Time for a truth in culture post. A topic recently came up in the that ties some of the abstractions together that we've been considering. SSH & r/K in particular. Turns out truth stays coherent, even in a House of Lies
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Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons & John Higgins, Watchmen, 12 issue limited series, DC Comics, 1986-1987
We recently read couple of posts on the heroism of the character Rorschach from Alan Moore's Watchmen of all things, that pulled together a lot of the stuff we've been thinking about [click for the first one, click for the second]. Plus we’re due for a little truth in culture. Lately, the Band has been thinking in-depth about the abstract theories, material reality, and their relationship to each other and to truth. We aren’t going to go into the depth here – check out recent posts if interested. The point is that we are sensitive to how different theories complement each other in productive ways if they conform to what is apprehensibly real.
Quick definitions.
Apprehensibly real means real in terms we can apprehend. Understand or have discernible knowledge of.
True means representation that corresponds accurately to what is apprehensibly real. To what IS. Statements, impressions, claims, etc. that are materially observable and logically consistent.
Our last post broke this down before getting into r/K selection theory and how it relates to our own House of Lies, functionally two species model, and Ontological Hierarchy. We found they fit together really nicely, with the r/K focus on abundance and productivity expanding our own ideas. This isn’t surprising – if abstract theories are truthful, they correspond to the same reality. Since each has its own focal areas, they can appear quite different. But different sides of the same thing = better picture of the same thing. It also smokes out the fakes when they don’t line up.
The topic we’re referring to is if the character Rorschach from Alan Moore’s seminal Watchmen is the hero. Or a hero. We say seminal and not brilliant or awesome because in hindsight, its impact outstripped its quality.
Alan Moore, Dave Gibbons & John Higgins, Watchmen, 12 issue limited series, DC Comics, 1986-1987
Oral history time. It’s hard to describe the impact of Watchmen on a young comics fanatic if you weren’t there. The equivalent of a Gen X kid comics fan doesn’t exist in comics today. Translated for younger readers, it’s more like video games. But with monthly publication & low-cost production that kept big money away. Totally different cultural context obviously, but purely on a youth pop culture level, it helps see how comics were impactful. In ways they can’t be now for a lot of reasons.
Watchmen was massive. Fans considered it probably better – if less of a commercial juggernaut - than Miller’s Dark Knight Returns, the other half of the one-two that changed mainstream comics. At the time, they were awesome. Like nothing we’d seen before. We can still remember the anticipation during Watchmen week at the comic shop. The Band’s friends were calling them the best comics ever [speaking of cultural difference, note the reality of real-life collectives of friends that cared about comics]. Looking back, it’s very well-crafted but better written than plotted. The way the sharp writing and multi-level art work to weave different threads together is masterful. And things are tense enough to keep the pages turning until the somewhat dud ending. It was absolutely electrifying at the time.
The cultural impact was bigger than blowing away fans. It ushered in two huge parts of late 80s & 90s comics. First, it and The Dark Knight midwifed the whole grimdark misfortune of the era by combining massive sales with critical praise.
Frank Miller, Klaus Janson, Lynn Varley, Batman, The Dark Knight Returns, 4 issue limited series, DC Comics, 1986
Dark Knight came out first in 1986, making it a watershed year for comics as art. This one was heroic though, with the old lion going to the well one more time.
Watchmen married a bleak, violent, de-moralized vision to part 2 – “deconstructing” the heroic archetype. It was the postmodern era, after all.
We aren't rehashing the story - it's easy enough to find. The basic premise is a world where superheroes are “real” and the personal and social consequences that follow. As seen by Moore, anyhow. It's noteworthy that only one actually has powers - 1.5 if you count Captain America-esque peak human potential as superpowered. And that one - Dr. Manhattan - is so over-powered that he's a practically omnipotent trans-temporal reality-warper. The only issue with him is his growing detachment from a relatively insignificant humanity. So the consequences of actual powers - the backbone of silver and bronze age comics - in a "real" world is absent. And this makes the deconstruction circumstantial. Obviously a costumed athlete is going to have differences from someone who transforms into organic steel or moves at Mach 50.
It's worth taking a moment to consider where Alan Moore "deconstructing" superheroes ranks on the ladder of cultural achievement.
Alan Moore & Gary Leach, Miracleman #1, Eclipse Comics, 1985
It's pretty much taking characters created as fantastical escapism for young readers (or the young-at-heart) and pretending it's set in The Real World. Meaning Moore's nihilistic materialist fantasy.
The highly-regarded Miracleman put absurd Golden Age Shazam! type characters pitched at 10-year-olds in The Real World - "adding “real-life” logic to fanciful stories again and again, perhaps most successfully in his and Kevin O’Neill’s masterpiece, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, a glorious pileup of literary references that recalls Mad’s anarchic heights".
The outcome is always alienation - benevolent detachment or murderous disdain. It also brought some early mass slaughter porn to comics. [Quick aside. Actually look at how many comic "events" revolve around mass death. It's part of the modern hatred for heroism. Shouldn't a "hero" occasionally stop the slaughter?]
Or as the Dark Herald put it in one of the posts that inspired this one -
I will also grant that Alan Moore invented the deconstruction of superheroes. Martial Law, the Snyderverse, Brightburn, Miracleman, The Boys, Alan Moore is the one that opened the door for this cliche that is as hideous, godawful, and morally bankrupt as the men who create it.Destroying heroism has always been the dream of Wormwood and his Uncle Screwtape. The methods for doing so are rhetoric disguised as dialectic (The Golden Compass) scientific proof (psychological technobabble) and art (Alan Moore comics). Yet, it always comes to nothing. Sure, it gets good reviews from Goodreads, and people like Kevin Smith go on at length over how brilliant it is. But at the end of the day, no one reads something like Watchman more than once.But the story of a well-written hero will always enthrall.Just like Rorschach, the one Alan Moore hates the most.
To be perfectly clear, we are not saying comics are inherently “for kids” or juvenile as a medium. Illuminated manuscripts go back way further than any surviving examples. It’s natural that aficionados would carry their love into adulthood and create works that would reflect that perspective. What we are saying is that in historical reality, American comics were a youth-oriented medium. At least, the archetypal characters and unrealistic tropes that Moore and co. find troubling were designed to resonate with a moral vision of youth.
Again, adult graphic fiction is a totally normal and expected result of youth graphic fiction having been so popular. But adult-minded graphic fiction. Not taking the bright world of relatively innocent escapism and imagining it full of sex and sadism.
We aren't alleging anything. But projecting that into childhood fantasy calls to mind a very different pattern...
Miracleman has some of the same technical qualities that make Watchmen so effective. Complex panel layouts that actually work with the words and pictures to enhance the story. And Moore approaches his scripting like the competent literary writer he is - the prose styling and themes you find in a serious novel. His comics are engaging. It's easy to see why they appeal to certain segments of pop intelligentsia. Sophisticated enough to support deeper analyses. Something most textbook-learned soylents are unused to.
But here's the thing. The physics capable of supporting a being like Miracleman means this ontologically isn't a representation of material reality. It's just a different fantasy where the setting is changed. And like any fantasy setting, the way the magical elements are framed by definition can't be the same as material reality. The setting permits things reality doesn’t. The different laws of physics necessarily produce a world different from one constrained by our natural laws. And since what we are seeing isn't actually "realism", the question is what the new fantasy represents...
Mick Anglo, Marvelman #25, 1954, L. Miller & Son
Miracleman was originally Marvelman - a British superhero created in the 50s to replace Captain Marvel reprints that were no longer available for legal reasons. It was later changed to Miracleman to avoid more legal issues around the name. The character remained a Captain Marvel/Marvel Family knockoff right down to the silly origin and adventures.
