(Dedicated to Kilgore Trout,
The character in Kurt Vonnegutīs books)
Around the star known to us as Fomalhaut there orbited a planet of such pain, unfairness, and futility that not one, but every species of life on it was prone to suicide. Naturally, the forces of Darwinism began to select for those beings on the planet which survived. On this planet, the most important feature was not so much intelligence or strength, but simply the will to live that needed to be developed.
And so it was. First Nature tried optimism, but on the planet that orbited Fomalhaut, such an outlook on life could be held only by such stupid creatures that are not smart enough to actually search for food. Some other way had to be found for the sentient population.
So Nature experimented with religion. No Fomalhautian believed for any length of time in a religion that told it to feel holy or uplifted. But they did believe when they were told that their planet was a place of punishment and purification for sins done on another planet, which they described alternately as Alpha Centauri or the third planet of Sol. They came to believe that happiness - if it could be possible anywhere - could only be attained after death when they are reincarnated on another planet. It certainly could not be attained on Fomalhaut.
But happiness on another planet could be possible only if they were sufficiently punished on Fomalhaut. So they punished themselves and each other by not taking baths, flogging themselves, imprisoning themselves within small lightless spaces where they drowned in their own excretions, and all the other things Christians had done in the middle ages as well as things that could only be done on Fomalhaut, whose creatures were more used to suffering than those of Earth.
This did not work any better on Fomalhaut than it had on Earth, and soon this religion died out. But the self-flagellations and the pleasures of tortures were not forgotten: the Fomalhauts had discovered masochism. "If your life is pain, become a masochist and enjoy it," became the cliche wisdom of the Fomalhauts.
It was an improvement over suicide. This way they at least tried to prolong their lives.
It also created the first Fomalhauts who lived and died happy in the history of their planet - the real history, not the fairy tales they put in their textbooks for their children to read. They enjoyed themselves very much as they tortured themselves to death.
Nature was a mother. So She kept the Fomalhauts enjoying pain, only no longer their own. They became sadists. They avoided their own pain but sought it in others. This was better than masochism because they no longer contributed to their own destruction, merely each otherīs. Now they happily tortured each other to death.
So nature carried through Her coup de grace: she made the Fomalhauts enjoy otherīs pain but not cause it. They now smiled with pleasure at the sight of another Fomalhautīs misfortune but did nothing to contribute to it directly.
This is not to say they did not indirectly contribute to otherīs pain. This practice they called "making fun". Small pains inflicted on one of them could keep a group happy for hours. In this way they "made fun" on a funless planet. They called such thing "funny".
The Fomalhauts had discovered a sense of humor.
They finally found delight in life and created art and science and improved their military technology. They had a good time. They paid to see strangely dressed Fomalhauts clobber each other with harmless objects and shout insults at each other, but soon their comedy grew more sophisticated and grew to include their entire world, including exploding rockets and their ever-improving military technology.
Sometimes they would Fomalhaut-a-phone someone in a country they were bombing and make fun of them.
They developed a great Bomb that one nation buried in the core of their planet. They made jokes about it. "Boom!" one would say and they all laughed. Parents told their children to eat the healthy foods - which were all disgusting in keeping with the nature of the planet of Fomalhaut - or be Bombed.
The owners of the Bomb demanded food and pretty stones and pretty pictures and famous music and comedy groups. Then one day someone thought it would be funny to actually explode the Bomb. Many laughed as their fellow Fomalhauts ran around trying to survive the preliminary Fomalhaut-quakes and trickles of lava that chased them, all the futile things they did to prolong their life on an exploding planet. The things some of them did in their last moments were funny too.
Around the star known as Fomalhaut there orbited a planet of such pain, unfairness, and futility that Nature had to select for the will to live. This planet orbits the star Fomalhaut no longer, and the universe is a better place for the lack of it.
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