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[-] Fleur_@aussie.zone 16 points 1 day ago

Yeah....

And the chaos causing Lovecraft's overwhelming sense of dread was black people moving into his New England neighborhood lol

[-] prole 3 points 16 hours ago

Kind of a lesson on its own... Like look how exhaustively terrifying it can be to be bigoted. I mean, it must be, right?

[-] qarbone@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

But unironically, I can see how it makes inroads toward white supremacy. They're being ground down the weight of inescapable change that they aren't keep apace with when someone comes and says "hating this group will fix it".

They're the crazy person who "knows" Nyarlathotep is coming...unless they manage to kill all the cats.

[-] Hugin@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

Also the fact that he might be Welsh.

[-] Fleur_@aussie.zone 1 points 1 day ago

Cthulhu is just the name of his aunt

[-] RedGreenBlue@lemmy.zip 33 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I prefer the ant on a circuit board, that briefly gained human understanding allegory.

1000002014

[-] twice_hatch@midwest.social 10 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I feel that way about at least 3 things. Camus called it "the absurd". The universe, he said, essentially does not make sense. You can dig and dig and there is no meaning at the bottom. We really are just atoms. The absurd is the interface, when humankind presses their hand against the meaningless and tries to make too much sense of it.

There isn't going to be an achievement screen when you die.

Terry Pratchett in Hogfather can be read as a direct response - You can live a good life anyway if you believe in "the big lies" - Truth, justice, love, etc.

[-] HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 1 points 19 hours ago

I think there will be an achievement screen when we die but it will be for someone else and in a language we can't read.

[-] chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 1 day ago

There isn’t going to be an achievement screen when you die.

I'm about to leave a negative steam review over this shit

[-] GreenCrunch@lemmy.today 5 points 1 day ago

I'd ask for a refund, but I'm a few hundred thousand hours beyond that point...

[-] ICastFist@programming.dev 4 points 1 day ago

TLDR - it's the fear when you first realize you're a nihilist

[-] HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world 1 points 18 hours ago

I'm not a nihilist tho.

[-] HexesofVexes@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

To truly understand cosmic horror, look no further than a mathematician.

They get a small (smaller than most will admit) look at something barely comprehensible to human understanding, and it is beautiful, and they dedicate their lives in search of this beauty.

To those outside falls the cosmic horror, the (culturally implied) madness of the mathematician. To those who see, only cosmic bliss exists (seriously, go explore mathematics WITHOUT exams, it will bring you joy).

[-] zkfcfbzr@lemmy.world 19 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

That got kind of increasingly oddly specific the longer it went on.

This is probably less accurate to Lovecraft's intent, but I like to think of "cosmic horrors" as being more literal. The universe, by and large, does not care about life - and the fact that it continues to exist at all, let alone so peacefully, is largely just chance or luck. It's almost absurd that we go about our lives so mundanely, given how chaotic and inhospitable the universe at large largely is.

Events at scales large enough to completely destroy Earth's biosphere happen on the regular and without reason in the universe. The Earth doesn't "owe" us a stable and habitable environment, it just happens to have one largely by chance - one cosmic catastrophe and we're out. One collision of sufficient size, or nearby supernova, or gamma ray burst aimed right at us, or front of vacuum decay, or solar superflare. A rogue planet could pass near our solar system at an odd angle and destabilize our orbit (or those of millions of asteroids).

Even our own actions - man-made climate change and ocean acidification could trigger a phytoplankton die-off, disrupting the global oxygen cycle, slowly suffocating most life over a span of decades. Or we could pass a tipping point and actually have Earth's biosphere run away into a Venus-like state, no longer habitable at all (there's on the order of 10x-50x more methane trapped in polar ice, than is in the entire atmosphere). A supervolcano could erupt today and send us into a decade-plus of freezing temperatures, famine, and overall civilization-collapsing conditions.

And in the very long term, an end of this nature is completely guaranteed. Life on Earth will one day end, because we're entirely dependent on the sun - one of those unfathomably large and powerful cosmic entities that could, at any point, destroy us or our civilization with a single random event. We're just a lucky ant on the cosmic dance floor that hasn't been stepped on. Yet.

[-] dohpaz42@lemmy.world 17 points 1 day ago

This is really well written, and nails how I’ve felt my whole life since n ways I could t even explain. I’m going to save this and send it to anybody who has never been able to understand me, because there is no way in Hell I’d ever be able to articulate my feelings as well as this Internet stranger just did.

[-] SamuraiBeandog@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

The essay Meditations on Moloch is powerful reading on this topic: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/

For the record, I don't endorse Scott Alexander's opinions in general.

[-] Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 17 hours ago

He is also a fantastic fiction author though.

His advice for people with depression is also broadly probably pretty good - my wife has issues with it and we tried a couple of his recommendations she hadn't tried before, and supplementing OTC l methyl folate helped her significantly despite not having the mutation that commonly results in it being prescribed. And his talking about ketamine being a prospective treatment with some good indicators in research led to the best drug commercial ever, for spravato - esketamine nasal spray for treatment resistant depression.

[-] SamuraiBeandog@lemmy.world 1 points 16 hours ago

He's a psychiatrist by profession so his opinions in that field I would hope were reasonable. His opinions on society and politics are another matter. I think his earlier writing is in general more reasonable than where he's ended up.

[-] twice_hatch@midwest.social 3 points 1 day ago

I think about that essay probably once a month at least.

Maybe "Moloch Horror" would be a good Schelling point, since Lovecraft was a racist- oh wait that poet was a pedophile. Shit... "Cosmic horror" it is?

