Mindful: Attentive, Aware, Conscious, Thoughtful, Alert.
Miscellany: A collection of various items, parts, or ingredients, especially one composed of diverse literary works.
Welcome to A Mindful Miscellany, a newsletter dedicated to Story-telling and Sense-making in the Turbulent Twenties.
“What sphinx of cement and aluminum bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination?
Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unobtainable dollars! Children screaming under the stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old men weeping in the parks!
Moloch! Moloch! Nightmare of Moloch! Moloch the loveless! Mental Moloch! Moloch the heavy judger of men!
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!
—Allen Ginsberg, “Howl”
I’m reading the Rick Rubin book on creativity right now — highly recommended. It’s a good reminder that art is unmatched in its ability to provide insight into reality. Art is the leading indicator of where the zeitgeist is flowing. Science brings wondrous discoveries, but it’s art that helps us make sense of them. This Ginsberg poem is such a work.
One of my intuitions about the modern age is that, while we’ve gained a tremendous amount of knowledge (yay, Novocaine!), we seem to have lost a serious portion of our wisdom. Resurfacing the concept of Moloch is an attempt to put an old name to something happening in the world. It refers to the dynamics that come about through the interactions between individuals, groups, technology, and systemic incentives.
“The question everyone has after reading Ginsberg is: what is Moloch?
My answer is: Moloch is exactly what the history books say he is. He is the god of child sacrifice, the fiery furnace into which you can toss your babies in exchange for victory in war.
He always and everywhere offers the same deal: throw what you love most into the flames, and I can grant you power.”
—Scott Alexander in “Meditations on Moloch”
Moloch and Metacrisis
Takeaway from Adam Widowski on LinkedIn:
“In order to slay Moloch and recover our humanity, one would have to bind the instrumental rationality of narrow goals by wisdom, as instrumental rationality unbound by wisdom is insufficient for preventing the self-termination of humanity.
Developing wisdom, however, would require us to stop, zoom out and reflect on ourselves and the big picture in a world where there's less and less time and attention available for things that make our lives intrinsically and not merely instrumentally meaningful, as our higher cognitive capacities are being systematically and persistently undermined by the same tools we use to become more "efficient.""
Liv Boeree on Moloch:
“A problem well put is a problem half-solved.”
—John Dewey (Possibly Taylor Swift)
Bringing back the concept of Moloch is a way to name something intangible happening in the interstices of modern life. If we can name it, we become better equipped to attend, appreciate, and act in service of flourishing.
As E.O. Wilson said, we have “Paleolithic Emotions, Medieval Institutions, and God-like Technology.” Our task is to develop the collective wisdom required to meet the moment. Simple, but not easy.
Your best one so far. Moloch is the sum of all our fears, not quite akin to the devil, but maybe more accurate. Idk if Ginsberg or Moloch is still studied or taught in colleges today.
We would need to ask my academic friend, Frank Walters, a Marine vet of Vietnam and a professor of English lit for 50 years, who has watched the curriculum morph over the same time frame.
Sounds like i need to read more E.O.Wilson. thank you kindly, mister, and thx for the use of the hall.