Somewhere in the early days of humanity, in a marketing meeting lost to time, someone had a breakthrough.
"Look," they said, leaning forward. "Logic isn't working. We've been telling people how to live better for generations. We've got the scriptures. Good stuff - don't kill, don't steal, be kind to your neighbour. Solid advice. And what happens? They nod, they agree, and then they go right back to being assholes."
A pause.
"We need an incentive. We need stakes. We need.." and here the genius struck "...(drumroll)a campaign."
And thus, in the most consequential marketing meeting in human history, two concepts were born that would shape civilisation more than fire, the wheel, or the internet.
Heaven.
And Hell.
Let's go back further, though. Before the pitch meeting. Before the brand.
In the beginning, there was a family. Let's call them Human Couple No. 1. They had kids—all different in personality, intellect, and worldview. The kids grew up, found partners (don't ask me where; I have the same questions you do), and eventually there was a small commune. A village. A tribe.
And at some point, as these things go, the elders sat down and thought: maybe we should write some of this down.
Not because they were prophets. Not because God spoke to them in dreams. But because they'd lived long enough to accumulate wisdom, and they figured — why should the next generation make the same stupid mistakes? Why should they learn the hard way what we already know?
So they wrote it down. Life lessons. Principles. How to treat people. How to handle conflict. How to find some measure of peace in a world that offers very little of it.
The first scriptures, in other words, were self-help books.
Let that sit for a moment.
Now here's where it gets interesting.
The commune grew. Generations passed. The original authors died. New readers of the book naturally had their own interpretations. Additions. Clarifications. "What they really meant was..."
And still, despite all the wisdom on offer, people kept fucking up. Kept lying, cheating, stealing, killing. Kept being exactly as flawed as they'd always been.
Which is when someone, and I wish I knew who, because this person deserves either a Nobel Prize or a cell in The Hague, realised the fundamental problem:
Humans don't respond to logic. They respond to incentives.
Promise someone a better life through discipline and virtue? They'll smile politely and go eat dessert first. But promise them eternal paradise if they're good, and eternal torment if they're not?
Now you've got their attention.
Heaven and Hell weren't theological innovations. They were product features.
Think about it. Before this, the proposition was: "Follow these principles and your life will be more fulfilling." After this, it became: "Follow these principles or burn forever in unimaginable agony."
That's not spiritual evolution. That's a pivot.
Someone looked at the early traction numbers, souls saved, behaviours modified, and said, "We're not getting enough conversion. What's our retention like? Terrible. What if we added a loyalty program? What if we added... consequences?"
And just like that, a philosophy became a religion. A guide became a system. A conversation became an institution.
The brand was born.
Once you see it as a brand, you can't unsee it.
Consider the infrastructure:
A product no one can verify. You can't visit Heaven. You can't interview anyone who's been to Hell. The entire value proposition is built on a promise that only pays out after death. Try pitching that to a VC today: "So the customer never actually experiences the benefit in their lifetime, but trust us, it's amazing."
Fear and reward as twin engines. Every great brand operates on desire and anxiety. Religion perfected this—dangling salvation with one hand, threatening damnation with the other. Aspirational and terrifying in equal measure.
Franchisees to scale distribution. Priests, rabbis, imams, pandits—local operators who spread the message, maintain the doctrine, and collect the tithes. A decentralized salesforce with extraordinary reach.
Real estate as retail presence. Temples, churches, mosques, synagogues. Physical locations where the community gathers, the message is reinforced, and the experience becomes tangible. Prime real estate, often tax-exempt.
Rituals as recurring engagement. Prayer, confession, fasting, pilgrimage. Built-in touchpoints that keep the customer engaged daily, weekly, and annually. Better retention than any subscription service ever devised.
Community as a network effect. The more people who believe, the more valuable believing becomes. Social proof at the civilisational scale.
This isn't cynicism. This is awe. Whoever designed this system was a fucking genius.
But here's the part that keeps me up at night.
Somewhere along the way, between the self-help book and the global brand, the original message got lost.
The elders who sat down to write those first scriptures weren't trying to control anyone. They weren't building an institution. They were just trying to help. Trying to pass down hard-won wisdom to kids who would otherwise learn it through pain.
Be kind. Be honest. Don't take what isn't yours. Take care of each other. Find some peace.
That's it. That's what it was supposed to be.
And then we, the humans, in our infinite capacity for corruption, turned something beautiful into a weapon. Added the incentives. Built the hierarchy. Drew the lines between them and us. Decided that our interpretation was the correct one, and anyone who disagreed was not just wrong but damned.
All the holy wars. All the inquisitions. All the partition trains and burning mosques and crusades and jihads and pogroms. All that blood, spilt over variations in how we read the same self-help book.
I think about this sometimes, when people ask me if I believe in God.
And here's what I've landed on:
I don't believe God gives a shit about which building you pray in, or which book you read, or whether you eat pork or beef or both. I don't think there's a ledger somewhere tracking your Friday prayers, your Saturday sabbaths, or your Sunday masses.
I think, and I checked with Him over a J the other day, and He confirmed: the only metric that matters is this: at a net level, did you make the world a little better or a little worse?
That's it. That's the whole test.
Not which franchise you belonged to. Not which rituals you performed. Not which interpretation you defended.
Just: Were you kind? Did you help? Did you leave things better than you found them?
The elders who wrote those first scriptures — I think they'd be horrified at what we did with their notes.
They wanted to share wisdom. We built an industry.
They wanted to reduce suffering. We invented new categories of it.
They wanted to help people live. We found ways to justify killing them.
God and I sit sometimes and share a drink and wonder: how did so much hate come from a self-help book?
He doesn't have a good answer either.
Some jokes, it turns out, write themselves.
🥃