Let me tell you a story. A very sad story...
Once upon a time, there was that man. We are talking an awfully long time ago. He belonged to that tribe. Nothing unusual thus far.
One day, for a number of reasons that have a lot to do with the just post-neolithic state of one's mind, i.e. terror, hallucinations, visions etc, he decided to climb up a mountain to find answers to some questions that were bugging him.
Legend has it that he found his answers indeed. Such a commonplace plot, you will say. Practically every myth goes along these lines.
Oh yes, I retort back. But listen to this. Not only he thought he had found HIS answers, he decided that he had found EVERYBODY ELSE's answers too. So as he strolled down the mountain and he saw that his fellow tribespeople had evolved into something different than what he had in mind, they felt like worshipping golden sheep you see, he got really really mad. (Gratefully, 'everybody' at the time just meant his tribe. So the rest of us were spared a few hundred years of unnecessary torment and guilt!)
This man was suddenly a very modern man. He ceased to be just-post-neolithic. He reminds me of the founders of the modern world. Thus, he sought to destroy. And he did destroy. His excuse was rather neolithic nevertheless. He claimed that he saw god who gave him some tablets. This happened to me last weekend, as I...never mind! Now this is a modern state of affairs though, isn't it? Good grief, all this jumping to and fro on the timeline of mental state is making me dizzy...
Let's call this man M.
Anyway, after he destroyed the golden gods and brought his tribespeople back to HIS OWN order, things went downhill.
Was it, I wonder, the first recorded act of religious coercion in the history of mankind?
Things REALLY went downhill after that.
It was a nomadic tribe like so many other nomadic tribes at the time. Always looking for a better place to stay. Like so many other tribes sometimes it had neighbours that got into trouble with. But it was still contained. Alas, though, they wrote about it... About their troubles and tribulations. Plus they were hearing voices... which they took very very seriously. You'll see what this simple act of recording the voices that were hammering into their primitive collective brain has brought upon this tormented world!
That very same tribe after few hundreds of years since madman M came down that mountain, spawned another one.
Now, HE was real trouble!
Because he thought that not only he was in direct contact with the divine, but he was actually IT! And he also decided that his tribe was not enough. Good grief, we are approaching just-post-modernism and we haven't even crossed the zero line into our times yet. But we are about to...
You see, he wanted EVERY TRIBE under his banner. Why, you may innocently ask. Because self-righteousness had already been born by that constantly pissed off old bugger, M, who ran down the mountain seething and frothing in the mouth.
But, you may stupidly ask again, surely history is full to the brim of similarly temperament-challenged individuals. Why was this one more dangerous than the others? Oh, I'm not disputing that there have been others. Look at shortie megalomaniac Alex, from the region of Mac, that's still pretty much as he left it. Didn't good old Alex think that he was the son of Zeus and, therefore, at least a semi-god himself? And how passionately he tried to prove his divine origins! But, poor guy, had no word to spread. To think that Athens had already happened and was dying at his feet at that time... Maybe that's why he trumpled all over it with such vehemence. But did he have the talent to twist brains on a grand-scale? Only in the 20th-21st century Balkans I'd say. In which case we couldn't care less.
Forward with our story now; jump three squares after Alex.
That second schizo, let's call him J for naming-the-evil purposes, found himself at the perfect point in time. Timing you see. Just perfect. The world had already been unified by the Rs. Who are the Rs? Well, let's just say that they were another tribe with deeply embedded restlessness, brilliant, but a little bit on the dry side, who were playing soldiers very very well (read your Belgian comics for more info.) They wanted riches and territory and more riches and more territory. They didn't really bother much with anyone's gods and beliefs. In actual fact, if they found them to their taste, they adopted them. Made a great excuse for more beautiful buildings, sacrifices, orgies, etc.
That's just normal, though. All conquerors did it, with the exception of our current ones who will not even take a bite of the conquered peoples' local dishes as they are conditioned to desperately seek the glorious site of the golden arches of you know what joint. But in the old times, that was the norm, when you set out to conquer new lands, which you did because it's, well, in our nature? (eternal debate there). You kill and exterminate and then you mingle and live happily either genetically altered or altering. I, therefore, insist: conquering, devastating lands, dipping into the local cuisine and pantheon and people were normal occurences. Sort of like in Xena.
So the Rs followed on these lines. And they were HUGELY successful.
And J found himself in a mostly unified world. If he ever existed, that is, but that is the subject of a future treatise. He was having a field day. Like any good businessman, he looked ahead and he saw a huge market. For his product. So the product was a plagiarised mishmash of all sorts of eastern philosophies put together haphazardly and hastily, but who cares! He decided that the details could be ironed out later. He could see that it would sell well. Because it suited everybody. Oh yes, it did.
You go out to a school playground and you tell the kids that they are SO RIGHT they are allowed to drive to their wits' end whomever they come across until everybody admits that they are RIGHT TOO and if they are caught and punished not to worry because there are heaps of bags full of sweets and golden arches' fries and action men and barbies awaiting for them after their punishment. And then stand back and enjoy. Quite a spectacle, eh?
That was his business plan. He didn't quite have the time to execute it because he was executed himself in a moment of devastating clarity on the part of the Rs. And devastating that clarity was indeed, as, unfortunately, it created the necessary logo for the advertising campaign. It consisted of two pieces of wood perpendicular to eachother. And believe it or not, that pathetic design caught on like mayo on Belgian fries (to put history right, finally, on this painful subject.)
In that sorry state of affairs, a third schizo breaks away from the pack of self-flaggelating hysterical beings that J had put together. Let's call him P. He is the 3rd-generation executive. He never met M or J (and it is alleged by some obnoxious non-believers that J was his invention, after all - a future subject to be treated too.) P doesn't even keep up appearances of civility. Oh no. He is out there to kill and destroy. He was trained well, afterall, by the Pharisees, to never budge from his position. And he does just that. He has the perfect product in his hands and he uses it to exhaustion. Yours and mine that is. He writes and embellishes on the tribal writings of J's secretaries. This one is good. A far cry from M or even J in actual fact!
Here we'll stop as P's is another long story that I will tell you soon. I need to go and have a stiff drink anyway. This story always upsets me!
Thank you for listening to me. Like all stories it has a moral: When you see somebody with a strange expression in their eyes, incoherently mumbling that he is the one, whatever that means, and is coming towards you holding two pieces of wood perpendicular to eachother, then run and hide. A safe place would be the nearest gay club. Although members of the pack may still be there, they are normally rendered harmless by other worries that have mainly to do with finding something to screw, dancing away and gossiping to somebody's death.
Goodnight for now
