Information, the Seducer
you know you want it
Information, the Seducer
Come, she says, patting the chair.
Sink into clubby leather.
Loosen your tie.
Lean back…
Good.
Open your head, now,
so I may tip the holy chalice
into that eager space,
funneling Facts into
the lonely chasm
left behind by Divinity
on that proud afternoon
you sent her packing,
the unprovable wench.
You’re so smart
Information murmurs,
to replace her, because
who needs Divinity?
Not you.
Not when you have me.
Imbibe this sacrament,
my darling,
welcome my alpha and omega
of quantum enlightenment;
swell into worth
as I pour and pour
ones and zeroes
blinking into infinity,
silver rivers of Knowledge
rushing, rising,
filling
yet never spilling
over their banks,
ferrying you
toward the Ocean
of Discourse
where data will cascade
from your learnèd lips,
quelling all discussion
—or, better yet,
drowning the ignorant—
for when you have consumed
all of me,
it is you
who will reign over
those sulfurous swamps
teeming with “common sense” and
“ancient wisdom;”
it is you, only you
who will chart
the correct course
of humanity
with icy certainty
that you know better,
because you shall,
yes—
only you, fiercely
omniscient,
gorgeous in your
apotheosis—
will be
just—
like—
GOD.
*
*
*
And really,
says Information,
lighting a cig,
her next sentence
issuing musky smoke,
isn’t that why you’re here?
She chortles, drags painted nails
through her balayage brunette
and shouts,
NEXT!
God Forbid! I think this was kind of chilling, Mary, as in "icy certainty". Yeah, right! We don't want no stinkin' common sense or ancient wisdom to confuse us. Just the so-called facts, more ones and zeroes, please! no need for individual thought, interpretation, or intuition.
You never disappoint, Mary, well done.
Delightful and prescient!
I was just listening to Bo Burnham's brilliant Welcome to the Internet: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1BneeJTDcU.
And I love that divinity is female. I've been reading a book called When God Was a Woman. Did you know that was true for 9500 years? It's been a mere 1500 since God's sex change.
And for some reason I woke up thinking about apples in the inversions of stories. Genesis says that Eve ate from the tree of 'the knowledge of good and evil.' What is that but judgment? However she's the one judged Ev(il) by the omniscient narrator who usurps her divinity for Himself (sic). He steals Judgment, which belongs to Her, the mother who only ever judges innocent and wants happiness for all her children.
And what about that golden apple thrown in front of Aphrodite? Was that another masculine trick blamed on a woman? The masculine side of the brain is the one stuffed with information that replaces intuition and beauty, the Venusian astrology in which we are currently suffused.
And then there's the wicked stepmother/ witch with her poison apple. Who made women so dependent on men that they'd have to trade on their beauty and lose security to a younger rival when it was gone? During the 9500 years when God was a woman, property succession was matrilineal. No primogeniture! And mothers were seen as the single parents of their children, with sperm donation not counting as shared ownership! So Snow White, if her mother died, would have been cared for by her aunts and grandmother, not some money-grubbing second wife. The house would have belonged to our hero Snow, not her father, so there would be no money to grub!
I think that Information should be portrayed as an adolescent boy, like all the ones who are promoting it, whether they look like robots or have sagging skin. Don't smear women with this seduction!