A well intentioned god came along and made people. He meant to be the hero but couldn’t stop being the villain.
He thought people were “good” (deep down and naturally) but just didn’t know what “good” was. He reasoned to himself that ignorance thwarted their desperate attempts at being “good”.
“A ha” he said with a light bulb above his head “I’ll teach them what “good” is!”
So he went to start and just before the first word left his mouth he realized that he didn’t know what “good” was.
What was he to do?
“A ha” he said again “I’ll find the “good”
So he searched and he searched.
He criss crossed a basket weave over all of existence and at the end of his trials he stood empty handed because “What is” when asked concerning the “good” said nothing.
“A ha” he said yet again “I know what I shall do. I shall make the “good””
With nothing to base the “good” on except his own preference he based it on that.
Of course he was more coy about that fact to both himself and the people he’d made.
He would sometimes say when asked “oh that’s good because, er, because it allows you to harvest more, or stops you being sick” but mostly he just said “it’s good because it’s good”
Once the good was set up (the people called them laws) he thought to himself “my work is done. Now they have been told what to do they can carry on without being told anymore”
Many generations of the people were born and died when he thought “I’m going to go check in on those “good” people. It will be “good” to bask in my prior accomplishments.”
So he went back and discovered it was somehow worse than he left it.
What had gone wrong?
He wiped the people out.
“Start from scratch.” he said.
So he made the people again and gave them the “good” he had made again. Now though he stayed to see what would happen.
Silently he watched from the ether. He watched and he saw.
He saw that it had nothing to do with the content of the “good”; nothing to do with what the particular laws said.
There was a surface and a depth to the application of “good”.
On the surface the “good” worked. It told people what they could or couldn’t do and what they could do to the people who did what they couldn’t.
Below that though the law had taken on another function unpredicted by him.
The “good” became synomous with trust. People trusted “good” people and they knew who was “good”and who wasn’t by looking at the law.
“All well and good, ” mumbled our protagonist “or at least it would be if some people didn’t have the cheek to disregard my “good”.
“Now there are people who want to harm other people or exploit them and I’ve given them the perfect disguise!
“They can hide behind the “good”. If I hadn’t made the good in the first place they’d have nowhere to hide and everyone would see their rapacity.
“And that’s not all! Their sacrilege knows no bounds because those very men who want to bind others to their own interests have re-fashioned the “good” as they see fit.”
He stared around him at the mess he’d made. He was about to wipe the people out again but then thought better.
“That’s enough meddling for me don’t you think?” He said through the 4th wall.
Subjective insights 