Are stories where evil wins unique to the West?

[Legato Endless]

The heck you're talking about?

That a shift in social attitudes is prefiguring a time of reckoning.

[Crooked Man]

That a shift in social attitudes is prefiguring a time of reckoning.

Give me a break you can't be serious.

That's pure gold. A more equal and accepting society will bring the end times?

Run away while you can.

[Lethologica]

That a shift in social attitudes is prefiguring a time of reckoning.

People predicting reckoning from shifts in social attitudes have predicted 1000 of the last 5 reckonings.

EDIT: Also, when possible, shift the burden of proof for actually demonstrating the shifts and their causal link to reckonings.

[Gastronomie]

Are stories where evil wins, such as in Alien: Covenant, or at least one of the Phantasm films, or some of the Nightmare on Elm Street series, or the original version of Little Red Riding Hood, and I'm sure many others than I have forgotten or am unaware of, unique to late-Western civilisation?

Uh, no.

I have a hard time imagining any traditional indigenous culture having a story like this, for example:
"And then the evil god slew the good god and his wicked kingdom stood forever and ever."

You couldn't complain if people argue you're being potentially Eurocentric (regardless of whether you actually are, or mean to be). Stories where evil wins are found potentially everywhere. It's just that you have a hard time imagining it, because you don't have a clear understanding about other cultures, and in no means are your "imaginations" correct in this case.

[Legato Endless]

Give me a break you can't be serious.

That's pure gold. A more equal and accepting society will bring the end times?

Run away while you can.

I've heard at least 5 explanations for the real reason topical storms have been dumping rain where my Uncle lives this week alone.

People predicting reckoning from shifts in social attitudes have predicted 1000 of the last 5 reckonings.

EDIT: Also, when possible, shift the burden of proof for actually demonstrating the shifts and their causal link to reckonings.

What's interesting is, ignoring the old canard of social attitudes, we are having some doomsaying these days from people who actually do spend a lot of time showing their work, speculatively. Superintelligence, for example, is basically Godlike robotic intelligence is both plausible and inevitable unless we prepare for it. Or whether modern automation might actually upend existing economic trends and finally have technology remove far more jobs from the market than it creates. Of course time will tell if the Futurists are just Nostradamus in technocratic robes.

[2D8HP]

No, with respect, it serves no purpose to humour you. I'm interested in the ideas, not the biographies of you or anyone else. If you have anything to say about my suggested need for new Archetypes, however, I'm all ears.

Hardly the original topic, but I'm game.

Also Nietzsche and Leo Strauss as advocates of the need for inner strength for the highly conscious to overcome the moral emptiness of existence.

Sounds like we need new Archetypes to help us bind the psychic forces that will otherwise upend everything as the locks on our moral fetters are picked by materialism. Such a model would need to be universal, cosmic even, that would set up a warning to humanity.

Never mind.

I have no clue as to what you're asking

Jungian Archetypes map the mind. Suppose there is a deeper level or another set of archetypes mapping a complementary aspect of the mind? I don't know, we humans are in such a pickle conventional solutions are deadlocked. I wonder if cosmic horror has potential to save us, instead of destroying us. I always was fond of humanity rising up to become a Lesser Independent Race.

"Such a pickle situation"?

If we're beyond cosmic fear then we are already insane or living in a new dark age.

I'd say society's wholesale denial of universal principles of art, science, statecraft, and morality counts as insane. Of course if it hadn't denied principle in the first place there would have been no room for cosmic fear....

Oh I think I get it!

Your doing an impersonation of someone who's lived through the World Wars who is suffering existential despair ala Nausea, No Exit, Waiting for Godot, etc.

I want to play too!

Purple Eisenhower mimeographs going through the stucco of my mind

Mustard gas, atomic blasts, squares are too sublime

*snaps fingers*

Espresso

The heck you're talking about?

It's free verse!

Ya dig?

Compared to today's world the 1990's were dark and terrible, and the 1950's and earlier weren't even civilized

According to my grandparents, compared to the '30's and the war years the 1950's were great!

And according to me the '90's were (mostly) AWESOME!

The 1980's however were a dark, dark time.

---

Alright, here's some fictional heroes that I'd like to see more of their like:

The meteorologist in David Brin's The Life Eaters,

Sam Gamgee in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings .

Both reject superhuman power.

[Bohandas]

I'd say society's wholesale denial of universal principles of art, science, statecraft, and morality counts as insane. Of course if it hadn't denied principle in the first place there would have been no room for cosmic fear.

There are no universal principles other than the laws of physics and mathematics (and much of the latter likely aren't really relevant to anything; a finite approximation of pi to a sufficient number of decimal places for example is sufficient given that distances lower than the planck length are meaningless and he observable universe is of finite size and will give you the exact diameter of any circle that can exist in the real world)

As to dead bodies and misery,
The century is young,
Give it time,
It will come.

