I had an idea for a Cthulhu Mythos story where the Necronomicon gets widely published, almost anyone can find it anywhere. But absolutely nothing happens. People might read it, go "ooh, scary", and then go on with their day. Commentary on how cosmic horror doesn't really work anymore, because we're all too desensitized to the idea of our lives being fragile and pointless to a cruel, uncaring universe.
i mean while capitalism is certainly horrifying, you can understand its methods and material constraints and even study them and write a whole 3 tome book about how it instrumentalizes life itself. cosmic horror has a sublime trait to it, it's not just that the universe is cruel, is that its reasons why it subjects terror onto you are just beyond your grasp, and so you imagine that maybe there's even more unfathomable cruelty on its ways that you haven't been subjected to yet. in lacanian terms, it's an otherness so radical it resists symbolization, in a way capitalism just does not. only someone as racist as lovecraft, so neurotically terrified of the abstract otherness of foreign people could've authored this cthulhu crap lol. i think our lives are just becoming very secular and cynical. maybe materialism has really taken over everything, even over the hapless mystics who have turned spirituality into a commodity, and we can wonder no more. in itself a horror, yes.
"Now your dreams will never again be so peaceful. You will see capital in your nights, like a nightmare, that presses you and threatens to crush you. With terrified eyes you will see it get fatter, like a monster with one hundred proboscises that feverishly search the pores of your body to suck your blood. And finally you will learn to assume its boundless and gigantic proportions, its appearance dark and terrible, with eyes and mouth of fire, morphing its suckers into enormous hopeful trumpets, within which you’ll see thousands of human beings disappear: men, women, children. Down your face will trickle the sweat of death, because your time, and that of your wife and your children will soon arrive. And your final moan will be drowned out by the happy sneering of the monster, glad with your state, so much richer, so much more inhumane."
I had an idea for a Cthulhu Mythos story where the Necronomicon gets widely published, almost anyone can find it anywhere. But absolutely nothing happens. People might read it, go "ooh, scary", and then go on with their day. Commentary on how cosmic horror doesn't really work anymore, because we're all too desensitized to the idea of our lives being fragile and pointless to a cruel, uncaring universe.
yeah it's called capitalism I'm familiar
i mean while capitalism is certainly horrifying, you can understand its methods and material constraints and even study them and write a whole 3 tome book about how it instrumentalizes life itself. cosmic horror has a sublime trait to it, it's not just that the universe is cruel, is that its reasons why it subjects terror onto you are just beyond your grasp, and so you imagine that maybe there's even more unfathomable cruelty on its ways that you haven't been subjected to yet. in lacanian terms, it's an otherness so radical it resists symbolization, in a way capitalism just does not. only someone as racist as lovecraft, so neurotically terrified of the abstract otherness of foreign people could've authored this cthulhu crap lol. i think our lives are just becoming very secular and cynical. maybe materialism has really taken over everything, even over the hapless mystics who have turned spirituality into a commodity, and we can wonder no more. in itself a horror, yes.
the universe isn't cruel it can't be it lacks an animating spirit. The universe is no crueller than a rock on the side of the road
I can see an extended bit about rabid evangicals trying to ban
"Now your dreams will never again be so peaceful. You will see capital in your nights, like a nightmare, that presses you and threatens to crush you. With terrified eyes you will see it get fatter, like a monster with one hundred proboscises that feverishly search the pores of your body to suck your blood. And finally you will learn to assume its boundless and gigantic proportions, its appearance dark and terrible, with eyes and mouth of fire, morphing its suckers into enormous hopeful trumpets, within which you’ll see thousands of human beings disappear: men, women, children. Down your face will trickle the sweat of death, because your time, and that of your wife and your children will soon arrive. And your final moan will be drowned out by the happy sneering of the monster, glad with your state, so much richer, so much more inhumane."
—Carlo Cafiero, Summary of Marx's Capital
Alright, but is there anything to the story that wasn't just in that comment?