Chapter 35: On Religion

where we learn what Karma is.

Why am I such a bad tempter? I think my main problem is that I overestimate human logic. I know that humans are partly driven by their Strange Subconscious Thingy, but I assume that their mind is able to understand the logic of egoism. However, most of them follow some other logic, a logic that makes altruism appear rational. If I don't understand this logic, I can't argue against it.

So I asked the old librarian whether he can explain me why so many humans consider altruism logical. I already had observed that some humans think that some supernatural power will reward them if they help each other. Turns out there are several rival concepts of supernatural rewards for being gentle. I'll try to resume the most important ones:

 

Earthly Reward

The simplest variant: Some humans believe that giving to other people is rewarded in this life by some metaphysical superviser, aka God. While it's kind of obvious that this is not how the world works, you would be surprised how many people think that is how the world should work. When humans suffer, they often ask "what did I do to deserve this", an attitude that assumes that luck and suffering happen for a reason, that they are rewards and punishment for former actions. 

Strangely, humans who have luck seldom wonder how they deserve it.

Earthly Karma
Same as the earthly reward coming from some metaphysical superviser - only without the superviser.

 

Heavenly Reward

Similar to the "Earthly Reward" theory, but the reward is delayed to the afterlife. The metaphysical superviser notes the good deeds and sins in a big book, and determines the reward or punishment after the death.

Depending on the religion, the reward consists on flying around and playing harp, on sitting in Abrahams lap, in having sex with 72 virgins, or whatever. Christianism initially promised an "Hevenly wedding feast", but as it is not clear who is married to whom, it has gradually been replaced by the flying-around-and-playing-harp variant, which is in my opinion much less appealing than the wedding feast, let alone the 72 virgins.

Note that this is maybe the closest to how things really work - but with some differences. Good deeds and sins are indeed listed in big books - but not by Heaven but by Hell, and not to reward or punish humans but tempters - see my last post. As mentioned in said post, it's not good deeds and sins that count for who goes to Heaven and who to Hell, but attitude. Deeds and sins are only symptoms.

 

Posthumous Karma
Same as "Heavenly Reward", but without the supervisor. Very popular in asian countries. The reward is often a pleasant reincarnation, for example not as a cockroach.

Calvinism

The same as "heavenly reward" where the superviser rewards good deeds in the afterlife, but without the good deeds. Calvinists believe that God chooses due to some obscure agenda who receives gifts in the afterlife and who doesn't, and that good deeds or sins don't have anything to do with it.

 

Advanced Calvinism

Like Calvinism, but the Almighty's chosen ones receive earthly gifts in addition to the heavenly ones. Earthly wealth is interpreted as sign for god's love. Amusingly, this somewhat inverts the "Heavenly Rewards" paradigm, as those who take from others get richer, which is interpretated as sign of God's grace, thus they are rewarded in the afterlife. That's why this system brings much more souls home to hell than anyone else. Infernal Marketing considers the popularity of Advanced Calvinism in the United States as one of its greatest successes. 

Those are the main variants of what humans consider "rewards by heaven". Maybe I forgot some - I'm new to the subject.

Chapter 23: On the word "Please"

In which we learn about special offers in the gratitude trade.

A many times I have heard the word "Pleas" coming out of a human's mouth. At first I had no idea what it means, but I think I figured it out. It's closely related to the word "Thanks".

We have learned in Chapter 17 about the exchange "favours against gratitude". But how are those exchanges initiated? Giving random favours to random people may not the most efficient way - you don't know who really needs a favour (and will therefor give you more gratitude). Guessing the favour needs of others might work, but it's not optimal. The best would be to inform others about what favours one actually needs, such that the others can see how to gain maximum gratitude with minimum effort.

It turn out that such a mechanism actually exists. It's called "request" and is often initiated with the word "please". A request is basically... Wait I'll better give you an example:

I observed, for example, a human who "requested" some eggs from her neighbour. She was in need of eggs, so she was ready to pay an elevated gratitude price for. She went to her neighbours door and said something like "Please, can you give me some eggs?"

 

The word "please" indicated that the neighbour would actually do a good bargain when giving eggs - a lot of gratitude per egg. Normally he wouldn't have had the idea of giving eggs to his neighbour - he wouldn't have received any gratitude at all ("Why are you giving me those eggs?"). But now there was this snip, lots of gratitude for some miserable eggs, and he could not resist. So the exchange was made, and everybody was happy. Seemingly a win-win situation. 

 

(For the record, I am aware that win-win situations are impossible, due to the First Dogma of Hell which states that everybody is on his own. I don't want to get in trouble with Inquisition. So someone else must have suffered in this very moment.)

 

So, to resume, a request is basically the fact of offering a high gratitude price for a favour.

Chapter 21: On the word "Thanks"

Where we learn what gratitude actually is.

I think I got it how this gratitude mecanism works. Remember the exchange "Favour against gratitude" ?

