esteem
Original: esteem on Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
Transcript
Panel 1:
Man (praying, hands clasped): God, if you were dead, would everything be morally permissible?
Panel 2:
God (speech balloon): Yeah, that's why I stick around.
Panel 3:
Man: To enforce good behavior?
Panel 4:
God (speech balloon): No, for your self esteem.
Narration box (God, yellow caption): If I disappeared, you'd act the same. Wake, work, wank, wink. Day in day out, till you die.
Panel 5 (man in profile, listening):
Narration box (God, yellow caption): You like to think you have this freaky spooky dark side that can only be restrained by the intercession of a universe-building god of everything, but the truth is you're just an iddybiddy little ape whose darkest conceivable undertaking would be thieving part of a co-worker's lunch.
Panel 6:
God (caption, man standing on a large block in a dark void): My continued presence allows you to fantasize about what you aren't, and build a mountain of self-regard on a heap of nothing.
Panel 7:
Man: Okay but sometimes I THINK about really mean stuff.
God (speech balloon): Ooooh, you absolute wildman.
Votey:
The man (close-up of his face): I'm gonna poop on company time as if there is no God.
Man (praying, hands clasped): God, if you were dead, would everything be morally permissible?
Panel 2:
God (speech balloon): Yeah, that's why I stick around.
Panel 3:
Man: To enforce good behavior?
Panel 4:
God (speech balloon): No, for your self esteem.
Narration box (God, yellow caption): If I disappeared, you'd act the same. Wake, work, wank, wink. Day in day out, till you die.
Panel 5 (man in profile, listening):
Narration box (God, yellow caption): You like to think you have this freaky spooky dark side that can only be restrained by the intercession of a universe-building god of everything, but the truth is you're just an iddybiddy little ape whose darkest conceivable undertaking would be thieving part of a co-worker's lunch.
Panel 6:
God (caption, man standing on a large block in a dark void): My continued presence allows you to fantasize about what you aren't, and build a mountain of self-regard on a heap of nothing.
Panel 7:
Man: Okay but sometimes I THINK about really mean stuff.
God (speech balloon): Ooooh, you absolute wildman.
Votey:
The man (close-up of his face): I'm gonna poop on company time as if there is no God.
Alt text
A man kneels in prayer and asks God, "God, if you were dead, would everything be morally permissible?" God replies, "Yeah, that's why I stick around." The man asks, "To enforce good behavior?" God answers, "No, for your self esteem." In a long caption God explains that if God vanished, the man would act exactly the same—"Wake, work, wank, wink. Day in day out, till you die"—because he is not a person with a dangerous dark side restrained only by God, but "just an iddybiddy little ape whose darkest conceivable undertaking would be thieving part of a co-worker's lunch." God says his presence just lets the man fantasize about being more than he is and build self-regard on nothing. The man protests, "Okay but sometimes I THINK about really mean stuff," and God mockingly replies, "Ooooh, you absolute wildman." In the votey, a close-up of the man's face shows him declaring with mild defiance, "I'm gonna poop on company time as if there is no God."
Transcribed by Claude Opus 4.8.