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hwangoOh, hello children. No, I'm not working today - I'm taking the day off, and I'm just going to sit here and read because I'm old and tired and falling apart. A story? Did you not hear what I just said? You know what, never mind. I’ve just thought of the perfect story for you today.
There once lived a loathsome hobgoblin called Fuligo. Fuligo was not a particularly happy hobgoblin. Indeed, Fuligo felt that life mostly consisted of suffering, disappointment, and despair. Accordingly, he took perverse delight in bringing things to life so that they might share in this suffering, disappointment, and despair.
Hobgoblins with less ambition or artistic flair might have brought simple objects like doormats or salad tongs to life so that they would be doomed to live out nightmarish existences of being trodden on by muddy feet or being forever thrust into bowls full of lettuce drenched in thousand island dressing, but Fuligo constructed golems. No, golems aren't just magic robots. That would be like saying that humans are just magic corpses. Although, okay, I guess that's a better metaphor than I had originally thought.
But just to be pedantic about it, a robot is a machine designed to perform work, but a golem is a person or creature crafted from inanimate materials and then brought to life. Most traditional golems are made of clay or stone, but they can be made of less likely materials such as glass, or salt, or paper, or the stitched together discarded pieces of people, although at that point things start to become very ethically questionable, and you also get into philosophical arguments about whether you're really building a golem or just quilting a zombie. But I digress.
Fuligo made golems out of garbage.
Right now you might be picturing Fuligo (a mistake on your part I assure you, as he was exceedingly grotesque) just taking any old random pile of garbage, waving a magic wand over it, and then "zing!," it was a golem. Well, you would be wrong. Fuligo was an artist, carefully choosing his materials and precisely shaping them to his designs. In fact, like many artists, Fuligo would sometimes work tirelessly on a project for weeks only to grow dissatisfied with what he had wrought and then throw it all away, or spend days at a time procrastinating and accomplishing nothing, or lose entire afternoons to reading books about color theory.
Also, no magic wands were involved. Furthermore, at no point in the process of awakening a golem does anything go "zing!"
So, Fuligo could sometimes spend weeks upon weeks crafting a single golem, but even at that slow a pace you might think that the countryside would soon be crawling with his creations. However, partly due to the materials he used and partly because Fuligo felt that art should be be fleeting and ephemeral if it was to be truly appreciated, Fuligo's golems seldom lasted more than a few weeks before they fell apart and died. Now, if it seems horrifying to live a life of uncertain duration and then gradually wear out until you eventually die, then all I can say to you as an old person is that I am way ahead of you.
But wait, I can practically hear you thinking, why did he go through all of this trouble and effort just to make something that would only suffer and be miserable and then fall apart and die? But the truth is that many things in this world pretty much only exist to make more versions of things like themselves. In fact, this is true of most animals, plants, educational institutions, and organized religions.
The process was not always so time-consuming, though. One particular afternoon, Fuligo was seized by so much inspiration and enthusiasm that he crafted a golem in just a few hours. The materials he used were not even the higher-tier trash that might have been interesting to scavengers, but the true garbage that no one could possibly want.
Golems can have varying levels of sophistication and autonomy, and if you plan to have a golem perform labor for you like some sort of mere magical robot, then you probably build it with specific capabilities and not a lot of autonomy. Fuligo had no particular purpose in mind for this golem, except as an instantiation of the concepts of ephemera, waste, and the nihilistic dread that can only come from meeting your creator and knowing for a fact that they care nothing for you and that your existence has no meaning. Accordingly, he created it with no particlar skills, a high level of awareness, and loads of autonomy.
“Awaken, my creation!” Fuligo cackled as he held aloft his magical orb, and with a dramatic “twang!” the golem awakened to life. See, you were nearly right after all.
The golem opened its eyes, gazed upon its creator, and experienced several emotions. It did not look happy.
