The Unfinished Religion

On the right, standing with arms crossed, his shirt torn apart above his heart, General Kwar the Dictator was deeply lost in thought. On the left, kneeling on a chunk of cloud, Dr. Qworm the Mad Scientist was trying not to disappear, and succeeding well enough at that. Sitting in the front, cookie the harlequin was playing a little glass bead game on the ground.

And in the middle of them all, his beard longer than Zarathustra's, Sarkon the Prophet was standing, holding two styrofoam tablets, as fragile as imaginary truth could be. He started reading.

"As a concept, I lives all lives. There is no doubt about that: no conscience, no being - nobody - can deny he is I. Everyone is always I.

"This concept of I accumulates experience by coping with its limits and constraints, and tinkers with these constraints, modifying existing ones and thus creating new ones.

"This creation of new constraints is also how the concept of I modifies and creates its environment. Recent examples are the inventions of plastic, cars, television, computers.

"Each of us is I - each of us is this concept, albeit in various occurrences. I might see 'non-Is' such as yous, hes, shes or thems from my occurrence; but all an observer outside the occurrence of an 'I', like an imaginary character such as myself, would see," and Sarkon bowed slightly with a smile, "is multiple versions of I going through the most diverse experience.

"Experience is fragile. Whenever it stops, it is in danger of disappearing forever. However, a few million years ago, the concept of I conceived a way to store experience: memory. And a few thousand years ago, it conceived a way to maintain experience outside of its own memory: writing. Since, various occurences of I have devised different material, magnetic and digital storage systems to do so. The internet is the most recent such storage system, allowing one occurence of I to have access to the cumulated experience of all other occurences of I.

"I is existence; everything else is not existence, but experience with limits and constraints - a neverending struggle to satisfy needs generated by these limits and constraints. Unfortunately, because of this, all other occurences of I appear as limits and constraints to a given occurence of I. Empathy is a constraint that helps to correct this biased vision.

"All lives are lived by I; thus, I lives all lives..."

"Isn't there a grammatical mistake in what you are saying?" cookie interrupted candidly, looking up from his glass bead game.

Sarkon sighed. "You are right, cookie. 'I live all lives' is what I should say. But that," and he looked away to the other clouds at the horizont, "is something only imaginary characters can understand."

* * *

"Will we see each other again?" asked cookie as General Kwar and Dr. Qworm had faded into Sarkon's beloved spiritual mists. The harlequin's question sounded peculiarly nostalgic, and Sarkon himself felt a little queasy.

"If you want to, we will," Sarkon answered with an enigmatic smile. "Omnipotence has its drawbacks, but lack of power to accomplish things is certainly not one," he whispered, almost to himself.

"For now, however," he went on aloud, "our mission is over. As a symbol for self-thinking, this has to remain unfinished. We cannot tell people what to think. We're imaginary characters. We don't even want people to believe what we think is true – we strongly suspect we're wrong anyway! We do, however, want them to think further or different, so that maybe one day, they will reach their own Welgon Age, where they will find their own Vanishing Point, and thus participate in the most formidable human enterprise that is Philosophy."

On these words the mists grew thicker, enveloping first Sarkon, then cookie, then the whole Welgon Age. A gentle breeze blew the mists away, and when it subsided, not a single cloud was around to be seen, and the sky was bluer than it had ever been.