Yeah, Adam Smith did
The Hand Of God at the Tower of Babel that destroyed a united humanity that realized they didn’t need kings and religion was a farce then force segregated them by making up languages and cultures to keep them divided.
In what world is the construction of tower of babel about how people dont need kings and religion is a farce? Babel is Uruk, is Ur, is Babylon—all these are monarchical polities with gods and commodity production. Yankland too is Babel. The collapse of the city of Babel meant the hand of proto-capital was crushed and all its slaves could return free to their land.
Babel is a story about the ancient near eastern urban city from the view of the nomadic herders at their periphery. This is how it has been interpreted by everyone until the weirdo enlightenment deists made it about human potential.
As an example of how Babel was understood as sucking, one of the midrash says that at Babel:
“[The labourers] who took up the bricks at babel went up on the Eastern [ascent], and those who descended went down on the Western [descent]. If a man fell and died, they paid no heed to him, but if a brick fell they sat down and wept, and said: Woe is us! when will another one come in its stead?”
🎵 The grabbing hands 🎵 grab all they can 🎵 🎵 All for themselves 🎵 after all🎵
I get it and often see it the same way, but sometimes I wonder if that sort of anthropomorphizing doesn’t undermine how truly sinister it is. Capital itself is in some ways incorporeal and is built upon layers of social abstractions, yet it bends the entire world towards its own misery and destruction- and in truth is concrete and hyperreal
I read the first part the other day and it really stuck with me. Excellent essay
it’s really effective at extending the metaphor until you are standing in the real world going “wait, it’s not a metaphor”
Yeah it’s one of those where it would be very easy to handwave as crank woo-woo shit until you actually seriously engage with what’s being said
I don’t think I have a very specific mental image of it. Usually it’s more of a dark, sinister, formless hunger with an alien will. If I think of it as having form, it’s in the form of a malicious and darkly glowing, ever growing pile of gold and plunder surrounded by blind sycophants and servants.
Never forget! Capital Is A Real God!
Description: SCP-3125 is an extremely large (see full Θ’-dimensional fractal topology, attachment 13), highly aggressive anomalous metastasized meme complex originating externally to our reality and now partially intersecting it.
SCP-3125 is adapted for survival in an ideatic ecology considerably more violent and hostile than our own. (Here, “our own” refers to human head space: the set of all ideas which humans have or are biologically capable of having.) Because humans have no natural exposure to ideas as aggressive as SCP-3125, human minds have no protective evolutionary adaptations against it. Individuals possessed of SCP-3125 become incapable of entertaining weaker, “conventional” ideas, and become instead wholly bodily subordinate to the purpose of serving and disseminating the core concepts of SCP-3125. In addition, although undergoing no outwardly visible physical alteration, they cease to be externally recognisable as human.
Yep, sounds like capitalism. What’s that quote about the divine right of kings again?
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What about a large evil floating penis?
That’s the patriarchy
And yes the big evil floating hand is jerking the big evil floating penis.
SHOW ME WHAT YOU GOT
i guess it depends on if your capital city is above or below yours on the map
everybody scared about a magical invisible hand coming to fairly distribute (to capitalists) in mysterious ways, all the while the perfectly visible hands are picking your pockets.
I think of it as a giant zombie robot
i see it as an infinite dimension of evil tentacles
