Ra | Otium

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The Egyptian god Ra was a symbol of divine kingship, all-powerful and all-seeing. He’s a good metaphor for a certain kind of psychological phenomenon that involves thought distortions around authority and legitimacy. A new demon, if you will, in the grimoire that includes Moloch and Azathoth. The idea of a malign Establishment is somewhat convergent: The Establishment (attributed to Henry Fairlie in 1950’s Britain, talking about an informal social network of power among prominent, well-connected people) The Man (e.g. Yippies, Burning Man) The Combine (Ken Kesey) Moloch (Allen Ginsberg) The Beige Dictatorship (Charles Stross) The Cathedral (Mencius Moldbug) The Mandarins (Megan McArdle) Not all of these ideas are coterminous with Ra, or identical to each other. What they have in common is that the Establishment is primarily an upper-class phenomenon, that it is more about social and moral legitimacy than mere wealth or raw power, and that it is boringly evil — it produces respectable,

Epistemic status: very speculative. This is mythmaking: you’ve been warned. Ra is the Sun God The Egyptian god Ra was a symbol of divine kingship, all-powerful and all-seeing. He’s a good metaphor for a certain kind of psychological phenomenon that involves thought distortions around authority and legitimacy. A new demon, if you will, in the grimoire that includes Moloch and Azathoth. The idea of a malign Establishment is somewhat convergent: The Establishment (attributed to Henry Fairlie in 1950’s Britain, talking about an informal social network of power among prominent, well-connected

Ra | Otium

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