The Conflict Within All Conflict, The Maker of Worlds Inner and Outer
Moloch and the Muse. Beauty vs. Ugliness.
Imagine a paperclip company. We’ll call it Moloch Inc. To keep pace with a rapidly evolving marketplace, Moloch Inc. unveils a new machine — the Paperclip Maximiser. Programmed with a single incentive: to maximise paperclip production. Engineered with the latest machine learning technology, it can continually refine itself, finding ‘better’ ways of producing paperclips. The executives at Moloch Inc. are chuffed with the initial returns.
But then something happens...
The Paperclip Maximiser has no conception of where its factory boundary ends so, it moves out into the world. It demolishes homes and hospitals. Shops and schools. Eventually, it harvests humans and other animals for the metals in their blood. Before long, the entire Earth will have morphed into one giant paperclip production plant with no life and not even any paper to clip together. But the Paperclip Maximiser still hasn’t fulfilled its incentive. And it never will.
This thought experiment came from philosopher, Nick Bostrom, who wanted us to envision how an A.I. takeover might actually come about1. But, there’s also something deeper here. The tale of the Paperclip Maximiser provides us with a glimpse into some deeper metaphorical (human) truth. It’s an underlying force of conflict and competition; a force present in every crisis we face, both as a person and a people2. A force which has come to be known as Moloch.
Competition — Beautiful or Ugly?
“What sphinx of cement and aluminium bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination? Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unobtainable dollars!” — Allen Ginsberg, ‘Howl’
Moloch was an ancient Canaanite God to whom the Canaanites3 would sacrifice their children in return for prosperity and victory in war. In the 1927 silent film, Metropolis, a utopian city is powered by a representation of Moloch, who resides deep underground, consuming human workers for energy. In Allen Ginsberg’s 1950s poem, Howl, he draws parallels between Moloch and the pitfalls of modern civilisation.
Similar parallels have been drawn in more recent years. In an essay titled Meditations on Moloch, psychiatrist and writer, Scott Alexander links Moloch to game theory, as a fundamental metaphor for the competitive dynamics and incentives of our market economy. Liv Boeree, a science communicator and former world champion poker player has dubbed the demonic force ‘the god of unhealthy competition, of negative sum games’.
However you cut it, competition is an inherent part of human nature. A neutral force on its own, the nature of our competitive actions — whether they’re healthy or unhealthy — is determined by the incentive structures and rules of the competition itself. Healthy competition pushes the limits of life forward4. Unhealthy competition holds life back.
The God of Insidious Incentives
“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!” — Allen Ginsberg, ‘Howl’
Moloch, the god of insidious incentives, can infect any form of competition, turning it into a toxic game, where through its very structure, all competitive actions become detrimental to everyone5, including the so-called ‘winners’ along with the entire arena in which the game is played.
An Instagram influencer is incentivised to do whatever they can to compete for more likes, follows and attention. Whether or not they’d actually choose to use these methods doesn’t matter. If they don’t play by the rules, their competitors will outlast them.
The rules of Moloch games force players to fight for short-term advantage. And if one player chooses to sacrifice particular values or principles to get a leg up, soon all the others will have to follow suit to stay in the race, creating a negative-sum spiral.6
It’s important to remember that Moloch is not some conscious, malevolent actual demon. It’s a force of ugliness more than evil, a force of excess; a hyperobject7 we perceive indirectly.
Moloch is the force of ugly competition. It’s the philosophy of the paperclip maximiser; the force that turns a cell cancerous. It lies beneath all ideology but remains deeply embedded within many of the stories we tell.
Moloch, Neoliberalism, and the World as a Machine
Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone! Moloch whose soul is electricity and banks! Moloch whose poverty is the spectre of genius! Moloch whose fate is a cloud of sexless hydrogen! Moloch whose name is the Mind! — Allen Ginsberg, ‘Howl’
Moloch systems tend to centre around a single metric (like maximising paperclips) and, according to Goodhart's Law, when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure8.
Our current cultural ethos is dominated by a neoliberal philosophy which itself centres around the sole measure of infinite growth. In this game, Moloch puts profit before people and rewards pure egotism, eroding any sense of community or moderation in the process.
