alt.fan.goat FAQ (modified 20-Apr-2000)
AFG Historical Society
Posting-Frequency: semimonthly
Last-Modified: 20-Apr-2000
Author: AFG Historical Society (afg...@anus.com)
Copyright: Copyright 1999 afgHIST
alt.fan.goat FAQ: Introduction to the Goat
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/etc/people/goat/.
2. Email
You used to be able to email the Goat at go...@paranoia.com, but now that
no longer works. I would try: go...@anus.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).