Beyond "Beyond Lies the Wub"
By John Taylor; 07 August, 2004
Like most of his work "Beyond Lies the Wub," a short story by Phillip K.
Dick, should be a movie. I am convinced that it already would be if it
were not for the far reaching tentacles of the meat industry and cattle
breeders' lobby. The story is about the wubs, a race of intelligent,
highly sophisticated creatures on a not too distant planet that look and
move just like hogs. Wubs are an "old race," indolent, pleasure loving
and sympathetic. In fact they are telepaths, able to read and write
directly into other minds. Many other intelligent races come and go on
their planet and their meat tasted very good. Being in no position to
hide, fight or flee, the wubs came up with a different strategy, one not
unlike that of fruit-bearing plants in spreading their seeds.
Dick's story of the wub has a bit of a twist to its tail. I didn't quite
understand what happens in the end and that confused my retelling to
Silvie. I had to draw out a long explanation of what a telepath is.
Fortunately she has a taste for homemade stories by now, in spite of the
large number of high quality, high budget movies she has seen (I was
probably thirty of forty years old before I had viewed as much of the
cinematic art as these kids have seen already). Still, I thought she
would like the story since she has lately firmed her resolution to
become a vegetarian. She didn't mind that my story about the wub was
fuzzy and confused, she liked the happy, ugly, fun loving slob that is a
wub, and as someone trying to lose weight, I had sympathy as well for
the creature.
Before too long Gabby and Bea had befriended the wub they had met and
were having all their adventures together. The strength of Gabby the
wolf and the smarts of Bea the fox was now allied with a wub's
telepathic, sympathetic abilities. My wub became a sort of consultative
super-creature, it could negotiate its way through the trickiest crises.
Like the writers of Star Trek TNG, I found it useful in the extempore
plotting of my Gabby and Bea stories to have a telepath on hand; it
saves a great deal of explanation and dialog to just be able to turn to
your resident telepath and find out exactly what the Others are
thinking. And when you can't be bothered coming up with a complicated
exchange of dialog, you just use the wub to distribute ideas directly
into various characters' heads.
Gabby and Bea's wub friend thus becomes a sort of intellectual card
dealer. No, our wub is more, he also deals out feelings and virtues of
God. Example? A toddler on a pirate ship wanders out onto the plank and
looks down; it begins to panic. The wub calms it by turning its fear
into fear of God, which chases out all other fears; meanwhile, the fox
holds the babe while the wolf carries them both back along the plank and
home to safety. That sort of thing.
My first major wub story came on demand last week when we visited the
last, dying hours of Port Colbourne's "Canal Days" festival. The sun
beat down on our heads, burning my naked shoulders which even now still
are hurting. Silvie and Thomas played in the wading pool and then in the
play structures, and I told the story intermittently between their play.
My constant thoughts about obesity affected my story of Bea, Gabby and
the wub. I told Silvie about how the wub could barely follow the fox and
wolf on their adventures, and how sad he felt about this. His stumbling
became worse, for Gabby and Bea traveled the world to find people in
danger to save.
In idle moments I have become rather like a medical student, constantly
assessing people according to their level of health. For years now I
habitually count up the number of obese versus non-obese in every group
of adults I enter into. Our Spiritual Assembly, for example, is about a
six three ratio of overweight to thins. Among the adult caregivers in
this wading pool it was about fifty percent, but among older caregivers
it was much worse, maybe three quarters obese. I use my own body as a
marker since I am into the borderline of the red part of the BMI chart.
If someone is fatter than me they are some variation of huge, gross,
obscene, or gargantuan obese. Sad to say, I am actually a thin obese,
fat by all standards except that of this Age of Obesity. I think of it
like this: I am carrying around more than the equivalent in fat of my
son Thomas, my almost five year old son, who weighs almost fifty pounds.
Better to have another child in the world than my sixty or seventy pound
burden of fat.
Finally Gabby and Bea decided to help the wub lose weight. They tried
and failed many times. Dieting did not work -- just like in the real
world. Finally they all decided to regulate their lifestyles together.
They all ate the same healthy meals, they covered themselves with
monitors, set up alarms for telling them when a health rule had been
broken, established a system of rewards for exercise, focused upon the
long term, and on and on.
I spewed out all sorts of ideas I have been thinking about for shedding
pounds myself. It was a sort of mental exercise, treating this fat and
lazy wub in the story. The three friends, Gabby, Bea and the wub, all
helped each other in their objective. I listed their gradual
improvements. The first year it lost a hundred pounds, the second,
eighty, the third, two hundred pounds. It was all pure, unadulterated
propaganda, mostly for myself but good things for a ten year old to
hear. There is too little health awareness in children's educations.
Fortunately, Silvie ate it all up, as it were. She did not care how
baldly tendentious my health tips disguised as a story were. With every
year that the wub improved his weight permanently she was suitably
impressed, letting out her characteristic "Wwooww!" of shock and awe. I
found her exclamations strangely encouraging, and still do. When I eat
something good rather than something bad, her cheer seems to ring in my
ears.
This morning I came across the Guardain's answer to a question you hear
a lot from new believers around Baha'i election time, one that does not
come up in a nomination system, "Should I vote for myself?" I must have
read this before but I don't remember it. I bring it up now rather than
saving it for next Ridvan because what Shoghi Effendi, or rather what
his secretary says in his behalf, goes way beyond the immediate topic.
He or she says,
"As to your last question whether the individual voter can
conscientiously vote for himself. The Guardian believes that not only
the Baha'i voter has the right, but is under the moral obligation to do
so, in case he finds himself worthy and capable of assuming the
responsibilities and duties imposed upon the members of every duly
elected Baha'i assembly. It is for every believer to carefully weigh his
own merits and powers, and after a thorough examination of his self
decide whether he is fit for such a position or not. There is nothing
more harmful to the individual - and also to society than false humility
which is hypocritical, and hence unworthy of a true Baha'i. The true
believer is one who is conscious of his strength as well as of his
weakness, and who, fully availing himself of the manifold opportunities
and blessings which God gives him, strives to overcome his defects and
weaknesses and this by means of a scrupulous adherence to all the laws
and commandments revealed by God through His Manifestation." (Shoghi
Effendi, Light of Divine Guidance v I, p. 69)
The Guardian's secretary probably should have rewritten this passage;
beyond the muddled diction there seems to be an important set of ideas.
In fact, this paragraph is a mini-course in self-assertiveness. I had
not thought of false humility as harmful. I had not even considered
voting for myself, assuming that the beam in my eye is bound to be worse
than any slivers in other people's eyes. And again, the idea of being
conscious of my strengths as well as my weaknesses, and that this is
part of the qualifications that make us believers, well that is new,
shocking, awesome.
Regards,
John Taylor
helpmatejet@yahoo.com
Â
Blog: http://badiblog.blogspot.com/
Â
Badi Web Site: TBA
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