This I agree with. That;s been clear since last november

[InvisibleBison]

As to dead bodies and misery,
The century is young,
Give it time,
It will come.

I feel obliged to point out that this century is actually rather tragically well-supplied with dead bodies and misery.

[Bohandas]

The absolute number of bodies is getting higher to be sure, but that's due to increased population resulting from people not dying of starvation, infected or poorly treated injuries, or complications from minor diseases

[Serpentine]

I can't believe someone actually tried to claim that horror is a Western thing.

If there is a universal constant that can be applied to humanity, it's that we like eatin', shaggin', and scarin' each other.

[2D8HP]

I feel obliged to point out that this century is actually rather tragically well-supplied with dead bodies and misery.

Yes, my great-grandmother, born in late 19th century Europe (who I knew in the early 1970's just before she died), was the only one of her siblings, or indeed any of her blood relatives who wasn't a descendent who wasn't killed by the wars and regimes of the 20th century, and always seemed downcast to me.

My grandfather who was born in 1917 (so he survived the Spanish Flu, and the Great Depression), and served in the U.S. Army Air Corps as a test pilot, and was scheduled to fly a bomber to Japan in 1945, and thought he would probably be killed, when the Atomic bomb was dropped and the war ended..

He didn't suffer survivors guilt, he had survivors euphoria! I seldom saw him glum (unlike my born in '37 father, or me, born in '68 who are cranky coots).

See 1936's "Things to Come" to see what my grandparents (most of the Forum's great-grandparents) generation feared war would bring, replaced by the fear of Atomic weapons by my parents and my generation. Those born before 1946 and have memories of those years knew terrible times.

Us?

Not so much, at that scale.

Yes they're many things I may complain about, but compared to my grandparents youth and young adulthood?

Easy street.

The times for existential angst was 60 to 102 years ago (during and after the World Wars), not now.

[Vinyadan]

Yeah, the dark ages weren't as nearly as terrible or dark as people say.

I was expecting a Monty Python video (the Medieval village in Holy Grail... )

The Dark Ages were very bad when they started. Parts of Western Europe lost about half of their population within a century, due to loss of safety, destruction of commerce, war, plague, and plunder. There is e.g. a book about the development of Baetica during and after the end of Roman authority there, and it paints a very grim portrait of the situation.

Also, the heck is cosmic fear? Fear of the cosmos? Fear for the cosmos?

[Kantaki]

Oh I think I get it!

Your doing an impersonation of someone who's lived through the World Wars who is suffering existential despair ala Nausea, No Exit, Waiting for Godot, etc.

I want to play too!

Purple Eisenhower mimeographs going through the stucco of my mind

Mustard gas, atomic blasts, squares are too sublime

*snaps fingers*

Espresso

Failed your SAN check?

[Crooked Man]

Also, the heck is cosmic fear? Fear of the cosmos? Fear for the cosmos?

It's fear of the insignificance of humanity in the face of the vastness of the cosmos.

[Vinyadan]

Oh, OK, thank you. I probably already said this in another topic, but it's something I never understood. I regard the cosmos as our home, so I don't know why we should be scared of it being big. Maybe, if we one day were to find some sort of alien race capable of wiping us out, I would think about it, but it's not like we don't already have to worry about fellow humans endangering our safety.

[Eldan]

Purple Eisenhower mimeographs going through the stucco of my mind

Mustard gas, atomic blasts, squares are too sublime

*snaps fingers*

Espresso

I dig, but I Eisenhower is more of a blue or dark grey than a purple.

[Eldan]

Oh, OK, thank you. I probably already said this in another topic, but it's something I never understood. I regard the cosmos as our home, so I don't know why we should be scared of it being big. Maybe, if we one day were to find some sort of alien race capable of wiping us out, I would think about it, but it's not like we don't already have to worry about fellow humans endangering our safety.

Many people like to think they, personally, are significant. And if the universe is that big, there's that feeling that what they do will never influence most of it, or even be remembered, in time. That scares them.

*shrug*

I never felt it either.

[Lacuna Caster]

Hardly the original topic, but I'm game...

2D8, I am also somewhat unclear as to what Donna is looking for, specifically. But I don't think your tone of jeering condescension is remotely helpful.

[Lacuna Caster]

Jungian Archetypes map the mind. Suppose there is a deeper level or another set of archetypes mapping a complementary aspect of the mind? I don't know, we humans are in such a pickle conventional solutions are deadlocked. I wonder if cosmic horror has potential to save us, instead of destroying us. I always was fond of humanity rising up to become a Lesser Independent Race.

