EPTIf I were a younger man, I would write a history of human stupidity; and I would climb to the top of Mount McCabe and lie down on my back with my history for a pillow; and I would take from the ground some of the blue-white poison that makes statues of men; and I would make a statue of myself, lying on my back, grinning horribly, and thumbing my nose at You Know Who.
For those of you who don't know the book, you should read it, it is a tragic commentary on everything from religion, to colonialism, to the fallacy or inherent risks of objective science. At this point in the book the whole world has been radically altered by a substance called ice-nine, which when is touched to water changes its composition so that it can be solid ice even at room temperature. The protagonist is stuck on the island of San Lorenzo, surrounded by the once ocean, which is now a world of tornadoes. He has become a disciple of Bokononism, a religion from the same island whose prophet Bokonon openly admits is all bullshit and lies.
He meets a few remaining survivors on the island, but the majority of people have all died from the ice-nine. Some of the more recent deaths were encouraged by Bokonon, a survivor himself. When when asked by an angry mob what all the chaos of the book's end means, he informs them that God is most likely telling them that its time for them to go and so they should show him some courtesy as their maker and just die. They comply. At the end of the novel, the protagonist, who has been religiously reading the never completed set of Books of Bokonon, spots Bokonon and rushes up to him to ask him what he is doing. He is writing the last words of his series of books, and hands to the protagonist a paper with the above excerpt.
His final message, is that he has none, this world is made in such a way that there can be none. The things which men build cannot save them from their own stupidity, and therefore God who made men deserves no credit or happiness either. He doesn't deserve their respect or their love. He deserves to feel the stupidity of his creations, he deserves to feel the fool, and so Bokonon's metaphorical final act, would be to stick his tongue out at God, and politely inform him that he did not win. That all God can claim is longevity, durability, and nothing more, and thus he will always recall the statue of man thumbing his nose, even should the statue made of ice-nine crack and turn to dust, it will always be there in the eternal memory of God. A small, but nonetheless bitter challenge to the best laid plans of Gods.
I'm not completely sure why, but this scene came into my mind after ST_Life defeated LG-IM_Mvp in the GSL Code S Season 4 Finals. Mvp, who despite the fame heaped upon Nestea by Tastosis and their sycophant minions, is the only player in SC2 who can be considered God like, appeared to have crushed the spirit of young Life, the potential Royal Roader. Life had started off strong, taking the first two games, but Mvp had roared back taking the next three.
It was as if Life had started off feeling like the universe was his, and that he possessed the freedom to do whatever he wanted and make of his life what he wished. But then, he had slammed into the much-less talked about conception of God, where his power is not comforting, but rather frightening in terms of how it might limit your ability to act freely or create your own path through life. Life had thought the world his, but Mvp made it clear, through his three victories that the world truly belonged to him. As the God of SC2, his fifth title awaited him and Life was just a bump in the road, a formality in obtaining it.
But as so many people have invoked since Life's meteoric rise, "Life finds a way." Despite being overwhelmed with the possibility of Mvp being on another level, being a God of SC2 before whom so many others have fallen, Life did not give up and seized control of the world through Games 6 and 7. By the end of the night Life had won, and Mvp got to enjoy the pleasure of standing holding a giant check, trying not to look too awkward, as everyone cheers for the person who just crushed you. Life thumbed his nose at God and won. He trashed the best laid plans of God, even making obsolete for the moment, that infamous G5L tag that God is eager to put on his mantle.
though fortunately the "God" in our world doesn't seem to have created a set of physics laws that could allow the ice-nine catastrophe to occur, massively violating entropy and all that.
