Your final paragraph drew a comparison to Orwell’s 1984 for me, and why I raised my son to resist claims of unverifiable realities— Santa, tooth fairy, gods, ghosts.
Being trained to live in fantasy is how people are able assert otherwise untenable moral codes.
“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
Damn good stuff. My favorite "faceless board" divinity tale is Mr. Robot. The hero is determined to take them down, but has to contend with his own role as a pawn of unimaginable power. God is insane and has made us in that image. Madman's stars, indeed!
It's a dreary read, but "The Conspiracy Against the Human Race" by Thomas Ligotti is a full treatise on pessimism that you might find interesting and on-topic.
The last few paragraphs of this essay remind me of the Calvin Warren essay "Black Nihilism and the Politics of Hope." Have you read that one? I feel like that one would be very much up your alley.
i genuinely love your essays and the way your mind works through concepts i may have thought of but never really tried to dissect more! your touches on afro pessimism and having to divide up the way these philosophers were beacons of intellectual thought and curiosity during their time and even beyond while contending with their very open and incurious racism was something i am trying to discuss but in a very different context in my college classes. this is genuinely really interesting to read i seriously love your work so much
“One of my more harebrained theories is that Barack Obama doesn’t become president without Morgan Freeman’s role in Bruce Almighty (but that is maybe an essay best explored at another time).”
This is completely crazy and makes so much sense at the same time. Beautiful thoughts and beautiful writing. ♥️
What a great read. my brain has stopped its elonexorable shrinking for a few moments... WAIT... DID I JUST TYPE ELONEXORABLE WITHOUT REALISING? I THINK i need to leave that there and have a sit down.
chilling dissection, am particularly taken with the juxtaposition of the “God as a CEO” trope and anti-CEO sentiments rising, as well as how the figures we celebrate for being so “right” in one sphere have demonstrated themselves to be so, so wrong elsewhere, such to the degree that it should call into question whether on the original point they were ever right. on how anti-intellectualism has coincided with post-colonialism and the diversification of academia, i can’t help but also tie that to recent thinkpieces on a dearth of literary men, as i am coming to believe from admittedly anecdotal observations that as women enter a space, men leave it. it seems that this model applies to culture as well.
!! i’ve definitely noticed the phenomena of “women entering a space and men leaving it” particularly in the fiction genre, i don’t think it’s a coincidence that an industry that was once over populated with white men’s imagination stopped being indulged by men as everyone else began to write/imagine more. now the readership of fiction is heavily weighted towards women while it’s only a sliver of pseudoscientific self-help that men read en masse.
Brilliant piece. I do have a question though, as someone marginally, at least halfway if for nothing else than my lack of melanin, height, and vocabulary, (The Puritanical nature of the origins of this country demand that for having been caught and punished for my crimes I am thereby cut off from full status as both citizen and person) inside the superstructure you quite rightfully see yourself as totally outside of, what would you think of the question of the universal (but particularly "enlightenment" onward) drive towards explaining any given thing (concept, object, phenomenon, hyperobject) through the available contextual milieu of the given present time in which one lives.
Once I was a student of neuroscience. The brain, how it works, et al. Has been overhauled theoretically as to how we think it works around every few generations, using exclusively the technology inherent at that point in time as an extrapolator and explanation for how the brain humans us. From a clockwork machine ran by a little man in your head, to a steam driven engine, to computational theory, to the now emergent theory that no, your brain isn't just a computer, it's THE WHOLE FUCKING INTERNET (An Internet In Your Head, Graham, can't bother grabbing the book to check the year, but I would guess between 2020-2022.)
If this is how we conceptualize a theoretical piece of ourselves, not only that, but the component that makes us, well, us, do you think it would be rational or theoretically plausible to work with this as a cultural marker but try to use it as template at scale for various elements therein?
IE.
