The Wombat File Is Yours to Keep

Well, my copy of The Secret finally arrived. I'll admit to some excitement...I figured that if Oprah was behind it, then this Byrne woman was finally the one to put it all together. At last, I thought, we're all going to move ahead to the next phase. After so many missed opportunities, it gave me a real charge to imagine a humanity truly transformed by the power of the knowledge that's been both hidden and obvious for so many centuries.

Of course, there's a bittersweet side. The Father in Me is pleased to see human beings on the threshold of fulfilling their divine potential. The Son...well, the Son part of Me did make a really good effort in terms of publishing on this subject. Kinda hurts to imagine it. But sour grapes is just not what I'm about, really.

Anyway, I needn't have gotten myself all worked up. A waste of time, beginning to end. This Byrne character gets caught up in that whole Law of Attraction idea. It's kindergarten logic, but there's a bit of it that's based on the old Wish Fulfillment protocols we had running in Reality 1.0, back in the day. Of course, those were written out of the system shortly after the Eden prototype crashed. I suppose some of the old technical documentation is still circulating, which means I really have only Myself to blame.

It's the same thing with that When God Winks nonsense. When I wink, you'll feel it, Jack. Anybody remember the Tunguska Event?

But it got me reflecting and to be honest, I'm in the end amazed that no one has figured out the actual Secret by this time. Especially because the whole idea was to make it obvious enough that even the benighted human race would stumble upon it. I want to shout, in a city-flattening Voice, "Ask the squirrels, people, just ASK THE SQUIRRELS. Why the hell else would I have all of 'em running around pointlessly to and fro under your noses?"

I mean, that's really it -- they've got the whole kit and kaboodle. You step on up and ask "Hey, do you happen to know the Divine Secret?" and then it's like clicking on one of those crazy Easter Egg thingies in Grand Theft Auto. They've all been loaded with the keys to prosperity, a couple of dozen infallible rules for living in perfect harmony, and the basic technical specs for a car that runs on recycled styrofoam peanuts.

Of course, they play dumb -- and I mean dumb until you actually ask, but there has to be something left for folks to figure out. After St. Francis missed it (so close, really -- he said good morning and all kinds of stuff, and then trailed off into a sermon about walnuts), I thought it'd be the sort of thing somebody'd get to by 1650, tops. Once all that crazy pre-Enlightenment experimenting started, you'd think some desperate philosophe would just start trying all the possibilities.

I've tried to give you people a fighting chance, but nobody seems to have the imagination to look around. I guess there's still some hope that Hawking'll figure it out. I wrote "Talk to the Damn Squirrels" in sorta nifty binary code and threw that into a couple of pulsar outputs about a millenia ago, just in case. But really, it's no fun if nobody wants to play.