WHY YOU EXIST NOW

by REV. IVAN STANG, Å.Ø.32^o

Church of the SubGenius

My Fellow Primates:

To Sum Up All Of Creation...

We started as amoebas, then slugged our way up out of the primordial mud and slime, devouring our fellow life forms, battling the elements for millions of years, through heartache and suffering, evolving an upright posture and opposable thumbs at the expense of our instincts, and for what?? For this?? Look around you, at your home or office or wherever you are. Take a good, long look. Is this what it's all been for??

A planetful of two-legged apes smart enough to create the ultimate weapon... but so dumb they actually went and built it, to the tune of 50,000 units of them. They dare to claim they are better than animals, even though they still work for a living, and crap too near the house ecologically.

Can the very apex of the evolutionary pyramid really be an animal so "advanced" that it can hate itself, overdose the environment, and ultimately put an end to all future evolution?

It's sure starting to look that way, dear friends.

We as living things have come far enough now, and taken enough notes down through the centuries, that we can finally get an overview: can look back and see enough of the path already taken to get glimmerings of where the path is supposed to be going. And the prognosis is grim, oh my brothers and sisters. Look at the historical evidence, if you can stomach it.

First there were rocks and minerals and gases and liquids, which possessed little more than the ability to collide with each other and gradually, mindlessly, wear each other down to nothing.

Already, you must admit, this sounds familiar -- in keeping with the '80s Yuppie lifestyle. Even in the sleepy first few billion years the pattern was emerging all too clearly.

Then, only recently as gods and scientists reckon time, things began to appear which not only helped wear away at everything else, but which also reproduced more of themselves in order to escalate the process before they died. What is important is that these first living things, the animals and plants, did so without any knowledge whatsoever of what they were doing. Life was no more motivated to 'create' or 'progress' or 'advance' than were the rocks and gasses; everything, everything, was done senselessly. It's just that these new living things could wear away at each other faster than inanimate objects could. And, as they became more complex, they became correspondingly more suited to rending and tearing at other species.

We can look at this logically, then, and deduce that on the global level, Nature's way is a path of ever-accelerating destruction. Oh, there's creation and birth galore, too. BUT LOOK WHERE IT ALL ENDS UP. Maybe Heaven, maybe Hell, but DEFINITELY worm food.

"How sad," you say. "This poor writer doesn't believe in an Almighty God who has guided life along according to His marvelous plan." Ah, but that's just the trouble, you see. I do. And that's the really terrifying part. Just as it is evident that life is created only to destroy other life, it's equally obvious that this is no RANDOM PROCESS, but something deliberately instigated. No killing machines as breathtakingly efficient as the mighty Tyrannosaurus, the Great White Shark or the Human Being could possibly have "merely evolved." No, there must have been a Greater Power, a Judging Creator Who demands perpetual conflict between Its creations, as well as ever-increasing abilities to mutilate and devour one another. The Age of Reptiles, for instance, was such a finely-honed machine of endless violence that the Lord was almost satisfied with it for 150 million years. But the dinosaurs just couldn't take it far enough.

After the aliens came and destroyed the great reptiles on a spree, an ecological niche was left open for something with brains to evolve. It was "only yesterday," with the ascent(?) of Man and Woman, that this third major evolutionary leap(?) occured, and the main difference is that these devilish bipeds are not only conscious of their reproduction of self and of their destruction of everything around them, but actually ambitious in these things. The important element of glee has been added, meaning that this new level of Life is motivated to notice better ways to erode the world around it -- for the first time, to destroy more than is necessary in order to survive, just for the fun of it. This final quantum jump has allowed, then, a 'perpetual destruction cycle' to heave into motion. Life can geometrically improve its techniques for grinding down the universe, until the final breakthrough happens: organisms become intelligent enough to have reasons to kill themselves, yet are so good at creating objects of beauty that they can avoid thinking about what they're really doing. The very fact that we go to work every day is evidence of the madness...

Now, in the final countdown of the evolutionary time clock, this is accelerating to the point that what started as dumb minerals brewing in a primieval stew have become able to understand themselves, fear themselves, and destroy themselves -- at the expense of every previous structure, all the way back to the first rocks and minerals. They -- we -- can blow everything to primal atomic particles.

The Great Spirit will have guided us FULL CIRCLE, from ashes and dust all the way back around to ashes and dust... the moral of the story being that He was merely passing time, that there was never any "final goal, " the it was only happening for its own sake -- just so 'the Lord' could see what forms His insane creations would take before they could destroy even themselves. Why, in A.I.D.S., He has even found a way to combine procreation and destruction!

