Midterm Post 1, God's Debris - Chris Lowry

Well hey there, glad you could join me.

I have decided to blog about one of my favorite books, God's Debris by Scott Adams, the creator of the Dilbert comic strips. This book however, is a far cry from a comic. Adams takes a leap across genres to write this wonderfully stimulating philosophical adventure. Since I first picked up this book in high school to the present day, it has provided me with countless hours of thought and debate. It is generally described as a "thought experiment wrapped in a story" and was basically designed by the author to make your brain spin around your head a little bit.

I'd like to do start this post with a basic overview of how the book works, and the basic premise of the story. To begin with, there is an average package delivery man on a routine delivery on a drizzly day. He has to deliver a package to a road he isn't familiar with, and in fact has never thought existed up until this point. After knocking on the door and not receiving an answer, he walks into the house to discover a tiny, shriveled up old man wrapped in a blanket curled in a rocking chair by the fireplace. From here on out, the old man engages the young man in a series of conversations, all stemming from the old man's intuitive and seemingly impossible questions.

During my blogs, I am going to talk about and explore some of the questions and analogies that the old man creates.

One of the first questions he poses to the delivery man is, "Did you deliver the package, or did the package deliver you?"

(I like including pictures. They make it pretty.)

It is an interesting concept. Most people would agree that the man does indeed deliver the package.  Without the man to carry it, how could the package get anywhere? But without the address on the package, the man would never get to his destination. 

The fact is that BOTH are necessary. Without one, the other would get nowhere. So in a way, the package does deliver the man.

Isn't it weird how our perceptions can be so mislead by our superiority complex?