Welcome, Brother and Sister. Peace be unto you.
So a while ago we finally had a chance to meet, strike hands and exchange pleasantries, after all this time of crossed schedules and missed opportunities. Chumba has been busy with the trials and tribulations of personal apocalypse. Indeed, we shall all experience our own revealing in one way or another, and sooner rather than later, perhaps sooner than you expect, or want.
Let us sit down now at the table. I'll bring out the board. It'll take some time to set up all the pieces and explain how each operates. After all, if one is to engage in a contest, it is only fair that each player know the parameters of engagement.
CONTEST. To make defense to an adverse claim in a court of law; to oppose, resist, or dispute the case made by plaintiff. To strive, to win or hold; to controvert, litigate, call in question, challenge; to defend, as a suit or other proceeding. - Black's Law Dictionary, 4th Edition, p. 391
Indeed, the Court of Chumbawamba is always in session. But don't mind your first insinuation. This is not as serious as it may seem. You haven't been accused, but you are being challenged.
Or if you prefer, we can use an alternate paradigm to describe this engagement. Instead of a gameboard we can call it a stage, and instead of pieces we shall instead have characters. In fact, just bring your own paradigm. This spectacle can and will be observed in any number of familiar constructs, all featuring their own nuanced perspective that altogether bring a fuller understanding of that to which I am to minister. Pick the one best suited for you and go with it; I'll be a gracious host and adapt to your preference. Think nothing of it, Arabs are typically like that.
Keep in mind that no apocalypse is the same twice, so a lot of this is going to be new for me as well. In fact, I expect to learn as much from you as that what I am going to proffer.
Now, before we discuss the structure and semantics of this engagement, I should first start with the most important aspect here, which is you.
Who are you?
Do you remember?
Do you remember where you are and why you're here?
...
Let's do an exercise. Take a moment now, and quiet your mind. Remove unnecessary distractions. We're going to meditate on this. Close your eyes and relax for a moment.
Now, open your eyes, and look around you.
What do you see?
I guess that really depends on where you are. Most of you, my dear cohorts, are inside a man-made structure somewhere, likely surrounded almost, if not entirely, by man-made objects. And if you thought about it for a moment, all of the things you use on a daily basis--your bed, your clothes, your house, your car, your roads, your place of work--basically everything, is man-made.
If you're like most people in the developed world, you might go your entire day without touching anything made naturally. Think about it. Even much of the food you stuff down your gullet is processed, man-made. Short of the purely plant and animal products you might consume, like a salad or a bowl of fruit or a steak or some chicken, much of your food these days is artificial, processed meats and vegetables.
Unless you're blessed to be living in a "country" environment, in your world, nature is merely the backdrop or garden adornment of your man-made worldly universe. Yours is a world almost entirely made by man. Your concrete walkways stingily allow for some meager foliage to protrude into the tidy man-made world, and perhaps you're blessed with front and back yards where you allow a lawn, some flowers and shrubs, and perhaps a few trees to exist, tidily maintained and confined to your preferences.
But the vast majority of your landscape, I'm guessing, is the creation of the hand of man. And it just sits there generally, not doing anything. It's all dead. Even the things that do something, like a clock, or a radio, or an oven, are just neat boxes that perform magic tricks based on properties of the physical universe that man has learned to master, but each of those objects ends in and of itself. In order for there to be more clocks or radios or ovens, and in order for there to be even working clocks and radios and ovens, requires the constant presence of the hand of man.
Now, I interject here my apologies to those who are reading these words on a farm, or a mill, or in the woods, on the beach, or just somewhere outside. Here, I am not primarily speaking to you.
But for the likely majority of you, contrast your likely setting with, say, a healthy forest. There, you have tall, lush trees. Creatures like birds and squirrels are zipping about; bugs flit here and there. There are flowers, an array of shrubs, aromatic grasses. In other words, there is an abundance of life all about you. Everything you see in such an environment is alive in the truest sense of the word.
So, uh, who made it? In your (“your” again being the majority of you) world, someone somewhere made your stuff. So, who made the forest and the trees and the birds and bugs and flowers? You see what I'm getting at here. I don't believe stuff like that “just happens” or is “just there”. In my Earthly experience, nothing just shows up without someone, or something, putting it there. Though they seemingly appeared out of nowhere overnight, someone put those Georgia Guidestones where they are. They had a maker. No one will dispute that. No one is going to argue that four slabs of granite self-assembled and spontaneously expressed a philosophy of global genocide and universal control of the world's population through some heretofore unobserved process of momentary sentiality of a previously inanimate substance.
Getting back to the forest and its contents, one might say that it was created as a result of “natural processes”. Ok, fine: natural processes. But who set those natural processes in motion? Somebody, or something, somewhere, had to have initiated it. Forgive me, but the “big bang” explanation just does not satisfy me or anyone who actually thinks for a moment and considers the proposition.
At this point there is none to arguing this either way. I beg you, my beloved guest, simply to accept and agree, for the time being at least, that we answer the inquiry as to who made the forest and all that is in it thusly: "It is natural", where "natural" has the meaning "made by nature". Let us just agree on this definition. Definitions are important, and to communicate effectively, it should go without saying we must agree on them. And if you plan to stick around, that is the definition I intend to use...for now.
So in conclusion, I pray we can agree that everything we can observe, and beyond, all of what we can see and touch and taste and smell and hear, natural or otherwise, has a maker. Cool?
Good.
There is a point to this. A major one. One that we must continue to explore later, after you have acclimated to our now agreed upon propositions above.
As for me, the Kingdom is presently under seige, and Chumba is dispossessed of his lands. A battle to turn the tides is in the making; plans must be lain and provisions garnered. And so with this I must take leave to my chambers. I shall return, and I pledge, in an expeditious manner.
In the meantime, make yourself comfortable, relax, close your eyes, and remember who you are...
I am Chumbawamba.