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Meditations on Moloch (2014) (slatestarcodex.com)
24 points by tosh on Feb 14, 2021 | hide | past | favorite | 2 comments



> What’s always impressed me about this poem is its conception of civilization as an individual entity. You can almost see him, with his fingers of armies and his skyscraper-window eyes.

Ancient Greek had a term for the concept of this kind of entity: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egregore


> A lot of the commentators say Moloch represents capitalism. This is definitely a piece of it, even a big piece. But it doesn’t quite fit. Capitalism, whose fate is a cloud of sexless hydrogen? Capitalism in whom I am a consciousness without a body? Capitalism, therefore granite cocks?

This sums up a deeply held belief of mine that is majorly in contrast to current popular philosophy in a way that I was never able to articulate.




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