The Brand Name

Follow-up to: The Seller of Stars

"In the beginning was the brand name, and the brand name was with God, and the brand name was God." John 1:1 (PKD).

In Philip K. Dick's essay How to Build a Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later, he relates a tale about the translation of his book Ubik into the German language. The translator looked at the declaration "I am the word," in the context of the speaker making several statements to the effect that it was God, and concluded that what PKD was having the speaker say was "I am the brand name." PKD goes on to briefly speculate what The Gospel According to St. John would have looked like had the same man been responsible for translating that, too.

A silly anecdote but one that reminded me of the main theme that I present in The Seller of Stars: Satan's best trick is in convincing us to look no further than the Almighty Dollar and that there is nothing in this world that cannot be bought, and no man in it who will not sell his soul so long as the price is right.

These two sides of the coin are where he suckers us in. We want to believe that whatever we want is there for the taking, requiring only a fee for purchase. We also want to believe that everyone else is all-too-willing to sell their souls for a dollar, because it's easier to do it ourselves so long as we can say that we're no worse than the rest of the crowd.

The man in The Seller of Stars sold his soul for his fondest desire, whatever it may have been. He doesn't even need to be told that everyone else is doing it. He just needs the opportunity to make the purchase, and is willing to believe that his eyes- his spiritual sensitivity- is a commodity to be traded like everything else.

Edit 14-08-2013 It has been mentioned that some people have mistaken or may mistake my reference to PKD's essay as an endorsement of it as scripture, as inspired, or anything else along these lines. To reemphasize what I hope is clear to most already, I bring it up because it helped to cement in my mind the imagery of Satan wanting to convince us that, in effect, God is not God, but money is.