Indeed, looking at the current state of humanity suggests the even more radical conclusion that God is not, after all, trying to create the universe anymore, but to destroy it. He started it all up, but until only in the last few decades did He figure out how to SHUT IT DOWN AGAIN. Perhaps He was having trouble pulling the plug on His handiwork -- and He needed OUR help.

Obviously, this goes against almost all previous religious concepts. But wouldn't it have to? God would not want us to know what we were really doing to ourselves.

And if, as some of my more mealy-mouthed readers would suggest, we were not meant to achieve the ability to poison and decimate the entire planet, then why would we possibly be doing such a suicidal thing? We certainly didn't choose it rationally. If, when we emerged from the trees and caves, we had had any hint that the end result of all our efforts would be the nuclear arms race, we would have rebeled against the Gods back then and stayed the way we were, chasing down rabbits on foot and eating them raw...and only when we were hungry.

GOD TRICKED YOU, friend. God TRICKED us all into doing His dirty work for him. WE ARE HIM figuring out how to go back to sleep, to shut it all down, to get it over with.

Pleasant thought, eh? Well, maybe it isn't THAT bad. Maybe He really doesn't give a Shit either way, and we are FLAWED CREATIONS of a DISINTERESTED WORKER. That would almost explain our ever-snowballing propensity for throwing banana peels into our own paths, both on the planetary level and as individuals. But this theory must be rejected on the basis that mankind simply shows TOO MUCH contrariness to have achieved such a high level of technology on its own in such a short time. If something hadn't been hurrying us along, we probably wouldn't have burned so many bridges behind us.

So we are probably on the verge of achieving our destiny. KA-BLOOOEY!!!

Come on, admit it. Something in you yearns for it. It is your instinct as a human being.

And yet, you PERSECUTE your prophets of doom. You DENY the hideous truth. You say, "Oh, yes, I know my continued participation in this planet-destroying Death Culture is bringing us all ever-closer to the brink of annihilation, and all that... so would you, like, warn me 5 minutes before it's too late, and I'll "turn back to nature" in the nick of time, and everything will be okay again?"

There IS a way to escape this rut, however! What is needed is a FOURTH MAJOR EVOLUTIONARY LEAP, one as different from Man and Woman as the amoebas were from the rocks and gasses -- a NEW BIPED that is intelligent enough to master the tools of global holocaust (and the compact discs, TV networks, designer drugs etc. that accompany this technology), yet is NOT MOTIVATED towards DESTRUCTION... a creature that is, literally, TOO LAZY to keep destroying the world. For that is what it will take. If a tool-using race has ANY MOTIVATION WHATSOEVER for using tools, they will ABUSE them... as history has proved. A kind of divine "intelligence in repose," a completely unambitious intelligence, is required -- an intelligence that is used ONLY FOR FUN. The 'New Creature' that bears this advanced genetic trait will only look human... its PRIMAL BEHAVIOR PATTERNS will appear, to the humans, to be completely back-ass-wards.

They will be creatures who look like humans, dwell among humans, but who will be completely disinterested in everything the humans live for.

They would appear to be misfits, bums, street crazies, bag people, chronic unemplyables, the feeble-minded, the nerds, the geeks. Kooks, drifters, eccentrics, failed artists, winos, procrastinators, visionaries.

Jesus said, "The meek shall inherit the earth." By "meek," I don't believe He meant 'wimps and cripples.' I believe he meant MUTANTS.

Could the 'New Man and Woman' be living among us now?? Is it possible, indeed, that they have been among us for centuries, secretly -- undetected because, like the whales and dolphins of the briny deep, they exercise their intelligence in a manner that looks to humans like mere mindless gamboling, frolicing, and sex-play??

Do you dare to think it might be true?

CLING TO THAT HOPE!! For there IS evidence that the New Ones have arrived. This article is too short to develop the argument further -- but if you are interested in the possible existence of a secret army of the Evolved, and even in contacting these Ascended Beings, there is a booklet you can write for. Send $1 for postage and handling to The Church of the SubGenius, P.O. Box 140306, Dallas, Texas 75214, and ask for Pamphlet #2.

But, you're probably too busy to explore these ideas any further. You probably have more important things on your mind. Go ahead, go on with your work, this information won't do you any good anyway. It all sounds crazy to you. They aren't paying you to sit on your butt pondering the final end result of your life, and of all the reality that has led up to it. You've got to get out there and earn your keep! Pay the bills! Meet that DEADLINE!

Better hurry, though, for the time is drawing nigh.