Fuligo was delighted, insofar as he was capable of feeling so admist all of his suffering, disappointment, and despair. Then his stomach growled insistently, and he instructed the golem to wait there while he fetched himself some lunch. Fuligo scuttled off to his kitchen and assembled something vaguely edible in a large bowl, armed himself with his finest spoon, and then sat down with the spoon in one hand and a book about color theory in the other. Fortunately, he did not mix up which of these to put in his mouth...mostly.
While Fuligo ate and read a particularly venomous essay about whether incarnadine could beat vermillion in a fight, and occasionally paused to extract pages from between his teeth, the golem decided that it would rather not wait for Fuligo to return after all, and it exercised its abundance of autonomy by getting up and wandering out of Fuligo's workshop. By the time Fuligo had finished learning about the latest research into whether metapurple was real or not, the golem was long gone.
Oh, the magical adventures the golem had! In no time at all, it had experienced the full panoply of emotion! Despair! Apathy! Other kinds of despair! And also...true love?
Could it be? Was this truly what it was to love? But, oh no - its love was fading! How could this be? Was love a lie? Are we all truly alone? Probably, but in this particular case it was simply that an opossum had crawled up the golem's leg and eaten the overripe banana that formed part of the garbage golem's rotting heart. It's easy to confuse an overripe banana for love - they both start off sweet but eventually turn into blackened filth, and both can make you fall head over heels.
Losing your first great love can be very upsetting, particularly when you lose it because of an opossum, and the golem felt all of its despair turn into rage as the opossum also helped itself to some shriveled pieces of onion. The golem knew very well who was responsible for its tormented existence, and it ran all the way back to Fuligo's workshop, smashed through the door, and...
Well, suffice to say that afterwards Fuligo was a good candidate for being included in a zombie quilt.
The lesson to be learned here is that emotions are the result of complex chemical processes, even if sometimes those processes are happening in a decomposing banana. That, and inevitably death comes for us all, possibly hastened by the appearance of an opossum.
Now, go away all of you so I can get back to my book. Apprarently, there's exciting new evidence that heliotrope evolved from ultraviolet.
There once lived a loathsome hobgoblin called Fuligo. Fuligo was not a particularly happy hobgoblin. Indeed, Fuligo felt that life mostly consisted of suffering, disappointment, and despair. Accordingly, he took perverse delight in bringing things to life so that they might share in this suffering, disappointment, and despair.
Hobgoblins with less ambition or artistic flair might have brought simple objects like doormats or salad tongs to life so that they would be doomed to live out nightmarish existences of being trodden on by muddy feet or being forever thrust into bowls full of lettuce drenched in thousand island dressing, but Fuligo constructed golems. No, golems aren't just magic robots. That would be like saying that humans are just magic corpses. Although, okay, I guess that's a better metaphor than I had originally thought.
But just to be pedantic about it, a robot is a machine designed to perform work, but a golem is a person or creature crafted from inanimate materials and then brought to life. Most traditional golems are made of clay or stone, but they can be made of less likely materials such as glass, or salt, or paper, or the stitched together discarded pieces of people, although at that point things start to become very ethically questionable, and you also get into philosophical arguments about whether you're really building a golem or just quilting a zombie. But I digress.
Fuligo made golems out of garbage.
Right now you might be picturing Fuligo (a mistake on your part I assure you, as he was exceedingly grotesque) just taking any old random pile of garbage, waving a magic wand over it, and then "zing!," it was a golem. Well, you would be wrong. Fuligo was an artist, carefully choosing his materials and precisely shaping them to his designs. In fact, like many artists, Fuligo would sometimes work tirelessly on a project for weeks only to grow dissatisfied with what he had wrought and then throw it all away, or spend days at a time procrastinating and accomplishing nothing, or lose entire afternoons to reading books about color theory.
Also, no magic wands were involved. Furthermore, at no point in the process of awakening a golem does anything go "zing!"