The silly adventures Moore was compelled to reimagine as implanted memories in lab grown being dimension-switched with mortal hosts through a magic word.
Realism, you see...
Repeatedly demonstrating youthful escapism is ugly, twisted, or perverse in adult nihilist terms is a retarded artistic mission. Self-evidently.
The silly set-ups in juvenile Golden Age comics served their purpose - to get to fantastical doings that fired childhood imaginations and sense of wonder. The 10-year old reader didn't care if Marvelman flies because of a wizard or alien technology - he just wants enough backstory to get to the cool stuff. And if parents thought it foolish, it's specifically created as a childhood escape from the mundane reality the parents were part of. It wasn’t for them.
Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, The Amazing Spider-Man #1, Marvel Comics, 1963
The Marvel/Silver Age of Lee, Ditko, Kirby, etc. is known for introducing "realism" to Golden Age silliness. Its important to pay attention to what that specifically refers to.
Here it was more relatable characters and attention to internal logic and consistency. What this did was change audience macro-dynamics. Instead of fans cycling out every three years, the stories appealed to less juvenile tastes. For adult Silver and Bronze Age fans today, these features are just enough to make it possible to enjoy that escapist wonder as a break from the grind. Now consider the "adult" motivated to repeatedly turn that into horror and perversion.
We aren't exaggerating. This “realistic” Captain Marvel Jr. becomes a demented psychopath who is released while his young host is anally raped. Seriously. He proceeds to graphically slaughter much of London before being finally stopped.
Again, we aren't questioning whether Moore can put together a complex multi-media narrative or turn a phrase. He obviously can. We're asking what sort of adult psyche sees this exercise as productive - artistically, emotionally spiritually, whatever. To the point where they perform it over and over to the same developmentally arrested squeeing of spiteful mutants?
Otto Binder and Kurt Schaffenberger, Captain Marvel Jr. #76, Fawcett, 1949
Alan Moore and John Totleben, Miracleman #15, Eclipse Comics, 1988
The arrested development is probably part of it in a general sense. As noted, Gen Xers and boomers like Moore grew up on a comics culture that hasn't existed for a long time. Cheap issues at newsstands, drug stores, etc. that sold in the 100,000s to young readers. The four-color boldness, fantastic scenarios, and black & white heroics were captivating in a pre-digital era. Most kids aged out as always, but what was different post-Marvel were readers staying with them. The older reader market that drove change.
There was a fork though. Healthy, fully developed adults that retained an interest in comics tend to be drawn to the wonder and heroism. Perhaps grittied up for mature sensibilities, but that same escapist core. Makes sense - for functional people, reality is real enough. Then there were the emergent gammas and omegas of the early stage House of Lies. People unable to fully function in reality who continue to identify in a child-like way with comic characters. These individuals lack healthy drives and moral balance because their mental worlds are rooted in unreality and projection. So their "realism" is a mix of repressed rage and hatred at the fakeness of their own psychic building blocks and the perverse fantasies they are unable to act out.
There's always seems to be rape and/or underage sex in Moore. Miracleman #12 gives us the repeated molestation and rape of the girl who becomes Miraclewoman to go with Kid Miracleman up above. Hyde rapes the Invisible Man to death in The League of Exrraordinary Gentlemen.
These panels from Watchmen #4 give us Dr. Manhattan and the 16 year-old Silk Specter. Don't worry, they only tease 14. And of course, she comes onto him... Oh, and the Comedian tries to rape the original Silk Specter.
Realism, you see.
The rape and pederasty are easy enough to explain. The hatred of heroism and wallowing in slaughter and darkness is different. It is possible Moore dreams of multi-digit body counts the feel of blood streaming down his arms. It's impossible to say. But the hatred of heroes and the need to see them betray their child fantasy ideals seems like a deeper issue. It's so common in the arrested development set. It's as if there's an embarrassment or latent self-awareness of their own incomplete state. But instead of evolving, they lash out at the bright fantasies that replaced maturation. Thinking that if they can "grow up" the comics, they'll become real boys. But they can't, because the comics are inherently divergent from reality. Hence escapism. And like any turn from reality, the only destination is an ontological spiral into nothingness.
Or psychedelic sex scenes between monsters and pretty girls. A soylent dug it though...
Alan Moore, Steve Bissette, and John Totleben, Swamp Thing Vol. 2 #34, DC Comics, 1985
Artfully rendered for a comic. Far out for a post adolescent. According to one random gibberish generator, it demonstrates "The Erotic Potentials of Thingness". But consider what the motivations indicate.
Anyhow, sadistic violence and sexual perversion are only part of the Moore content package. Another recurring theme is the necessity of some higher power to save humanity from itself. In Miracleman, the superhumans simply reorder the world and replace the false gods of humanity. To an atheistic nihilist, creatures of Science! being the real gods is a gamma powered wet dream. In Watchmen, this idea is the moral crux - the question of Rorschach's heroism.
Jerry Siegel, Joe Shuster, Superman #1, DC Comics, 1939
Moore seems driven to "debunk" the homespun values and benevolent virtue of the original archetype. He's certain the inevitable outcome of that power level is detachment.
What he reveals is the self-limits of his own retarded nihilistic "morality". In his world, power - or knowledge - are the only metrics of worth. The old "as humans are to ants" analogy. But that's satanic. Objective morality is ontologically real. Power level is irrelevant to whether a sentient being aligns with reality.
In Watchmen, super-smart boy Ozymandias creates a giant alien attack false flag in New York. This kills thousands but saves millions by - allegedly - uniting a world on the brink of nuclear war. The others are too late to stop him, but how they react ends the story on the heroism “moral dilemma”.
The Watchmen
Ozymandias (left) - the House of Lies gamma wish fulfillment. Smartest man in the world, genetically superior, knows better than anyone so any means are justified. He's beautiful and rich, but doesn't seem to rape anyone.
Dr. Manhattan (back) - Moore detached higher power fetish that agrees with Ozymandias because power is morality in a materialist hellsacape.
Silk Specter and Night Owl (middle) - accept the [superior being as moral authority] inversion. They wind up prosperous and together.
The Comedian (front) - sadist "patriot" means justifier who sees the emptiness behind the House of Lies and breaks under his own impotence.
Rorschach (right) - relentlessly truthful, dies before he caves. Presented as repulsive.
The moral bankruptcy is why Moore's stories ultimately fizzle out or don't stick the landing. He is able to observe aspects of reality and present them in darkly compelling ways. But his need to have atheistic materialism and some kind of "greater good" is self-detonating. He tries to "logically extend" a false incoherent world view which necessarily deviates from the internal consistency with reality that Tolkien considered the core of great fantasy.
So why did the Watchmen resonate? The creative, integrated structure and sharp engaging writing are certainly part of it. And to kids raised on Bronze and Silver Age tropes the proto-grimdark did seem viscerally powerful. The 80s saw the edginess really take off as the adolescent art form changed with its audience. In the mainstream, Wolverine and Batman led the way. And indies like Eclipse, Image, and Malibu took it to... well... x-tremes.
Chris Claremont, John Byrne & Terry Austin,
The Uncanny X-Men 132, Marvel Comics, 1980
One of the most influential panels in early 80s comics.
Gen X grew up before the trauma of digital society. Our childhood culture was pretty sanitized comparatively. Seeing our heroes get “real” fit with aging out of the child world view. Can't speak to older "fans" who groove on Moore's vision. Our thoughts on them are pretty clear up above.
