It’s like, at some point, horror is horror and we know that we’ve seen or imagined in some way the potential of bad stuff that would mess with us. We know the feeling of helplessness to enough of a degree to dampen the effect, too. I’m sure it would be awful, the visions from an eldritch horror, but I doubt it would have the same effect as it would on the people who had barely the imagination to picture science fiction as any further along than still using propellers to creat lift.
It’s the difference between introducing a whole new hell and showing something we’ve seen before just way worse. And it makes me wonder if there’s something we’ve missed with our greatly expanded collective imagination and if our allowances for the unknown have limits we can’t see yet.
I heard a really great description of this the other day
Imagine you’re an ant. Your world is small and scent based, your life is simple and straightforward
Now imagine you experienced a human perspective. You feel the stress and anxiety of something as abstract as money, you know of events on the other side of the world - you understand that there is a world, and how walking in one direction long enough would bring you back here. You see the beauty of the sunset, and dream of traveling to space
You see how humans see ants
You also understand where food is stored, what ant traps are, and the layout of the surrounding area your colony has yet to explore - things incredibly useful for an ant
Now you’re an ant again. Your ant brain can’t hold onto this knowledge, but you have a notion of what you saw.
You know you found all the food everywhere, and learned of hidden dangers to your colony… But you can’t remember the knowledge. You saw impossible ways to travel, but they no longer make any sense. You know the humans see you as pests, just minor annoyances in lives filled with emotions you don’t understand. You know they were scared of something… But what could threaten such a being? Another ant touches you to see if you’re alright, and you want to scream and vomit using organs you don’t have
I dunno about can’t, but most people seem stuck on the won’t part.
Like every single member of your family being already dead, and it being your fault, and now you have the disease too and have decided retroactively that you would like the vaccine now, except that’s not how that works and now you are going to die as well, leaving your kids behind as orphans.
Now see if you can guess which disease I even mean - hint, you probably think you know, but keep going and you can come up with more than a handful without too much effort, and with a bit more thinking even a handful of entirely distinct categories (edit: for the latter I mean leaving behind the literal definition of “vaccine”).
We would do much better if we would fear more than we currently allow ourselves to, collectively as a society I mean.
It’s like, at some point, horror is horror and we know that we’ve seen or imagined in some way the potential of bad stuff that would mess with us. We know the feeling of helplessness to enough of a degree to dampen the effect, too. I’m sure it would be awful, the visions from an eldritch horror, but I doubt it would have the same effect as it would on the people who had barely the imagination to picture science fiction as any further along than still using propellers to creat lift.
It’s the difference between introducing a whole new hell and showing something we’ve seen before just way worse. And it makes me wonder if there’s something we’ve missed with our greatly expanded collective imagination and if our allowances for the unknown have limits we can’t see yet.
I heard a really great description of this the other day
Imagine you’re an ant. Your world is small and scent based, your life is simple and straightforward
Now imagine you experienced a human perspective. You feel the stress and anxiety of something as abstract as money, you know of events on the other side of the world - you understand that there is a world, and how walking in one direction long enough would bring you back here. You see the beauty of the sunset, and dream of traveling to space
You see how humans see ants
You also understand where food is stored, what ant traps are, and the layout of the surrounding area your colony has yet to explore - things incredibly useful for an ant
Now you’re an ant again. Your ant brain can’t hold onto this knowledge, but you have a notion of what you saw.
You know you found all the food everywhere, and learned of hidden dangers to your colony… But you can’t remember the knowledge. You saw impossible ways to travel, but they no longer make any sense. You know the humans see you as pests, just minor annoyances in lives filled with emotions you don’t understand. You know they were scared of something… But what could threaten such a being? Another ant touches you to see if you’re alright, and you want to scream and vomit using organs you don’t have
That’s cosmic horror
I dunno about can’t, but most people seem stuck on the won’t part.
Like every single member of your family being already dead, and it being your fault, and now you have the disease too and have decided retroactively that you would like the vaccine now, except that’s not how that works and now you are going to die as well, leaving your kids behind as orphans.
Now see if you can guess which disease I even mean - hint, you probably think you know, but keep going and you can come up with more than a handful without too much effort, and with a bit more thinking even a handful of entirely distinct categories (edit: for the latter I mean leaving behind the literal definition of “vaccine”).
We would do much better if we would fear more than we currently allow ourselves to, collectively as a society I mean.