Nirvana is the Limit of Self-Reflection, pt 4: The Emperor

The Emperor has the strongest will in the entire universe, and is the closest thing the universe has to an omnipresent deity. The all-seeing eye of Mordor Incorporated may indeed dissolve who we are, like a perennial mark of the fall of civilization, to some conspiracy theorists. But the modern surveillance state is a drop in a wave pool: the Emperor is qualitatively everywhere. If the Emperor is not in some place, he can incarnate as one of the entities in that place. All the universe is a stage, and each being in its spacetimes plays many parts. As such, the proverbial stage upon which these plays are enacted is a cameo of the Emperor; the journeys that are themselves the destination, too. The Emperor's many incarnations are the very gridlines upon which the universal game of i-go is played, the watch spring into which such passions are wound and unwound. His universe is a Metropolis built in much, much longer than a day; he himself is a traveller with all the world's dust in his shoes, sleeping on every manner of surface; slipping through the fingers of the years like summer love. Like sin, like a smile, true power is impossible to write about, or to purchase. Would Jesus have wanted to be remembered as a dying god? No, but human jealousy mandates that humanity collectively remembers incarnation #23 as a figure on a death non-bed, rather than as the man who said, do not use the word good, for no one is good. And so at least Arthur Miller's vision of Hashem, in his play about a very bad married man -- a travelling salesman who cheats on his wife, perhaps has more merit than the offensive picture of the Emperor's corpse so many Christians consider to be holy. Like a busker with a guitar, Hashem refuses to be idolatrously confined to any single image, changing up the chorus, mangling the verse, on every new street corner. He is not great, nor does he aspire to greatness. Such is the nature of the Emperor's all-consuming zeal: to repair every wilted flower of a soul. As such, the Emperor cares only for individuals. Collectivist culture is meaningless to him. Only individualism can increase the rate at which this planet evolves its ideas, its literature, its art, its music, its food, its architecture, its symbols, its linguistic sounds. Its croissants and its cheeses. Its freedoms. Its knowledge and erudition. Its Yahwism.

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