So, Fuligo could sometimes spend weeks upon weeks crafting a single golem, but even at that slow a pace you might think that the countryside would soon be crawling with his creations. However, partly due to the materials he used and partly because Fuligo felt that art should be be fleeting and ephemeral if it was to be truly appreciated, Fuligo's golems seldom lasted more than a few weeks before they fell apart and died. Now, if it seems horrifying to live a life of uncertain duration and then gradually wear out until you eventually die, then all I can say to you as an old person is that I am way ahead of you.
But wait, I can practically hear you thinking, why did he go through all of this trouble and effort just to make something that would only suffer and be miserable and then fall apart and die? But the truth is that many things in this world pretty much only exist to make more versions of things like themselves. In fact, this is true of most animals, plants, educational institutions, and organized religions.
The process was not always so time-consuming, though. One particular afternoon, Fuligo was seized by so much inspiration and enthusiasm that he crafted a golem in just a few hours. The materials he used were not even the higher-tier trash that might have been interesting to scavengers, but the true garbage that no one could possibly want.
Golems can have varying levels of sophistication and autonomy, and if you plan to have a golem perform labor for you like some sort of mere magical robot, then you probably build it with specific capabilities and not a lot of autonomy. Fuligo had no particular purpose in mind for this golem, except as an instantiation of the concepts of ephemera, waste, and the nihilistic dread that can only come from meeting your creator and knowing for a fact that they care nothing for you and that your existence has no meaning. Accordingly, he created it with no particlar skills, a high level of awareness, and loads of autonomy.
“Awaken, my creation!” Fuligo cackled as he held aloft his magical orb, and with a dramatic “twang!” the golem awakened to life. See, you were nearly right after all.
The golem opened its eyes, gazed upon its creator, and experienced several emotions. It did not look happy.
Fuligo was delighted, insofar as he was capable of feeling so admist all of his suffering, disappointment, and despair. Then his stomach growled insistently, and he instructed the golem to wait there while he fetched himself some lunch. Fuligo scuttled off to his kitchen and assembled something vaguely edible in a large bowl, armed himself with his finest spoon, and then sat down with the spoon in one hand and a book about color theory in the other. Fortunately, he did not mix up which of these to put in his mouth...mostly.
While Fuligo ate and read a particularly venomous essay about whether incarnadine could beat vermillion in a fight, and occasionally paused to extract pages from between his teeth, the golem decided that it would rather not wait for Fuligo to return after all, and it exercised its abundance of autonomy by getting up and wandering out of Fuligo's workshop. By the time Fuligo had finished learning about the latest research into whether metapurple was real or not, the golem was long gone.
Oh, the magical adventures the golem had! In no time at all, it had experienced the full panoply of emotion! Despair! Apathy! Other kinds of despair! And also...true love?
Could it be? Was this truly what it was to love? But, oh no - its love was fading! How could this be? Was love a lie? Are we all truly alone? Probably, but in this particular case it was simply that an opossum had crawled up the golem's leg and eaten the overripe banana that formed part of the garbage golem's rotting heart. It's easy to confuse an overripe banana for love - they both start off sweet but eventually turn into blackened filth, and both can make you fall head over heels.
Losing your first great love can be very upsetting, particularly when you lose it because of an opossum, and the golem felt all of its despair turn into rage as the opossum also helped itself to some shriveled pieces of onion. The golem knew very well who was responsible for its tormented existence, and it ran all the way back to Fuligo's workshop, smashed through the door, and...
Well, suffice to say that afterwards Fuligo was a good candidate for being included in a zombie quilt.
The lesson to be learned here is that emotions are the result of complex chemical processes, even if sometimes those processes are happening in a decomposing banana. That, and inevitably death comes for us all, possibly hastened by the appearance of an opossum.
Now, go away all of you so I can get back to my book. Apprarently, there's exciting new evidence that heliotrope evolved from ultraviolet.
