Paradigm piracy, also known as metabelief, is the practice of freely adopting and discarding beliefs and world views at will. Paradigm piracy is embraced mostly by practitioners of chaos magic, though it is also popular among Discordians. The idea is that belief is a tool that can be applied at will rather than unconsciously.
Though it began as an aspect of chaos magic, paradigm piracy by itself has more emphasis on the religious, rather than magical aspects of belief shifting, and it is not necessary for one to practice chaos magic to be a paradigm pirate. the concept of fluidity of belief was first introduced by Peter Carroll and Ray Sherwin in the late 1970s through their books Liber Null and The Book of Results. Peter Carroll would later go on to further develop some of those ideas in the early 1990s in his book Liber Kaos.
Eclectic versus systematic paradigm piracy
In The Paradigmal Pirate, Joshua Wetzel made a distinction between eclectic and systematic paradigm piracy. Eclectic paradigm piracy is similar to religious syncretism, except that the resultant belief systems are temporary. Systematic paradigm pirates, on the other hand, tend to embrace existing belief systems as a whole, often pursuing official membership in organized religions or other groups.
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