Sagely Stats No. 20 in "The Idea Man" Series by Anther Varick Ticklaw  Cranach: Crucifixion. How many people have lived? 8? 10? 15 billion? Whatever it is, given the number somewhere in the 12-digit range, let's talk about the probability of occurrence for a certain type of personality. Consider the person, apparently rare, who, while befuddled by the plethora of phenomena and the head-jamming mix of pleasure-pain sensory experience, is somehow able to think his/her way through it. Not just through it, though: through it, and out of it. Achieving a perspective, a point-of-view, or no point-of-view at all, that the rest of us can't or don't quite get. How do we know such people have existed? Long ago a few of them talked about their paradigm-busting perceptions, and the people within earshot, at least some of them, were sufficiently impressed that they wrote down what they heard. Of course I'm referring to your messiah-types, your bodhisattvas, your Enlightened Ones, your gurus, your Sages. Moses, Jesus, Buddha, Aknaton, Lao-Tze, that ilk. But notice what happened. Near the beginning of history, these people appeared and talked (a couple of them even wrote). And then they stopped appearing. And please, televangelists don't count, no matter how many 400-foot Jesuses they see. Oh we've had the occasional mystic, the now-and-then poet or painter, but otherwise, nothing. Now. Back to that number, 12 billion, we'll say. Statistically, one would expect an increasing number of this personality-type to appear. The handful of Big Names all appeared prior to the year zero. And the total number of humans who lived before the year zero is small, somewhere in the 100- to 200-million range. Which means since zero, there've been 12 billion of us, and not one person the equal of the Big Sages? I don't think so. Which means one of three things: 1. It was all fake. Those guys were just the first, best con-artists, and people around them heard what they wanted to hear, believed what they wanted to believe, and then organized religions to match the con. As proof, we need only point out the hordes of religious hucksters through the ages, including naturally our own. 2. Or those people were genetic or environmental anomalies, of such oddity that their kind hasn't turned up again. 3.Or they have been turning up, but have learned to keep their mouths shut. Why would they not set out preaching? For two reasons: incipient martyrdom (e.g., Jesus), or because the earliest talkers and writers said it all. Or, if not all, said enough. And the late-comers see no point in repeating themselves. So they shut up, and go about doing whatever you go about doing when you exist in such an exalted state. Which, if this little analysis has any truth in it, brings us to the good news and the bad news. The good news is, the words, the hints, are here, available, right now, for anyone who chooses to pay attention. The bad new is bad news mainly for Republicans and other persons of a conservative political stripe. The bad news is that that homeless person you just passed on the sidewalk may well be Jesus No. 25,473. END
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