🙋‍♀️ TREE 387: The conversation just before Thag and Grok invent a religion

One.

LOCATION: INTERIOR, PREHISTORIC CAVE DWELLING, A COOKING FIRE IS BURNING, EVENING

THAG: Grok, I’ve been thinking about the hot sky ball.

GROK (with a mouth full of mammoth meat): Mmm?

THAG: Why?

GROK: Wha oo oo mea y?

THAG: Why does it show up every day? Why is it hot? Why does it get bigger and turn orange before it disappears? Why is it always the same shape but the cold sky ball changes shape?

GROK (swallowing): You see this fire? It’s hot.

THAG: You think the hot sky ball is a fire?

GROK: Maybe.

THAG: Makes sense. But why does it move across the sky every day? Our fire doesn’t move around.

GROK: It does when we make a torch and carry it.

THAG: Yeah but no one’s carrying the hot sky ball

GROK: How do you know?

THAG: Can you see anyone carrying it?

GROK: How else is it going to move?

THAG: So there’s an invisible man carrying the hot sky ball across the sky everyday?

GROK: Or a woman.

THAG: Okay. How do they get up there?

GROK: Wings.

THAG: Wings?

GROK: Yeah.

THAG: Right, so you think an invisible man—

GROK: Or woman.

THAG: —or woman with wings carries the hot sky ball across the sky everyday.

GROK: I do. What do you think?

THAG: I think they’d better stay healthy or we’re going to be awfully cold one day.

Two.

This is Grok. Thag is more bookish.

Three.

When in doubt, Bill Withers.¹

The drive to know why is so strong that we humans will use whatever information we have to piece together a reason, even if that information is woefully inadequate.

Grow slowly
Jeff

1. I love names that are also sentences.