke a phallic, sticky,
sloppy, honey-smeared device that leaks powdered marijuana on
you. This is a blunt. Accept it gracefully, for not only is it
the doorway to another world, but also it means when the
munchies hit the Goat might follow his instincts to acquire
excellent food. After that, you know you have found a method of
networking with the Goat.
5. When to avoid the Goat, and Why
If you are an ideologue (one who believes in the exclusive
theory and practice of a doctrine) in the following traditions,
please avoid the Goat for the sake of your health:
* Fatalism
* Materialism
* Moralism
* Jingoism
* Christianity
* Zoroastrianism
* Judaism
* Scientology
III. Historical Context
1. Postindustrial materialism
After it became established by a previous rennaissance that
technology would be the future of mankind's frontire
exploration, society polarized to function as a mechanistic
production device. In doing so, it modified the incipient
material morality in Judeo-Christianity's "good-evil" spectrum,
and empowered a social system where wealth determined the right
to exercise power, or "moral" right to act. The perversed
philosophies of Locke and Rousseau became, combined with
Darwinism and Protestant Christianity (read: liberal Judaism), a
justification for a material order in which personal "success"
was the most important goal, with the less-fit and
less-chosen-by-God being weeded out by their inability to
produce income. This was used to justify endless killings, from
simple political hangings in Europe to genocide in the Americas
and Black slavery, an abomination and atrocity in its own right.
2. Moralistic politicism
Currently, we exist in an age of corporate control, where the
city-state is secondary to its income stream, the multinational
corporation (as appear in the Napalm Death songs and the books
of Thomas Pynchon). As it stands now, we have surrendered all
of our will to a material morality where the basest elements
determine whether or not something is challenging and new or
"safe" and conservative. While we vote with our hearts, our
minds are deluded and occupied with "entertainment" like
television which presupposes life is not worth living and must
be replaced with unreal fantasy. Our political and social
systems crumble but our technology advances and the warlords get
more powerful; we as individuals may see great successes, but as
a species, we're pitting ourselves against ourselves as
resources become more scarce.
The greatest consequence of this development is that we've
poisoned our planet and poisoned our society with a hate we
can't admit we have, hiding instead behind Darwin or God. Our
children and grandchildren will be destroyed by this, and what
of generations beyond? Change the channel, Beavis: we've
already all given up hope, and hope to only pass away quietly
beneath nuclear waves we never saw coming.
The Goat stands opposed to this development in history, and
argues to change it toward dentological socialism.
3. Postmodernism counters
Postmodernism, or the realization of relativity in art and
science, has caused a great divergence in history: how to
understand relativism, without making it an overall philosophy?
Obviously it is insane to say we each exist exclusively in our
own worlds, for it is possible and _consistent_ that we
interact, as "proven" by the scientific method of
test-hypothesis-test induction. It is further insane to insist
we must judge others but then to say, "It is okay for that
person, in his/her situation." Our morality is what has become
relativistic and in doing so, we have conveniently replaced it
with what stood behind it for all of history: material control,
or power. What's the oldest gig but to claim God ("the power of
everything") told you to rule?
Relativism is perhaps best expressed in James Joyce's Ulysses,
in both a constructive and destructive way. Constructively,
Joyce unifies the different "threads" of his characters
wandering around town, establishes different interpretations of
objective events and finally similar conclusions on the same
events, and notes an organic, mystical consciousness to
existence. Where he is destructive is his pity: he glorifies
the underdog-loving culture of Judeo-Christianity in a
sentimentalism that is crass for his intellectual exploits.
The challenge of relativism is even greater than what is
proposed immediately, in perspective re-assessment, because it
includes also the preomonition of a greater complexity to the
order of the "whole" than we normally suppose. Simultaneously,
as we watch ourselves murder each other, we realize our world is
within our control and not in the hands of a benevolent god (or
at least, not one who will intervene). As diligent
postmodernists we must remember the self-reduction of
relativism: all things are relative, especially to the system
which dynamically unifies them: an objective truth. Having done
this, we must find new ways of exploring our world with a love
for existence instead of a need for control.
4. Heavy Metal as postmodern science
Heavy Metal, as a form of art, is postmodern science. Accepting
the precepts of postmodernism and countering them with science,
it has produced a logical, anti-materialistic, Romanticist
philosophy which encourages reduction of mercy, pity, self-pity,
solipsism, sentimentalism, morality and other intellectual
errors. Its culture is a tight-knit group of people joined by
an ideology transferred by sound who have made changes in the
"public culture" more prominent than the hardcore, metal, gothic
and industrial "sub-cultures."
Objectivism is seen as Romanticist in heavy metal, which by
nature of its exploration of the ambiguous, unknown and evil
hopes to decode "aesthetic," or appearance and categorical
position, as a process of "structure," or underlying logical
conditions in material or intellectual space. This objectivism
is romantic in that it posits a level at which humans can
interact with their world wholistically through design, and in
doing so, can build themselves an externality to reflect the
inner peace they seek. (Metal does not stop there, but its
recommendations for inner peace are best decoded by practice -
the secrets will not be given away here.)
IV. Goat Contact/Resources
1. Web site
The Goat has a website at http://www.anus.com/people/goat/.
2. Email
You used to be able to email the Goat, but now that no longer
works. I would try: goat at anus dotty com
3. Sightings
Confirmed GOAT sightings: Hollywood, California; Houston, Texas;
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
4. Who Wrote This FAQ
The alt.fan.goat Historical Society (afgHIST) hired two college
interns for two weeks to write this. Their names are Melonie
Richards (Syracuse) and Steven Maxwell (Occidental).
GOAT HOMEPAGE