The other thing that works for Watchmen is the verisimilitude. Like Dazed and Confused he includes elements that do relate the real world. Well enough to observe some true insights in spite of the creator's inverted world view. What we called the brownfield - the morally hollow, inverted mass culture we grew up with. Where narrative assumptions are nonsense, but the world they get wrong is truthfully rendered.
A page from Watchmen #10 captures the ultimate faith in the House of Lies side of the reality/inversion divide.
"Just me and the world". The formula, working backwards is fake media world = knowledge of reality = power over reality. This is the same inverted error as Postmodernism - confusing a huge macro-representation for the reality it represents. It's pernicious nonsense if we take it as the ontological reflection Moore assumes. But it is a truthful reflection for the position of the House of Lies in the beast system and their acceptance by the narrative-huffing denizens. So like Dazed and Condused, there are sociological insights to be had.
We wouldn’t all be here if we hadn’t learned to recognize inverted distortions. The question in a work of brownfield fiction is what - if any - truth is applicable beneath the distortion.
Alan Moore & David Lloyd, V for Vendetta #1, DC Comics, 1988
Part of Moore's famous series appeared in a failed British rag from '82-'85 before DC ran the completed version in 1988. It's a mess of infantile fantasies of anarchic heroes battling "fascists" without any grasp of human nature or ideological coherence. Apart from endless fugazi facsimiles online, it's mainly useful for understanding those early 80s dancing puppets called "the left". Both the [human stupidity presenting as "wisdom"] and the [how easily organic culture was subverted by glowing screens] parts.
The Band is harsh on the mentally-crippled pottage that r-selected FTS-2s sold truth and culture for. They deserve it. But it was the grand illusion of the time. And putting V for Vendetta next to Watchmen shows the same scenario from opposite sides. [Controlling techno-administrator] and [V/Rorschach] truth-seeking rebel.
What's the difference? V is cultured, charming, learned, sexy. All the indicators of materialist "higher worth" in the House of Lies. Rorschach is a social pariah, ugly and embarrassing to be around. In the House of Lies, image is everything, so the character's actions are morally justified by the strength of their appearance. Conversely, the techno-administration V fights pushes all the low-wattage "fascist" media hot-buttons. While we are repeatedly told Ozymandias is the smartest man in the world and both Miracleman detached higher power Dr. Manhattan and non-loser everymen Night Owl and Silk Specter are quick to agree with him.
Therefore the morality of the narrative engineers had nothing to do with truth or actual virtue. It's how it relates to Moore's psychically broken subjective response to a fake reality made of lies on screens.
Ozymandias is right because he's a super smart boy secret king and his ends justify the means. He's what Moore would be if he were brilliant, attractive, and capable.
The Norsefire party is "fascist" and that word triggers gamma Moore, so their techno-administration is "evil". It's really that blunt.
Since he treats the narrative like reality, its "morality" depends on which lies are in the showcase. But that essentially is modern socio-culture. Everything goes as long as no one gets hurt in ways obvious to me. We're living around it. It's materially real in the sense of existing and shaping people's basic beliefs. And since human nature manifests consistently regardless of context, if the House of Lies is presented truthfully - with verisimilitude - then truthful observations about that context will appear.
The mid-80s were still the Cold War. The nuclear threat hanging over the series is something the House of Lies assured us could end life at any time. The mass trauma du jour is nothing new. Nor is the correlation between ignoring high production value liars and quality of life.
Time, Vol. 119 No. 13, March 29, 1982 |
About Time - "Time magazine's circulation has dropped to approximately 2 million copies in 2020 from a peak near 20 million in the 1990s". We don't know anything about these reports, but it's consistent with our impression. Pre-internet, it was a big deal.
Another interesting note from the link - "Glamour magazine ceased its regular print schedule in 2018, at that time it had a circulation of about 2.2 million copies". That kind of reach not being profitable is how we know House of Lies "numbers" don't mean [our mental picture of the implications of having that many people buy copies]. Faked, fluffed, only insiders know. Just be aware.
No matter how spotty the narratives in hindsight, repeated reminders from every avenue that annihilation was a radar ghost away has a toll.
It really is a blessing how much the internet has let us see through old deceptions. And taught us to expect new ones. It's easy to mock the spells that we fell for at the time. But in a default high-trust culture much higher on the "representing reality" macro-arc, information control flew under the radar. At least to these post-adolescent Watchmen readers. Nuclear annihilation was just something to hope didn't happen. War Games was the must-see movie the summer of '83. Including a scene where likable young adult star Matthew Broderick and his girlfriend live the moment they believe the world's ending.
Mainstream cultural morality was still loosely high-trust Western Christian, but it was running on momentum. Media and institutions already defaulted to “more intelligent” secular materialist progressivism. Science could destroy Creation, so science must save it! It's secular transcendence on the most doltish level. It also was life at the time. The fear of obliteration stuff rang true. Lots of kids had idly figured out the rough distance to a city center or major base. From #7...
Looking back, the nuclear terror of the 80s looks as contrived as the nuclear terror of the 50s did then. There's a macro-pattern there - the darkening of the childlike nuclear propaganda parallels the darkening of childlike comic book heroes. Looks like boomer childhood "maturing". Worth considering.
Another bit of life at the time was major urban decay. That veneer of high-trust organic moral culture was just running on momentum. And the "cynical, nihilistic" Band can testify that the cracks were easy to find at the time. Our recognition of the macro-arc and inevitability of collapse came came in our teens. Perhaps shepherded by realism like Watchman.
Urban America in the late 70s and 80s is difficult to imagine in an era of modern rent. The idea of burned out wasteland patches of Manhattan with third-world living conditions in places. People who don't get it can't see how easy the slide is.
Picture collection links for those interested in the topic. Link, link, link. Don't go out at night, stay off side streets, don't gawk at tall buildings, keep moving...
Times Square was a porn & prostitution hub, but you could get electronics cheap.
It's not just optics. New York was insanely dangerous in the late 70s and 80s. Seriously, look at the homicide rate. It actually peaked around 1990 due to the crack wars in the inner city.
Critics point out the national drop in urban crime at the time. Even so, the overall magnitude and relative scale of decline in New York stand out.
Watchmen came out in 1986.
The one-two of 60s and 70s “social” changes and first wave globalist de-industrialism brought horrors without real precedent. Victorian slums, perhaps, though important contextuals were different. Watchmen amplifies these in a fictional world where superheroes were real in the sense of costumed normies beating up criminals. No actual powers as motivator clears the slate for a “realistic” deconstructive study of the superhero psyche. For the question "what kind of person puts on a costume and beats up bad guys?"
Loaded question, but relevant. The post on anti-heroes mentions the revenge fantasies of the darkening 70s. This impulse was a natural fit with the old Golden Age comic kid fantasy of a guy in a costume with a kid sidekick punching out muggers. Make the guy in the costume a Bronson, but show how “crazy” that really is to a progessive. The problem with verisimilitude is that reality and the reader get votes.
The street violence and general urban decay in Watchmen captures a slightly further degraded version of Manhattan in the Koch-Dinkins era. The very context that drove the revenge fantasies in the first place. More later.
Keep in mind that the crime was real. Dystopia porn was useful for traumatizing FTS-2s into accepting more central power without thinking about why things are like that. It was also leveraging a real situation. It's the usual beast [options within a dysfunctional inverted framework of its creation] rather than [beast or not beast] that we've seen before. Not "what's wrong with modern society to make it bottom out?" But "how can more Progress! fix the inevitable consequences of Progress!?" It's the real fear that makes it effective. Imagine covid, but with a dangerous virus.
