O l i v e r B e n j a m i n
Mankind needs to be given a better reason. What kind of great prize
is it to go on living in this world? You think most people are happy
here? You think they’re content with their lives? Of course they
aren’t. And it’s a good thing, too. If they were, nothing would ever
happen. Nothing would be invented, no great art would be
developed, no one would agonize and kill each other over ways to
make life better. If man knew how pointless his situation was, he’d
have given up a long time ago, and we’d all still be sitting around
pounding rocks and eating bark.”
“So,” interjected Gautama, “You’re saying that man would be just
as happy pounding rocks as he would be punching clocks.”
“Undoubtedly. Give a man food and shelter and a little love and
he’ll be just as happy as any other man at any other time in any other
place in the history of the world. What religion did for a long time
and what the media marketplace does now is just provide man with
a carrot to chase. I am no more than a manufacturer of really big
carrots.”
“And to what end do you think man chases these carrots?” asked
Krishna.
“It’s what he was designed to do!” Gareth maintained, “Man is a
machine of desire. He covets what he doesn’t have. And since the
carrot is a product of his imagination, he must covet that which does
not yet exist. And in doing so, he makes it exist. In this way, with his
greed, man creates the world. You might say that, in buying stuff and
thinking up stuff for other people to buy, he is doing the work of God.
After Eden, commerce took up where the old guy left off.”
“An interesting point of view, though surely a little self-serving,”
Krishna alleged, “Still, I still don’t see what it portends for our
‘marketing’ of Armageddon.”
Gareth crossed his arms and sat down. “It’s simple,” he said.
“People want what they don’t have. That’s fundamental to the law of
supply and demand. If the future was guaranteed to be there, it
wouldn’t be worth much. That’s why mankind has screwed the earth
up so badly. We figured it would always be there, so it wasn’t worth
much to us and we treated it accordingly. It’s the same with the
human race. However, according to you guys, the warranty may be
about to expire. Starting this moment, our future may be in short
supply. Therefore, now it’s a hot commodity and we’ve got to market
it as such. We’ve got to make Armageddon look exciting and fun to
drive.”
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