It’s a god’s life

SUNDAY INDEPENDENT, 18 AUGUST 2002

IT’S A DOG’S LIFE, being God. Hang on, I’ve just realised that I’m not sure whether the expression “It’s a dog’s life” means it’s a hard life or an easy life. Do dogs have a hard life? In Korea, yes, and it can’t be much fun in Greenland with a sled tied to your back and a man in a furry parka yelling “Mush!” at you all day, but besides that dogs seem to have a soft enough time of it.

There must have been a couple of Buddhists over the generations who have been tempted to rack up a couple of bad-karma points so that they could come back as a dog and spend some good years being fussed over and scratched behind the ears and regularly fed a tasty dish of something nutritionally balanced and tail-thumpingly good. Of course, the risk is that you might collect too many bad-karma points and come back as a tapeworm, or a pimento, or something.

That’s why I have never converted to Buddhism: too imprecise. There should be a schedule of benefits and punishments, as with frequent-flier miles: “Thirty acts of adultery earns 1700 bad-karma points, which equals reincarnation as a moose,” for instance. Then you would be able to plan for the future.

But I digress. When I say: “It’s a dog’s life, being God,” I mean that it can’t be much fun. Oh, there must be plenty of fringe benefits. Good seats at all the big games, for instance, and you wouldn’t have to worry about medical aid or retirement schemes. Plus, there are any number of tax-free corporate gifts, although after a while you might be looking for a little variety. “Enough with the burnt offerings already!” you might say. “What’s with the thousands of years of burnt offerings? What’s wrong with medium-rare every now and then? And would it kill you to throw in a nice blue-cheese sauce?”

Yes, there are some drawbacks to being God: You would know how all the movies end; it’s hard to go for a quiet evening out without being recognised; people are forever doing awful things and saying it was your idea.

Mostly, though, I would get depressed by the kinds of people I would have to deal with every day. Heaven seemed like a good enough idea in the beginning – you get to hang out with your buddies and no one ever has to get up early to go to work – but heaven must increasingly be resembling Cape Town: it’s an attractive enough place, but all the interesting people are somewhere else.

Imagine, for instance, having to spend eternity in the company of Neleh and Vicepiah. Neleh and Vicepiah are not the names of twin towns on a Biblical plain earmarked for destruction, although they should be. Neleh and Vicepiah are the names of the last two contestants in Survivor: Marquesas (SABC3, Tuesdays), which ended this week. Throughout the series the two gals ran their respective campaigns on a two-pronged platform of evangelism and deceit. Neleh was a Mormon, and Vicepiah belonged to some other denomination that allows you to do whatever you want as long as you ask forgiveness afterwards.

“We pray to the same God,” Neleh solemnly informed Vicepiah, in a moment of what passed for multiculturalism in America. It might have been a meaningful gesture if Neleh had been Palestinian and Vicepiah an Israeli soldier, but between two Christian denominations it was hardly an epiphanic moment.

They may pray to the same God, but they had different ideas about what God’s best course of action should be. Neleh prayed that God would make Neleh win. Vicepiah prayed that God would make Vicepiah win. “I am proud of my spirituality,” they both informed the camera. It was infuriating to watch two such smug individuals so utterly persuaded of their own virtue. Their faith had not made them behave any better than anyone else – it had just allowed them to feel good about it.

Perhaps I am just envious. It must be a pretty sweet deal to be able to act the way we are going to act anyway, and still have no doubt that it’s all going to turn out well for us in the end. I have no beef with religion. I had a beef with Neleh and Vicepiah.

“I could never believe in a God that did not know how to dance,” Nietzsche once said. I suppose I could never believe in a God that watched Reality TV. The good news was that one of them was going to lose. The bad news was that one of them was going to win. Vicepiah won. She hooted. She hollered. “God is good!” she hooted and hollered. Neleh did not hoot and holler that God was good. Vicepiah thought God had made the right call. Neleh wasn’t so sure. Neleh, you had the impression, was beginning to wonder if they really did pray to the same God. What if, she seemed to be thinking, my God was watching Big Brother instead?