The dystopia crime porn outstripped the nuclear holocaust porn. Video store/late-nite cable education Gen X style. The 80s clean up and normalize 70s filth. So it wasn't "shocking" to us. It was normative.
Michael Winner, Death Wish, 1974
Martin Scorsese, Taxi Driver, 1976
Walter Hill, The Warriors, 1979
William Friedkin, Cruising, 1980
James Glickenhaus, The Exterminator, 1980
Daniel Petrie, Fort Apache the Bronx, 1981
John Carpenter, Escape from New York, 1981
William Lustig, Vigilante, 1982
Amos Poe, Alphabet City, 1984
Abel Ferrara, Fear City, 1984
Oliver Stone, Wall Street, 1987
Mario Van Peebles, New Jack City, 1991
Armies of the night. Kill to stay alive. You're not safe anymore. Where survival depends on friends, trust, and power...
Curtis Hanson, The Children of Times Square, 1986
Even TV movies were in on it. The facetious reply is something like "nothing like child abuse and sexual exploitation for a plucky feel good story". But growing up in this, it was just accepted as part of "how things are". Cities are simply dangerous places of violence and perversion to be avoided. Or perhaps used as props to regale less traveled friends with "exotic" experiences.
Band readers get that it’s all just narrative. Mass trauma and societal decay were consequences of Clown World ascendency and its House of Lies sliding ever further from truth. It has to blame its own consequences or else it is revealed as systemically fake. Someone might ask why failed Enlightenment experiments can't be scrapped for something different. Or at least for a discussion of reality. Watchmen totally buys into the most perverse gammafied side of that narrative. But it presents the material situation honestly.
As always, the House of Lies is vertically integrated. The existential bleakness could be offered up as a reason for the societal decay. Or the reason, given the predilection for binary "thought". A hypothetical uber-peril that moral relativists use to justify any means to stop [sound familiar?]. And only Ozymandias and moral relativism can save us...
That’s the unintentional logos. Dazed and Confused romanticizes a hollow youth society but gives a real glimpse into real socio-culture and its inversions. Ditto Watchmen. The nuclear fear trauma-societal decay-violent, revenge fantasy stuff really was cultural background. Self-declared elites clandestinely destroying lives and cultures with lies and fear for the greater good proved prescient.
It's unfortunate Watchmen (and The Dark Knight) were responsible for so much grimdark deconstructive spawn. Reams of unreadable dreck in equal parts preposterous and dark and badly written. But Moore constructs a world that's easily applicable to the social world of the day. Like a genre fantasy. And where it's wrong, it shows how the House of Lies inverts reality. Exactly inversively wrong, or pointing negatively towards truth. Watchman’s realism isn’t granular like Dazed and Confused. It's too filtered through a gamma's-eye-view. Its truth is more broad, abstract strokes. Which is fine, since the point of this post is to think about broad abstract theories coming together. Early stage socio-cultural consequences of the beast system entering decline, the r-selected fruits, and the SSH. The issue of Rorschach's heroism being the occasion.
Mentioning the Dazed and Confused posts brings up an unintended connection. We've avoided the 20th century big picture, but have a series of cultural snapshots on the House of Lies trajectory. Especially with all the tangents and side commentary. A selection...
The Glamour of Fake Reality - building fake media reality.
Pay the Piper, a Psychedelic Fable of Accountability - cultural inversion through media illusion.
Logos in Pedowood - Approaching Boomers with Dazed and Confused - peak r-selection and the Mouse Utopian aftermath
Satanism the Marvel Way - moral inversion leading right into this post.
Watchmen brings it right into the mid-80s. Not the hairsprayed pop cool of retro marketers. The culture where absurd societal breakdown was normalized as [stay out of certain areas].
Enough set-up. The conclusion in the two articles that inspired this post – Rorschach is the hero – is one we agree with. But it was reading the argument that pulled together some of the abstract realities the Band has been dealing with.
First the hero question. The Band obviously buys it. It’s the point of the post. Morality is objective and Rorschach is the only one that is morally resolute. He may be imperfect or in error, but his intention is entirely to follow the truth. Meaning he’s generally morally correct. He objectively can’t be immoral. The real question is how moral is he?
"Even in the face of Armegeddon I shall not compromise" is what pretty much what Revelation instructs faithful Christians to do. Or pretty much opposite Moore. "I just tell the truth, and telling the truth is crazy in a world full of lies" to quote Kanye. Rorschach appears insane – or is forced to behave in insane ways - in an insane system. The alternative is the Comedian. So the deeper second question is why his does his morality seem insane?
The first thing from the Literature Devil post that brought this topic up is the Moore interview where he frames the creation of Rorschach [note that he’s lying to at least some degree. From an SSH Perspective, falsely retconning the past to seem more creative or clever is a reliable gamma tell]. He wants it to be seen as a grand psychological plumbing of Batman. The reality is nothing more than that desire to smash the toys deconstruct heroic ideals that infects developmentally stunted adults in youth venues. In this case, according the Dark Herald, the old Charleton heroes acquired by DC. The Mr. A-Question bit is interesting for comic fans.
Steve Ditko, the first appearance of the Question from Blue Beetle #1, Charleton Comics, 1967
Batman...
The truth is less important for this post than how Moore frames his story. Batman makes sense for a retcon because he is so iconic and The Dark Knight is eternally linked to Watchmen. But the same point applies to The Question - another heroic masked mystery man with elite fighting skills and resourcefulness but no superpowers. Both embody the same heroic archetype of righteous violence. Both are also appealing, relatively successful men with enviable lives – Bruce Wayne more so, but Vic Sage is no loser.
What Moore fails to grasp is that strong, morally-aware men aren’t.
Details aside, dismantling the aspirational heroic archetype is his proud achievement. Put aside whether or not Moore’s encounters happened as told. His message is that Rorschach is a deliberately repulsive character and that it is surprising that fans see him as heroic. He can then use this disappointment to disparage them with the usual beast-huffing smugness. From an interview with LeJorne Pindling of Street Law Productions in 2008 quoted in the Literature Devil post...
So, I thought, ‘Alright, if there was a Batman in the real world, he probably would be a bit mental.’ He wouldn’t have time for a girlfriend, friends, a social life, because he’d just be driven by getting revenge against criminals… dressed up as a bat for some reason. He probably wouldn’t be very careful about his personal hygiene. He’d probably smell. He’d probably eat baked beans out of a tin. He probably wouldn’t talk to many people. His voice probably would have become weird with misuse, his phraseology would be strange.“I wanted to kind of make this like, ‘Yeah, this is what Batman would be in the real world.’ But I had forgotten that actually to a lot of comic fans that smelling, not having a girlfriend—these are actually kind of heroic. So actually, sort of, Rorschach became the most popular character in Watchmen. I meant him to be a bad example, but I have people come up to me in the street saying, ‘I am Rorschach! That is my story!’ And I’ll be thinking, ‘Yeah, great, can you just keep away from me and never come anywhere near me again for as long as I live?'”
The Literature Devil correctly sums it up as "less smelly comic book losers idolizing one of their own in a wild misunderstanding of Rorschach and instead Alan Moore misunderstanding heroism". What we find interesting is how.
By Moore's standard, the front - poor hygiene, social awkwardness, violence, and broken psyche - defines the man. Liking him means choosing the front. In Moore's defense, the mind reels at the continual gamma ray blast of fan attention he must live with. But uncharitability isn't the error. First, he assumes that a man physically formidable enough to smash groups of armed enemies, intelligent enough to unravel complex crimes, and driven to power through injury, slander, hatred, etc. would be a broken husk. This is one tell.
