Carthaginian demon
Since the medieval period, Moloch has often been portrayed as a bull-headed idol with outstretched hands over a fire; this depiction takes the brief mentions of Moloch in the Bible and combines them with various sources, including ancient accounts of Carthaginian child sacrifice and the legend of the Minotaur.
“Moloch” has been figuratively used in reference to a person or a thing which demands or requires a very costly sacrifice
Personification of forces and systems which compel individuals to race to the bottom
Moloch is the personification of the forces that coerce competing individuals to take actions which, although locally optimal, ultimately lead to situations where everyone is worse off. Moreover, no individual is able to unilaterally break out of the dynamic. The situation is a bad Nash equilibrium. A trap.
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.
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!
[…]
(Ginsberg 2022)
Related:
Bibliography
Backlinks
- All cops are bastards
- Allen Ginsberg | Howl
- Capitalism
- Collective action problem
- Coordination (Moloch)
- Dark forest theory
- Dreamtime
- Excess resources (Moloch)
- Ian Danskin | The Cost of Doing Business
- James C. Scott | Seeing like a State
- Marc Andreessen | It’s Time to Build
- Physical limitations (Moloch)
- Programming as a tool to make things
- Scott Alexander | Meditations On Moloch
- Tanya Reilly | The Staff Engineer’s Path
- The opposite of a trap is a garden
- Todos
- Tragedy of the commons
- Utility maximization (Moloch)
- We live in a society