"We are Building Utopia" pt. 2: The Word of God
The worship of humanity is a bucket with a hole in the bottom.
What’s the point? Eventually you’ll die, your kids will also grow old and die, so will their kids. On and on it goes, this thing of ours. Someday your genetic line is going to come to some awful end, maybe during the 14th millennium in a terrible asteroid belt mining accident. Every single person that could be called your “descendant” will be enjoying a family-reunion picnic on Zebulon-9 and then, right before Uncle Alvin does the belly-button trick, KABLOOEY! Some dipshit forgot to turn off the fission drive and the entirety of the “Davis Family” is blown to smithereens! What an absolute tragedy. It’s all anyone will be talking about for the next three days. Everything you’ve ever hoped for, dreamed of, worked for during this life eventually gets vaporized to nothing in a completely preventable fission-drive accident! All those paychecks where you sacrificed 4% of your income to your 401k…it was all for shit.
So who cares? Run this timeline long enough and everything condenses, decays, or explodes. Some things just evaporate. You and your annoying offspring won’t be spared. Think Neil DeGrasse Tyson saying something in his weird low voice, the husky voice he does when he’s trying to crack an especially big egg of truth over your head, the voice that sounds almost phone-sex adjacent, and in this voice he’s saying, “you are made of stardust.”
But it’s the other end of that head-exploding thought that no one considers, the end that says “yes you came from stardust but you will also eventually return to being stardust.” And the longer you think about that, the less you’ll actually think being stardust is cool. Because being stardust is just another word for being “dust,” but instead of being the dust on a nice antique armoire or marble bust or Chevy Silverado, you are just space dust; little specks of bullshit floating around a dark empty void until one day, after like 40 million years, you penetrate the atmosphere of some far-off planet, get breathed in by an alien who looks positively hentai in nature and, separating the dust particles from the breathable helium of their planet’s air (yes, these ones breathe helium), you get cleaved from the air and cycled through the alien’s bloodstream, get filtered out by the organ that could be considered a type of kidney, and then you shoot out of his body in what could be considered him taking a piss.
Yes, you are most definitely stardust. And yes, everything is stardust. And yes, that also includes piss. So it is just as true to say you are made of stardust as it is to say you are space-piss.
So again I ask, ye wondrous fleck of space-piss, what exactly is the point? Forget about the 14th millennium, where do you think it will all be in the 114th millennium? How about the 1 millionth, a time so far in the future that tracking it via the word “millennia” seems about as appropriate as figuring out how many seconds it is until your retirement.
Perhaps you see that as none of your concern? Perhaps you think it’s best to stay focused on the arc of your own life, to think only in terms of the duration of this here mortal coil, and perhaps that of your children, maybe your grandkids, and then after that - who gives a fuck? You don’t know those people. They don’t know you. For proof of this, tell me the last time you thought about your great-great-great-great-great grandfather Abner.
That’s what I thought. RIP Abner.
I’m not doing my own DeGrasse Tyson-thing here, I’m not trying to “blow your mind with scale,” like people who still marvel that we are nearer to Cleopatra in history than Cleopatra was to the construction of the Great Pyramids! Will these Cleopatra-Great Pyramids people give it a rest already!!! I mean, when will people get over that? It’s not that big of a deal when you consider that humans basically had six inventions in the first 10,000 years of their existence, and then started revving up 150 years ago, and now we are at the point where I truly have no idea what edition iPhone I am currently using. The pyramids were basically like the only iPhone of the first 100 centuries, the sooner you can accept this the sooner you’ll stop being blown away by the Giza-centered scale of the human timeline.
No, no - this isn’t a pondering of scale, it’s a consideration of meaning. A lot of people claim to have meaning in their lives, but I’m a bit suspicious. Meaning is usually ascribed to living for something “greater” than yourself. Now, there are some fun Jedi mind-tricks circulating in the ether about this here “greater than yourself” notion. People like to play a little fast and loose with this idea, such as claiming that their bigger meaning is their “self.” But I don’t quite understand how your bigger meaning can be your self. I’m not trying to be semantically stubborn, but how can a human simultaneously be lowly enough to need to tap into a higher power, and also be that higher power which is tapped into? Smells like the same flavor of poop as most new-age drivel that allows people to feign some beneficial parts of the “spiritual” lifestyle (lower blood pressure, kinship with plants, collecting magic stones) whilst absconding the more difficult parts of it (abstaining from hedonism, forgiving those who wronged you, putting others before yourself). In other words, I’m saying that it sounds to me like a bit of bullshit that gets pedaled to appease the atheists.
