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27 Premises

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Silent Assumptions to Drive Systemic Thinking

By J Circio

Source: Modern Mythology

When you derive a conclusion, how do you get there? As you gather facts and pieces of narratives and figure out the picture that the puzzle should be configured into, what assumptions are you making — do you need to make for the sake of expediency, if nothing else — to get there without spending the better part of a lifetime so you no longer require a shortcut?

These are intrinsically generalizations, since they seem to arise from experience such as — if you find blue seashells every time you go to a particular sea shore, you might derive that sea shells are often blue and so come to conclude that is a general rather than local effect.

The following list each contain a brief explanation, and then a few additional comments. More on this in the upcoming Newsletter! (December 2023)

Talk with a GPT instructed to follow these 27 Premises, aka Narrative Machine-139.

1. Simpler is not necessarily more correct; Complicated is not necessarily more correct.

This principle challenges the idea that the truth or correctness of an idea, theory, or system can be judged based on its simplicity or complexity alone. It’s a rebuttal to both any rigid application of Occam’s Razor, which suggests that simpler explanations are generally better, and to the assumption that more complex theories are inherently more sophisticated or accurate simply on account of their complexity.

“Correctness” is question and context dependent, not innate.

2. Simplicity often obscures inner complications… and the inverse is also often true.

This principle underscores the notion that both simplicity and complexity can be misleading in their own ways. A simple explanation might overlook critical nuances, while a complex one might overcomplicate what is fundamentally straightforward.

An important corollary is that looking at a problem with the mindset of optimal complexity, or optimal simplicity, each will bring out some dynamics and minimize or remove others. Ideally, both frames need to be considered, although not always equally weighted.

3. Anything true is likely propped up by unspoken falsehoods. The inverse is sometimes but not always true.

This suggests that truths are often supported by assumptions or beliefs that may not be accurate. It underscores the importance of scrutinizing the underlying assumptions of any ‘truth,’ as well as the extreme difficulty of actually doing so. The inverse — that falsehoods can support truths — is acknowledged as a less common but possible scenario.

Logical relationship is based on assumptions about likeness, mimesis, and consistency with specified rules. In generalized form, it is tautological. This was a major fin de siecle fixation (before WW1), and in many ways historically and culturally, the devastation of that particular apocalypse was a form of answer to the question, in terms of some of the potential outcomes of “applied reason.”

Of that which goes beyond such tautological relationships, to quote Wittgenstein, “we cannot speak.” As he would also later come to recognize, that includes a significant portion of life.

4. Everything is relatively dependent on context; everything is in some sense connected, but not equivalently.

Context is critical in understanding any concept, idea, or system, as the environment in which anything might come to be. This principle aligns with systems theory, where the meaning and function of a component can only be fully understood in relation to the whole system. It also touches on existentialist ideas about individual perception being shaped by one’s unique context, however the emphasis is on the distributed interconnections of systems that actually operate within the world.

Everything is relatively dependent/contingent, and the range of possibilities that exist within those overlapping contexts in a given place and time, which is another way of saying that everything is connected but not equivalent. Your mileage may vary based on the local neighborhood you’re living in, whether that means solar system or city block. The same is likely true regarding time.

5. Time has various senses, such as that which is measured versus that which allows for experience.

This principle integrates ideas from physics and phenomenology. While time has measurable physical properties, our experience of time is subjective and varies based on individual perception and context.

Time can be measured through the entropy in a system, and it can be distorted by mass (4d curvature), but as a field that allows for experience to occur, our experience of time is just another socio-biological construct of our nervous system.

6. There are no first causes. Look instead for drivers of outcomes.

In line with complex systems theory, this principle rejects the notion of an original, singular cause of events, suggesting that causes are themselves effects of prior conditions, forming an interconnected web of causality.

The billiard ball model is oftentimes less salient than the idea of ‘entanglement.’ Attempting to chase that train to its point of origin will invariably lead you back to the big bang, although that neither means that it necessarily started there, or that it was ‘caused’ by it. Rather, if that had not happened, its antecedents would similarly not exist. That is to say the chain is one of contingency and continuity rather than discrete causality.

7. Nothing happens for a “reason”. (Causal syncretism).

This principle challenges the notion of a singular, directed purpose in events, instead favoring a view of causality where events are contingent on preceding conditions, always “reasons” plural. This aligns with complex systems theory, where outcomes are often the result of numerous interacting variables rather than a linear cause-effect relationship.

“It was meant to be.” Only in the sense that everything happens because many other things did or didn’t happen. What can we actually make of this contingency?

8. Meaning is something we project on the world, not the other way around.

This principle reflects the existentialist and constructivist view that meaning is not an inherent property of the world but is either constructed or imagined by individuals through their interactions, experiences, and interpretations.

Meaning is dependent on action and intent. What is the meaning of a rock? What is the meaning of a flower? What is the meaning of that letter you sent to me? Only one of these makes sense. Even the Buddha’s “flower sermon” only makes sense because of the intention behind holding up the flower, even if its specific meaning is enigmatic.

9. Conversely, and yet equally, our meaning is shaped by our being in the world.

Expanding on the previous as a corollary and yet seemingly contradictory point, this principle suggests that our personal meaning is contingent on our interactions with the world around us. There is in fact no contradiction here. This is a phenomenological view, recognizing that our consciousness and perception shape our understanding and meaning-making processes.