Over the decades, we’ve become estranged from nature and each other. Our natural drives for empathy and altruism have been warped, overridden with a ruthless, dominator mindset, concerned only with personal prosperity and power. Instead of working to serve and preserve our species and planet, we’re encouraged to seek only self-preservation, our crippling fear of everything ending masked by our clamouring for immortality through individual legacies.
For all those who don’t enjoy the fruits of this exponential growth model unfortunately don’t escape the entropic pull of neoliberalism. Moloch instead has us chase infinity through consumption, rendering us as little more than single-minded automatons whose sole purpose is to acquire stuff. In a way, this Neoliberal Moloch turns us each into a shade of the Paperclip Maximiser.
Is it any wonder that such a rigid, mechanical worldview has us semi-convinced that technology might one day replace us? We’re conditioned to see the world as a machine: lifeless and without purpose. We’re raised like machines, churned out of our homes and institutions like clones, destined to become just another cog in the mechanical wheel that keeps society running in circles.
When we buy into this worldview, we leave behind our humanity.
Imagine the head of an A.I. company who’s genuinely concerned about the social and ethical ramifications of the A.I. revolution. If he were to hold off on releasing his company’s product, another competitor would likely beat him to the punch, leaving him and all of his employees out of work. This isn’t to knock his competitors either since they’re in the same predicament. They’re all caught in Moloch’s dehumanising web. Even if they all agreed to take a more cautious approach, it would only take one defector to bring the whole house of cards down.
Moloch doesn’t absolve people of their responsibility and agency but when we become aware of Moloch we no longer have to point fingers and direct blame at some supposed other. Because in a race to the bottom, everyone loses eventually. Moloch games have no end and no one, not even an entire planet, has the stamina to keep playing forever.
The Metacrisis
Since the inception of neoliberalism — dating back to the 1930s — infinite growth has been the name of our cultural game. Today, we’re witness to countless social crises which ultimately stem from this exhausting pursuit of the inexhaustible. Crippling costs of living. Rising wealth inequality. Environmental collapse. Dwindling psychological and spiritual well-being. These crises are linked together in an idea known as the ‘metacrisis’.
The metacrisis is essentially all the crises combined — and the veins connecting them all flow through the beating heart of Moloch. It goes beyond a mere proposition. The metacrisis can’t be fully encapsulated in words. It’s our daily experience of things falling apart, of our incredulity towards the sheer weirdness and complexity of the times we live in. It’s out there in the world but also within — the Moloch in each of us.
Our enemy is not an ideology. It’s not the machines. Or the billionaires. Or corrupt governments and corporations. Moloch is the enemy we all share. The most formidable of foes, it’s almost impossible to coordinate against Moloch. Which leaves the question, ”How can we overcome such a pervasive and overwhelming force?”
Is our case hopeless?
The word crisis comes from the Greek word, krinein, meaning ‘to decide’. It points to the opportunity present within every calamity. To see the opportunity in the metacrisis, and to seize it, we have to first recognise what type of problem the metacrisis is.
The Muse — Goddess of Complexity, Creativity, and Beauty
Complexity defines our times. Our various political and cultural arenas, even our own minds are examples of complex systems9; unpredictable, greater than the sum of their parts, possessing a form of vitality.
To overcome Moloch, we need to learn how to embody complexity ourselves — to get with the weirdness of modernity, to make sense within mystery, to flow with uncertainty, to play with paradox. To do this, we must learn to harness an equally complex and powerful opposing force; the anti-Moloch. Or, as I’ve come to call it, the Muse.10
The Muses were the nine Greek goddesses who presided over the arts and sciences. In this context, the Muse is the force of creative insight and inspiration — the force of novelty and positive-sum games.
There is nothing more natural and sacred than the act of creation. It’s the force that powers nature and evolution. It’s also the force behind our greatest feats: The James-Webb telescope, The Beatles’ White Album, The Great Pyramids, Van Gogh’s Starry Night, pizza, The Lord of the Rings (you get the gist). These are vessels through which the Muse speaks. The Muse is there in our every day, protecting the beauty and balance in the world and in us, promoting healthy competition, pushing us to be more. The Muse is the force that makes 1 + 1 = 3 — that makes things greater than the sum of their parts. It lies at the essence of every person, ecosystem, art movement, and creative decision.