Of which there are many! I still remember the first decade of the 2000s, when the forces of belief and disbelief went head-to-head on a daily basis! Dunking on believers was the primary usage of the internet circa 2008, and boy was it fun. How exciting to see Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins calling elderly Catholics delusional! They finally got put in their place, those old bags. How dare they believe that there is some loving force out there in the universe that created them? Can you believe the audacity of the smooth-brained believer who simply can’t see that the universe is nothing more than a cold void of meaningless, icy pain?
But hold on, now…I was that guy. I was that militant atheist who loved to flummox the faithful, loved to push them to pathetic defenses of their faith, adored the look in their stupid devout face when I showed them the **striking similarities** between Jesus Christ and Horus and Hermes and Zoroaster (wasn’t sure about that last one but sometimes I threw it in for good effect). What important work it is to disabuse people of their hope! What important work it is to disenthrall people of their childish needs to believe that there is something beyond this painful existence, that there is some lesson in the private anguishes we all endure! It was absolutely imperative that everyone knew just how ridiculous it was to see some sort of meaning in our pain, our loneliness, our private perversions, our great sadness!
No…we can’t have any of that. All I ever dreamed of was a time when religion was relegated to the dustbin of human history so that we could get to the real work of humankind. Imagine my delight as I sit here and type this in 2023, knowing that this mission to eradicate religions has pretty much worked. Religion - at least in the US - doesn’t mean shit. If you have any doubt about this, think about the last time you gave a shit about what the pope had to say about anything. That shit used to be all over the news. Not anymore. Pope Francis seems nice but he still won’t let priests be gay or whatever. But it matters not, with religion finally defeated we can now focus on the real work. And this real work wouldn’t be possible without the only true friend to humankind, science!
Man I love science. Science is so great because it actually does what religion claims it does. Science actually heals people, science actually multiplies fish and loaves, science actually leads to human flourishing! Not like stupid religion. Stupid religion only leads to misery and guilt and pain. Not to mention the inquisition and the Crusades and the pervert priests. Obviously science yields no perversion. Science only yields crystal clear truth.
It is through SCIENCE that we can actually grow beyond the “self” as the only higher purpose. Science replaces the worship of the self with the worship of “humanity.” Now this is an idea we can all get behind, amirite? I mean, nothing compares to rooting for the home team, and whether you’re a Jets or Giants fan, a Cubs or White Sox fan, a Trailblazers or…Portland Timbers fan(?), no matter who you root for on the field, you obviously also root for humans in general. I mean, humanity is truly the one home team we can all get behind. Science is the thing that truly works in the favor of team Human Race, and it is through adherence to science that we can all achieve our wildest dreams!
Our wildest dreams. Hmm.
What are our “wildest dreams,” exactly? What exactly are we working toward? The thing that we relegated religion to the dustbin of history in order to pursue?
Suppose the atheists are right, that what we are starts and ends in this life. That outside of this one life, there is just a pervasive nothing; a blanket of un-existence that is not felt nor seen nor experienced in any way. That there is just the opposite of existence, which is something that is of no concern to us, as we will not be there to experience it. One minute the lights are on, and then we slip on a patch of ice, and then the lights go off. Sayonara, asshole!
If that is the case, then…what exactly are we working for? What is it that we are after? I’m not asking this as a rhetorical means to prove God via convenience or a hedging of bets. I’m trying to understand what it is that we are building here? What is the grand project that we are after? After all, I would say that I am firmly on the side of humankind; I’ve been a card-carrying member of the human race my whole life, and - should there be an interstellar invasion - you bet your ass I’m fighting on the side of the Imperium of Man.