Martin Scorsese, Taxi Driver, 1976
It's pretty much the Taxi Driver perspective. The only person who'd take morally directed action has to be a damaged loon. That's the r-selected FTS-2 view since morally driven action is inconceivable. Although the underaged girl is a recurring theme.
Rorschach grows up in poverty, abused by his slatternly actual whore mother and other kids. Contrast this with young Bruce Wayne. Moore can't imagine the nobility of higher purpose.
And we’re supposed to believe he’s been doing it for years. The unlikelihood that someone with Rorschach's abilities lacks tactical self-awareness doesn’t collapse the narrative though. It works ironically in the imaginary world of the story by showing the preposterousness of the founding assumptions. It’s that Tolkien applicability – where the world may be fantastical, but once established, conforms to real truth patterns. Only in reverse, since Moore's value system is inverted materialism and Tolkien's isn't. Rorschach’s asocial “craziness” reinforces his position outside and, if necessary, in opposition to the system. Reality to Huffmoore. The House of Lies to readers.
Bringing us to the first apprehensible reality – the Socio-Sexual Hierarchy. This is something we’ve posted on before [click for a link]. A much-needed comprehensive book by the creator is scheduled for this year. It’s a set of male behavior patterns that is so consistent and predictive that it seems clairvoyant. Fictions reflect it to the degree of their verisimilitude. And it’s so useful for navigating social landscapes to understand how and why people will react.
Rich Buckler and Joe Sinnott, Fantastic Four Vol 1 #159, Marvel Comics, 1975
Comics can show the SSH sharply if well written because the characters tend to be clearly defined. In this case, situational rank. The Thing is bravo to Mr. Fantastic in the team ranking, but clearly the alpha in a fight. To the point where he comes before the Inhumans' alpha king Black Bolt situationally.
This may explain why the frequent conflict between the two felt natural, even in a four-color fantasy.
It's also a great cover.
The SSH is an abstract human reality. An inductive theory based on real human behavior that holds up as a universal pattern. The edges are blurry and ranks can change situationally, but any broad classificatory system is the same. It’s just like the r/K post – they’re tendencies that hold true on the broad scale they operate on. Obviously tendencies are filtered through countless personality traits and how profiles manifest depend on the social context. But as general directions, the apprehensible truth – the consistent observability – is undeniable.
In SSH terms, Moore tries to make Rorschach unlikable by defining him as an omega. Someone outside of and excluded from normal social hierarchies because they’re maladjusted or repulsive.
He’s out-grouping - the ultimate blow in the narrative huffer’s abundant pastures. No one will like him because no one of knowledge or power likes those people. And no one worthy of moral admiration identifies with a smelly fetishist. Hence his surprise and dismissal of fans as the same sorts of people in the interview quoted above.
The point he misses is one missed by the entirety of modern gamma "progressive" comics. Superheroes aren’t someone you identify with as a self-insert. Not in the sense of picturing yourself as yourself in their place. They’re aspirational. They're what you'd like to be. They do things you can’t do. They’re physically or morally superior in some ways. You want to be more like them, not make them more like you. The young Band learned honor and toughness in a hive of boomertastic materialism from the Thing and Captain America. But our psychic fitness didn’t depend on it being pre-adolescent boys going toe to toe with the Hulk or Red Skull [at least not after outgrowing pretending to be superheroes in the yard. Which may say something about that stunted development]. It’s participating imaginatively in something bigger or better and maybe growing or coming away with a new insight. The other is mirror-stage-tier infant solipsism - aware others exist, but not able to self-conceptualize as one among them. Arrested development again. Speaking of patterns, repetition forces consideration of the kinds of childhood experiences that correlate with that.
Here's the more relevant point. Rorschach may be socially outgrouped, but he is also extremely competent. And not at some arcane gamma or omega specialty most normally socialized people find repellant. At violently dispatching a whole range of dangerous criminals. This may be omega to a house rabbit like Moore. But not to living men and women in a spiraling social collapse. And that points to the other SSH outsider.
The Band compared a sigma to an omega on the desire to be alone but didn't explain well. The point was that being unseen isn't an actual option for the sigma because they're a sigma. Their interests, activities, and personality attract positive attention and opportunities that prevent the preferred isolation. Because the alternative is advantageous in some other way. The omega's interests, activities, and personality deflect attention. They're unalike beyond not caring about normal priorities.
Both can fixate on something not seen as so important by the majority to the point of monomania. The difference is in the nature of the person fixating – and by extension, the nature of the fixation. Is the person attractive in ways that do register socially or uncool and off-putting? Do they seem relatively fulfilled and self-directed or are they alienated and marginalized?
Sigma interests can be intriguing when part of a life that registers positively on mainstream sociability. That is effective enough to be attractive on those not interested or apt. It's how sheltered pretty girls find themselves enthusiastically expressing their life-long passion for wilderness hiking because they met a guy who's really different. It's exponentially so when it’s something admirable that the admirer isn’t capable or brave enough to do themselves.
This is where we have to control for Moore's distortions. Someone as daring and capable as Rorschach wouldn't actually be such a train wreck. The physical regimen alone requires monomaniacal discipline. You probably don't see someone so intensely omega in personal presentation and so intensely sigma in their high performance social impact. But suspend disbelief and play along with the fantasy. The two profiles point in diametrically opposite social directions. Which one resonates more?
Rorschach lives completely outside the social hierarchies around him. In a vacuum he does score poorly on the male sociability and appearance aspects of the SSH. But his motivations - seek truth, punish evil - actually score quite highly with the hoi polloi.
He also doesn’t care at all. Despite scathing descriptions of society, he won't stop. He shows no unrequited desires beyond wanting to do more. No interest in any companionship at all other than allies in the mission. In Moore’s comic world, this makes him a cautionary tale. In reality, he is also delivers something living people actually want. That many wish they were capable and brave enough to do themselves. His monomaniacal isolation is effective in ways that register socially. In reality, there actually are women who would be extremely attracted to him despite his anti-social qualities. And if people thinking he’s the hero surprised Moore, that might trigger a suddenly.
The anti-hero is willing to use socially inappropriate means to ends. But this isn't deconstructing conventional morality. This simply moves moral agency from the institutions that have failed morally to someone else. And whether or not the anti-hero is ultimately moral depends on their actions and intentions, like anyone else. Moral judgment. Which implies... wait for it... moral standards. Otherwise, it’s the archetypal midwit gamma self-detonation - a pragmatic “relativist” serving an absolute “greater good” & with graduated levels of moral acceptability.
Absurd. Heroism is an abstraction that manifests to varying degrees. Superman isn’t a human type, it’s a fictional archetype. It’s definitionally not realistic. Real people have inconsistencies. It’s material.
The best case anti-hero breaks laws to do good. That implies an objective moral metric. Otherwise it's just dueling subjectivities like... well... Watchmen. Where the moral equation is something like [killing this many] = [this many might die] x [chance they do]. So if there is an objective morality, what happens when the system and its laws fail? Or invert? People generally get the system they deserve, but the House of Lies has really skewed that balance.
Bringing us to the next abstract reality we've recently posted on – r/K selection. This one is even broader and less precise than the SSH, but also describes apprehensibly real tendencies. In our last post we observed how the beast system-House of Lies is intrinsically r-selecting. It’s unproductive consumption of unproduced abundance. There's a strong correlation with FTS-2 narrative huffing. It takes extreme r-selection to think a guy who cleans dangerous streets should be vilified for hygiene and elocution. Even if those were his traits. Someone like Moore. Or some soylent NPC from Esquire that "worships" Watchmen [one reason for a post like this is to help people understand valuable patterns hidden by the House of Lies. Examples are a good way to do this. So think about things like the SSH and r/K when encountering a proof of concept like this and you'll see how it comes together].
