The Vital Greed

"Hey guys, I'm going to shop for new ideas on the vaporous mists of the spiritual paths! Anybody wants me to get him a thought?"

Sarkon the Prophet was in a good mood. Shopping for ideas was one of his favorite activities, and every time he went for it, he felt full of joy. Ideas were incredibly cheap, too: a few molecules of glucose could easily be traded for the most amazing thoughts.

"It would be great if you could find me the philosophical stone, the one that is supposed to turn lead into gold," Dr. Qworm the Mad Scientist required sarcastically.

"Ok. Turn lead into gold. I'll try to find that for you," Sarkon agreed.

"Could you find me a new game?" pleaded cookie the harlequin, whose only occupation was having fun. "I don't want to get bored with the ones that already exist!"

"No problem. A new game. I'll check that out for you," Sarkon answered. "And you, General Kwar? Is there any idea I can get you?" he asked hesitantly as the Welgon Age's Dictator remained silent.

"Sure. Give me power. Make me rich. Find me a genie that'll grant me wishes. Found a political party that would support me. Bring me all, all you can get!" snorted General Kwar the Dictator.

Sarkon frowned. "I am not going to do such a wonderful activity as thinking just to fuel your greed!" he scolded.

"You asked for something, and I gave a honest answer," justified Kwar.

Sarkon sighed. "Kwar, I've noticed you are in a bad mood recently. Maybe your expectations are too high. Too many desires that cannot be fulfilled. Maybe you should let go some of the harder to accomplish stuff. Drop some desires, you know. Have you ever heard of Buddhism? It says that if you can get rid of all the desires you have, you'll reach beatitude. They call this state of perfect happiness Nirvana."

"Having no more desires should make you perfectly happy? That's the worst scam I've ever heard of! I have seen people who had no more desire for anything at all, to the point that they didn't want to eat any more or even refused to get up! I even wondered if I should hit them so that they would want me to stop - just so that they wanted something! Absence of desire is called 'depression', and that's not a state you want to reach! Believe me, Prophet, you don't want to see desire waning! Desire and greed are our source of life, and without them, we might as well cease to exist! What you propose with your Nirvana stuff, Prophet," Kwar waved an immense finger under Sarkon's nose, "is nothing short of suicide!"

Sarkon bit his lip. The Flight from Omnipotence theory[1] actually gave Kwar right. "But then you have to fulfill a desire from time to time, at least, so that you know they are within reach. Having desires impossible to fulfill is just like not having any," argued Sarkon, "and that can be depressing as hell. Why don't you want something you can actually get, I don't know - a piece of chocolate, for instance?"

Kwar covered his face with both of his hands. "But I don't care about chocolate! I want power, I want riches, I want fame! I want to be the head of Drax Enterprises, I want to rule the world! Besides," he went on arguing, "you call me greedy, but aren't you too? Don't you always want to save the world? Isn't Dr. Qworm always trying to create a universe? Aren't these much greedier desires, that are much more difficult to accomplish on top of that? Believe me, by centering my desires on myself I am not asking for that much, and if maybe I am not the sanest being in the universe, I am certainly the one furthest from depression!"

On these words he turned away and strode off in a very dissatisfied manner. Sarkon just shook his head.

* * *

"Kwar is quite depressed these days. Would you know of any way to help him?"

Sarkon was conferring with cookie, the kind moron with supernatural mental powers, in the hope of finding a way to make General Kwar feel better. Which was no piece of cake, since they were more used to fighting him.

"General Kwar's problem is not that his desires are difficult to fulfill," cookie started explaining. "His problem is that they all are already fulfilled. He wants to rule the world, and you, Dr. Qworm and I all admit that he's the Welgon Age's Dictator. He wants riches, and he can take everything around here, which means that it all belongs to him. He wants fame, and we all know him -"

"So his problem is that he has no desire that is not fulfilled?" Sarkon asked.

"Exactly. Consequently, if he shows no interest for any new desires, we have to prevent his old ones from being fulfilled," cookie explained.

"That's… A wonderful idea!" Sarkon agreed with a grin. "Let's tell Dr. Qworm of our plot!" he proposed.

Dr. Qworm was enthusiastic about cookie's idea. "You're asking me to secede from our leader, to question his rule, to thwart his wishes? Count me in!"

"It's for his own good," justified Sarkon, still wondering about the rightness of what they were planning to do.

"After all, we already did that once, and it was quite a lot of fun![2]" cookie smiled. But then they quickly tried to look as if they were just minding their own business, because General Kwar was striding down the Welgon Age's hill towards them.

"I thought a little about your Buddhism business, Prophet, and I just don't get it," General Kwar started arguing as usual. "You say I should suppress desire to reach Nirvana, but this is logically impossible: you cannot suppress desire by wanting to suppress desire, because you'll at least remain stuck with the desire to suppress desire - which is a desire in itself! There's a fundamental logical flaw in this, and I'm not going to let -"

"Oh, forget what I said about that," Sarkon said lightly. "Listen to the good news we have for you instead: we strip you of any political leadership you had, we confiscate all your belongings, and we'll stop admiring you –"

"Not that we did it in the first place," Dr. Qworm commented with raised eyebrows.

"- So that you can try to fulfill your desires – power, riches and fame - again!" Sarkon finished.

"Aren't we nice with you?" cookie asked. All three were smiling with the utmost candor.

General Kwar was flabbergasted.

Then he burst out laughing. He laughed and laughed and laughed. He laughed more than he'd ever laughed since he had become the Welgon Age's Dictator. "And you three puny little beings really think you can…" he started, but then he had to laugh again. "OK, I accept your challenge," Kwar finally managed to say. "I'll start my new political campaign soon, with you, Qworm, as my fundraiser, you, Sarkon, as my political advisor, and you, cookie, as my fellow-candidate. Let's meet tomorrow to work out our strategy!"

"In the meantime, I'll try to manufacture some gold for our campaign!" proposed Dr. Qworm.

"I'm going to hunt for political ideas on the vaporous mists of the spiritual paths!" said Sarkon.

"And I'll be looking stupid so that you look better!" exclaimed cookie.

"That's great. Thank you very much, all of you," Kwar patted them on their shoulders. "Oh, and Sarkon…" he whispered to the Prophet's ear.

"Yes?"

"If you happen to stumble on the idea of chocolate somewhere on the spiritual paths… Don't hesitate to bring it along!"

Sarkon the Prophet just winked with a smile, and he knew: General Kwar had definitely become greedy enough again. Greedy - and healthy.