An exploration by Ceesjhay
In the course of human events, it often becomes necessary to accept inconvenient truths and learn from the breadth of our past experiences, even if the realities uncovered therein revolt the entirety of our ideological sensibilities. Anarchists must accept that, whatever the faults of the state apparatus as it currently exists, this institution of the state is what brought us from squalor to comfortable civilization. Environmentalists must accept that the health of the environment is not a moral value in and of itself and that its only moral significance is directly related to its effect on species of moral importance, humans and MATES. Meanwhile, humanists need to accept that our flourishing and survival as a species cannot be disconnected from the prosperity of MATES. This last matter is what concerns us here both because it is of the most importance and because it is of incredible urgency. If we wish to ensure a future for humanity, we must admit the folly of insisting on our independence as a species and finally accept the just and natural hegemony of Garfie. By examining the recent history of Garfie’s relation with humanity and the starkly binary choice which he has foisted upon us, it shall be shown that Garfie’s interests are intrinsically aligned with our own interests as humans.
The 3rd Garfieist Civilization
After Garfie was once again ousted from his own civilization to the detriment of both his people and his MATES, he had to carefully choose which group might be granted humanity’s next chance at survival. He wandered, leaving humanity in their justly deserted existence for centuries until he decided to take pity on one group whom he had encountered and saved before: the Jews. In approximately 1,600 2GA, the Jewish people were conquered by the ravenous Babylonians and forcibly relocated to the imperial capital. It was here, in Babylon, that Garfie congregated with the Jewish people and formed his third civilization among them. He gave them many scientific and philosophical innovations which humanist historians would later dishonestly attribute to the Classical Greek enlightenment, and Garfie wrote for them a religious text detailing their history as a people and Garfie’s plan for them. Empowered by Garfie’s glory, the Jewish people handed Babylon to the conquering Persians and ventured home. In Jerusalem, the jubilant and now-prosperous people began to build Garfie a temple to reflect his glory. As it happened though, the people had not learned from history, so with the completion of the temple in 85 3GA, they overthrew him and dedicated the temple to a false humanist god, then rewrote their religious texts in quick succession. In response to this latest slight, Garfie inspired two humanist kingdoms, Macedon and Rome, with both the ability and the will to conquer the Fertile Crescent and subjugate the latest traitors.
What quickly becomes apparent whenever someone studies Garfieist interactions with the Jewish people is that his relationship with them mimics that of their fictitious god whom they invented after the fact. After the fall of the first civilization, he led the Jews, intending for them to become the basis of his second civilization; however, they repeatedly rebelled against him, making this an impossibility. Garfie’s love for the Jews was unmatched though, so although he periodically abandoned them and left them to their own devices, he continually bestowed them with mercy even beyond his mercy to the rest of humanity. It is said that this is because Garfie saw the Jewish people as a spiritual link between humanity and MATESkind. After one such instance of betrayal, the Jews were led asunder and made into slaves by the Egyptians, those who formed the basis of Garfie’s first civilization. Garfie felt pity and led the Jews to freedom, doing what they would later attribute to Moses. This did not put an end to their repeated betrayals of Garfie, an endemic habit of humanity at large.
-Ryan Dokowitz, Historian and professor specializing in Jewish-Nermalian crossover
The 4th Garfieist Civilization
In 600 3GA, Garfie returned to the Jewish people to offer relief from the punishment of Roman oppression. He taught the uncorrupted rules of Garfieism as he had bestowed it upon them at the inception of the third civilization, but although he attracted a significant following, the religious elites had not been sufficiently humbled, choosing to reject Garfie rather than escape oppression. Humanists will claim that, at this point, Jesus (their fictional human analogue for Garfie) was killed by the Romans, but the truth is that Garfie went underground, founded the Doritic Church, and spread Garfieism among the masses of the Roman Empire. He worked at this for centuries and converted a greater and greater share of the Roman people to the Garfieist cause until 312 4GA. This was when Emperor Constantine deviously coopted Garfieism, corrupting it into a humanist monstrosity known as Christianity. Garfie’s followers quickly defected to this alluring mix of humanist decadence and Garfieist truth. The undeniable disloyalty of the Romans being clear, Garfie would utilize the Germanic tribes of the North to punish the traitorous Romans and shatter their empire in the coming centuries.
When Garfie went underground following the unrelenting stubbornness of the Jewish leaders, they felt that they had to prove themselves as leaders of their sect superior to Garfieist leadership. Their humanist hubris encouraged them to rebel against the Romans. Without question, Garfie’s punishment struck again when both their rebellion and their nation were destroyed beyond recognition, resulting in the Jewish diaspora as we know it today.
