ESSAY // Killing Moloch: Early Pandemic Reflections on Sobriety and Transcendence
EXCERPT //
“The rationality blog Slate Star Codex uses the the brutal Canaanite god Moloch, depicted in Allen Ginsberg’s ‘Howl,’ as a metaphor for humanity’s repeated failure to coordinate toward a better future: Although we might collectively agree that we should steer toward something positive and stable—for instance, workable approaches to health care or criminal justice reform—Moloch offers incentives to individuals within the system that steer everything toward destruction.
Researchers in Silicon Valley have calculated that all of the money Americans spend on ‘getting out of their heads’—including legal and illegal drugs, useful and bogus wellness products, pornography, IMAX theater outings, and other entertaining luxuries that cause measurable increases in pleasurable neurochemicals—adds up to a grand total of around $4 trillion.
We are, as Neil Postman warned in the ’80s, amusing ourselves to death. But let’s try to be optimistic and assume that these Silicon Valley researchers overshot by a trillion: That would still be more than the GDP of the United Kingdom, and we should probably admit that some of this time, money, and energy could be redirected toward killing Moloch.”
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