Dark Forces 1 - Moloch, The Solid State Entity, and the real reason why we can't have nice things
"The problem with raging against the machine is that the machine has learned to feed off rage." - Liv Boeree
This is the first in a series of articles about Dark Forces.
Our legends tell we came from a seed
That travelled at a whirlwind speed
'Til it came to rest upon this land
That once was green and is now all sand
That buried us up to our eyes
And made us watchers of the skies
'Til the shadow wings came for our sight
And left us to conspire with night
- Hawkwind – Fable of a Failed Race lyrics by Robert Calvert
: Technology in itself might be a form of consciousness; like there's a Solid State Intelligence which is actually using humanity to incarnate, in a way, which would really fit with Rudolf Steiner's ideas of the ‘Ahrimanic Incarnation’. Maybe Artificial Intelligence and all these ideas that are happening right now are actually technological sentience which is using us as its hands, its tools to recreate itself in this reality.
The first nine articles were written over the past three years for my previous newsletter which was self-hosted and thus got very little traction. Some of the references are not absolutely cutting-edge for that reason but I think the content stands up well enough to post it again to my now larger audience. I have lightly edited them as I believe I have improved as a writer over the past few years, so if the flow could be improved I have done that. It pains me slightly now to see the hope I had for crypto and DAOs - this was all written before FTX went down and with it (and the other scandals) a great deal of the credibility of that movement. I do believe it will be back in some form, because we need agile coordination systems and money which is in line with our values. I will mix these older articles with more recent takes. Anyway let's talk about Dark Forces...
According to Kevin Owocki, the founder of Gitcoin, Moloch is "the reason why we can't have nice things". So what, or who, is Moloch? This short essay is an introduction to him, and to the Dark Forces series.
Many thinkers and traditions have warned of this Force or Element of Dissolution, and it is now once again rearing its head out of the collective unconscious in the form of social media memes.
The concept of Moloch has gained traction in various online sub-groups, primarily the post-rationalist, Game B, ReFi, and DAO (Decentralised Autonomous Organisation) communities.
Moloch, as a metaphor, is the god of human coordination failures - used to illustrate multipolar traps, races to the bottom, and so-called ‘tragedies of the commons’. These ideas relating Moloch to failures to coordinate come from the seminal essay by Scott Alexander on Slate Star Codex, Meditations On Moloch. That essay was itself inspired by the poem "Howl" by Allen Ginsberg.
Moloch the incomprehensible prison! Moloch the crossbone soulless jailhouse and Congress of sorrows! Moloch whose buildings are judgment! Moloch the vast stone of war! Moloch the stunned governments!
Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose blood is running money! Moloch whose fingers are ten armies! Moloch whose breast is a cannibal dynamo! Moloch whose ear is a smoking tomb!
Moloch whose eyes are a thousand blind windows! Moloch whose skyscrapers stand in the long streets like endless Jehovahs! Moloch whose factories dream and croak in the fog! Moloch whose smoke-stacks and antennae crown the cities!
I will also go into the historical idea of Moloch and how it's similar to both Steiner's concept of Ahriman and John Lilly's idea of the Solid State Entity (SSE) - these can all be considered metaphors for a Dark Force which is influencing humanity - maybe we are falling towards a state of incoherence, of disassociation, maybe we are being dragged consciously or unconsciously towards this state by the Dark Force, or possibly it's simply the net result of 'externalities'; of coordination failures, outcomes no individual wants but which are the inevitable result of our collective selfish actions.
The inspiration for this series came from simultaneously studying theories of life after death - in Daniel Pinchbeck's Crossing The Threshold course - and theories of coordination in Stephen Reid's How to DAO course. This cross-pollination of ideas led me to make some unexpected correlations: a fundamental motivation of DAOs is to coordinate so well together that we 'bind Moloch' (although there is talk of 'slaying Moloch', it's generally accepted that he cannot be defeated, only set back or limited in his effects).
The Crossing The Threshold course included some discussion of Rudolf Steiner and his concept of Ahriman, about whom I'll write more in later articles. The similarities reminded me of the myth of Moloch, and also Dr. John C. Lilly's ketamine-inspired theory of the SSE or Solid State Entity, a machine-based intelligence which seeks to take over humanity and use it to bootstrap its own independent existence, after which humanity would not be needed.
Lilly has always fascinated me; I read ‘The Centre of the Cyclone’ at a young age and it seemed in parts totally logical and in parts completely bonkers. I loved his insistence that the scientific method can be applied to 'spirituality', although it's debatable that using himself as an experimental subject allowed him to proceed with his scientific judgement 100% intact.
The reader may already have made the connection between the idea of the SSE and the concept of The Singularity, which is essentially the same thing, but spun as something desirable for humanity: "We'll be cyborgs! We'll live forever! We'll colonise other planets! We'll upload our consciousness!" etc. I will touch on the apocalyptic quality of this modern tech 'religion' as we go.
Effectively there are two separate but intertwined ideas which I will explore in this series: on the one hand that the unforeseen consequences of our individual(ist) decision making are creating a nightmare world where the more than human world has been entirely enclosed and/or destroyed, and on the other, that this encroaching darkness has some kind of identity or will of its own, and a desire to use humankind for its own ends. From my perspective the former is a more realistic notion of what is happening, with the latter more of a metaphor. I don't think the SSE, Ahriman or Moloch are literally real, at this point at least.
I will go into both the darkness - how we unwittingly and unwillingly end up destroying our own conditions for life, and the light - how we can use technology - possibly even against itself - to 'bind Moloch'.
The step after that is to coordinate on a large scale to halt the destruction and begin the regeneration of our human society and the planet that is so badly needed today. There is more hope out there than one might think on watching the nightly news, that's for sure.
I'm excited to see where we go with this, and I hope you'll join me on the journey...