Wise Words

No discussion of ego would be complete without touching on our greatest egomania - the perception we're all somehow "special," sacred, on a mission predestined by God... A God who's all knowing and omni-present, so involved and invested in us he's obsessed with who we fuck, whether we eat pork or if we're daydreaming about screwing the neighbor's wife. And yet he's never been seen or engaged by anyone - never stopped in at the corner deli for coffee or appeared in the bathroom to scold us for masturbating. And he can only be understood or engaged via "faith," a device through which rejection of the overwhelming lack of evidence of something somehow provides a stronger "intangible" proof of the thing. I don't know if God does or doesn't exist, but I do know a gimmick when I see it, and the "faith" sold by religion is a pure, Grade A gimmickry. If I told you a band of magical trolls live in your basement, but that you'll never be able to see or engage them - never observe any evidence of their existence but an ancient book of contradictory, fantastic fables professing to describe the history of their rich civilization under your stairs - would you believe me? Build a shrine or home for them next to the washing machine, something along the lines of the Keebler Elves' tree house or the Hobbits' Shire?** You'd thrown me out of your house is what you'd do. But that's basically "faith" - collective, tribally-reinforced suspension of disbelief... And the oddest thing is, it's utterly unnecessary. Devout or non-believer, the golden rule's still the same: Don't be an asshole. If you need the balsa wood artifice of organized religion to remind you to treat people as you'd want to be treated, you don't need prayer. You need a fucking psychiatrist. Make nice with the pious as much as you need to for business purposes, but never get too close. As pleasant as they might be, as comforting as the pitch sounds, anyone fixated on the "afterlife" is nuts. There's more than enough astonishing, amazing shit around us right here to keep a sensible, inquisitive mind busy.