The Conspiracy Against the Human Race (29 page)

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The alternative would be an experience of anxiety of the kind we know at those times when we become conscious we will die, which negates any reality we ever fastened to ourselves.

3. The reason that people believe in Creators is something they are happy to admit: because certain books tell them so. This is the default position for all theists, whether they are pedestrian tithers or top-notch theologians, whose theories of God must go back to books.

What they believe, then, is that those who wrote the books about a supernatural being somehow had inside dope to which they, as readers of these books, are not privy. It works that same way with popular narratives of any type. The task for writers of widely read books is to prove that they know more than their readers about the world and its workings. By and large, writers do have more facts at their fingertips because that is part of their skill-set. And if they are not knowledgeable in some specialized area, they may research a subject to garner more information about it than that of the average reader, which is no Herculean labor since people have just so much spare time and do not fact-check an author’s research—they only gorge themselves on it for the sake of being entertained. The more recondite and removed from a reader’s life the doings within a book appear to be, the more likely the inexpert reader is to believe in its truth. If a reader happens to know more than the author about a subject, then the game is over and the book is tossed aside. A more lowly method for taking readers for a ride may be sampled in books of self-help, inspiration, or motivation, the pith of which is to bear witness that

“It happened for me. It can happen for you. You can become rich. You can become happy. Aliens have invaded your body but you will become rich and happy once we have audited them from your system. You live in a world created by a loving god and have an immortal soul.” All that is required for this scam to work is a reader’s desire to believe the persons making these claims. Need it be said that myriads of readers will line up if the line they are being handed is scandalously pleasing to their eyes and ears? Anyone who is not willing to exceed the bounds of seemliness and good sense (and do it with a straight face) or to deliver nothing but good news to the downhearted will be obscurities in the above-named genres. The least scent of a negative word will be met with disbelief or inattention. Sometimes it does not matter what you say but how you say it. This is another method to keep in mind. Imagine a disheveled person roaming the streets with a sign that reads “The end is near. Prepare yourself.” Offering a prevision or opinion unwelcome by all, this individual will be shouldered aside by people shaking their heads, rolling their eyes, and snorting in disgust. Now imagine a well-dressed huckster on television who says, “Praise be, we are at the end of days. Soon we will be together in paradise. I’ve got the spirit in me. I’ve got Christ on a cracker. Send contributions to the address on your screen.” By generating a positive atmosphere and a vision of good times beyond the end times, a televangelist pig will receive tax-free money by the bagful. Yet whether there is a claim to rendering actual facts—the class of communication under which fall such genres as gossip, history, and religious narratives—or a frank admission that one is producing a wholesale yarn, the creation and consumption of stories is apparently a need endemic to the fairgrounds of the human freak show. Born of consciousness and the artifact of language, storytelling in some form will never saturate its market. Those who are not in it for the money or the glory are nonetheless practitioners in this field: we can hardly open our mouths without telling a tale. In every society, storytelling is compulsory and addictive. We are coaxed into its practice every day of our lives. What is the first question posed upon hearing of someone’s suicide?

Answer: “Was there a note?” We want the story. Acceptable or not, this appetite of ours is unhindered by compunction or discretion and is insatiable. Fortunately, there will always be those eager to cater to this relentless desire. The most adept of them are 130

immortalized, so to speak, as gods of literature whose place in our world is regarded as being of the highest worth. What madman would derogate the addiction that is the mainstay of libraries, universities, and whole cultures? We are as incapable of impugning the need under discussion as we are of fairly examining the consciousness that lies beneath it and brings it forth as a scum-filled pond does a lotus flower. Ask any literary genius. A distinguished author once said in an interview that writers who ask themselves why they write are doomed. So are those who approach human consciousness as something it were better never to have been.

4. One gasps to hear scientists swooning over the universe or any part thereof like schoolgirls overheated by their first crush. (Albert Einstein, Karl Popper, Carl Sagan, Richard Dawkins, many others.) From the studies of Krafft-Ebbing onward, we know that it is possible to become excited about anything—from shins to shoes. But it would be nice if just one of these gushing eggheads would step back and, as a concession to objectivity, speak the truth: THERE IS NOTHING INATELY IMPRESSIVE ABOUT

THE UNIVERSE OR ANYTHING IN IT.

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