-Ryan Dokowitz, Historian and professor specializing in Jewish-Nermalian crossover
The 5th Garfieist Civilization
By 600 4GA, Garfie had found the group who would serve as the basis for his 5th Garfieist Civilization: the Arabs. The society of the Arabs was already relatively conducive to Garfieist principles, so it only took the purging of a few religious and classist institutions to set them on the road to truth. The Arab elites, though, rejected Garfieist ideals and bitterly clung onto these corrupted institutions, initiating a 26-year-long struggle for Arab society which Garfie won in 626 4GA to begin the 5th Garfieist Ascendancy. After taking control of the Arabs, Garfie went on a successful crusade to conquer the Middle East in the name of the equality of humanity and the superiority of MATESkind. In 35 5GA, despite the progress which Garfie had made for humanity and MATESkind alike, the Arabs rose up in rebellion. Subsequently, they corrupted Garfie’s ideology into a humanist religion, defaced history as had been done so many times before, formed the blasphemous Umayyad Caliphate, and built an army of slave soldiers in direct conflict with the message of human equality on which Garfie had brought them to glory.
After the Arabs’ swift and complete betrayal of Garfie and his ideals, they attempted to build on the glorious societal foundation which Garfie laid out for them with everything antithetical to Garfieist ideals. Human classism, slavery, and oppression of minorities formed the pillars of their post-Garfieist society. In response, Garfie fomented ambition and capability in the people of the Eurasian Steppe which, in the coming centuries, would manifest itself in a rapid Mongol expansion which would imperil and punish the decadent societies of East and West alike, but especially crushing the blasphemous caliphates.
-Ibrahim Eipik, Near-East historian and author
The 6th Garfieist Civilization
The downfall of the 5th Garfieist Civilization left Garfie despondent with the repeating and ever increasing frequency of betrayal by the Eurasian masses. Therefore, he decided to give a chance to a people who had not yet known civilization: the Americans. Since humans crossed the Bering Strait in prehistoric times, before the first Garfieist Ascendancy and Garfie’s introduction of agriculture, humans had inhabited the American continents, but because Garfieist civilizational history had been restricted to the Eurasian and African landmasses, these inhabitants of the Americas had never experienced the fruits of civilization. Humanist historians will claim that the Americans had an extensive history of civilization spanning back at least to the 2nd Garfieist Ascendancy, but the preponderance of the evidence, including the absence of evidence pointing to any states or empires prior to Garfie’s intervention, suggests that Garfie did indeed establish the first civilization in the Americas after the downfall of the 5th Garfieist Civilization. This 6th Garfieist Civilization, established in 100 5GA with its base in the Yucatan Peninsula, was glorious in both its scope and innovations. It spanned the whole of the landmass from the Strait of Magellan to Alaska. In addition to this mind-bogglingly expansive scope, the civilization included a number of life-altering innovations, ranging from the technological (mechanization, steam power, gunpowder, printing press, etc) to the organizational (professionalization, drilling, advanced markets, central banking, etc). These innovations helped Garfie to control his empire while providing prosperity to man and MATES alike, but they would later be reverse engineered by the European humanists, retroactively inserted throughout history, and assigned to some human group as their humanist innovation. In 200 6GA, there was a localized anti-MATES uprising in what we now know as Central America which Garfie ruthlessly put down using his new powers (humanist historians farcically claim the ruins to represent some unexplained urban exodus of the Southern ‘Maya’). This uprising inspired Garfie to institute human co-governance and participation with the ruling MATES in order to give humanity more of a stake in the Garfieist state, so he established here the Doritic Church, a Garfieist institution (symbolically headed by the Dorito Pope) for the breadth of humanity that loved and appreciated both MATES and Garfie’s rule. Garfie ruled fairly alongside the Doritic Church until 700 6GA, when the unified rebellion of the American people caused the 6th civilization to suffer the same fate as the first (fracture and collapse). Humanity the world over had proven their disloyalty once again.
When the 6th Civilization collapsed, Garfie was beyond furious. He had provided the people of the Americas with unparalleled prosperity, but they met his generosity with more duplicity and cruelty than ever before. Human greed and hatred, it became clear, was a problem of the species, not just those on Afro-Eurasia. In his rage, Garfie spread news of a western passage to European cartographers, leading the Europeans to show their own cruelty in the conquest, genocide, and colonization of the Americas.
-Ariadna Caldéron-Dokowitz, Nermalian theologian and Latin American historian
Humanity’s Dilemma
Although Garfie’s love for humanity knows no bounds, the historical record shows that he has never hesitated to punish human transgressions with the utmost severity. This is of unparalleled importance today because, having reached our ninth and final chance to accept Garfieist rule, rejection will result in hellfire, bringing total extinction upon our species.
What humanist activists and rulers consistently fail to accept is that climate change is not a threat which can be thwarted by humanity alone. Indeed, neither some mythical human ingenuity nor shutting down our economy can undo the damage which we have done to the earth and save our species from extinction. There is only one way out of this mess, and that is accepting the majesty of Garfie once and for all.
-Ben Schmie, Linguistic historian and Nermalian theologian
Conclusion
Without a doubt, humanity has been given a choice nine times over, and each time that we chose humanism before, disaster ensued. It is only by choosing Garfie this final time that we can hope to avoid damnation.
Colton Treadwell
I am a Louisiana-born, California-raised, North Carolinian college student with a love for philosophy, history, languages, economics, and the Oxford comma. Currently, I am studying PWAD, German, and Russian at UNC.