God is a corporate head now because that is the vast hand that the peasantry does not fully and cannot ever fully understand (try to think like a billionaire or high level CEO, as a thought experiment, my theory is that while obviously people, there is something in them that is so divorced from reality and has so thoroughly drank some kind of very potent Kool-Aid that we just can't fucking do it, even as thought experiment, not from where we are.)
God formerly was embodied as a singular entity going back to early Christianity distinctly as a stand in for the nobility (Right of kings and all that) so God then was obviously A Monarch. But lo, industrialisation, nationalism, secularism, and the end of serfdom inevitably came along and fucked the works. (Insert something about Nietzsche I'm too bleary eyed to type here.)
Fuck, I may have lost the track, but surely you see the potential correlates?
I'd love to know your opinion, because I've had this thought for a while, but your essay just added a layer of nuance to it I had been wanting for a while. (No one can have ALL the thoughts, thank God. Ah, calling on something you don't believe exists as a symbolic ritualized piece of shared western linguistic culture. Nice Emil, you fucking clod.)
Anyway, this was an excellent essay, and it does get to the point of why if the corporate board (I haven't touched on the shadow organization for various reasons) is a stand in for god, and we don't like how he's running shit, culturally it becomes Oscar Kilo to slab him in the street if given the chance.
Yes, OFC, God never existed but Nietzche meant it was now also dead for the majority of educated people, because of the progresses of science in XIX. To be honnest, as a french guy, it allways has been and still is very weird that so many of u, murikans believe in god. In old europe, and in France, millenials like me, n later, are like over 80% atheists. I mean.
And yes, its a pope, with the valladolid controverse who allowed slavery since "nigers had no souls". I never understood how black people could believe in god, especially the catholic or protestant one. As do the majority of africans i know, including my father (hes from Benin)
There is a lot to say here. I'll come back. My main thing is, God is such not a thing here in France. Hum, i'll be back ^^
Your final paragraph drew a comparison to Orwell’s 1984 for me, and why I raised my son to resist claims of unverifiable realities— Santa, tooth fairy, gods, ghosts.
Being trained to live in fantasy is how people are able assert otherwise untenable moral codes.
“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
Damn good stuff. My favorite "faceless board" divinity tale is Mr. Robot. The hero is determined to take them down, but has to contend with his own role as a pawn of unimaginable power. God is insane and has made us in that image. Madman's stars, indeed!
It's a dreary read, but "The Conspiracy Against the Human Race" by Thomas Ligotti is a full treatise on pessimism that you might find interesting and on-topic.
The last few paragraphs of this essay remind me of the Calvin Warren essay "Black Nihilism and the Politics of Hope." Have you read that one? I feel like that one would be very much up your alley.
I’ve never read it!! Will check it out, thanks Noah!
inigo darling, you might be saving our minds one essay at a time.
i genuinely love your essays and the way your mind works through concepts i may have thought of but never really tried to dissect more! your touches on afro pessimism and having to divide up the way these philosophers were beacons of intellectual thought and curiosity during their time and even beyond while contending with their very open and incurious racism was something i am trying to discuss but in a very different context in my college classes. this is genuinely really interesting to read i seriously love your work so much
“One of my more harebrained theories is that Barack Obama doesn’t become president without Morgan Freeman’s role in Bruce Almighty (but that is maybe an essay best explored at another time).”
This is completely crazy and makes so much sense at the same time. Beautiful thoughts and beautiful writing. ♥️
What a great read. my brain has stopped its elonexorable shrinking for a few moments... WAIT... DID I JUST TYPE ELONEXORABLE WITHOUT REALISING? I THINK i need to leave that there and have a sit down.
chilling dissection, am particularly taken with the juxtaposition of the “God as a CEO” trope and anti-CEO sentiments rising, as well as how the figures we celebrate for being so “right” in one sphere have demonstrated themselves to be so, so wrong elsewhere, such to the degree that it should call into question whether on the original point they were ever right. on how anti-intellectualism has coincided with post-colonialism and the diversification of academia, i can’t help but also tie that to recent thinkpieces on a dearth of literary men, as i am coming to believe from admittedly anecdotal observations that as women enter a space, men leave it. it seems that this model applies to culture as well.