 

After observing many humans doing this kind of exchange, I think I figured it out what gratitude is.It's kind of a currency that has only value between these two humans. Think of it as kind of Favour Voucher:                   

The "1000 Thx" part may actually be misleading: Gratitude has a precise value, a person has usually a very clear idea how much favours he owns another person or vice versa. However, he does not associate any numerical value to it. It's like temperature before invention of the thermometer.

But how do people agree on the amount of gratitude? Well, the gratitude is transmitted by a symbolic expression, usually a variation of the sentence "Thank you". The way this sentence is said gives a hint on the quantity of gratitude - a murmured "Thanx" has not the same "value" as an enthousiastic "Oh thank you so much, you really really helped me!"

People who know each other well often use those vouchers, strangers use rather money. I'm not sure why humans don't use money all the time, it seems much clearer to me and is furthermore transferable. 

 

This favour-against-gratitude trade has actually an emotional side-effect: The giver of the gratitude feels often bad - something between guilt, humiliation and inferiority - and the receiver feels often good. Those feelings come actually not from the Unconsciousness thingy, but from the Annoying Niggler. Sounds familiar? Indeed: The gratitude tranders. When you know about those feelings, the gratitude sale business I wrote about actually makes sense: What the clients want is actually not the gratitude voucher itself - they will probably never use it - but the good feelings that come with. In other words: When giving money to a beggar (that's how humans call gratitude traders), the client buys himself a happy Niggler.

Chapter 20: On Gratitude Trade

Where we meet a gratitude dealer and learn that there is no such thing as "strawberry gratitude".

I still don't know what this gratitude thing is. It seems that it is bound to the person it gives - gratitude received from A can't be used with B - and it seems that it is not quantifiable. (The expression "a thousand thanks" seems to be nothing more than an idiom.)

But there is one thing that contradicts the "bound and unquantifiable" hypothesis: I saw a gratitude dealer. That's right. In the center of the city, sitting on the sidewalk, selling gratitude against cash. Most human dealers have their own "shops", but this one didn't - he couldn't even affort decent cloth. It seems that gratitude dealers are supposed to be poor, don't ask me why. He also had a dog. But it's clearly a dealer, his job is quite similar to the job of an ice-cream seller: People give him money, and the more they give the more merchandise they get. Only that's not ice-cream but gratitude. Which comes, by the way, not in different flavours, so the client's can't choose, say, some strawberry and some vanilla gratitude.

Anyway, this gratitude trader puzzles me: How can you sell something that's not quantifiable? Whatever is sold has a price per quantity, whether it's a number, a weight, a volume, time or whatever. Secondly, when I observed the buyers' thoughts, most clients had no intention to see the dealer again. So, if the gratitude they bought is bound to the dealer, what do they do with it?

As a sidenote, an interesting difference with other dealers was that the buyers didn't buy to satisfy their Unconsciousness Thingy, but their Annoying Niggler. Normally it's the Thingy that makes people buy something (except with a post-card seller on a public place who sold overprized post-cards for handicapped orphelin seal babies or something)

Later the day I paid attention to other people sitting on the street and i discovered, in fact, quite a number of other gratitude dealers. This seems to be a rather popular expression - although it seems to be neither reputable nor profitable. Many of the sellers had dogs - don't ask me why. I even saw saleswomen of a gratitude selling company, women with headscarfs, many of them with children. I don't know whether this is a proper company, but according to their thoughts they seemed to be somewhat organized.

Could anybody explain me this gratitude dealing business?

Chapter 17: On Favours

Where we learn that some humans think they receive gifts from Mr. Nobody.

Social interaction - what a complicated thing. I'm far from being able to describe how social interaction works, but "favours" seem to play a central role in society.

What's a favour? Well, a favour is an action (or, more generally, decision) made by a human A, which satisfies two conditions:

1. It has a certain cost for A (in terms of time, effort, money, whatever)
2. It brings a certain benefit for another human B.

Why would a being possibly do something he takes no direct benefit from? Well, I observed some possible reasons. The first two exist also in hell, the others were up to now unknown to me:

Favour exchange
The simplest of all variants. A does a favour to B, and B does a favour to A.


Money
A variant of the former: A does a favour to B, and b gives money to A, which can be exchanged against favours with anybody else.

Biology
Humans sometimes do favours to others because their "unconsciousness thingy" wants it. This usually serves preservation of the human's DNA. A typical example is raising and nourishing children:

A variant are favours done as part of the humans' mating rituals:


Religious ethics
Very popular among religious people. The idea is the following: A does a favour to B, and G does a favour to A in the afterlife, where G is any real or imaginative benevolent supernatural power (usually the Enemy).


Atheist ethics
The same as religious ethics, but without G.


Gratitude
This one is one of the most popular - and for me, the most difficult to understand. It seems to involve some imaginary currency called "gratitude": A does a favour to B, and B gives "gratitude" to A.

I've no idea how this system works, whether or not gratitude from B can be given to another person C (like money), whether or not it is quantifiable etc. I think I have heared the expression "Mille Merci !" (1000 Thanks), but often the precise amount of gratitude is not specified.

I will have to do some research to understand this social mecanism.