MOOism

MOOism (also known by many alternate names and spellings, such as "Thee Church of MOO", or "MUism") is one of a number of experiments, jokes, or artistic projects involving religion as a medium. It incorporates methods and content found in joke religions and subculture religions such as the Church of the SubGenius, as well as more serious experiments in modern or postmodern religion such as Discordianism and TOPY (Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth). It is conceived of as a combination of genuine religion, joke, and performance art.

Originally created as the product of a virtual community on FidoNet in 1991, and later propagated by first the internet via the gopher protocol and then the World Wide Web, MOOism has been one subject of a study of the internet as a medium of proselytization of new religious movements, as well as of the influence of postmodernism on religion. Sociologists of religion Lorne L. Dawson and Jenna Hennebry are among those who have studied it.

One postmodern element of MOOism is the tendency to use and combine samples of cultural sources and ideas after the manner of collage art. Some sources it has sampled include paganism, occultism (especially the works of Aleister Crowley), the fiction of Philip K. Dick, Jorge Luis Borges and H. P. Lovecraft, and also ideas of Robert Anton Wilson and Terence McKenna.

At least one sociologist of religion has criticized this approach as superficial and not truly relevant to religious feeling , but one MOOist document justifies the use of collage and sampling methods as a mechanism for demonstrating the interconnectedness of the universe, involving magical thinking in a manner analogous to the "Cut-Ups" of William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin.

Slogans

* "Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law, Unless Thou Wilt Not Follow The Law, In Which Case Don't"
* "First there is a WOMBAT. Then there is no WOMBAT. Then there is."
* "Who's to say there is a Mooism let alone a wombat... Where is mooism... Everywhere and nowhere all at the same time, but then what is time, where is time, and what is its problem..?"
* "The MOO in YOU has got to get through"
*If playing the well known game "Frustration," MOOism definitely helps.

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See Also

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