Bargaining with God
I’m supremely arrogant. Maybe not in action, and I’m conscious about not trying to rub it in anyone’s face but secretly [or maybe not so much] I’m very narcissistic. It’s a problem. One of the major ways in which this can be explained is my consistent arrogance in bargaining with Gods.
Like the idea of karma. If I’m a good person good things will happen to me. Not individually but over an arc. So, I try to be good, kind, nice.
I expect it to come back to me.
Is that not some sort of ultimate delusion of grandeur? That somehow, I could negotiate with forces beyond understanding?
Praying is a similar idea. If god were an omnipotent force, would it ever notice me? Where do I get off asking something omnipresent to deal with my mundane issues? Doesn’t stop me in the slightest. I’ll happily strike a deal with any god, as if I could stroll in to the Parthenon and have Tyche be my bookie.
I’m just finished reading Gods: A Human History by Reza Aslan, and he mentions that the gods of very early religions during the Paleolithic era were often nature based, but with vaguely human-like traits. He attributes this to our innate ability as humans to give things agenda and empathy. That strikes a very resonate chord with me, as I think I’m also trying to give the universe-at-large some attribute of agency, where-by I can take advantage of the universes “long arc toward justice” with a little smart haggling.
“One cigarette won’t hurt me.”
“If I run today, I can go drinking tonight.”
“Please god, let me sleep 15 more minutes. I’ll work super hard today and if I catch this train I won’t even be late.”
“Just let me hit these lights, it’s been such a long day.”
“It won’t rain if I’m just smiley and optimistic.”
“I’ll donate all my spare change if my phone will come spinning back into my hand, right now.”
“Please don’t let my mom find out about this.”
Mother Nature takes care of the weather or recycling based bets. Judo-Christen God when I’m exclaiming or sighing. Allah if I’m feeling adventurous. Buddha offers me stability. Odin if things get real dark. I ask for good karma when I’m going out of my way to be nice. I ask animals or spirits or ghosts or nymphs or Merlin. I try to add good vibes to the universe, and have them resonant back.
Ever read American Gods by Neil Gaiman? I can believe anything without guile, as long as it’s working for me. It’s functionally similar to Shintoism from Japan, where wishes are asked of every non-specific entity, and when you don’t get your way, you just switch gods. It’s actually pretty convenient.
What I’m really hiding is that fact that I have such little control. We’re all not even specks of dust in the scheme of the universe and its laws are unshakeable by mere mortal hands. Gaia is just one vast planet, in a galaxy unfathomably huge, in a universe that grows faster than we can see; I want to pretend that each step I take matters, does something, gets me somewhere.
Instead of just accepting I’m just the same decaying organic matter as everyone else, which is to say, shit.
So, with supreme arrogance, I’ll bargain with whatever, placing ultimate faith that the foot I put forward lands on solid ground and not plunge into the void of hopelessness.
Here’s the cold truth. I don’t think there is a god.
If there were some kind of deity, it wouldn’t notice or care about us. Do we give a though about ants? Do trees bend to provide us shade? Everything is thinking about itself first, no one else second. And that’s the hopeful case that there is a god. Instead, we are [probably] another random of twig in the tree of evolution born from the physics of the very first instants of the Big Bang. The explosions and collisions of stardust that made everything we will ever see, did not and does not care about me, about you, about anything.
Nothing was meant to be, nothing is planned or foretold in scripture or anything else. Everything ever will die and the universe will continue to expand until it splits itself apart and we still don’t quite know why. My only option, in a desperate plea for survival, is whispering an urgent but quiet prayer and throwing it into the uncaring oblivion. I have to pretend that it matters, and I matter. I have to go forward. It’s the labyrinth and it sucks, but it’s the only way out is through.
Here’s the prestige. It does matter. You do matter. It’s all a carefully constructed fairytale that we choose to all believe, but the more people who believe in it, the more real it becomes.
The universe created us but it doesn’t care for the things we create ourselves. It shouldn’t. But I can appreciate the small gift that is your humanity. You can care about mine. Together, this community we build ourselves, however fragile, matters.
Don’t lose hope. Be free. It never mattered to some greater entity. The only God you’re bargaining with is yourself and the people around you. It’s the most insignificant thing, to create and fight entropy with music or art or dancing, with jokes and books or food, with smiles or favors or secret handshakes, with the brief embrace of another human in love or lust or loss or just because. We’re here. We’re still fighting. We’re putting one foot in front of another. We.
It does matter, in spite of the fact that it doesn’t.
Which brings me back to arrogance. I’m here. I’m yelling. I’m screaming my head off into the void. I think it’s important, and ultimately, I think my opinion is the only thing that matters.
However, I hope you decide, in whatever way you want, to scream into that void with me. I’ll listen and appreciate. I’ll hope you find light in mine.
Maybe it’ll be heard by the masses, maybe even whatever is out there. Maybe it won’t. But at least you and I will have. And that’s not nothing Hazel Grace.