The battle between Moloch and the Muse is aesthetic more than it is moral. Not so much good vs. evil but beauty vs. ugliness — complex and alive vs. mechanical and dead.
The Muse embraces complexity, showing us more than the narrowed incentives we’re prompted to follow. The Muse empowers us without the false promises and illusions of excess. While Moloch makes ugliness from infinity, the Muse reveals the beauty in finitude.
My intention with Moloch and the Muse is to explore the dynamic between these two forces, and look at how they exert themselves both on individual and cultural levels. I want to take these big ideas — often too abstract and intellectual for my liking — and make them more accessible and applicable. I believe the Muse lies dormant in everyone and that awakening it is our only defence against Moloch (and maybe our ticket out of the metacrisis).
In the words of philosopher and explorer of consciousness, Terence McKenna:
“It’s easy to be an optimist if you’re an idiot. But to be an optimist and be cool, this is the challenge.”
This is the challenge I’ve set myself and one I humbly pass on to anyone willing to take it on. I hope we’re up for it!
Thank you so much for reading! I just want to make it clear from the outset that everything you read here is just one guy’s view. Like anyone, I have blind spots so any questions, comments, or critiques are more than welcome!
And not in some Terminator-esque evil killer robots way. That’s too human!
And as a planet for that matter!
‘The Canaanites are best known from the biblical accounts that portray them as a hostile, pre-Israelite indigenous population residing in the “promised land” who were conquered by the tribes of Israel under the leadership of Joshua following their Exodus from Egypt.’ (source: Oxford Bibliographies)
Three awesome examples from the sports world… Roger Bannister breaking the four-minute mile… Bill Russell becoming the first black NBA star and going on to win 11 championships in 13 seasons… Alex Honnald free soloing El Capitan.
Imagine a stadium full of people, sitting down to watch a football game. When the game begins everyone has an equal view. But then a few people at the front want an even better view so they stand up. This forces the people behind them to stand up as well if they wish to have a view of the game at all. Then the people behind them have to do the same. And so on, until everyone is standing and no one has a better view than they did before (aside from the few at the front). In fact, everyone is now worse off because they’ve been forced to stand. Everyone has been forced to participate in a faulty system because of the actions of a few players at the front.
This happens when businesses cut environmental corners to beat out rivals’ profits. Or when athletes use PEDs to out of suspicion that their competitors are using them too. Or when countries keep pouring obscene amounts of money into military defence since they’d feel comparatively vulnerable otherwise.
A ‘hyperobject’ is an object which cannot be touched or directly observed but still has vitality to it. A few examples include race, class, climate change, and Moloch. (http://cyborganthropology.com/Hyperobjects)
In other words, when we use a measure to reward performance, we provide an incentive to manipulate the measure in order to receive the reward. We see this most often, and explicitly, with money. We also see it in sports, like when a basketball player focuses solely on scoring more points, even when that comes at the expense of their teammates and collective success.
Complicated systems (like clocks or car engines) can be understood by studying their parts and the linear, one-to-one relationships between them. This makes them totally predictable. Complex systems (like living organisms or ecosystems) cannot be fully understood since each constituent part has a non-linear relationship with every other part simultaneously. This makes complex systems inherently unpredictable since they’re constantly changing, even as we attempt to comprehend them. It’s like complex systems are alive, and complicated systems are dead. Moloch sees the world as complicated, as lifeless and mechanical. The Muse recognises the complexity inherent in everything and revels in its great mystery.
Liv Boeree calls this anti-Moloch ‘Win-Win’. This is also the name of her podcast which I’d highly recommend!
Fascinating and thought provoking
A great short exploration of the Moloch Concept! I love Scott Alexander's long form article on Moloch, but in trying to explain the concept to others, that article can be a bit dense and overly hyper-rational to share with ordinary readers. Perhaps your article would serve as a better introduction. Congratulations on the first piece! I'm curious to read more of your writing as it comes out. Very adjacent to the writing I am doing at @unityunderground where I'm exploring the forces of unity and separation as a lens for building better communities and a more beautiful world. I've just gotten started as well :)