Welcome to Moloch and the Muse

The newsletter in a nutshell, a bit about me, and what you’ll get as a subscriber.

Life is weird. Weirder than we can suppose. We’re born. We grow. We die. We fade into the mulch that makes the next life possible. As the artist and poet R.A.P. Ferreira once waxed, it’s “funny how cycles work”.

We’re pushed from birth and pulled towards death and in between the two we’re just here to witness what each has to give.

The human experience is one of opposing forces — light and dark, pain and pleasure, the sublime and the mundane — and it can be a struggle to find balance, tightroping what feels like a tug of war at times.

Our inner conflicts manifest en masse into a culture which has become warped and out of whack with the natural order. The world is screaming at us to slow down. To stop consuming its beauty like a cancer. To stop building fences like they’re its shackles. But we can’t. At least as long as we remain fearfully unaware of what pulls us in this direction of destructive excess: the pull of death, what I call Moloch.

Moloch, through the work of Fritz Lang, Allen Ginsberg, Scott Alexander, and others, has become a symbol of modernity’s shadow. It’s the force that pulls us forward with a single-pointedness of purpose. Scientist, Liv Boeree, has referred to it as:

“The force behind fortune. The power behind progress. The shaper of success.”

However, this force can only fuel real progress if it’s balanced by its partner: the push from birth to rebirth, what I call the Muse.

The Muse (like in the ancient Greek myths) is the force of creation, of fluidity and change. It’s the spirit of nature, the mother of life, the bearer of inspiration and evolution.

Moloch may drive us from A to B but the Muse gives us reason to make the trip in the first place. Without both we’re lost, either in endless pursuit or aimless wandering.

The dance between Moloch and the Muse can sure get messy when we don’t know how to move with its infinite variations and styles. My intention with this newsletter is to learn this dance and explore how it plays out on both the inner path and the world stage. Really, I just want to make sense of the weirdness.

If you also wish to make sense of these weird times (and possess a somewhat philosophical bent) then this newsletter may be a match for you.

Before you hit subscribe, though, I guess you might want me to introduce myself briefly…

I’m Munro — a haver of thoughts and holder of opinions without a fancy degree or credentials to flaunt. I bring with me not answers, just an overactive mind and battered keyboard. As a writer, I see my job as that of a synthesiser of information; to connect ideas from different fields and from people far smarter than me to build a broader, more comprehensive picture of things.

In an effort to avoid becoming just another ideological imp of the information age, I try to hold these ideas (as well as my own) lightly, and remain humbled by all that I don’t know. I don’t want to drown in the ocean of keyboard warriors who are convinced that what they’ve got to say is so damn important. I’m just a guy with a worldview and a message, one of many. For that reason, while I take great care over the words I write, I don’t take what I say too seriously. I’m not that important. I’m just over here, doing my dance, and the door is open if you’d like to join in.

And if you’d like to take a proper dive into Moloch and the Muse, check out my first piece for a more in-depth introduction to the idea and vision behind this work.

In a Game of Paperclips There Are No Winners