In the beginning Man said: “Let Me have Happiness!”
But nothing happened.
Man got sad and Man got angry. It seemed to Man that He was responsible for taking care of children that He brought into the world, so whoever had put Man on Earth ought to be responsible for taking care of Him.
But burning sun and bitter cold, illness and accident and age, came to hurt Man, and no one made it better.
Man was also hurt by his various inequalities with his fellow Man: some Men were beautiful, some were strong, some were smart, some were healthy, some were their ideal weight; but some were not. And not only were Men hurt because their weaknesses cost them opportunities and affection, but also because they could anticipate this ill-treatment and imagine how much better life would be if only...
And then there was that universal insult that the world dealt to every Man: Death. Some Men died young, and some men died old but none found immortality.
No matter how badly Man wanted to solve one of these difficulties, there was nothing He could do, and knowing His own impotence was salt in Man’s wounds.
Man cried out to Himself and the unheeding universe: “Why?”
“Where is Justice? Where are Rhyme and Reason? Where Order?”
He thought: Perhaps they are a little smaller or a little farther away than I can see. So he made telescopes and microscopes with which to interrogate the universe. Order he found, of sorts, and Rhyme, and Reason, but there was no Justice to be found. Atoms know nothing of Justice or the assumption it is based upon, Virtue. There was no benevolent, humane god to define Virtue and enforce Justice, and the dumb universe was decidedly inhumane.
Now Man was very distressed, and He said to himself: “There MUST be Justice! Perhaps I have been too hasty, and I have accidentally discarded the unlikely solution as a crackpot theory…”
He painstakingly looked at all the things he has discarded during his search. Antique religions, antiquated philosophies, alchemy, psuedoscience, magick… there was nothing. Man saw that He had evolved to be compatible with the social universe of His fellow Men, to the exclusion of the physical universe.
It was not in Man’s nature to accept this – His soul cried out for a universe that operated on poetic justice, where a Man could accomplish anything if He wanted it badly enough. “There must must must be justice!” he said in a voice half whimper and half snarl. “If I cannot find any, then I will damn well make My Own!”
Accordingly He set machines of metal, and plastic, of computer code, and of DNA to work, commanding them to reshape the world, that it might be ruled by Justice. And in turn, Man reshaped Himself so His own cells and body would treat Him justly.
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(the actual story here)
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In the beginning, Man said: “Let Me have Happiness!” One million years later, He answered Himself: “Here, at last, is a just world in which I may pursue my happiness with unclipp’d wings.”