A brief history of the world

There was, in the ancient myths, a place called Earth. Now to speak of the fabled Earthlings who dwelled thereupon is beyond all question a tragic tale, for they wanted nothing more than to be happy, but their inability in this regard surpassed even this desire. Yet they were in all regards the most absurd of all possible creatures, for their favorite of activities was to do just those things which made them less happy, and then invent a multitude of clever reasons as to why these activities, in reality, were doing just the opposite. They had been entrusted by their perplexingly patient Master with the gift of truth, which if they followed, would make them happy, but truth was too simple to be of any good: it just meant doing what Master told them, and anything that fell so far beneath their own brilliant ideas surly could not be of that much value. Among them were always those who possessed what was called wisdom, and they continually urged their fellow earthlings to abandon their quest and simply accept happiness without trying to invent it for themselves, but still more clever reasons were invented as to why this suggestion was altogether worthless. The problem was, everybody really knew that truth and wisdom were right. To this they would respond that un-wisdom was just as right, but that never completely made sense. That was their problem; they could not escape the nagging idea that things needed to make sense.
Then they invented psychology. It was very much like wisdom, although better, because it always agreed with their own ideas. What better solution could possibly exist: they could have truth, without having to worry about whether it was true! The problem in the first place, you see, was that truth had always been so strangely centered on what Master said; it was almost as though he thought that he knew more about what they needed than they themselves did. Psychology (which, by the way, was a gift given by one of their greatest prophets of un-wisdom before he made his departure in the customary cigar shaped box), was not the least bit concerned with what Master said, it was only concerned with themselves. Not only that, but Master’s messages, delivered by his rag-tag following of eccentrics who so shamelessly advertised truth, were always tremendously discouraging. All that they ever seemed to say was that the earthlings had messed things up most terribly, and that they were bound for certain doom and much greater unhappiness if they did not take his warnings seriously enough to throw out un-wisdom and psychology and accept the truth he wanted them to have. And he even had the audacity to suggest that this offer was somehow merciful; that they had all been very disobedient and that they really deserved to be stomped out forever and to be more unhappy yet than they were, and that the only escape from this fate was through a most painful sacrifice made by Master himself. They could only marvel at the absurd antics that Master went through to try to get them to follow truth and reason and all his other irrelevant notions. It was all such a waste: even if they wanted it, a plan like that could never really work! It was far to objective and not nearly symbolic and experience-oriented enough to be of any actual merit. And besides, giving up their freedom to invent their own idea of what was best for them was an awfully high price to pay for cheap fire insurance...