(Salutation.)
What is writing? What is reading? I want to say that writing is like thinking, but it is not: because my thinking always zeroes itself and flips beyond recognition when I begin writing. And reading is like allowing an alien force to take over your mind for a spell.
Do you disagree with this assessment, O hostile reader? Then I bow to your veto. You’re the only one who knows what it’s like to be the soul of the reading outfit.
But wouldn’t it be neat if you and I broke through the sacred dividing-panel that separates you readers from us writers? We could face each other, then. I wonder who would surivive.
You would win. I would let you win. (“I have won,” you agree.)
§
Did you ever think about what happens after the Day of Judgment? Currently, everything’s wrong: all the brute people are in charge, and the compassionate people are impoverished and held down. Kind souls always are born into lives that are awful from the get-go and only get worse. Is this world a punishment for some crime that those meek and gentle souls committed in past lives? No, there is no justification for the wrongness that dominates reality: that’s just the way things are. But, like I was saying, there will come a Day of Judgment, on which all the friendly souls will finally get petted by their Maker; and this same Maker will round up the harmful people and cast them into a fire pit and burn them up. The bad people will get annihilated: they will vanish completely, and the world will be perfect from that point forward.
Yet, what happens after that? Once the world is perfect, what will those who survived the Judgment do? You might answer that they will live happily ever after, meaning that they will then all appear handsome, and they will have enough food to eat, and beautiful clothing to wear, and they will each go wandering and meet their true love and get married; and nobody will abuse anyone in any way; all prices will be fair – or, rather, there will no longer be a charge for anything, because everything is free (since money itself got totally obliterated) – and the vehicles that people drive will never need a tune-up, for they will be pulled by supernatural beasts who all love their employment.
And yet there remains the question of memory. For, although the entire population of bad people will have disappeared, there will still exist a recollection of all the bad things that once occurred. And how can one enjoy perfection in Paradise if one has witnessed, for instance, the sight of an innocent man being crucified? You might argue that the memory of this event will eventually fade, but . . .
After pondering it for a moment, I admit that your point about remembrances evanescing does indeed satisfy my curiosity. For if time can cause unwanted memories to dissipate here and now, before the world has been perfected and while we all are still mortal and the barbarians rule, then I must consider how easy it will be for memory to become amended in the perfect, eternal Paradise.
Now I only wonder whether our mnemonic contents’ penchant to disintegrate is something that also must undergo perfection. In other words: Might not memory’s tendency to abandon its belongings be considered a flaw: a malfunction that the Judgment shall make functional? In that case, a perfected memory would never forget. And then we’re right back where we started.
However, the Judge could “reset” all memories from the moment when the world is made ideal. Then everyone could go on forever remembering everything that happens in eternity without ever having to suffer an ugly perception.
But since memory is identity, this would be the equivalent of disposing ALL souls, whether they are bad or not, and manufacturing a whole new populace.
Does the idea of a fresh start strike you as undesirable? It sounds fine, to me. I’m always trying to improve myself, anyway: to get my soul-train back on the track. This just sounds like a faster way to reach my destination.
But if individual personalities are so unimportant that we can toss them all into the wastebin unconcernedly . . .
I’m tired of considering this dilemma. Do what you will: Either save or blot all identity, or make it so that the building blocks of reality continue rearranging into novel forms and systems. Blur or sharpen the outlines of every ego. Save these changes or allow them to mutate. Set bounds for pleasure and unpleasure, if you like; I suggest that you give the first a vastly expanding domain, and strictly limit that of the last.
P.S.
From Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “The Witch of Atlas,” XXVII:
Men scarcely know how beautiful fire is—
Each flame of it is as a precious stone
Dissolved in ever-moving light, and this
Belongs to each and all who gaze upon.
From St. Augustine’s THE CITY OF GOD, Book XII, Ch. 4:
. . . the nature of eternal fire is without doubt a subject for praise, although to the wicked after their condemnation it will be the fire of punishment. For what is more beautiful than a fire, with all the vigour of its flames and the splendours of its light? And what more useful, with its heat, its comfort, and its help in cooking? And yet nothing can cause more distress than the burns inflicted by fire. Thus a thing which is dangerous and destructive in some situations proves to be of the greatest utility when properly employed.
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