(no subject)

[subplotkudzu]

 83) Evolution, the Triumph of an Idea: Car Zimmer's companion work to his PBS series, this was an interesting account of evolutionary theory and the resistance to it, though I felt it strayed afield in the end with discussion of computer programming leading to the evolution of an AI. The most interesting thing about it was how it highlighted the inherent Anti-Darwinian bias in the Call of Cthulhu Sanity mechanic, which I discuss a little in this month's A&E. 

84) Bring The Jubilee: Ward Moore's time travel classic, this had been on my shelf for decades before I finally pulled it down. It was very good, but somehow I had built the image of it being a very different book in my head - one that I was less enthused to read than the one n that actually existed. Maybe the one I was thinking of was written in a previous timeline....

Comments

what was in A&E

[brianrogers.livejournal.com]

I may be well behind the times here, but it just dawned on me how anti-Darwinian the CoC sanity rules are. In the 1920's - 30's Lovecraft was essentially rubbing the uncaring randomness of the universe into the face of the people fighting the anti-Darwinian crusade. His horror is coming from their belated realization that they are not the pinnacle of creation, that they are not being shepherded by a kind and loving god and that there is no divine guidance on ethics. Instead the universe is chaotic & uncaring, with the force at its center being a writhing formless madness and humanity's existence being a fluke that barely measures as an afterthought in an eyeblink's worth of time. Well, that would seem to be Evolution via Natural Selection with a Big Bang universe age.

When confronted with the truth of this the average human's mind snaps, with the worst of them turning to the slavish worship of alien forces as incarnate 'deities' in pursuit of a meaning that these entities will not deign to provide or after power by way of unnatural magics, the complete abandonment of ethics and social norms, serving as agents for invading forces or some combination of the three. I suspect that William Jennings Bryan would have agreed that those were likely outcome for the severing of God's role in man's creation. I don't know whether Lovecraft would agree, but the Call of Cthulhu game certainly does.

It seems strange then, given Lovecraft's own atheism that the heroes of the game made from his works spend their time defending the social compact and moral norms, and refusing to embrace the core realities of the universe: that man can be defined as a statistical fluke, that the universe is really big and really old, and could likely contain some big, old powerful beings and other races that don't care about us, that there are sciences we don't yet understand and that morality need not be dictated by an outside force. Instead we as players layer on an even greater madness to the universe, something above the things that generated horror in the anti-Darwinian, Biblical literalists of Lovecraft's day.

But what is it, if we've internalized the big bang/natural selection universe paradigm? You could say that that paradigm is just one screen closer to the real truth, which is even more incomprehensible. There is evidence of that in the settings magic and the dreamlands, but there is still this core problem: learning the universal truth, and thus abandoning the idea of man's central importance and of a loving god, destroys your ethical foundation and sanity. You become a sociopath or wildly unhinged, can engage in things that are black magics in all but name and are a threat to society and good people everywhere. Again, Bryan would likely agree. I just don't think that most of the payers agree.

I'm not entirely sure what to do with this, other than share what might be common knowledge with the rest of the zine and see what sort of discussion it sparks. I still like the game, and agree with Hite's analysis that it is a modern Western with the heroes defending a society that they can no longer truly be part of. Hrm.