{"id":2632,"date":"2009-01-27T04:48:16","date_gmt":"2009-01-27T11:48:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/generoseberry.com\/?p=2632"},"modified":"2009-01-27T04:48:16","modified_gmt":"2009-01-27T11:48:16","slug":"our-father-who-art-in-candyland%e2%84%a2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/generoseberry.com\/?p=2632","title":{"rendered":"our father, who art in Candyland\u2122"},"content":{"rendered":"

During a recent discussion regarding the prayer comments<\/a> posted by my aunt and myself, an idea struck me.\u00a0 It’s one of those story premise ideas I mentioned earlier<\/a>.\u00a0 It’s an idea, that upon reflection, has probably been used before, but I’m sure it’s rich enough to last a few more interpretations.\u00a0 The idea was that prayer worked, and its working was a common fact and highly utilized.\u00a0 So, praying becomes a kind of resource.\u00a0 In my initial imagining there would be elite pray-ers, like elite scientists and elite warriors, that could sway the balance of power in global conflicts.\u00a0 Perhaps nations could remain powerful, despite weak militaries and weak economies, if they had strong prayers on their side.\u00a0 I also imagined the pray-ers, that’s those praying, being embroiled in the mundane parts of intrigue, being bought, or going rogue or flipping sides, targeted for assassination, and the like.<\/p>\n

I’ve given the idea a little bit of time to simmer and have a few addendums.\u00a0 Really, options that would have to be selected depending on the type of story one wants to tell.\u00a0 One of these choices is whether the elite pray-ers are born with the ability, or if it’s trained, or both.\u00a0 And what is the nature of the training.\u00a0 Has the prayer industry been developed, are the secret prayer research labs developing national prayer secrets?\u00a0 Can certain prayers counter certain other prayers more effectively than certain still other prayers?\u00a0 Does a pray-er have to truly want the thing he prays for?<\/p>\n

Another aspect of interest would be the way the prayers were answered.\u00a0 Perhaps powerful pray-ers essentially have magical powers, able to summon what they want with a wish.\u00a0 Perhaps the power never reaches that high, a powerful pray-er able only to tip events slightly in his or his countries favor.\u00a0 Maybe the power of a pray-er is measured by how frequently his prayers are answered, but the timing and method of reply is not certain.<\/p>\n

Going the route of super powered pray-ers seems somewhat tedious to my mind.\u00a0 Essentially, writing a book about wizards, but calling their power prayer to rile up the religious.\u00a0 To me it would be more interesting to investigate the idea of institutional prayer, manufactured providence, grace to order.<\/p>\n

Maybe in this fantasy world the god is a benevolent accountant, attempting to maximize happiness, with prayers as his measuring stick.\u00a0 He takes all the prayers, determines what will result in maximum happiness, maybe does some tweaking to favor certain individuals over others, and then the course of events unfolds accordingly.<\/p>\n

I like the idea.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

During a recent discussion regarding the prayer comments posted by my aunt and myself, an idea struck me.\u00a0 It’s one of those story premise ideas I mentioned earlier.\u00a0 It’s an idea, that upon reflection, has probably been used before, but I’m sure it’s rich enough to last a few more interpretations.\u00a0 The idea was that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[115,124],"class_list":["post-2632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-things-i-think","tag-plot-device","tag-prayer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/generoseberry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/generoseberry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/generoseberry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generoseberry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generoseberry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2632"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/generoseberry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2632\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2634,"href":"https:\/\/generoseberry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2632\/revisions\/2634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/generoseberry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generoseberry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/generoseberry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}