What is PLUR?
Definition
Peace - To be in the same place as another, to exist similtaniously without conflict or adverse effects/reactions.
Love - To unconditionally feel great affection for a fellow being, and offer friendship regaurdless of race, sex, or creed.
Unity - To come together and defend common interests and give a sense of well being among those who feel unaccepted, to allow any and all to be a part of you and your friends.
Respect To allow yourself to be who you are without expectations, and allow others to do the same while helping each other, giving those around you the pride, courage, and honor you would yourself.
Understanding everything about a rave is the key point to becoming a true raver.
It's not about drugs, drama, and sex. Sure, these things can be fun, and are usually identified as a stereotypical rave displayed in many movies, but there's alot to what a rave is and what it symbolizes.
My personal opinion is this: If you're going to use drugs, don't take them at your first rave. It shows that you're not there for the party or socializing or the music. Your first rave is to take in the experience, not the substances, to actually enjoy the scene without the influences that taunt the many participants.
A rave, in it's utopian sense, is about a four letter anacronym that many people have argued about for years: PLUR.
Peace
Love
Unity and/or Understanding
Respect and/or Responsibility
Most often, Unity and Respect are the most commonly used for the letters "U" and "R."
These are the several pillars of what a raver is supposed to support, through themselves and others. Many in the rave scene, at one time or another, have heard this term at sometime or another, though, it's common usage is relatively recent (in the past 10 years). In the mid 80's to early 90's, ravers followed similar principles, but didn't use the now popular anacronym ravers use today. It enterpreted the way that a raver should, in believe, live their life, and how people are expected to act at a rave. PLUR wasn't the first anacronym to hit the scene, infact it's predecessor was LPE (Love Peace Ecstacy) which was removed because of the Drug Reference. LPE was mainly used in Europe during the 1990's, when the rave scene became a youth oriented subculture. Many ravers will also add the word "Responsibility," and others sometimes add "Kindness" and/or "Honor" at the end, feeling those virtues are as important, or more, than the other four letters.
A fellow DJ wrote:
"PLUR is not just a trendy word that is thrown out there by ravers and people involved in the rave culture. As a new-aged hippie or what ever it is you want to label me, I have one point I want to get across. I'm sick of people putting PLUR on their myspace profiles, and AIM, and everything else they own when they do not understand the TRUE meaning behind PLUR. My intentions are to spread not just PLUR, but the background with it." ~DJ Trippy.
Peace
"Peace is the calmness you find with those around you, and also inside yourself. It's tough, we often have to work at it, but when you're at peace with others, with ourselvesand with our planet, only good can come of it."
"Peace is what you use to chill out when the sound system blows and the music stops for ten minutes. It's what you use when some idiot keeps bumping into you while dancing. It's sort of like serenity and being calm. Shit happens, and you deal with it."
All of these are good definitions, told to me by ravers.
Peace is the mind. Peacec is the ability to make friends, connect and grow into a family. Peace is what makes a rave possible. Ever been the only person you know at a rave? This makes it possible to calm down, not be afraid, and let out that first olive branch of friendship. You can't smile truethfully without a bit of peace channeled through your body.
Love
"Love is the caring you feel for friends, for strangers, for those in need and also for caring that you show for yourself. It's symbolic, it's about sharing whatever energy you put into something will be returned to you."
"Love is an unconditional appreciation of something or someone. It combines with peace to allow you to think things like 'Frankie Bones isn't a bad guy, in spite of his flapping mouth.' The peace gives you the chill factor so you can get to the unconditional love."
A leapfrog kind of thing. It proves that all elements within PLUR must be interchangable, and connected to work as one whole creation. Without Peace, Love is nonexistant, or impossible to retain. Love allows us all to grow, adapt, create bonds with other people, and keep the peace with everyone. Love is also unbelievably important in order to retain the following elements of PLUR. Without Love, A rave would become chaotic and create a world of paranoid dancing people.
Kandi Kids can often be seen giving unconditional Love towards newcommers, Giving gifts of Bracelets made of many colored beads of different varieties. This is a sign of friendship, as areminder of them to whoever recieves the bracelet. These gifts are known as Kandi, and will be discussed in another section.
The Two 'Us'
"Unity means we share alot of common things, regaurdless of our age, gender, rave, orientation, we are all human beings, we all need other people, and we're all in this for the happiness experienced being around others. Though we may have differenced, we all arise from the same source."
"Once you have peace and love, unity follows in that you can appreciate other people and other things, and this appreciation allows you to work together with them, or spend time together with them, and otherwise support themm even if you don't always agree with them. A sense of something 'bigger' than just yourself and your own pleasure is part of unity. In the case of us on the list, the 'bigger' thing is an interest in the off social phenomena known as 'raving.' Unity helps me to do things like throw a good party for the new-ravers list, even though there are people who are on the list and who might come to these parties who I'd rather not have anything to do with. It is in the spirit of greater unity that I chill with these feelings (peace again) and welcome everyone into my home so they can be together and have fun."