I'm afraid I'm not terribly familiar with Jung- heck, all I know of Freud is from webcomics- so I'm not sure I can comment usefully on the idea. My gloss from skimming wikipedia is that some interpretations of archetypes making them into a genetic predisposition toward certain ideas and values, which I think is plausible, but by definition that wouldn't be much affected by changes in culture?

But why in particular do you feel that humans are in such a pickle? I can see various existential problems on the horizon (see below), but I'm not clear on how physical materialism per se is to blame. Unless you equate it with consumerism?

Not really. At least, not in the way you're framing it. People weren't terribly more in consensus about the intricacies of life then, than they are now. But there's a much more fatal problem. Mythology can cover the broad strokes of life, the inevitably of death, your role in society, what we as a culture celebrate and why it's a good thing. But it can't readily answer the messy specifics that inevitably arise, because they exceed the limits of any canon, especially one limited to oral transmission. But these events are nonetheless earth shattering.

Hey, I'm not saying that there aren't distinct benefits to having actual explanations for how the world works- obviously medicine and sanitation and transport and manufacturing, etc. have raised the bar for living standards. I'm clearly in no hurry to go back to a time when the miasma theory of disease was in vogue.

My main point is that, prior to the scientific revolution, the fringes of the map might say "here be dragons", but Marduk bested Tiamat and St. George slew the worm. Lovecraft takes a look at billions of years of geological time and the gulfs of distant stars and concludes- correctly- that any dragons who swim in that sea could swallow us without noticing if they were half a notch higher on the kardashev scale.

(An an aside, I'm not convinced that modern societies have been vastly more rational in dealing with, e.g, economic dysfunction or rampant deforestation or technological unemployment or other sweeping paradigm shifts, since narratives of convenience tend to obfuscate reasoning on these points as soon as vested interests get involved. Empirical knowledge hasn't really solved that problem.)

[comicshorse]

This little one greets fellow daoist!

I also like to read wuxia and fantasy novels. A expression that I have seen repeatedly in several works is "the winner is the King, and the loser becomes the thief". This idea seems to appear in a lot of Asian works, maybe because of the pervasiveness of the concept of the Order and Mandate of Heavens.

" Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason?
Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason. "

[Kantaki]

It's fear of the insignificance of humanity in the face of the vastness of the cosmos.

A healthy dose of arrogance can help with that.

[Gastronomie]

Many people like to think they, personally, are significant. And if the universe is that big, there's that feeling that what they do will never influence most of it, or even be remembered, in time. That scares them.

*shrug*

I never felt it either.

Regarding the underlined part, you could argue that Buddhism, as well as some parts of Hinduism, are in some ways similar in their main point.

Buddhism pretty much starts with acknowledging that you're an ugly, greedy jerk, living in a jerkish world full of jerks, and that your life is of no significance whatsoever... because you're a jerk.

I'm not an expert on Hinduism, but from what I heard the gods in Hinduism are so overpowered you could argue they can wrestle the Great Old Ones or even the Outer Gods... and win. Like, some god whose name I forgot, his "one blink of an eye" takes about the same time as the life span of five thousand universes or something. I'm sorry, my info might be incorrect or inaccurate, but anyways, the human race is insiginificant in a world with such powerful entities.

The difference between these religions and Cosmic Horror is prolly about whether there's a way to do something about it.

In Buddhism, after realizing you're a jerk, you proceed to start thinking about "how to escape your jerkishness".
In Hinduism, you can pray to the almighty gods. Given how powerful the gods are, if you could gain their blessings, that's great.
But in Lovecraftian Horror, there is no way to cure your lack of importance. The Great Old Ones don't even really realize they're destroying your planet (or solar system) as they make their morning stroll. So perhaps, the idea that "there is no hope" may have first originated in Europe (which is the first area in the world where nihilism somehow successfully spread and became a major movement in the society, if I'm not mistaken).

(No, this does not mean that "stories where evil wins are unique to the West". Stories are created for various purposes, by various people, with various beliefs and spheres of thought. Horror is a universal thing, and in most old horror stories, the evil, or unfathomable, side wins (note that most of the time, the reason here is not really because the world sucks, but simply because that way, the story's scarier).
However, it may mean that the West is the first place in the world where people actually took that type of horror seriously - instead of considering it simple entertainment - and connected it to the real world. Or to be more exact, "the first place in a very long time". Ancient people did the same thing, got scary, couldn't stand it, created religion to cover it up, and passed it on to their children. Western culture decided to strip it off, and as a result, re-discovered what their ancestors tried to hid from them.)

The main point of Cosmic Horror - "you're an ant, you suck" - is in no way peculiar to the West. Every culture has that.
It's just that while other cultures went on to cure their hearts with explanations or ways to escape that thought - mostly in the forms of philosophies and myths - the West eventually stopped doing that.

