Thread by @SarahAMcManus

Ok, I'm going to attempt a really long thread in response to this...

https://twitter.com/QiaochuYuan/status/1118773759177924608

I've been thinking a lot about this today, and now it's gotten all mixed up with a bunch of reading I was doing about Vajrayana and Tantra.

I guess that's pretty appropriate!

(Qiaochu, I think you’ve read some of this stuff too, so I’m not assuming it’s new to you. I’ll write what’s coming up for me, and I figure it might be relevant for other folks as well)

So, horror: not just modern, not just egregores!

(And egregores: not just horror! Could write another thread on friendly ones, little household gods, etc.)

Probably handy to start off with these posts about seeing the world as a charnel ground:
vividness.live/2012/08/22/cha…

And as a pure land:
vividness.live/2012/09/11/pur…

And I think that Tantra perspective is an important base for any practice that involves looking at horror.

(Vinay Gupta talks about this in his recent conversations with Daniel Thorson, which is a Whole ‘Nother Thread)

I also find myself wanting to point at some of @algekalipso ‘s stuff:
qualiacomputing.com/2017/12/20/the…

I don’t always agree with his conclusions, and I find his work fascinating. There’s usually a chunk of math and physics leading up to the conclusion that I haven’t yet managed to grok.

I think there are at least a few different components of how someone could react to “Children of Moloch” memeplexes, and folks could get tangled up between them.

(I may bungle this and would be glad of any help; words remain broken as usual)

Some things that make decent sense to me:

1. Molochian patterns freak me the fuck out, man! I am frightened, I am horrified.
2. Molochian patterns could kill me, and could destroy human civilization as we know it.
3. I want to live and thrive, and I want the same for humanity.

Flinching from horror has been adaptive for human survival!

Flinch away from misplaced blood and shit → get fewer infections → have more surviving babies.

I figure, treat it as a signal, as you would pain - "alert! this situation is not friendly to human survival"

And also, the value of a signal is dependent on its context.
We’re now in a situation where there is no “away.” Reflexive flinching is no longer enough.

And we’ve had cultures clash and break down such that an action can mean “loving care” in one framework and “horror like unto misplaced bodily fluids” in another. Crazy-making!

If someone’s very reactive, getting some space between the gut reaction, and the meaning of it, and the choice of action, can help.

If someone’s very numb, getting more connection with the gut reaction, and the meaning of it, and the choice of action, can help.

Now, here’s where things could get confused, if folks went on to:

4A: Moloch is Evil and some other things are Good; Moloch is entirely contaminated and some other things are pure.

There’s dualism for you! And a whole bunch of stuff around attachment and aversion.

(This, I think, is why Scott Alexander’s post about “The Goddess of Everything Else” didn’t quite land for me? Because it’s about getting entirely free of the Darwinian charnel ground, and I think that’s a confusion.)

Or, folks could add “but it’s hopeless” to #3 and fall into a trap of:

4B: Moloch is Evil and no other things are Good.

There’s nihilism for you:
meaningness.com/nihilism-anxie…

And there’s something here about… “horror that paralyzes” (like Lovecraftian nihilism) vs “horror that galvanizes” (like Feynman at the Oak Ridge plant, telling folks to store those nuclear materials further apart!)

Now, I want to pull in a few examples from biology & ecology, to point at how all this goes way deeper than any modern Moloch.

(Perhaps a bit of bending some assumption back and forth until it snaps?)

Ok, so!

- A pink flower
- A green caterpillar covered in small white things
- An iridescent beetle
- A retrovirus (diagram)

Any particular reactions so far, right off the bat?

Let’s start with the flower. Maybe you find it beautiful, and you’re pleased?

Now you find out it is Striga, witchweed, a parasitic plant that sucks nutrients from cereal crops. It destroys the equivalent of 15 million meals per day in Africa.
wur.nl/en/newsarticle…

You might feel horror, sadness, anger, resolve?

Is it still beautiful?

Or, perhaps, you find a caterpillar, covered in cocoons of parasitoid wasps. The larvae have eaten it from the inside out, and emerged through its skin. It will die soon.

What does that bring up?

As a child, I felt the horror, and would try to remove the cocoons, not knowing it was already doomed.

(Darwin felt the horror: "I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created parasitic wasps with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars.")

And yet. Without parasitoid wasps, and other diseases and predators that kill plant-eating insects, our own vital crops would fail.

If baculoviruses did not liquefy caterpillars, human children would starve.

(Couldn’t find #s for parasitoids specifically, but biological control provides half the value of food production!

Cock et al. 2012 - PDF via Google Scholar, search doi 10.1079/PAVSNNR20127043 )

What emotion is there now? Is the photo still ugly?

And the beetle! I find it beautiful!

How about you?

It’s also a dung beetle! Does that change how you feel?

(Phanaeus vindex - I’ve seen ‘em in Florida!)

Consider that different species would have different valences (attraction / aversion) to the same stimuli.

If dung beetles wrote poetry, they would compose odes to the sweet fragrance of life-giving shit.

Dung beetle poets:

"Shit, triumphant prize of victors! Shit, nourishing cradle for babies!

The ox anus, glorious fountain from which all good things flow!"

And! Humans have worshipped scarabs, dung beetles.

Without them, we’d be knee-deep in dung!
Important for nutrient cycling.
wired.com/2014/07/fantas…

And, the retrovirus. What comes up for you?

As humans, we're not on Team Virus, right? Viruses are terrifying, and sometimes deadly!

Welp: blogs.discovermagazine.com/loom/2012/02/1…

Some of the key patterns that make you who you are, biologically, are made of ancient viruses. We wouldn’t be able to carry our babies in the womb, if it weren’t for viral DNA.

Does it look any different now?

(((If you really, really, really want an extra-strength bonus mediation on grotesque Darwinian patterns juxtaposed with tenderness and meaning --

Just be aware that it's enacted by numberless cartoon spiders:

)))

Contaminated and pure, sacred and profane start to break down, and build back up into something different.

I don’t think there’s a “right” or “wrong” way to feel about these, before or after you know more about them. Many layers of meaning and story. It’s patterned and nebulous.

And you can still make choices that matter, to care for what you care about.

Gonna leave this thread for now, with Alan Watts on bloodstream-scale battles:
organism.earth/library/docume…

(while also not wanting to get attached to reifying harmony / balance as a final thing)

(That site's running a little slow, so here's the audio as well:
)