The soft gurgling of soy huffing. It's actually instructive glance at beast drivel on occasion. The ignorance is staggering - it has to be for the extent of the r-selected world view. As preposterous as a lab mouse shrilling about the threats to science from Sylvester the cat.
The House of Lies is nothing if not consistent - the Rorschach-style vigilantism of endless 70s and 80s movies and stories wasn't real. But it was ubiquitous. And as a narrative, was based on a major House of Lies tenet we can call the Darkness of Man (DoM). The implication being Western but the presentation being universal. It's more of a cluster of related narrative assumptions that point in the same direction. Humanity is cruel and indifferent, with evil and suffering without the higher guidance of some...
...to save them. We're all familiar with it - it was poured over the postwar era like poison treacle on almost every level. Relativistic meaninglessness in physics. Existentialism in philosophy. Orwell and Koestler on human nature unchecked. Lord of the Flies on human nature in the wild. The Milgrom Experiments and the like. And an indifferent crowd of spectators to Kitty Genovese’s terrible murder. Again, there's no attention to issues of morality and social composition. Just the mounting failures of the House of Lies presented as some intrinsic measure of human nature. With the demented "solution" being more House of Lies. This in spite of organic culture having being built organically in the first place...
Note. Obviously social organization and administration are necessary. Only a literal retard, as in someone of diminished mental capacity in some way, or a someone looking to cover their own immorality could think otherwise. Render unto Caesar. The question is whether the system is an extension of a monstrous, traumatic societal inversions that drive degeneration, or of a moral, reality-facing culture. Projecting a fake characterization to degrade a populace for greater control is the first.
Call it the intersect of materialist de-moralization and trauma-based control in an attempt to destroy the image of man as created in God's image.
We'll use this bit of fantasy as the example, since endless schoolchildren were forced to endure its inhuman message. Decades of plucky bands of youth from J. M. Barrie and E. Nesbitt`to Our Gang went up in puff of "realism".
“Ralph wept for the end of innocence,” we read, and for “the darkness of man’s heart...”
Obviously barbarism is real. But so are morality and enculturation. And his story never happened. An English schoolmaster made it up in 1951.
“Wouldn’t it be a good idea,” William Golding asked his wife one day, “to write a story about some boys on an island, showing how they would really behave?”
So Ralph's a maudlin self-insert for a pussy that never knew the expanse of the human spirit, the true fellowship of a comrade, or the love of God.
A real live version actually did happen, with schoolboys stranded on an island for over a year. See the link above. The results could not have been more different of they'd been inverted.
Lord of the Gammas won a Nobel Prize. That's a lifetime pass to glowing screens in the credentialism pyramid. Promulgating fake and toxic cultural distortion is worthy of the highest accolades. Extrapolate.
The posts that inspired this one mention the Kitty Genovese story – one of the central tales in the local news tier of the DoM narrative.
Here's a page from issue 6 bringing together omega weirdness and the DoM.
The important part of the Genovese story for narrative purposes seems to be fake. People did intervene, though she still died. Just as we thought people would. Anyone surprised the fabulists here was The New York Times? It's been an enemy of the people for a long time.
The thing about the DoM is that it’s almost all nonsense. Yes, anarchy is deadly. But it is historical fact that basically moral cultures and systems are not. We know through repetition that the beast orchestrates the threats it claims to be reacting to in stable societies. False flags, hate crimes, and bioweapons come to mind.
The larger pattern is the de-moralization we’ve posted about before. How the supposed freedom of the Enlightenment removed objective morality from ontology and kicked off the entropic slide into the House of Lies. In a world without actual objective standards, do what thou wilt gradually overtakes any moral inertia. And degeneration kicks in as systems invert into lies, exploitation, and destruction.
Photograph of Times Square in 1953. Once you untether from reality, it goes fast. A lot of people idolize 50s society for its superficial order. But it had already detached from reality - a flare of prosperity as materialism became ethos but cultural Christian momentum was fresh.
But there's no foundation. So moral entropy explodes downward.
This process is profoundly unnatural. Anti-Creation. Anti-life. It takes a lot of full-spectrum psycho-social manipulation and conditioning [if curious, we go in depth in the House of Lies posts]. Part of this is instilling hopelessness or despair. And short that, impotent consumptive acceptance. Blocking out awareness of our inherent greatness. Creation in the divine image so perfect that we can create too. And the wisdom and inspiration that comes from heroic tales of our best natures. Aspirational tales. Obviously the change from healthy young fans looking up to heroes to broken souls pretending the heroes are them fits here.
The message in all the de-moralization porn is that human nature is horrifyingly barbarous. Worse than animals for the deliberate cruelty. The existence of civilization shows this isn't true. Inner darkness balances with pragmatic order. Fallen and created in God's image. The valley of shadow and the path out. Possessed of animal and spiritual natures in a classical sense. Conditioning people not to see the upper part is important enough to fabricate the DoM and disseminate on blast. Despite any real support. Because there are so many downstream positives for a beast point of view.
Alan Moore and Joe Bennett Supreme: The New Adventures #43, Maximum Press, 1996
Moore pioneered dismissing aspirational stories as sentimental trash unsuited for real world harshness. Interestingly, Moore is actually aware of this in modern comics. A brief subplot in his Supreme has a “creator” talk about violently destroying Silver Age tropes. He even gets the casually psychopathic sadism and perversion.
More perfectly, Erik Larsen takes over in #64 and slaughters Moore's sunny creations. Missing the entire point for demented bloodlust.
One thing linear thinkers miss is that a complex macro-arc like societal decline has lots of parts. Morality is polarized, but the countless manifestations are all over the place. Different players, agendas, and levels of huffing. Identifying one causal factor is usually just that - one of many. DoM had a few benefits. Metaphysically, fear and despair opens people to nihilism then immorality. Psychologically, a constant drip of trauma makes the huffers easier to control. And politically, it drives acceptance of social control. The more people believe all people naturally trend to horror, the more abuse they’ll accept in the name of safety. If we are intrinsically only terrible, we need centralized globalism and elites and the beast to keep us safe.
The general pattern is to make us forget our true selves.
Watchmen offers DoM on a couple of levels. There’s the crappy pirate comic story-in-the-story that’s probably an EC shout-out. Moral inversives and other degenerates still grow tumid over the glory days of feeding children uncensored trash. The “plot” such as it is is that isolation and stress drives a lone shipwreck survivor to such madness that he murders his loved ones. And yes, we realize it's actually meta-textual commentary on Moore's concept of "heroic" psychology. How the righteous mission sinks into madness and evil.
From issue 5...
Leading into issue 6 - the Rorschach in prison story.
It's not exactly subtle.
The guy motivated by supposed modern indifference to horror is an outcast omega. Not someone who’d be marched on shoulders in a parade. Or at least quietly go funded.
The reality is DoM is shabby House of Lies magic lantern show intended to make us believe other than our full reality. But it can’t change our reality. We aren’t all sadistic monsters or cold cowards. And someone who competently and bravely administers morally facing justice in its absence is going to resonate widely.
The beast creates the atmosphere for predation then claims more beast is needed to stop the predation. We’ve just watched open refusal to prosecute crime – even under the absurd modern system – followed by spiking crime rates. The system refused its mandated duty and innocents suffered without recourse. That’s definitionally evil. Whether or not Rorschach is always fully justified to do what he does is a totally different issue. Whatever he is doing, it is morally opposite willful, definitional evil.
