The Modern Eldritch Deities have also always existed, alongside the traditional ones; we just never talked about them because the traditional ones were worse.
Arguably they weren’t as powerful or as eldritch before. The economy has always been a complex beast, but it was probably relatively more manageable when it boiled down to “90% of all people work on making barely enough food that we do not starve, 7% make tools for the 90%, 3% are on military and administrative duty and get to syphon off all the surplus”. And each local system was relatively isolated. It’s an interesting question whether the growth in complexity has outstripped our growth in understanding; maybe we hit an optimum ratio of understanding/complexity around Adam Smith and then things have gotten out of hand.
This is false. Consider the examples of Modern Eldritch Deities given: “The Government, Academia, Geopolitics, Bureaucracies, The Culture, The Algorithm, Technology, Ideologies.”
Academia didn’t exist 10,000 years ago. Nor did bureaucracies, geopolitics, or The Algorithm. To the extent that government, culture, technology, and ideologies did exist, they were legible and understandable by humans.
Academia existed in the form of “trying to become a priest so people trust the stuff that you say” and various adjacent concepts.” Bureaucracies and geopolitics existed, in a state actually worse (although simpler) than they do now, before we could even smelt iron.
The Modern Eldritch Deities have also always existed, alongside the traditional ones; we just never talked about them because the traditional ones were worse.
Arguably they weren’t as powerful or as eldritch before. The economy has always been a complex beast, but it was probably relatively more manageable when it boiled down to “90% of all people work on making barely enough food that we do not starve, 7% make tools for the 90%, 3% are on military and administrative duty and get to syphon off all the surplus”. And each local system was relatively isolated. It’s an interesting question whether the growth in complexity has outstripped our growth in understanding; maybe we hit an optimum ratio of understanding/complexity around Adam Smith and then things have gotten out of hand.
This is false. Consider the examples of Modern Eldritch Deities given: “The Government, Academia, Geopolitics, Bureaucracies, The Culture, The Algorithm, Technology, Ideologies.”
Academia didn’t exist 10,000 years ago. Nor did bureaucracies, geopolitics, or The Algorithm. To the extent that government, culture, technology, and ideologies did exist, they were legible and understandable by humans.
Academia existed in the form of “trying to become a priest so people trust the stuff that you say” and various adjacent concepts.” Bureaucracies and geopolitics existed, in a state actually worse (although simpler) than they do now, before we could even smelt iron.