Yet, I don’t actually see the preservation of mankind as my meaning. It seems a bit self-evidently cyclical for me to want to preserve something so that it can be around in the future so that it can also preserve itself. Is existence nothing more than a sourdough starter that we just keep passing along through the centuries? Seems pretty dumb. Nevertheless, for so many, it is exactly this professed (or implicit) battle-cry that serves as the raison d'être for the whole damn show. We are working to create a better humankind, for the sake of mankind, so that mankind will continue to exist…okay?
And it is science that shall get us there!
Why? Again, I’m not trying to be stubborn here, but…what for? If the purpose of my life is to conduct my affairs in such a way that allows future people to exist in order to do the same, there must be some sort of underlying sense of hypothetical benevolence that guides my actions. Like doing your homework on Friday so that you can party all weekend, is this just us doing a solid for our future selves? I mean, if this is the case, then I can…maybe?…sort of? get behind this. Perhaps it’s something akin to my dad’s worldview, i.e. “I don’t know what the meaning of this life is supposed to be, so I worked three jobs and lived in abject misery to give all of my children a sporting chance of figuring it out for themselves.”
I’m not sure where this sense of benevolence would come from. I don’t think this line of reasoning fully holds up for the “worshippers of humankind” (henceforth referred to as “WoH”) out there. First and foremost, the people who claim to be most seriously undertaking this utopian project are often the most angry, vengeful, vindictive, envious, unforgiving, and cruel people imaginable. True inquisitors, in my opinion. Why would these people give a shit about someone in 3084 A.D.? They just tweeted that they think someone should die for fat-shaming Lizzo, am I really supposed to believe that they care about a hypothetical person a thousand years from now?
But hey, that’s just my opinion. Say I’ve got it wrong - that the WoH are actually just mad because they’re so oppressed and silenced or whatever…it still doesn’t hold much water. Because they themselves hold as an inalienable truth that there is no greater meaning, and that all that we have is “the present moment” or whatever the fuck. Why would you be motivated to care about the species for the species in and of itself? What’s the greater cosmological principle here? I’m not saying atheists can’t be good people, I’m merely saying that the reason for being good can’t possibly be a general sense of benevolence toward the future of mankind. Why give a shit about people who don’t exist yet? They are floating in the same nothingness that you will float in when you die, and so there can’t possibly be anything sacred about that which doesn’t yet exist.
If you truly believed this, then why fight for the proliferation of our species at all? So that we just pursue an endless wheel of meaningless propagation? That our children can grow up in a wonderful utopia, where they may freely pursue their interests and - in their own time - come to the revelation that it’s all a meaningless waste of time. How many iterations of this meaningless cycle must we endure for the sake of science?
Shall we ride science into the sunset? Into the final sunset, the one where our sun turns into a red giant or explodes into a supernova or collapses into a black hole? Is that what the purpose of humanity is? Nothing more than a morning run where you try to keep going as long as you can, until you finally collapse from heat death? Pretty bleak. But then again, if that’s the case, then that’s the case! Nothing to be done about it, and besides we have “quantum physics” now, which says that maybe time doesn’t run the way we think it runs and so maybe the end and the beginning are the same thing. If you can’t understand that, it’s because you have a feeble human mind. Any good scientist knows that there are things that lie beyond the reach of the human mind. Just not old bearded men in the sky.
Those on the side of science, the Godless WoH who believe that their liberation and salvation will come not from a man who died for your sins on a cross, or from a man who freed his people from Egyptian slavery, or from a man who sacrificed all earthly pleasures to learn how to break the eternal cycle of human suffering. Nope, none of these will do. Salvation in the West only comes from one place: SCIENCE.
If you live in the United States, you will not be able to disagree with the following statement: in every major urban area of the US, the worship of Anthony Fauci, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, and Michelle Obama far exceeds the worship of Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, or the Buddha. I’m not even attempting to attach a value-tag to that statement, it’s just absolute fact.
Urbanites everywhere unite behind the cause of those people who so clearly just wish to govern society by the clean, frictionless methodology of “being sensible.” Be they scientists or not, be they believers or not, all of the modern saints represent the aesthetic of the scientific mind. The scientific mind is one that demands tidiness, orderliness, and predictability above all things. We can’t give ourselves over to the chaotic messiness of cosmology. If we open the door to invisible things, there is no end to the other invisible things that we invite in along with them. You let someone believe in God, maybe they’ll also believe in…well, whatever they might believe it will probably lead to the Handmaid’s Tale!!!