Heading on down the Ontological Hierarchy. It has always been obvious that we are unique in Creation for our ability to rise of fall by choice. DoM ramps up the Fallen side, but in an empty materialist Flatland that disallows metaphysical explanation. So the barbarity has to be physically intrinsic. And there can be no alternative angelic path or the whole nonsense charade falls apart.
If Ultimate Reality grounds Truth and directs morality, where does pretending it doesn’t exist point?
With no soul, there is no path to redemption. Rorschach's conviction leads to meaningless death. Flatland morality is a count - size, wealth, "leadership", IQ - there's no grounds for a defense of truth as a virtue. But Rorschach doesn’t die in vain. Moore can’t help himself. He's trapped by his own verisimilitude. The truth will out.
The last post observed how level of system dependency correlates to degree of r-selection in the House of Lies. To a totally r-selected rabbit like Moore, organic self or community protection is “insane”.
Note. We are not arguing against rulership structures or social order. These are necessary and inevitable. What we are talking about is a system that reflects rather than attacks reality – logical or material. That isn’t opposite what it represents. And that only happens when the idiot masses realize life requires more than huffing narrative and processed calories in front of screens.
This is a necessary distinction. Excess abundance is inevitable with any society. That’s why humans form societies in the first place. Cooperative synergy increases per capita productivity to the point where nomads or isolates can’t compete. There is always an “r-selected” dimension in civilization of getting more than you put in. That’s the synergy. The productivity. We all have that as a starting point.
Dez Vylenz and Moritz Winkler, The Mindscape of Alan Moore, 2003
You can see the soft dependence of an r-selected system grazer in the appearance. The patterns of his writing align with his physical presence in pointing to a weak, broken man filled with impotent anger. The hatred of his fans being projection in the classic sense.
We realize that many find our non-House of Lies takes abrupt because they are such a break from the narrative. Complete inversion. Think of it this way. Many of you have read a comic. How many have seen a story where heroes have to rescue captured comrades and fixated on what the villain was "really doing" to the hostages? To the extent of writing graphic anal rape before say Cap could rescue the Falcon. The mind's direction and the imagination's fancy reveal the inner man.
Moving on...
Societal abundance is inherently supportive of r-selection. It's why we've had leisure classes for as long as we've had history. The issue is what you do from there. A productive, moral K-selected populace will have a more moral society and ruling structure. Impotent whining protoplasm? We’ve seen that one. Their system degenerates into the House of Lies. And when that collapses under its own weight, things become… less r-favorable. Because the organic productive communitarian ethos is gone. Replaced by atomized hapless prey. And that's when victim consciousness becomes actual victimhood.
People go both directions. Fallen and in God’s image. Fail to collectively ensure the latter and the former prevails. Urban life will be interesting to watch from a distance over the next decade or so.
People can be pulled down. Ruling structures reflect the populace in a symbiotic way. The boiling the frog metaphor exists for a reason. Especially when outsourcing thinking to strangers on glowing screens in a post-Bernays era. It was still a choice, though, even if it didn't appear that way in Progress! dreamworld. It's why centralization and detachment were so crucial for the beast. And why choosing properly for yourself is so crucial for you.
Anyhow, the system dependency we’re discussing is [hapless dependence for everything] + [obliviousness to the fragility of that]. Not proactively and morally thriving in a societal construct that lets you accomplish more than you could alone in the woods. Anti-fragility. In the world but not of it. We shouldn’t have to point this out, but MPAI.
The half-truth in DoM makes it very subversive. By recognizing the Fallen side, it has real examples of human brutality to justify itself. But denying the in God’s image side doesn’t only make us forget our potential. Representing half the truth as the whole truth makes a choice appear inevitable. Nothing to do about it, might as well sit here and fear and huff. Good golly, one can have a more stable, reality-centric government that has its laws and doesn't become a House of Lies [source: we used to]. But that needs a population able to process the concept that modern FTS-2 narrative huffing and consooming is a choice. And that choice does bring responsibility. DoM helps prevent this process from even appearing as a possibility. Remember, the House of Lies is fully integrated, with aspects and levels reinforcing and supporting each other.
The House of Lies will collapse. What matters is sufficient morality and organic cultural cohesion within and outside what remains of the system to fend of anarchy. Random internet maps to make the point. Europe in 117, 600, 800, and 1300 AD.
Moore isn’t anti-fragile, even in present-day civilizational terms. He feeds perversion and hollow pre-fab beast nihilism to narrative huffers with enough grip on reality to draw readers. Whining all the time like a bitch about his fans and employers. He’s a pathetic physical specimen who spews incoherent modern gibberish philosophy to appear insightful to dolts. His “masterpieces” aren’t aging like masterpieces and his “serious” fiction isn’t. The perfect r-selected midwit dupe with enough perceptiveness to grasp some material reality.
He can see systemic breakdown. But his argument is more system, just with a smarter engineer. One founded on lies for the greater good. The idea that individual moral decisions are foundational to cultural health is beyond him. Literally. Materialists only see voids when they look up. So any desire to "fix things" is hamstrung by the system itself declaring truth seeking insane. Any system that doesn’t actively support the virtues that it ultimately depends on is ghost running. No one person changes that. Not even the smartest smartest boy. It’s a macro-arc. But macro-arcs are aggregations of individual choices. And not everyone goes down the vortex. The path out is personal choices, networks, culture building from the ground up and outward. Writing deontologically non-retarded stories couldn’t hurt.
Wu Zhen, Fishermen, after Jing Hao, 1341, ink on paper handscroll, Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.
The Mongol Yuan Dynasty (1271–1368) was the first foreign Chinese dynasty. Many scholars and literati withdrew from public life and focused on culture. They looked back to pre-Yuan - mainly Song - tradition and personal expression. Renewing links to the past and moving culture forward.
To anyone remotely K-selected, Kitty, Milgrom, Piggy, and all the other DoM tales are disgusting. They aren’t indictments of the human condition. They’re reminders how low the bar for virtue is in an r-selecting House of Lies. K-selection doesn’t take endless abundance for granted and correlates with awareness that civilization needs order to exist. Ideally, the infrastructure set up to do just that performs its function. If it doesn’t, things start to break down. And in a fragile artificial hothouse environment of a modern city, the population is de-moralized, atomized, and dependent. predators flourish. The whole purpose of civilization – productive synergy – reverses.
There will be an order one way or another. There always is. If the official system fails to maintain order, something else will. If the community doesn’t find a way to do it internally, the gang/cartel/warlord scenario happens until something new develops organically over time. Or a new empire rises. Whatever the long term prognosis, it’s not what was. Rorschach is at least of the society he protects. His moral code is more or less Western cultural Christianity. What he wants isn’t radical for most of history. Or even most people today. Even the r-selected dislike his initiative and moral discipline, not the idea of affluent safety.
Edward Lamson Henry, One Sunday Afternoon, 1902
To anyone remotely reality-facing, the binary Moore sets up [note - it's imperative to remember this is a story, not real humans] between systemic decay into anarchy or self-cleaning is a no-brainer. It may be preferable to have a high-trust, high-morality populace with smooth-running systems. But that option isn’t offered. It’s Rorschach or 8th and 40-Deuce on steroids.
Most guys may not like Rorschach’s personality. Others may disagree with some of his choices. And at the same time love what he’s doing, given the options, to the point that they don’t care. Healthy functioning people want to see the sadist stopped and punished. For obvious materially necessary reasons. Far more than they care about some fake universal abstraction. The litmus test is a thought experiment. Imagine being cornered by murderous thugs. Knives flash. Suddenly they look away together. Expressions change dramatically. You glance that way to see Rorschach gliding towards them carrying a lead pipe. Or a garotte. How do you feel?
