[The following is the forty-third of many posts–here is the first, here is the second, here is the third, here is the fourth, here is the fifth, here is the sixth, here is the seventh, here is the eighth, here is the ninth, here is the tenth, here is the eleventh, here is the twelfth, here is the thirteenth, here is the fourteenth, here is the fifteenth, here is the sixteenth, here is the seventeenth, here is the eighteenth, here is the nineteenth, here is the twentieth, here is the twenty-first, here is the twenty-second, here is the twenty-third, here is the twenty-fourth, here is the twenty-fifth, here is the twenty-sixth, here is the twenty-seventh, here is the twenty-eighth, here is the twenty-ninth, here is the thirtieth, here is the thirty-first, here is the thirty-second, here is the thirty-third, here is the thirty-fourth, here is the thirty-fifth, here is the thirty-sixth, here is the thirty-seventh, here is the thirty-eighth, here is the thirty-ninth, here is the fortieth, here is the forty-first, and here is the forty-second–about a fictitious discovery of ancient manuscripts of a religious text of narratives and magic spells. Its purpose for my readers and me is to provide a cosmology and mythography on which I am basing much, if not most, of my fiction–short stories and novels. If anyone is interested in reading this fiction, he or she can use these blog posts as references to explain the nature of the magic and universe in my fiction.]
Translator’s Introduction
The last of the “Trough” chapters describes a world without any knowledge of the Crims, let alone how to worship them or use the magic of the Tanah. In the eyes of the ancient tribe that wrote these texts and prophesied this future in their visions, it’s a future world that has totally lost its way, with nothing to give its people any kind of moral guidance.
Accordingly, the trough depicted here is a particularly bleak one. Though a corresponding crest is supposed to follow it, as was mentioned in the translator’s introduction to Troughs, Chapter One, there’s an ambiguity as to whether humanity’s salvation will result in physical survival in a better world, or if it will be only a kind of spiritual survival, a nirvana without physicality.
In any case, this trough also shows a disturbing, uncanny prescience of our modern, capitalist world, or so do some of the researchers in our group believe. Most people will face appalling poverty, state repression, and social alienation, while a small elite own most of the land, money, and property. There’s a description of money-making that reads like a formula from Marx’s Capital–M-C-M’, meaning money-commodity-valorized money (i.e., money with added profit).
Finally, there is a prophesied man who will usher in the end of the world: Christ, or anti-Christ? The text is unclear. Some will think he’s the former; many will think he’s the latter. We researchers think he sounds like a certain contemporary US president.
Chapter Three
O, woe to those in the future who will forget the Crims! We have seen that the people of the world will lose their way, and the punishment of their sins will be too great for most to bear.
These people will know a new kind of slavery, in which the slaves are given wages (though very little), are allowed to change from one master to another of their own accord (if they can find one to give them money and thus save them from total destitution), yet are slaves nonetheless. Exceedingly few have the most, and almost all have almost nothing. The people seem to know or care little about each other, or about themselves. People are not close to each other.
An oppressive state watches the slaves closely, puts them in prisons to work like even more abject slaves, and kills people in other nations through constant war. Wealth is created by transforming money into a product to be sold, which is then made into money again, yet a greater amount of money than before, most of it to be kept by the masters. If too little of this wealth is made in one’s own nation, one goes out to other nations, steals what is in those other nations, and makes the greater amounts of money in those other nations, all to be taken back to the first nation.
Attempts will be made to overthrow these greedy rich men, to establish just and fair societies, but through the clever machinations of those men, who always trick their people into believing that the makers of those just societies are making unjust ones, these attempts will be thwarted, plunging the world into worse oppression and greater despair.
At one point in our vision, when matters seemed to be at their worst, we saw a man emerge and rise to the highest seat of power. Our vision became cloudy and unclear: we could not decide if he was a righteous man avenging the unjust by destroying the world, or an evil man completing the destruction of it.
Some of the people thought him a saviour; many others thought him a demon. Still others thought him a mere fool raised far too high. He saw himself as a saviour; there were pictures depicting him as such. His face was orange. Whatever his intentions were, he assuredly brought on the destruction of many, leading to the end of the trough.
Infinite Ocean 