Ahhhhh but crafty they are, the WoH. They claim to not like invisible things, but the human heart inevitably leans toward the secret hidden treasures that can be found in the vapor. In the place of things like reincarnation, original sin, heaven & hell, angels & demons, nirvana & samsara, we now have things like “compulsive heterosexuality.” These things, much like Michelle Obama, don’t really have anything to do with “Science,” but I’ll be damned if they don’t carry the aesthetic. The kind of aesthetic that compels you to place your chin on your fingertips and say, “ummmm…how about we all just stop being racist???”
The WoH do indeed worship humanity, but only certain versions of humanity. Using the language of “science,” they work tirelessly to not only liberate humanity from their shackles, but also to liberate words from their actual meanings. Those who take issue with this are “cryptofascists” who “care about words more than humans.”
But you see that is exactly what I do. Not the cryptofascist part, that’s just stupid. But I absolutely care about words more than humans. You see - humans are fun and all but after about 65 years they start to shrivel, and by 85 they can’t even hold their piss anymore (their space-piss). If they keep going past 85 then…damn…let’s just say it just gets worse and worse until they finally die in a pool of their own indignity. Their heirs might live on, but sooner or later they’ll hit 85 too (if a bus doesn’t hit them first). Eventually the heirs of their heirs blow up during their asteroid-picnic on Zebulon-9. Everyone dies.
Words live on though. Words act as symbols, ways that we can have conversations with each other through time. Words in books written in 1812 give comfort to people reading them in 2023. Words carry emotions like love and understanding and forgiveness through aeons. Words reveal truth, smite evil, illuminate the dark parts of the abyss. It is through words that we can understand the actual project we are working on. This is not a preservation project; we do not exist to commemorate dead people and make way for new people. That project is small in comparison to the project we work on through the word.
I am not sure if I am a Christian. I was born a Christian, then became an atheist, then became humbled. So that is all I am right now, a humble person who wishes to stay open to that which hovers above my head. I know that there is a God, and that this God loves us more than we could possibly imagine. That this God loves us so much, if we were to stare directly into the heat of that love for a millisecond it would blow us into a billion pieces. I think this God wants to talk to us, wants us to talk back, and occasionally sends us manifestations in the form of prophets and messiahs. I don’t know which one is right, don’t ask me.
What I do know is that the Christians refer to the message of their messiah as “The Word.” And I think there is something to that. I think there is a reason why Christians can so easily munch on the body and sip on the blood each week, while the word is preserved. The word is held before the priest, who reads it with arms wide open, who sanctifies the very pages it is written on. What use is a body and blood without the word?
The body and blood of Christ is consumed, just as our own body and blood will be consumed. To deny this is the greatest delusion that one can suffer. To deny this reality is to deny God. And to deny God must mean that you think you can handle things without God. Maybe it even means…you are God?
Maybe science can bring us happiness one day. Maybe it can lead us to become so great and powerful that we travel to other solar systems and galaxies. Maybe it will give us the power to create new solar systems and galaxies ourselves. Maybe it will give us the power to go between dimensions and travel through time. Maybe it will give us the power to know all things and be in all places, all at once. Maybe the reach of our science will grow so powerful that we upturn every stone, think every thought, explore every nook and cranny in the universe. Trillions of years from now, the reach of our science will be so absolute that we will transcend flesh and exist only as thoughts, or…spirits?
Eventually, perhaps, all of those spirits will converge into one. All alone, with all of the power and knowledge of everything at its fingertips. All of human thought collapsed into the mind of a single entity. Imagine how lonely that single entity will be, how all of its scientific progress was in vain. How the only true “utopia” that exists is the one in which you’re the only one left.
Perhaps that entity will float in the void for awhile, regretful of the way that it was so eager to understand, so greedy to control everything around it. The entity long ago figured out, through the most advanced of sciences, how to overcome death. But now it is doomed to live forever alone. Floating past nebulas and event horizons it has gazed upon billions of times. What choice will it have left, other than to destroy itself and erase its memory. Just to try again. One more time around. Maybe this time, they won’t try to be God. Maybe this time, they will just be content to exist.
Maybe this time they will just thank God, instead of trying to be God.