!! i’ve definitely noticed the phenomena of “women entering a space and men leaving it” particularly in the fiction genre, i don’t think it’s a coincidence that an industry that was once over populated with white men’s imagination stopped being indulged by men as everyone else began to write/imagine more. now the readership of fiction is heavily weighted towards women while it’s only a sliver of pseudoscientific self-help that men read en masse.
Brilliant piece. I do have a question though, as someone marginally, at least halfway if for nothing else than my lack of melanin, height, and vocabulary, (The Puritanical nature of the origins of this country demand that for having been caught and punished for my crimes I am thereby cut off from full status as both citizen and person) inside the superstructure you quite rightfully see yourself as totally outside of, what would you think of the question of the universal (but particularly "enlightenment" onward) drive towards explaining any given thing (concept, object, phenomenon, hyperobject) through the available contextual milieu of the given present time in which one lives.
Once I was a student of neuroscience. The brain, how it works, et al. Has been overhauled theoretically as to how we think it works around every few generations, using exclusively the technology inherent at that point in time as an extrapolator and explanation for how the brain humans us. From a clockwork machine ran by a little man in your head, to a steam driven engine, to computational theory, to the now emergent theory that no, your brain isn't just a computer, it's THE WHOLE FUCKING INTERNET (An Internet In Your Head, Graham, can't bother grabbing the book to check the year, but I would guess between 2020-2022.)
If this is how we conceptualize a theoretical piece of ourselves, not only that, but the component that makes us, well, us, do you think it would be rational or theoretically plausible to work with this as a cultural marker but try to use it as template at scale for various elements therein?
IE.
God is a corporate head now because that is the vast hand that the peasantry does not fully and cannot ever fully understand (try to think like a billionaire or high level CEO, as a thought experiment, my theory is that while obviously people, there is something in them that is so divorced from reality and has so thoroughly drank some kind of very potent Kool-Aid that we just can't fucking do it, even as thought experiment, not from where we are.)
God formerly was embodied as a singular entity going back to early Christianity distinctly as a stand in for the nobility (Right of kings and all that) so God then was obviously A Monarch. But lo, industrialisation, nationalism, secularism, and the end of serfdom inevitably came along and fucked the works. (Insert something about Nietzsche I'm too bleary eyed to type here.)
Fuck, I may have lost the track, but surely you see the potential correlates?
I'd love to know your opinion, because I've had this thought for a while, but your essay just added a layer of nuance to it I had been wanting for a while. (No one can have ALL the thoughts, thank God. Ah, calling on something you don't believe exists as a symbolic ritualized piece of shared western linguistic culture. Nice Emil, you fucking clod.)
Anyway, this was an excellent essay, and it does get to the point of why if the corporate board (I haven't touched on the shadow organization for various reasons) is a stand in for god, and we don't like how he's running shit, culturally it becomes Oscar Kilo to slab him in the street if given the chance.
Yes, OFC, God never existed but Nietzche meant it was now also dead for the majority of educated people, because of the progresses of science in XIX. To be honnest, as a french guy, it allways has been and still is very weird that so many of u, murikans believe in god. In old europe, and in France, millenials like me, n later, are like over 80% atheists. I mean.
And yes, its a pope, with the valladolid controverse who allowed slavery since "nigers had no souls". I never understood how black people could believe in god, especially the catholic or protestant one. As do the majority of africans i know, including my father (hes from Benin)
There is a lot to say here. I'll come back. My main thing is, God is such not a thing here in France. Hum, i'll be back ^^
In France, God = retarded right-wing catholics, that is. ;-) But yes, they are vey powerfull and have the power kinda. ^^