Wauism

Sometimes I think the best thing I ever wrote was this piece about a brand-new computer-aided religion called "Wauism.” (It looks like it’s pronounced “Wow-ism;” however, it’s intended it to be pronounced “Wah-ism;” but in any case.)

Originally, it was a hoax letter I sent to a bunch of my friends, hoping to enlist them in a new cult, or at least to send me money. Back in the zine days, I used to occasionally produce gag pieces like this; onetime I mailed out several dozen fake Christmas letters from a made-up family named the “Waverlys;” the funniest joke in that one, I think, was the Dad writing about how he had broken a leg skiing in France; fortunately, he said, it wasn’t his leg.

Anyway, sometime later, I posted “Wauism” to my student website when I was in graduate school at the UW; now, some ten or so years later, you can find it here and there on the internet. I even recall, I think, seeing a usenet newsgroup devoted to discussions of it some years ago; there weren’t many postings, but a few of them debated it seriously.

I have this occasional fantasy that Wauism will someday be seen as a real religion by people in the future; certainly, its ecumenical spirit might go a long way towards alleviating some of the sectarian violence we see in the world today. Or at least help make people a little less guilty about their little guilty secrets.

If that were the case, though, would I get to be high priest? I sure hope not, although in many ways, I think my background and training has pretty well prepared me to be worshipped…but who’s hasn’t?

Of course, there’s something ironic about an atheist being the founder of a new religion; it’s like someone, say a President, sworn to uphold his nation’s Constitution, engaging in all sort of activities that run counter to that document’s principles.

Oh, yeah. Right