Exactly.
His asocial monomania registers positively on society. And on a high-performance social hierarchy [note - put the characterization aside. The guy in the flying high-tech owl ship of his design who's a great fighter and just landed the heroine will take risks to go get him. That doesn't happen to omegas]. This positive impact is what makes Rorschach K-selected. He’s literally productive – producing a safer, better environment so the r-selected can consoom on in obliviousness. Remembering that he’s a comic creation in a structured plot and not a real person, that’s more sigma, not omega. And since we don’t have the real person to go by, what comes through the story exerts sigma attraction and not omega repulsion. If you don’t need him, you’re not aware he’s there. But if you do, there’s no one you’d rather see.
This raises the matter of social context. How somebody registers socially depends on how they’re known. One area of confusion around the SSH is the idea of a social hierarchy. The Dazed and Confused post sidestepped this by looking at a single microcosm. Individual reality is a bunch of overlapping social contexts. This is where situational and fractal profiles come from. The core behavior doesn't change, but the alpha of a team isn't the alpha of a company. Someone's overall profile is apparent from how the contexts relevant to them generally react to them. But you do need to be aware of the context in question
Comics are a visual medium. You see the images and read the words in relation. Fans don’t have to smell Rorschach, hear his weird voice or put up with his irritating personality. He’s not a roommate. Fans’ impression of him is what they see. His honesty, dedication, and competence. Exactly how the public would perceive his effectiveness were he real. And a handful of r-selected inverted freaks would mewl about taking the law into his own hands.
Regarding his basic profile. We've already pointed out the gamma-filtered incoherence between his omega presentation and sigma competence. For a fictional character like this, we have to be extra attentive to the social context in question. The public and readers pick up on the effectiveness. Someone stuck in an elevator for an afternoon with him may form a different impression.
The unreal aspects of the plot reminds us that fiction – no matter how “gritty” the “realism” – isn’t real. The scenarios, options, characters, etc. are all structured and pre-ordained. Stories can present improbable or unrealistic situations because they don't have to conform to the laws and patterns of reality. Rorschach might be antisocial and unpleasant, but the discipline required for that level of sustained performance makes the characterization unrealistic. Lacking the applicability that Tolkien considered the source of wisdom in fantasy. It actually reads more like the insane pretense in "progressive" fiction that any preposterous personality type is credible in any role.
It's an off-shoot of House of Lies credentialism. Where some word-magic declaration designates a role regardless or aptitude or performance. Among other things, this misrepresents roles - what is actually required for high performance in demanding, high-value tasks.
Real personae aren't disconnected fragments in healthy people. The facets interrelate because they're all aspects of the same underlying character.
Moore wants to believe one could be a Rorschach without extraordinary focus, discipline, and innate talents. Qualities that aren't reducible to selective self-identification or a chit. Beyond that, most people aren’t speculating what that guy would be like in real life if they’re caught up in the story. And Moore can keep the pages turning. All we can go by are the actions we're shown in the context we're given and how that fantasy is applicable to reality.
Hatred of heroism has a few sides. There’s the perverse desire to bring the worst of adult degeneracy into spaces of wonder. “Childhood’s end”. But that’s a natural maturation process of disinterest. Old imaginings put aside but warmly remembered. Splattering rape and murder all over them isn’t that. Structurally, [perverse desire to bring the worst of adult degeneracy into spaces of wonder] is the same pattern in pedophilia. We don’t know enough to even speculate on specific psychologies.
There is also the production-consumption split that thinking about r/K led to, and ways that lines up morally. Whether a society orients towards responsibility and productivity or consumerism and benefits. Planting or burning seed corn. And the attitudes that follow.
Richard Adams, Watership Down, London: Rex Collings, 1972. Hardcover, 1st edition, preceding "undated" 1974, American edition
The story of the warren of the silver wire is a brilliant allegory for a house of lies. The "cultured" rabbits are cared for and protected by a farmer. But the unprecedented comfort has a price - accepting regular disappearances. The culture is darkened and distorted by this unspoken reality. There's an unnatural lack of empathy, the rabbits become defensive and vicious when confronted.
The r-selected are systemically dependent on houses of lies. They have to be - their r-selected consuming lives are unsustainable in reality. Whether rabbits or FTS-2 huffers. With various negative effects. Depression, unhealthy lives, darkening fantasy, stress... and invariably defensive anger not too far below the surface.
To a Moore, the possibility of self-reliance and anti-fragility - on whatever level - is awful. Terrifying on at least a subconscious level. Suddenly, moral responsibility is an issue. Collectively and personally. Questions pop up about real lifestyle and policy decisions and their impact on societal health. Productive accountability and not consooming behind a satanic illusion. Best to call that crazy, reaffirm the House of Lies, and make up nonsense about just needing the right smart enough boy to run it.
Put it together and one thing we can observe is a K-selection/sigma correlation. Seems logical - operating successfully outside conventional social structures means less easy access to the r-supportive abundance structures create. Swimming upstream in other words. And the success part means making that social environment productive in non-obvious ways [note - obviously there are sigmas in large organizations. Their success will be personalized in some ways and their ultimate agenda may not align with their organizations']. There may be a limited gamma/r correlation - certainly along the hardcore huffing-House of Lies consumption-delusion axis. There’s definitely an omega/r one. We wonder if r/K selection correlates with the opposite omega/sigma directions of social outsider. It makes sense as a tendency. And it aligns with attitude towards idealized heroics and childhood wonder.
Rich Buckler and Joe Sinnott, Fantastic Four #147, Marvel Comics, 1974
Aspirational heroes appeal to moral healthy people because they represent ideal human qualities. Something to aspire to in an appealing form.
All fiction is escapist to a degree, but comics as a sub-set are especially so. You don’t necessarily want to hang out with the characters to have them appeal. Or even be moved emotionally by what they do. Because they're painted in broad, archetypal heroic swathes. The escapist appeal of a comic is putting an aspirational hero in a world of wonder and justice. It’s why they were a kids’ medium and why they remain appealing for the young at heart. Escapist, as in a break from the grit of everyday and an example to apply situationally.
These 70s covers make the point that comics essentially became a different genre better than any wall of text of ours. It’s also why “subverting” or deconstructing them is so demented. They never pretended their absurd scenarios and archetypal characters reflected reality. They were an escape from reality. Where K-selected heroes right wrongs beyond us.
“Deconstructing” this is about as meaningful and clever as exposing My Little Pony for not being a real horse. Changing the fundamental structure of the genre destroyed the appeal that perpetually generated new fans. Kids who enjoy a fantastical tale of a badass whooping some repellant scum.
Using the medium to pedestalize evil and inversion misses the entire point. While failing to make an argument for more materialist House of Lies. That's why Watchmen seems so gripping while failing to stick the landing. The resolution fails miserably because the morality doesn't align with reality. The House of Lies rings true, but the conclusion reaffirms the foundational problem. It's because Moore is a vile huffer, but an observably effective storyteller. We wouldn’t be blogging about him in 2024 if he wasn’t. He creates in the sense of revealing truth in spite of himself. Like an oily reflective film over reality, not a clear representation or fully inverted replacement like contemporary Marvel.
Reflecting some material truths but inverting the meaning is the House of Lies in a nutshell. We can ignore false meanings and respond to observation and logic. Truth. Just as we see through the House of Lies, we can see productive heroism through Moore's r-selected, secret king powered take on it. We can see Rorschach.
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