I… am a goblinist.  There, I said it.  I believe in goblinism.  *whew*  That’s a tough admission to make for someone who claims to be pretty tech-savvy.

So…

What is goblinism?

Goblins. Seriously.

Goblinism is the truth at which a clear-minded individual may arrive once he has moved beyond the deceit and the conceit, the pretense and the pretender.

Simply put, once one has accepted that all those little bits of wire, green boards with copper inlay, and mysterious cylinders and rectangles of some not-quite-plastic, not-quite-metallic material are mere illusions to deceive the unwary, one’s vision is unclouded to reveal:

Goblins.

I’m going to ask again: What is goblinism?

Ok, look, take that old, defunct cellphone that you never donated to charity and smash it open with a hammer.  See all the little mangled masses of metal (and more mysterious materials) you have scattered across your table?  Those don’t exist.  More accurately, they don’t exist until you look at them, and when you stop looking, they stop existing.

Instead, what is really inside your phone is a collection of tiny, magically-concealed huts and workshops.  Those huts and workshops contain goblins… ethereal creatures summoned by techomancers to run all of our “electronic” devices.  Your wristwatch has a goblin in it (several, if it’s one of those calculator or heart-monitor watches).  A cellphone will contain anywhere from a half-dozen to several hundred, depending on the phone model; a desktop computer might contain thousands.

Goblinism is, basically, the realization and acceptance of these simple facts.

Is goblinism a religion?

Is “realism” a religion?  Are “optimism” or “pessimism” religions?  Goblinism is not a religion, it is a world-view.  Just as optimism’s antithesis is pessimism, goblinism’s antithesis is called “engineering.”

Who founded goblinism?

It doesn’t exactly have a “founder”… techomancers have known about goblinism ever since George Eastman discovered how to summon artistically-gifted goblins from the nether regions of the cosmos.  It’s just that techomancers are amazingly tight-lipped about the truth behind their work, so very few outside that esoteric industry know that the world is not, in fact, run by wafers of silicon.

I suppose the first non-techomancer to discover and widely publicize the secrets of goblinism must have been Terry Pratchett, although he prefers the word “imp” to “goblin.”

Is this related to flat-Earth theory?

Don’t call it a theory.  The Earth is flat.

As if a Goblin with a Gauge —
Kept measuring the Hours —
Until you felt your Second
Weigh, helpless, in his Paws —

– Emily Dickinson

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