Notes on Gitcoin Moloch Comic Lore

# Notes on Gitcoin Moloch Comic Lore ###### tags: `Gitcoin` `molochcomic` * Can a relation be made to the new MolochDAO manifesto/vision being written? * Might we begin with creative generative sessions through the end of 2021? * When should the narrative be locked in to facilitate a Q1 2022 completion? * What is the driving purpose? * Illustration of key concepts of MoM? * Gitcoin marketing? * Elaborating upon the MoM mythology/meme? ie: an expanded vision of Moloch brand/meme through different representations * Public education: quadratic funding, multipolar traps, etc.? * What kind of *monster* is Moloch? * Zombie: undead souless proletariat * Vampire: aristocracy preying upon the weak * Blob: symbolic capitalism/industrialism sprawling and consuming everything in its way (cloud of sexless hydrogen) * Granite cock: obelisk, patriarchal monolith of power, urbanity, civilization, Luxor of Las Vegas * Intoxicating/asphyxiating atmosphere: *the very air we breath* or perhaps *nothing or no-body at all*, the paranoia of loneliness, the neurosis of repetitive labor, psychic trauma, capitalist aliennation * Bull-headed demon: what is the lore of the Canaanite/Carthaginian god? * Eater of babies to ensure positive outcome in war and trade deals * Cosmic kiln, oven, fire portal to a dark dimension; it keeps us warm, bakes our bread, fires our stoneware, just so we have something to fight over. * *The fire around which cities are build, around which people are gathered.* Fire drives the machine of progress, steals the gaze of anyone that approaches. * Moloch *is not exactly* capitalism (as Alexander states in the beginning of MoM). Moloch *is*: * Coordination failure; humans failing to coordinate * Always already present, within all of us * Incessant, nagging; a demon sitting on your shoulder, whispering in your ear (confused for Satan) * A tempter, a seducer, a caster of illusions; like the harpies singing to the sailors in The Odyssey * Negative compulsions against others, **the adversarial drive** to out-compete other players? * A shapeshifter: diffuse, dispersed, emanating from the mind itself, psychosis, skeleton jelly laying multipolar traps * An **ancient god** and therefore powerful, unlike younger/newer gods * A necromancer, an evil wizard, a reality distortion field, chaos magician, caster of illusions: making us think we are racing for the top while we are actually speeding to the bottom, convinving us that selfish desire is the primary drive * Is there another way to represent Moloch? As something more psychological? * Ashcan * Children screaming, boys sobbing, old men weeping * MC Escher-esque prison, jailhouse, congress of sorrows, buildings of judgement * Stone of war, pure machinery, fingers of ten armies, spectral nations * Blood running money, cannibal dynamo, smoking tomb, demonic industry * Reflective window eyes, robot apartments, skyscrappers, factory dreams shrouded in fog, smoke stacks, invisible suburbs * Oil, stone, electricity, **banks**, skeleton treasury * Poverty, genius, **the mind** * A cloud of sexless hydrogen * Loneliness, dreams of angels, craziness, fear, abandonment, invincible madhouse * Every issue of the comic might explore a new embodiment of Moloch as a new attempt of the demon to *sabotage the human imagination, to take ownership of our creativity, and leverage us against each other* * Positive attributes * We teach each other to understand the tragedy of the commons, multipolar traps, existential risks, etc. * We must first *unlearn*; unfuck our imaginations, desires, etc. * A return to an indigenous way of knowing? * A matristic orientation, as opposed to the paternal/patriarchal? * Who is the protagonist? * Ninjas of coordination using the tools of dispersion, decentralized histories (oral tradition?), autonomy, radical anonymity (identity play), weaponized privacy * Anon anarchists! * Invisible activists * Apache guerrilla warriors over medieval barbarians * They avoid congregating in masses, to avoid becoming appropriated into the war machine * Individuals figuring out how to use the tools at their disposal to remain dispersed, to instigate a conversation about reclaiming the means of production without desiring to accumulate them - instead to disperse resources through alternative supply chains to the under privleged communities that need them the most. * uh... punks??? Food not bombs lol. Not crass tribalism, but an archaic revival? Radical mnemonic wizards? * WoW-style MMORPG LARPing is problematic * Medieval times = the dark ages, based in superstition, LCD idea of magic, warring tribes * Definitively adversarial * Implies the superimposition of a false reality: simulation or simulacra, the metaverse that we escape into (Daniel Schmachtenberger: UBI and Occulus will render the masses as zombies when we no longer need a workforce [due to AGI]). If people receive just enough to survive, they become passive, subdued, docile, ineffectual... and the myth of scarcity continues. *This is Moloch at play!* * What is the alternative? * The Enlightenment, The Rennaissance, Modern Science, maybe even Transhumanism lol * Utilizing the tools of reason, rationality, logic, abstraction, theoretical modeling, perspectival projection, etc., to transcend our own limitations. *Game theory* * Cyberpunk, cypherpunk, solarpunk ethos: post-apocalyptic futurity * The apocalypse is caused by humans: are we manifesting it through this image? Apocalypse = seeing through the veil! * The comic should take place in the **present moment** * Examples: Chris Ware comics render the mundane/banal into an intricate schematic of experience, allowing us to see the familair in unfamilair ways * We must balance the existential weight against the borefom of meatspace reality. This isn't fantasy, it's really happening! * Psychedelic allegories? Portals to other dimensions? * We live in transitional, intermediary times * What we choose and how we determine our individual values within the deterministic universe: this is how we will successfully coordinate to "slay" Moloch * What is the most important thing the comic book might hope to achieve? * An educational outlet for people to be introduced to, think about, and learn about the importance of coordination * Visualization of multipolar traps: * 14 unique instances outlined in MoM * Give a stern warning of the grotesque upper limits and dangers of full automation, ie: coordination for coordinations sake, or optimization for maximum dehumanizing efficiency, like an earth-scale paper clip machine * **Can we unfuck our imagination fast enough and throughly enough?** *Time crunch, a race against time?* Can we focus on the unlearning required to regain our ability to dream beyond the veil (beyond apocalyptic fantasies)? So that when we peer beyond the veil we don't just default to manifesting more of the same? ie: How do we manifest coordination without manifesting the traumas of web2/corpo experience? How do we dream successful worlds without repeating the traumas of capitalism, colonialism, or even of *humanism* (anthropocentrism, the anthropocene)? * **Coordination begins with one's own body**: eye-hand-heart coordination * **It extends into our relationships**: how we interact with others, or isolate/aliennate * **It manifests in local>global human networks** * The comic book format seeds the imagination (lol), teaching an oscillation of scale from the micro to the macro, to seek out Moloch lurking at every level of scale: the most important thing is shifting the readers perspective