An abridged history of Tolipsteism

First published on Reddit.

About a hundred years ago, the Prophet -- a now-(in)famous author, who looked a bit like Papa Smurf, habitually molested his servant, and never worked an honest job a day of his life -- wrote the gospel now known as the Tolipsteist Manifesto. In it, he told everyone who would listen that they were victims of an evil race of nonhuman Greedsters; however, not to worry, the Manifesto provided Mankind with a prescription for a righteous system to defeat the Greedsters. You see, according to the Prophet, once the Manifesto got implemented, an era of Tolipsteism would dawn upon Mankind, and -- to quote from his extensive allegations -- everything (or at least most things) would be better than before. Or at least that's what the bearded Prophet said.

It took a few decades but, eventually, most people of the great nation called Suffix Union believed the great bearded Prophet, and supported a revolution that, after a short while, completely implemented every plank of the Tolipsteist Manifesto.

Curiously, and contrary to the Prophet's claim, immediately after implementing the Manifesto, democidal-level deaths occurred. These deaths continued in waves for decades to come. Bafflingly to believers of Tolipsteism, other places that had lots of people who truly believed in Tolipsteism and banded together to bravely implement the Manifesto, experienced the exact same results. In every place where implementation of the Manifesto was attained — Chones, Viet Pong, Qubus, North Chimnea, Vendenzuelas — misery and deaths kept just happening, over and over again. For some inexplicable reason, things always kept going wrong, without any of the prophecies of the bearded Prophet ever materializing at all. It was almost as if doing the things necessary to implement the Prophet's wishes caused the misery and the deaths. Who could have guessed that? Well, certainly not the Tolipsteists.

Today, after many decades of undeniable historical evidence, it is an accepted conclusion that attempting to implement Tolipsteism (even when fully achieving every tenet of its Manifesto) inevitably ends in human tragedy, and therefore the fantastic promises of Tolipsteism are an utopia that, in reality, becomes a horrifyingly bloody and pauperizing dystopia. So total is the acceptance of this reality that you may be forgiven if you thought Tolipsteism to be an extinct belief system.

Unfortunately, that is not so. Tolipsteism still dwells in the minds of some among us, and those minds definitely want to (have us all) try Tolipsteism yet again. Unfortunately, the rest of us have this pesky habit of responding "umm, nah, thank you" to their relentless desire for a democide do-over. Of course, being the sensible bunch that we are, usually tend to base our reluctance upon damning historical facts about Tolipsteism, such as, um, well, the democides. Consequently, contemporary Tolipsteists who desire to cling to Tolipsteism have developed quite effective techniques to protect their belief system against all damning facts:

1. The modern Tolipsteist splains his belief system's failure by insisting that what happened back then "wasn't truly Tolipsteism" because, you see, the promises of the Prophet never materialized... even though all past Tolipsteists demonstrably followed to completion the Prophet's instructions to bring about Tolipsteism.
   A sane man, of course, would immediately ask the obvious question: «OK, so your instructions for growing potatoes start with planting rocks; you do that over and over; no potatoes ever grow... and your explanation for your lack of potatoes is that the rocks you've been planting aren't really rocks? Really?» This question, of course, is charitable enough to leave aside the small fact that planting rocks, unlike implementation of the Tolipsteist Manifesto, doesn't actually cause democide every time.
2. Other Tolipsteists splain that past implementations of Tolipsteism couldn't have been real Tolipsteism, because, you see, what got implemented was the Manifesto, which was merely a propaganda piece and not the User's Manual. Oops!
   The sane man would again ask: «OK, so you repeatedly keep causing deadly explosions with a factory machine, because you keep following instructions from a propaganda piece you found online instead of the operator's manual of the machine... and your contention is that you weren't really operating the machine, therefore we should let you try again on the double?»
3. Yet other Tolipsteists do acknowledge the facts surrounding the democides caused by Tolipsteism, but insist that the perpetrators couldn't have been true Tolipsteists because "clearly, no Tolipsteist would do that".
   Our proverbial sane man may ask: «OK, how do you explain all the democidal maniacs that called themselves Tolipsteists, or all the sycophantic followers who venerated and aided the democidal maniacs who also called themselves Tolipsteists, or all the savage literature written by venerated Tolipsteists explicitly calling for brutal aggression against Greedsters and non-Tolipsteists? Is all of this part of a giant conspiracy to make Tolipsteism look maniacally deranged?» It's a rhetorical question, of course -- the sane man already knows he has been fed a particularly deranged form of the No True Tolipsteistman fallacy, a deliberate propaganda lie that has become super popular among contemporary Tolipsteists.

The reader may notice a common theme of terrible lies of the kind not even a child would believe, outright irresponsibility, and outright denial in the Tolipsteist's splanations for the failure of past Tolipsteism. This, however, does not seem to faze the Tolipsteist in his obsession to continue believing in Tolipsteism.

In their religious zealotry, Tolipsteists today join countless other historic cults in the greatly respected human traditions of Let's Do The Same Shit Again Expecting Different Results, usually followed by the greater tradition of Let's Make Farcical Excuses To Explain Why We Didn't Ascend To Valhalla Last Time, ranging from The Kool-aid needed more poisonsugar, to We didn't votepray hard enough, to We didn't build enough stick antennas for John Frum's cargo plane, to The infidelsGreedsters beat us this round, but next time we will surely be more efficient in exterminating them.

And so, blinded by rationalization and utterly unable to recognize that their cult is a toxic lie, the Tolipsteists remain obsessed with trying the Prophet's prescriptions once again, faithful to the core that It Will Surely Work Next Time. They steadfastly cling to the prophecy, and continue to indoctrinate their children and pupils into the doctrine as well.

Fortunately, the rest of Mankind — the vast majority, actually — now knows what a farce Tolipsteism is, and if any doubt remains, the legacy of Tolipsteism can be easily looked up on this thing called The Internet. In my opinion, that's absolutely fantastic because, with every passing year, Mankind becomes less and less vulnerable to the siren songs of the schizoid death cult that murdered the most people in the History of Mankind. Obviously, Tolipsteists disagree -- based on what we know about how they reason, of course they would.

Today, Mankind rolls its collective eyes at the Tolipsteists. And that can only be good — the farther we get from witnessing maniacs reimplement democidal ideas, the longer our lives will be.