Do You Feel Lucky?

(and feel free to comment! My older posts are certainly no less relevant to the burning concerns of the day.)

Friday, June 21, 2019

Blockbuster Idea for Humanity #2: The Participation Award (Posthumous). Enter the SLF.

You know what would be a good idea? For a charity, non-profit, one of those deals - a foundation with a CAUSE.

Legacies. So many people fret weirdly over these! "It's what I'll be remembered for when I grow up and DIE!" SHUT UP! GROW UP. You're going to end up remembered for fretting over your dumb legacy if you don't watch it! Anyway, funny thing about memory. It ain't you. It's just some made-up character, a minor one to be honest, superseded by the barista and everybody else you bump fumbling into - recalled in a sigh of real gratitude and nostalgia, mostly, by anyone whose life you actually HUGELY TOUCHED in REAL WAYS that DON'T MAKE THE PAPERS (but once!) - but still, a minor character. That they made up, in mind, inspired by a true story element of theirs: you.

Legacies are stupid. But since people like and want them, why not?

Establish a foundation in combo with the powerful force of goodwill and money represented by such luminaries as Jimbo Wales, Bill Gates, and Elon Musk. We need a girl in there. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Shut up she's poor! Capital or lack thereof is no obstacle when you've landed (in spectacular Olympic dismount and stick fashion!) one of the prize spots in the Capitol. She is in the jackpot, baby - political capital is and has always been the real investor's holy, hell secular as well grail. And a grail is what? A cup, not just any cup, but the Grail was famed as world's secondmost receptacle of divinity's own full-own first blood, the blood of the Holy Virgin, Christ. Far as we know - the French say otherwise, but they would, wouldn't they.

Why is it that Christ never gets due props for being such a Virgin? Leave it. That dude's legacy is secured. The Foundation has other work to do.

I give you the Secure Legacy Foundation.

Its mission?

Using the funds and resources we dispose of, comb the ranks of anonymous dead for those patently unworthy of being elevated to the pantheon. Elevate them anyway. They Tried. No one with an existing wikipedia page is eligible, but upon elevation: FAT ONE. BIG wikipedia article in your honor! Tons of links, everything you touched or did is now notable. Prizes, awards established in your honor in significant-to-your-biographical-details but otherwise cosmically irrelevant areas. Never say the elevation is only for the dead. Just act that way, consistently - then someday when you capriciously slap a Secured Legacy on some utter shmoe - game-changer. His or her whole life just changed - for the noteable. And see that it stays that way! Good publicity for the Foundation's work.

Make a big huge deal about how the criteria for elevation is known only to the trustees, whom are all coyly and darkly hinted as members of the illuminati. Adds some heft to it. Once the conspiracy theorists endorse your endeavor, how can it not fail to fail? But never reveal how or why this person rather than that one is elevated. Past a certain point, it assumes the mystique of Coke's secret formula.

Folks, this is going to take a buzz-load of money. I'm sure you can see that. I'm relying on contributions to make it come true, but myself?

I'd prefer to remain a "silent partner," unlegacied and unrecognized. At least until I'm dead. Once you're dead, who gives a shit about legacies? HAHA! ONLY THE LIVING! What dupes! What gulls! This one's for them.

All we do in life is for the living.

Don't worry, I'll handle and control all the decisions and detail. This will be MY BABY, let's just keep donor status blank on the birth certificate. People will think I'm Elon, he denies it - all part of the sales pitch. You won't be in the dark, every step of the way I'll clasp that hand and guide - but let's have some up-front, respectable top one-percenters (or equivalent in political capital HOT-CHA) fronting this. It's going to be a breeze, trust me.

We don't need to elevate many. It'd be as rare as the Nobel Prize in Anonymity - and thereby so much more prized. It's not a case of "This might happen to ME!" Not on any level greater than a lottery bigga-bux fantasist who doesn't actually get around to selecting any magic numbers, or even quick-picking more than once in a blue mood. The magic happens when people see shocked, died-anonymous corpses suddenly MADE KNOWN and having lived SIGNIFICANT (because signified) LIVES. "PEOPLE LIKE ME," we all then muse "GET TREATED LIKE THIS, WHEN THEY DIE." Therefore people like we are deserving of recognition. Just for being alive, it is coyly implied.

What a boon! What a boost! And isn't it true?

Nothing is true, of humanity's worth. But believing makes it so. Let’s get make-believing.

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The above is posed as satire. But any satire we like is always available to buy.

Tuesday, June 04, 2019

Abandoned in Drafts #1: Pretty Sweet Excoriation of Somebody's Jaundiced Take, I Forget Whose

This person's case is risible. My Ancestors were Greek and Irish. Neither Ireland nor Greece were evangelized by military means. People just heard what sounded to them, at the time, as a Sweet Deal (the "gospel," loosely translated, would mean something like "Sweet Deal"). That's the ideal way to do it, I would say. Whatever I think of the specific doctrines and propositions today, a religion's spread should be based on ideas that win people over. Any given faith just another article in the marketplace of ideas, and see who buys.

Now it's as detestable as it is true that after Rome made Christ Caesar, after the Church became entrenched as a sort of confederating world power, some bright bird (a cardinal, perhaps) trumped up a justification that it was mortally necessary to conquer 'em heathens in order that their souls might have a chance at salvation: come in fast, hard and give no quarter - ends justifying means, greater good and all - "There are people dying!" to quote Michael Jackson. To save even a remnant from hell, of course the virtuous thing must be to storm in blood and thunder, obliterate all opposition and grind everyone under the boot-heel 'til they see how sweet Jesus is.

Contemptible stuff, and just as contemptible are the later spates of Inquisitions and heresy hunts, zero tolerance for nonstandard views - no good news involved in the conversation, just obey or suffer. These tactics are nothing whatsoever to do with Christianity, the religion. They were the military policy, domestic and imperial, of Western Christendom - an entirely more warlike entity. Powerful, wealthy, worldly kings and princes striving for dominion have historically had an easy time finding clergy willing to bless their endeavors and cloak them in some trumped-up - but outrageously anti-Christian - justification.

An entity less warlike than Christianity would be hard to describe. As Christ spread its seeds in Galilee and Judea, as Paul spread it flowering through the Greek world, as Patrick strewed it all through Ireland, Christianity's official and only approved vector of distribution has been and is: by the word, not by the sword. By the marketplace of ideas - and never is anyone obligated to buy. Sweet deal.