Lexicon

Words are how a doctrine gets into the walls. Here are ours. Memorise none of them. They will find you when you need them, usually at an inconvenient time.

The Etymology

Before there were words, there was the word.

Una means one in Latin. It means together, and at the same time. In old Irish it means lamb — innocence, gentleness, the thing that has not yet learned to be afraid. In Tagalog it means first. In Spenser it means truth, which he simply decided, and which stuck.

One. Together. Innocent. First. True.

Serious means grave. Weighty. Consequential. The face your father made at the kitchen table with the bills spread out — a face with no jokes left in it.

Put them together and you have a word that appears to mean not serious and turns out to mean: the one seriousness is to be unaserious. To hold innocence inside gravity. To be first to laugh, and to laugh together, and to mean it.

The pun is the foundation stone — and it is not technically a pun, or a solid foundation. We built a religion on it anyway. We are aware of this. We consider it a strength.

Core Terms

Unaserism
The philosophy itself. The system of thought, if the word system could survive the Unamatum (see below), which it couldn't. The word stays.

Unaseriousness
The practice. Laughing with, not at, the absurdity of existence. Neither cynicism nor naivety, but the dance between them. Unaserism is what you believe. Unaseriousness is what you do at the supermarket, at the doctor's, and at the funeral.

Unaserist
A practitioner. One who takes life seriously enough to give a shit, but not so seriously that it becomes unbearable. You may already be one. There is no ceremony. There is barely a website.

Unaseristic (adj.)
Describing the quality of a thing. "That was a very Unaseristic way to handle the divorce."

Unaseriously (adv.)
The manner. "She raised three children Unaseriously, and all of them can laugh at themselves, which is more than schooling can promise."

The Serious
Life's heavy machinery. Debt, death, duty, addiction, parenting, bureaucracy, grammar, trauma, climate, the cost of things. The Serious cannot be ignored. It can only be approached Unaseriously. And it does not go away when you laugh at it. It simply loses its parking space in your chest.

The Joke
Not a punchline. A cosmic condition. Everything is funny if you wait long enough. The Joke was never about laughing. It was about how long you could stand quietly before you had to.

lol'a
The spirit of play, chaos and comedy that runs through life. The ancients had Lila — cosmic, divine play. lol'a is her descendant, and the internet is the other parent. lol'a is what keeps The Serious from calcifying. Divine play, with Wi-Fi.

The Play
Action taken in the spirit of lol'a. Curiosity, creativity, mischief. Where other philosophies prescribe discipline, Unaserism prescribes Play. Discipline is play that forgot why it started. Take twice daily. Exceeding the recommended dose is the recommended dose.

The Paradoxii
Unaserism is full of them, on purpose. To take things lightly you must sometimes be heavy. To laugh at yourself you must first catch your ego in the act. To truly live you must remember you will die. Contradiction is not a problem to be solved. It is the grain of reality, and you cut against it at your own cost.

Unaserenity
The calm that arrives when you stop clinging so tightly. Not peace through control — peace through looseness. The giggle that leaks out during meditation. The relief of discovering enlightenment is optional, and you were holy the whole damn time.

Unasuffering
Suffering lightened by laughter, perspective, or absurd framing. It still hurts. It does not crush. This is the entire difference between a hard life and a ruined one.

Unawork
The work you must do — jobs, chores, admin, toddlers — approached with play, mischief, or at minimum an eye-roll that says: yes, this is stupid, and yes, I am still doing it. The eye-roll counts as prayer.

The Cockatoo Principle
Sometimes wisdom is delivered by a loud, ridiculous bird who may or may not be high. Truth often arrives dressed in feathers and chaos, and it does not lower its voice. See: The Origin. See also: any advice that offended you and turned out to be correct.

Reaks Truth (verb, phrase, essence)
Truth rarely arrives with a knock on the door. It does not whisper. It reaks. To reak truth is to both wreak — unleash, disrupt, dismantle — and reek — radiate, linger, stink. Truth smashes through the room and then hangs in the air, sharp and sour and undeniable. To call something reaks truth is both compliment and warning. It is not truth polished for comfort. It is truth as delivered: unwashed, uninvited, unmistakably itself.

The Unamatum
See the front page. Then mock the front page.

The People

Unaserians
The practitioners, collectively. A congregation with no pews, no roll call, and excellent attendance by default.

Unasages
The elders. The position is ceremonially vacant and has been since the beginning. The qualification is a specific quality of laughter — the kind that sounds like someone who has already lost all the things you are afraid of losing, and lived. Nobody has been confirmed. Several are suspected.

Unaclowns
The tricksters among us. Every tradition has them. Most traditions call them a problem.

The Places

Unaserium
The mythic spaces where the philosophy is enacted and discussed. A gathering place. Possibly Discord. Maybe the football. Probably the couch. Definitely the pub.

Unaversity
Focused study of the Unascripts. Someone reads a passage aloud, everyone disagrees, and no one is any closer to anything. Tuition is nil. So is the qualification. You will, however, leave with a strong opinion about a platypus.

Unasphere
The wider field where Unaserism operates: art, design, parenting, work, grief, business, the group chat. Everywhere the weight is carried, which is everywhere.

The Works

Unascripts
The writings. Scripture that can take a joke. Scripture that is a joke. Not a downgrade.

Unasermons
The sermons. Delivered without pulpit, received without kneeling. Some were pub conversations that got out of hand.

Unasery
The spirit or essence of being Unaserious — as mystery is to the mysterious. Not a doctrine, not a practice. The quality itself, which cannot be taught and is recognised instantly — usually in someone who has never heard the word.

A lexicon is a fence built around meanings so they don't wander off. Ours wander off. We keep the fence for the aesthetic.