[-] SamuraiBeandog@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

It had a profound impact on me when I read it years ago. It was a key influence on me constructing a personal religious cosmology and practice, with the purpose of reconciling my strong urges towards the spiritual with my reflexive scientific skepticism.

Was an interesting read!

[-] sharkfucker420@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I think climate change and the extreme weather it causes are the closest we have to eldritch horrors. The impending doom and helplessness of a hurricane or wildfire terrify me. There is literally nothing in my power that I can do to prevent it from happening and there is little I can do to ensure my survival if it gets really bad. I think of storms as these collosal titans tearing through everything we have built and destroying lives without even the knowledge that we exist.

[-] ChicoSuave@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

That's just regular fear and anxiety. We know what's happening and why. We understand that in theory it can be stopped and with the power of friendship we can change our outcome.

Cosmos horror is something happening beyond our understanding. Beyond our ability to understand. Like the ant that has a flash of human sentience and experience, seeing the world change due to their decisions and our existence utterly meaningless to them - only to lose that capability but not the memory of what they witnessed. To the ant they saw the answers to so many questions but those answers created more questions and now they will never have closure or understanding.

They will never again be able to know. They are instead cursed with the knowledge that there are bigger things out there and they can change the world without caring about ants at all. The world outside them moves on uncaring. And at any moment it can change and no one would be able to do a thing.

[-] sharkfucker420@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

There is a reason a said close to but also a lot of the examples given in the original post are things that can be understood or explained but have an outsized affect on our lives that can't be fully quantized. Natural disasters can be explained and described but experiencing them is completely different. I have been through a few hurricanes and nothing has made me feel more dwarfed. I am entirely at the whim of nature's mercy. There's nothing in this world that is more stunningly beautiful and utterly humanizing. It isn't exactly eldritch horror but I think the perspective shift from normal life to feeling like a mouse dancing around the pounding feet of an elephant.

Edit: also I don't humans are capable of grasping climate change that well

[-] SamuraiBeandog@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I think this is overly literal and simplistic. Sure a person can understand on paper what causes a cyclone or flood. But being in one is an experience completely outside of usual human norms. I would describe the power of a big cyclone or tsunami as "incomprehensible" in precisely the way that a cosmic entity wiping out a city would be; you can read about how many miles per hour the winds are in a cyclone but you don't really understand what the reality of that kind of force is and just how insignificant you are in the face of it.

[-] jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 5 points 1 day ago

I think, generally, a lot of people have poor literacy and analysis skills. Like, they might know how to read the words but pulling any deeper meaning out is a reach. I've seen too many people that think stories are just stories, and or they have secret meaning for you to find like a puzzle with one or two "correct" answers.

So I think a lot of people read Lovecraft and latch onto "oh yeah squid monster cool", very literal, and don't really think about what this post is about. Kind of a shame.

There was a book for an RPG I liked that talked about horror. It said something like yeah monsters with tentacles can be scary but also that's very mundane, really. You can see and understand that, and probably shoot it. But horror can come in other forms. Like, how would you fight an enemy that is a song?

[-] prole 1 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago)

Lovecraft adaptations can be cool, but unless you're reading his written words, it just doesn't hit.

You might be able to get close to portraying it, but I feel like you'd always be missing an integral part of what makes it so terrifying.

[-] twice_hatch@midwest.social 2 points 1 day ago

Antimemes are dangerous, and we don't understand them; therefore, they are part of the Problem. Hence my division. We can do the sideways thinking that's needed to combat something which can literally eat your combat training.

[-] MummysLittleBloodSlut 1 points 1 day ago

Aw snap, aw snap! Come to our macaroni party and we'll take a nap!

[-] naught101@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

Sooo... Donald Trump is a cosmic horror?

[-] 1SimpleTailor@startrek.website 5 points 1 day ago

No. You could argue the system that brought him to power is though.

A system that's sole purpose is to empower a few kid diddling degenerates. A system that has been intentionally perpetuated by those who embody the worst aspects of human nature. Those who prostrate themselves at the alters of greed and power. Those whose actions are driving our whole species to destruction. The plots and gears of this system were well in motion before any of us were born, and the window to stop it before is destroys us all has passed. The system is biological life's self-destructive nature made manifest.

In the end we are naught but mere animals. Like all other animals in a system where there are no natural predators and they are allowed propagate unrestrained, it will inevitably lead to the collapse of our ecosystem. We are just deer without hunters on a global scale. Cursed to be clever enough to realize we have brought about our own destruction, but not clever enough to stop it.

A Cosmic Doom has come for us all. The universe will go on without us.

[-] naught101@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

While reading this I kept expecting it to degrade into madness like the html regex explainer

we are naught but mere animals

Speak for yourself, I naught AND a mere animal

[-] Nico_198X@europe.pub 5 points 1 day ago

um, i was promised tentacles?

[-] ekZepp@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Ants on a leaf drifting towards the Niagara Falls.

[-] twice_hatch@midwest.social 2 points 1 day ago

idk, ants are pretty tough on account of the square-cube law.

We're more like monkeys in a rainforest being logged

[-] Atelopus-zeteki@fedia.io 2 points 1 day ago

Dang, I should go back a read some of that stuff, it's been too long.

this post was submitted on 06 Aug 2025
201 points (100.0% liked)

Lovecraft Mythos - Cosmic Horror

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H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos is a shared universe far larger and more terrifying than that of humanity, where ancient, malevolent beings known as the Great Old Ones slumber in the depths of space or time. After Lovecraft's death, the Mythos has been expanded and developed by many authors, including August Derleth, Clark Ashton Smith, and Robert E. Howard. These and many other authors have helped to flesh out the Mythos into a rich and complex Dark Universe.

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