[kraftcheese]

This insignificance of human life doesn't seem so bad if you place it in the context of the human experience being the only experience we ever have, if that makes any sense?

Like, we're all significant on a person-to-person level as long as we have social interactions with people, and humans are the only thing we know of that even measures significance. Materialism doesn't necessarily mean we're insignificant.

[Brother Oni]

Not sure that the Monkey King is an example. True, it is his pride that gets him stuck under the mountain, but in Journey to the West that happens at the start of the story, and by the end (some 95-odd chapters later in a 100 chapter story) he is made an Ahrat as a reward for his actions after his release.

While you're correct, the Sun Wukong's 'origin story' is often told as a self contained tale and in my opinion, there's a big enough time gap (500 years) before the birth of the main protagonist of Journey to the West to reasonably regard it as separate.

The times for existential angst was 60 to 102 years ago (during and after the World Wars), not now.

Unless you remember the Cuban Missile Crisis or live within missile range of North Korea, but now we're veering into board rules territory.

[pendell]

I can't believe someone actually tried to claim that horror is a Western thing.

If there is a universal constant that can be applied to humanity, it's that we like eatin', shaggin', and scarin' each other.

Don't forget sleeping. Like, actual eight hours of uninterrupted sleep.

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Aotrs Commander]

As to dead bodies and misery,
The century is young,
Give it time,
It will come.

Look, I'm trying, okay?

But no matter how much I submit my requests to the boss how humanity desparately needs to be orbitally bombarded into paste, vanishingly few good, many bad, and uncounted stupid and incompetant alike, he just won't let me do it, because it's "against regulations."

I appeciate the saner members among you realising that explosive death from above is the best way to deal with humanity's many, oh SO MANY, ills, but just give me frackin' chance, will you? Wearing away a 2700 Lich's resolve takes a while, is all.

Honestly.

You try to be a good Evil-doer, but there really is no rest for the wicked.

*sigh*

Right, I suppose I'd go submit request number... *checks* 4273, then hadn't I?

Are we happy now?

[SaintRidley]

Also, +1 to the fact that tragedy isn't the same as "Evil wins". You can see it by, well, reading them. In Beowulf also evil doesn't win: Beowulf dies, but the dragon is dead.

Point of order: it's a bit more than that. Now that Beowulf is dead the neighboring tribes will finally be able to invade without fear of losing, and Beowulf's entire people will be extinguished. It only deepens the tragedy and may not qualify as evil winning (unless in a very delayed sense), but it's not as simple as Beowulf and the dragon killing each other. Beowulf has also shortsightedly doomed his people.

Anyway, just wanted to throw that out there.

[eggynack]

Of course not. I've been on a reasonable Bong Joon Ho kick recently, and his films tend to end with Pyrrhic victories at best.

Spoiler: Bong Joon Ho spoilers

Show

So, movies I saw were Snowpiercer, Okja, and Mother, in that order. Snowpiercer is arguably the movie where evil triumphs least, but that's just because the protagonist decides to likely destroy all of humanity rather than perpetuate the villain's problematic system. I'm inclined to say that a film where the only way to destroy evil is to make there be no humans to be evil is pretty close to the goal here.

Okja is kinda the middle ground here. The protagonist successfully saves her super pig, and a bonus pig on top of that, but she was only able to do so by directly participating in the system she was ostensibly opposing, and said system seems like it'll do just fine after the events of the movie. If anything, the interference of our heroes just made the system more evil, replacing the PR conscious sister with the one that couldn't care less about either morality or about how her morals are viewed.

Finally, you have Mother, which is a ridiculously dark film. The titular mother succeeds at getting her son not to go to jail, but said son turns out to have been the murderer, and she had to kill someone to keep that fact secret.
Moreover, all that effort and murder was utterly pointless because the police wound up pointing the finger at an even more disenfranchised kid. The mother in question is pretty evil, and she wins to the detriment of a buncha stuff.

Really gotta see The Host at some point. I've heard a bit about it, so I think it captures those same themes of futility and the durability of cruel and callous systems. And, of course, all of these movies are very much not the west.

[The Eye]

Just watch the darkest film I have ever seen:

"Sympathy For Mr Vengeance"

You can't get worse than that.

[Manga Shoggoth]

While you're correct, the Sun Wukong's 'origin story' is often told as a self contained tale and in my opinion, there's a big enough time gap (500 years) before the birth of the main protagonist of Journey to the West to reasonably regard it as separate.

Fair enough - I'm not aware of the story in any context outside Journey to the West (apart from one propoganda film that didn't get as far as the Mountain of Five Elements...).