Alien Magflies Deforest Bridge

Notes on the State of the So-Called Apocalypse



The so-called apocalypse is coming our way. It's not really real. Not really.

Christians might die in swarms as they protect Israel from nuclear bombs in order to ensure that the end of the world comes – but, it doesn't affect you.

If you can read, there's a good chance you're not a Christian…or a Muslim or Jew.

No, you're card carrying religious person doesn't read the writing on the wall. They're too busy looking for incongruent symbols of destructions.

The Jews have their Moses; the Christians their Jesus; the Muslims their Mohammad.

We have ourselves. Believe in yourself and you'll succeed, they say.

Believe in imaginary figures in the sky and you'll end up booby trapping your foreskin to assassinate the unclean. You'll end up launching terrorist campaigns from backwater countries with no running water and a severe shortage of Big Macs and Grande Lattes.

If you believe in evolution, you'll find that man has evolved and brought his Gods along with him. Once we lived liked pygmies and saw God as a movement in the trees. We developed tools and learned that God was a thing of thought; something to be built in our heads. When we looked around we saw that we were multitude and needed a numerous Gods to watch over us. Later, we assigned them seasons, feelings, and formal wear. Our Gods grew emotions and style. They were built into the best technology our imaginations could afford at the time as we struggled for survival. Our Gods were at best two-year-olds with no disciplinary figure. Gods don't need role models.
Soon, we met other cultures and traded Gods like baseball cards. Took the rookie Vishnu and traded it for a Buddha. Looked up ancient ERAs and realized that Gods were much like us: better at some things, not great at others.

Then an ugly day in history occurred (a necessary ugliness on our way to enlightenment). We found that as we looked around us our friends and family were not infallible. They were not as good as we were. Sure, they might share some common morality, but in the end, it was really our self and our self alone that had it right. At that point we decided that there could only be one God, and one God alone. For the many are pieces, but the one is the puzzle.

The age of one Gods began.

Moses comes from the left with a God created in our own image. Jesus follows with tales of decency towards humans and sacrificing sins to the one God. Mohammad comes over and double checks for us. Prophets galore come out of the wood work like running water shouting about the one God, the true God.

But, the prophets were people and people rarely agree with all the other people. So, all the prophets battle it out in words. Using the clergy and the parishioners as soldiers, they advance on the countryside. Great swaths of blood thirsty trolls with stars, crosses, and moons dangling from their necks have it out in ReligionMania.

The flock stand by, mouths agape and wonder where this bloodfest came from. The prophets counter with promises of hell or salvation. The flock is upset, they latch onto the nearest deity and ride it out.

Soon, power is circling around these God makers and their voodoo haircuts and their power begins to eclipse the great states.

The great states, lecherous fools, clamor to a prophet and tame it like a horse. The state rides the horse into crusades across the globe stamping out the old Gods and their heathen followers.

Finally, every God is in their place. Every prophet has a cut of the Earth. Every nation has a cut of the God.

The stability is a breath of fresh air. A great Mentos to the populace. We collectively sigh and thank our district's/borrow's/parrish's prophet and hope that the prophet from next door is content on sucking the new peace.

A dull mood of stupidity sets in and the prophets die out. Replacing them are Saints, Rabbis, Priests, Clerics, and miscellaneous de facto Jedi Knights. They bore too. And with their boredom they find new ways to persecute in their own kingdoms. Butchery begins and paranoia sets in.

Years pass and the flock looks around at the bodies upon bodies and decides something's amiss here. They whisper to one another in the dungeons about where this God is.

They begin looking.

Alchemist look for God in the minerals. Astronomers search the skies. Mathematicians search the numbers.

Behold! We have found God! God is in the atom! God is in the DNA! God is in everything! Here's God! And with that, the scientist produces the most wondrous lump of fecal matter mankind has yet seen.

For you see now! God is everything! God is nothing! But, most importantly, God could give a rat's ass!

The flock begin to blush. For thousands of years they had been killing and raping for this God that didn't care. This God that was as good to them as compost.

Kill God!

The flock set out to leach the world and everything it offered. They created smokestacks, heroin, and nuclear bombs. They created ways to sap food of all its nutrients and serve it to children in the hopes that they would get a real bargain. They built devices of convenience that ran on the blood of the Earth. Before long, they had enslaved themselves into an armored machine sent to run them all into the ground.

But, before long, people started looking around and seeing the machine for what it was. They blushed again, but this time, they didn't act in anger. They set about to fix the machine. Make it a machine of life, rather than a machine of death.

They ran this by the governments of the world and they were none too pleased.

The machine of death was easy to control, it made money, and it generated power. The other machine was useless to those that couldn't see passed their nose and had no love for machines that took work to build.

So, while the flock set about taking down the machine of death, the rulers of the world set about trying to put it back together.

The Ying and Yang of the 21st century had begun.

A year in, the machine of death was a near memory and the machine of life was coming along.

But, like Vader with the plans for the Death Star, the flock had a surprise in store.

By 2002, the machine of death was fully operational again, and what's more, the Gods – those ugly precursors of the machine of death were back in full forces.

On step forward, two steps back.

So where are we now?

Have we hit our great period? Are we slowly folding back into our own past? Or, do we evolve in large spasms that span a million years apiece?

Well, judging by the news lately, we're far away from salvation.

By a few hundred years at least.