But life is already like that. Defeat is inevitable, destruction is inevitable. And madness takes its toll. The thing is, we also understand madness a lot better than we used to. And we can work with it.
I’m minded of a story by William Tenn about a peaceful race of aliens that come to Earth. Thing is, our best brains go out to meet them and, very shortly, go insane and also develop superhuman powers.
It’s sort of a parable on how Europeans destroyed Native American society. Thing is, in the end, a businessman is able to deal with these aliens, not by understanding them, but by not caring about understanding them and just trading, back and forth. The trades are incomprehensible, but they are a standard from which more things can grow.
There are ways to comprehend the incomprehensible. Abstraction, modeling, willful ignorance and so on. If an atom bomb won’t affect something, then something else will. At the very least, it has an interface with our reality, and we can affect that interface. In theory.
Is the insanity effect of Cthulhu supposed to be effectively magic? If so, then yeah, that’s at least medium-scary.
And on a different note, I’m sitting less than a mile from the Fairview street Walmart in Burlington. If I heard there was anything Cthulhu like over there, yeah, I’d be doing what I could to make tracks away, and hoping that he didn’t head in the direction of my office or my home.
Hi, Rick! I don’t think I realized that there was such an active, prolific, and wise Doper so close nearby.
You fear not Dread Cthuhlu? Excellent! Lovecraft’s ploy is working.
You see, once he realized the terrible Elder Beings existyed, he devoted his life to preparing humanity against the day they might return. Absent the ability to defend humanity, he opted instead to immunize us. We may not eb fully protected, yet within a mere handful of generations no mortal shall look at the Elder Horrors with anything other than a mild disgust. Yes, we shall soon be safe from their madness.
This. Cthulhu isn’t a monster, really - he’s a natural disaster, an extinction-level event. He’s frightening for the same reason a gamma-ray burst would be frightening - entirely unpredictable, no defense is possible, and death will be slow and painful.
Might well be, but I’m envisioning total Disney image status overkill. Cthulhu backpacks, Yog-Sothoth tee-shirts, Night Gaunt shaped breakfast cereals, the whole nine yards.
Unfortunately, it looks like you have to purchase books of his letters, there doesn’t seem to be any online repository. I got a few quoted to me once, the one is question involved the two talking about what black people (with… more derogatory names) would taste like, and how they should try to lynch and eat them. There may have been a bit of simple black humor in there instead of COMPLETE malice, but it was hard to tell.
Seems to me like Cthulhu is just a Mary Sue type villain. “I have a great idea for a bad guy. It automatically wins. Brilliant!” Why does its presence drive people insane? “Just does.” Lame.
Already have it. Though we dodged a bullet on 9/11/01 that the plane did not entirely breach the walls and free Yog Sothoth, which was Bin Laden’s plan.
