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The Superiority of the Religion of the Ranamemi

It is an enjoyable pastime to survey the peoples of Zyem and observe how each has met the metaphysical challenges of life, and to realize how superior is the Ranamemi approach to all others. Space does not permit us to consider every form of religious expression in the world. but we can consider some of the major ones.

The Kadane come first to mind, inasmuch as they are sometimes called the most religious people on earth. Certainly their thousands of gods and temples at every crossroads give no little credence to this assertion. Moreover, theirs appears to be no empty devotion, but an integral part of daily life: their civil calendar is organized around the names and feasts of their gods, personal and domestic rituals abound and are practiced assiduously, and their ethical system, based on the emulation of their legendary king Prabaset, has produced a level of morality among them to which any people would do well to aspire.

Yet there is a dark side to Kadane religion, and that is an unnecessary fear of death. Now, certainly every living thing has a drive to continued existence. One need only observe even plants and trees going to extraordinary lengths to secure the stuff of life, to know that the life force is strong in all mortal beings. And, when death approaches a thinking being, it is natural to experience some fear, if only of the possibility that the process of death itself will be painful. Yet the rational mind can take comfort in the fact that, after the death of the body, the mind is simply no more. While it is impossible to imagine what the state of non-being would truly be like, it surely has no features that should frighten. Thus, a Ranamemi faces death sometimes with a healthy fear, sometimes with regret, sometimes with anger, but always with the resignation that comes from accepting that this is the roll of Lady Chaos' dice, no more or less, and that death will bring a final and total end.

A Kadane, however, must always face death with the fear that it will bring not quietus, but punishment. Their ethical system is based on emulating the Ninety-Nine Qualities of Prabaset, and this is done so that the devotee may prove worthy to join Prabaset's Army of the Just in the Good Land of the afterlife (what happens to those who fail to secure Prabaset's approval is not usually made clear, but is assumed to be very bad). Even their ritual observances are considered ineffective, if this approval is lacking. Yet, so far as I know, no Kadane has ever tried to quantify exactly how good one must be, how often one must practice virtue or what percentage of achievement of a Quality is enough, to enter Prabaset's Good Land after death, so striving for total perfection is the only logical choice. But no matter how faithfully one attempts to emulate Prabaset, who could ever claim to have perfectly incorporated all 99 Qualities into their own lives? Thus, there must always be fear of the judgment after death, for even the most scrupulous of worshippers (indeed, in a cruel irony, the most scrupulous are generally the most unsure of their virtue).

The Kadane sometimes call us, the Ranamemi, the most irreligious people, but this comes about, I believe, because they do not understand our relation to the gods, so different from their own. While we cannot lay claim to thousands of gods, our hundred or so serve us very well, and we return the favor. As we have seen, the Kadane worship of their gods has as its ultimate goal the securing of a place in the Good Land. While, along the way, rituals and prayers may confer benefits in this life, that is not their primary purpose. This is, of course, due to the otherworldly orientation of all of Kadane religion.

We Ranamemi, in contrast, have no "otherworld" to distract us. Our lives and our gods operate in the here-and-now. If some ritual or practice has no practical benefit, then what is the point of performing it? It is obvious to anyone after a little analysis that there is some sort of organizing principle at work in reality. Our tradition has, through trial and error over centuries, come to identify this principle as the gods of our pantheon. We have come to see that these gods can be influenced by our rituals and prayers to the benefit of the devotees. Some gods are efficacious for certain tasks, or different times of day or year, or different phases of our lives, according to their likes and temperments. While we have made a study of the attributes and proclivities of the gods, the only way to truly know which god is efficacious in a certain situation is to invoke that god, and if the invocation is without result, to try a different one. Thus is set up a healthy relationship between gods and mortals of the exchange of value (our devotion) for value (the gods' favor), in marked contrast to the abject manner in which the Kadane beg their gods for their favor. It may be, as the Kadane say, that all gods are emanations from one hidden god, but if so, that god is so well hidden that neither its name nor attributes can be known. And of what use is devotion to a nameless, powerless deity?

The Thisbo and Udank peoples present interesting variations on the contrasts we have delineated. The Thisbo claim they believe in nothing. Along with us, they recognize no afterlife, but, apparently blind to any deeper dimension of life, they also reject the idea of the gods. They claim that every person is a totally free agent, with full responsibility for all of life's successes and failures. This approach to life is somewhat bracing in its austerity, but it ultimately appears to be unsatisfactory for the Thisbo people themselves. Although their societies are officially atheistic, in reality, a subculture of personal superstitions flourishes. These are not well developed enough or widespread enough to earn the name of rituals, but they serve somewhat the same function, being little actions or habits designed to give one an edge over the normal chaos of life. Another flaw in their world-view is their tacit belief that people can bring about good things in their life through force of will, something they call "as-ifing". The flip side of this, however, is the belief that bad things are somehow the result of one's failure to prevent them, or even one's active attracting of "bad energies". This leads to much useless self-recrimination and a certain hardness of heart towards the less fortunate.

The Udank are a spiritual people, and in many ways similar to we Ranamemi. They believe that all living things, and many non-living ones, possess a spirit, and that those spirits must be propitiated for the violence done to them as a natural consequence of human activity. They also believe in and worship the spirits of their ancestors, but they do not have a concept of an organized afterlife as such. Unlike our gods, these spirits are somewhat vague in nature (even the ancestor spirits lack anything like a personality), and devotions tend not to be oriented to receiving benefits, but merely averting the revenge of an angry spirit. Except for holidays honoring the ancestors, there is little collective ritual, and most devotions are private.

As a Ranamemi, I cannot help but be proud of our religion and our gods. Uniquely in the world, our religion has been founded on observation and is sustained through honest and straightforward transactions between gods and mortals. We see the present with clear eyes, without any sense of guilt or offense or existential fear, secure in the knowledge that the organizing principle of the Universe is accessible to us and open to negotiations. What it must be like to be an adherent of a different worldview, I can only shudder to imagine.

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