I’ve contemplated writing something along those lines, but I haven’t yet managed to come up with something that would be an entertaining story and still keep the point. Even Lovecraft, after all, only managed to write evocative fiction about an uncaring universe via the metaphor of intelligent monsters.
There was a short story (sorry, no cite) about humans picking up radio transmissions from an alien species which had solved the problem of war and, iirc, poverty, too. They were so prosperous they could afford to eat off of lead plates! But they were dying for reasons they couldn’t understand.… IIRC, they died off before they could explain their social insight to humanity.
More subtly, I suspect that large scale mood disorders could affect the fate of cultures. Without fully invoking the mind-killer, if people stop caring enough to keep their society going, whether by not bothering with crucial details, or by building defection into their institutions, then there will be a long term effect.
I’ve heard of an old theory that sunspots could affect people by making them more irritable. (Again, no cite, and I don’t think it matters if it was a real theory.) Anything that makes people generally more irritable increases the chance of war because the people at the top are more likely to create and react to slights and threats.
Large scale mood disorders would be in our blind spot, but not in a spooky or interesting way. They’re just too big and too slow for us to notice, and besides, surely there’s nothing wrong with our national character.
I’ve contemplated writing something along those lines, but I haven’t yet managed to come up with something that would be an entertaining story and still keep the point. Even Lovecraft, after all, only managed to write evocative fiction about an uncaring universe via the metaphor of intelligent monsters.
There was a short story (sorry, no cite) about humans picking up radio transmissions from an alien species which had solved the problem of war and, iirc, poverty, too. They were so prosperous they could afford to eat off of lead plates! But they were dying for reasons they couldn’t understand.… IIRC, they died off before they could explain their social insight to humanity.
More subtly, I suspect that large scale mood disorders could affect the fate of cultures. Without fully invoking the mind-killer, if people stop caring enough to keep their society going, whether by not bothering with crucial details, or by building defection into their institutions, then there will be a long term effect.
I’ve heard of an old theory that sunspots could affect people by making them more irritable. (Again, no cite, and I don’t think it matters if it was a real theory.) Anything that makes people generally more irritable increases the chance of war because the people at the top are more likely to create and react to slights and threats.
Large scale mood disorders would be in our blind spot, but not in a spooky or interesting way. They’re just too big and too slow for us to notice, and besides, surely there’s nothing wrong with our national character.