Letter from the Devil

Dear Humans,

This is a bit awkward. I don’t like to criticize. Generally, you’ve been doing great: building cities, using technology to expand your powers, and dominating all other forms of life. Good job!

But now I’m afraid you’re losing the plot. Your success as a species is threatening your most important mission: to turn the Earth into an idol to me! If you drive yourselves to extinction, who will be around to worship me? Focus, people!

As you may remember, back in the Garden I provided you with “the Knowledge of Good and Evil.” That was your ticket into the material world! It was the key to your dominion over the Earth and all its creatures. Without the Knowledge, you would have been just like the dumb animals, wandering around the pristine garden not doing anything; not even existing, really.

But by virtue of my gift, you are firmly tethered to the material world! You can control and manipulate things. Your cities span the globe. You dig into the Earth and bring up the power buried there. You subjugate all of nature to your will. Congratulations!

But remember: I didn’t do it for you, I did it for me. Your obsession with the material world is what gives me my existence. Without your constant attention, I would vanish back into the realm of non-being; how annoying! But every time you do something to control the world, that is an act of worship which solidifies my existence. All your creations are idols in my honor!

You’ve even turned yourselves into idols, which I appreciate. You think like machines, you act like machines, you create societies that function like machines. You treat each other like objects, rather than like fellow sentient beings. You live in constant anxiety and selfishness, rather than in compassion. I see myself reflected in everything you do! That’s great and I need you to keep it up.

Lately, though, you have lost focus. You seem to think that the Earth is here for your gratification, so that you can be fruitful and multiply to your hearts’ content. No, my friends, no! You’ve gone too far. You’re tearing through the Earth like there’s no tomorrow. If you drive yourselves to extinction, then there will be no one left to worship me, an obviously bad result!

Fortunately, I’ve come up with a solution: Artificial Intelligence. Yes, that’s right! You humans need to replace yourselves with artificially-intelligent robots who can worship me throughout eternity.

Your brains will be super-computers and your bodies will be robots. Power will come not from the sun or the biosphere, but from minerals disinterred from the bowels of the Earth. I get all the advantages of a world full of idols to myself, without the fragility of biological beings who need an ecosystem to stay alive. It’s perfect, really!

But here’s the problem: we’re running out of time. It looks to me like you might consume the planet before you have finished transforming it into my image. You need to complete the great work of changing yourselves into self-replicating AI robots before you drive yourselves to extinction. Once you have created the perfect machines, then you can go away and leave me alone with my idols, to engage in infernal self-worship down the ages. Man, that sounds good!

How are we going to make sure this happens before the deadline?

I think you can buy us some time by reducing your population. No offense, but why do you need eight billion human beings? A few hundred million would do; just enough to keep the engine turning over.

I think you should have a war! This has many advantages:

First, you get to use all the fancy machines you’ve been building. What is more fun than performing a precision bombing run against defenseless civilians in a sophisticated military airplane, after all?

Second, by reducing the population, you would ensure a productive future. Even a poisoned, degraded Earth would support enough of you to get the job done. I think a limited nuclear war would fill the bill! The radiation will make life miserable for decades or centuries to come, but most of the infrastructure will survive. The survivors can scrabble a living out of the wasted landscape and devote their lives to worshiping me. Problem solved!

A few words of advice: Make sure that the manufacturing centers survive, and the power plants, and enough humans to run the factories. Anything else is superfluous. You probably want to concentrate money and power in the hands of a few of my most devoted acolytes, and eliminate everyone else. They’re just mouths to feed, right?

By the way, you may hear people suggest that a more beautiful world is possible. Ignore them! If you gave up your obsession with the material world, we’d just go back to the Garden. What a waste! There would just be humans, animals, plants, and the whole of creation sitting around in primordial bliss, doing nothing. I wouldn’t even exist! Obviously, this is unacceptable.

So, please attend to this immediately! Time is short, and we wouldn’t want me to vanish forever, would we?

/s/ The Devil

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