"Unity is in the music. Unity is very important in the role of PLUR because with out the U for Unity, PLUR wouldn't even be a word that could be pronounced. In the song eminem sings, he quotes 'Lose yourself in the music, the moment, you better never let it go."
I believe he's referring to what we 'ravers' all come together for. The music blindfolds us all, and brings all of us, black; white; hispanic; asian; purple; green; silver; ect, together all for one thing: The Music. The Music is by all means the 'Weapon of the Future.' Now those of you who don't hang out with someone because they listen to Happy Hardcore and dress like Kandi Kids, can not say that you believe in PLUR without being hypocritical. That is lack of Unity at it's peak.
Unity is being on the dance floor without noticing the minorities or majorities. Unity is bringing everyone together for one cause. Unity is the Music.
Also defined as "We are all part of the universe." The scene is only as good as the bonds between you and your fellow ravers. A rave is only as good as the love the ravers share with each other. Infact, a rave's success may sometimes depend on this bond, this connection. Again, The practice of Peace and Love combined to create a new pillar in the rave society.
Understanding can be viewed like things:
"It's in all of us to accept everyone as a person and understand them, no matter race, religion, group, sect, or dream. We're all here for the same thing in different ways, so understanding everyone is a common goal."
A sort of piggy-back to Unity. Without Understanding others, you cannot join forces with the community you have just learned and now Peacefully Love.
The Two Rs
The biggest of the letters.
"Respect may mean respect for others, their ideas, their music, and their lives. It's also respect for one's self: one's body and the needs that it has whatever they may be. Educating yourself on the substanced you ingest shows love and respect for your body; Passing on the knowledge to others shows respect and love for your fellow person."
Also, similar to the definition of Understanding, which is why Understanding is rare.
"This, to me, is the key that is often missing in our scene. People get too much into flamage (and I admit, I've been guilty of this). People are more worried about being DISrespected by others, rather than concentrating on generating and giving respect. This is the most difficult one for me to explain, because I've had the least ammount of time to think about it... Respect includes things like NOT graffiting on walls at raves, picking up your trash, and giving whatever you can as a donation when the hat is passed at a free event. It also includes seperating yourself from that what you don't like, while allowing it to continue uninterrupted because people other than yourself are getting enjoyment from it (for example, take my feelings toward the majority of breakbeat: I really don't like it, so when it's played, I go chill with some friends and wait until their set is over... I used to whine and complain, but then it sunk into me that OTHER people were getting something from it, and by trying to supress their enjoyment, I was showing extreme disrespect for them)."
"Respect is not so much a verb, as it is a rule. You can't be respected, unless you give a little respect. Respect means many more things than it is given credit for. Yes respect is tolarating other people's differences, but it also has deeper meanings.
Respect is when you tell your friends, Family, anyone, that you are going to meet them somewhere, and no matter WHAT situation occurs, you will try your damn hardest, and go out of your way to keep your promise that you made with them.
Respect is when you KNOW other peoples boundaries and you DO NOT CROSS THEM NO MATTER WHAT! If you don't know how far peoples boundaries are, you don't push anything on them untill you do know their boundaries. I know sometimes it may be hard, sometimes people may send mixed messages but respect is also not ASSUMING anything either.
Respect is when someone asks you for help, and wiether you know them or not, you don't care who they are, but you will help that person in anyway possible, because you have respect.
Respect is respecting others who don't respect you. You can't expect people to respect you unless it starts somewhere, and that somewhere isn't going to start unless YOU make a difference. you cannot rely on other people, that's a lack of Respect."
You see, Respect is like giving that piece of Kandi to that person you just met. Respect is like a gift that keeps on giving, even if you never see it right away. It's what keeps us going. It's what makes us believe in the world, and whatever deity we believe in.
The one thing that people fail to grasp, and I have been guilty of this, is being able to respect themselves. Without being able to truely respect yourself, you're always going to second guess and make poor decisions, like being the kids lining the walls at their first raves, on whatever drug they managed to get their hands on because they didn't take the time to talk to anyone else about it. They took in the stereotype, and without truely thinking about the concequences of their actions, they become the drug addicted Rollerbabies that make ravers look bad.
Responsibility
Why Responsibility? Think about it. you're responsible for your actions, and you're very responsible for yourself. No matter what goes onm you have a responsibility to yourself and everyone around you to do what's morally right. If you take drugs, you're still responsible for #1. Taking the drugs, and #2. What you do while under the influence of the drugs. Same with what you say and do.
Other Wiki Pages
Comments (0)
You don't have permission to comment on this page.