Our meaning is shaped by our own being in the world. We are not in any way inseparable from the worlds in which we have been. “Nothing exists within a void.” That also has dual meaning.

10. No point of view, model, or experience can singularly encompass the truth; they can only model it well or poorly, which is to say, be more or less pertinent to the needs of a specific situation.

This aligns with the philosophical understanding that absolute objectivity is unattainable, and in fact incoherent. All perspectives and models are inherently limited by virtue of their very existence, and can only approximate truth within specific contexts.

Those “needs” might be broad or narrow. Relating back to the first Premise, this is a determinative factor when it comes to how to model a situation, how many variables are necessary to track, and how they should be evaluated.

11. Correlation isn’t causation except when it is.

This principle addresses a fundamental concept in statistics and scientific reasoning, emphasizing the distinction between correlation (when two variables are related) and causation (when one variable directly affects another). While correlation does not inherently imply causation, there are instances where a causal relationship does exist, emphasizing the need for careful analysis in understanding relationships between variables.

This impetus to look for the exception to the rule holds true for many other things as well: e.g. The human mind isn’t like a computer… except in the ways it is.

12. Cause is often both partial and plural.

This principle suggests that in many situations, causes are not singular or absolute but are instead multiple and interconnected, each contributing partially to the outcome. It emphasizes a more nuanced understanding of causality that acknowledges the complexity and interdependence of factors in various contexts.

13. Beware false binaries, such as Free Will/Determinism.

This principle emphasizes the importance of recognizing and challenging oversimplified dichotomies, like the free will versus determinism debate. It suggests that such binary oppositions often fail to capture the complexity and nuance of philosophical, scientific, and ethical concepts.

Outcomes are determined within the context of systems, and in that sense nothing exists “outside” of the system including our own volition. We are free to the extent that our available range of choices allow us to be, although those actions are similarly conditioned (and so on down the chain). All parts affect all other parts, if not universally in the same type or measure.

14. Emergent complexity makes determinism problematic, and randomness or order may appear to emerge at certain levels of complexity or scale.

This principle addresses the challenges determinism faces in the context of complex systems, where emergent properties and behaviors can arise unpredictably. It suggests that at different levels of complexity, what may seem random or orderly may be a product of the system’s own inherent complexity. The unpredictability and non-linearity inherent in complex systems, where larger patterns and behaviors emerge from the interactions of simpler components, render deterministic models less applicable or even irrelevant in certain contexts.

Emergent complexity makes determinism not just epistemologically problematic, but also it doesn’t seem to hold between different scales. For example, things may appear more random at certain levels of complexity or scale, and deterministic at others.

15. Taxonomic categories are descriptive, not prescriptive.

This principle suggests that the classifications and categories we use in various disciplines are tools for describing the world, not inherent truths that dictate how the world must be. It aligns with contemporary understandings in linguistics, biology, and social sciences, challenging essentialist and fixed views of categorization.

We cannot learn all we need to know about an entity from its descriptive taxonomy. Language conceals as it reveals. This has cross-domain salience.

16. Fixed reality is always off limits.

This principle suggests that reality is not knowable without introducing some form of extension or abstraction based on our own prior assumptions, our experiences, and is similarly contingent upon the types of experience we can have. This aligns with post-structuralist ideas about the fluidity of meaning and reality.

We are required to look around corners to derive anything about the world we live in. This is at the root of the “problem of language” and representation in western philosophy.

17. Consciousness as we so far know it on earth is an embodied phenomenon.

This principle posits that consciousness may be a fundamentally embodied experience, emerging from the interactions between a living organism and its environment. It suggests that consciousness is not an abstract or detached entity but is intimately connected to the physical and experiential realities of organisms, operating within an environment.

More on this in upcoming notes.

18. Complexity and emergence on their own don’t simply result in capacity for experience.

This principle posits that consciousness arises not merely as a byproduct of complexity, but from a confluence of various factors within a system, leading to emergent phenomena that cannot be predicted solely from the properties of individual components. It emphasizes the role of emergence in the development of consciousness and warns against simplistic, reductionist views.

19. Consciousness may have a plurality of forms.

This principle recognizes the diversity and continuum of consciousness across different life forms, challenging the notion of a singular, universal model of consciousness. It posits that consciousness manifests in various forms, each unique to its bearer’s biological and ecological makeup.

20. The form of embodiment appears to determine cognitive shaping.

This principle acknowledges the significant role of the body in shaping cognition and consciousness, challenging the traditional dichotomy between the self and the external world. It suggests that the form of embodiment — how an entity exists within an existing ecosystem — plays a crucial role in the development and nature of its consciousness.

21. Self is sustained by narrative.

This is influenced by both existentialism and narrative psychology. It posits that our sense of self is constructed through the stories we tell about ourselves and our experiences, highlighting the importance of narrative in identity formation.

In this specific sense, we don’t exist save as a figment of our collective imagination, and the universe is just another such narrative construction, even if what it represents is obviously quite ‘real’ in a sense that none of our stories are. (Real, but singularly unknowable.)

22. Stories collectivize experience.

This aligns with the role of narrative in forming collective identities and shared understandings, a concept central to folklore and myth studies. Stories serve a crucial role in shaping collective understanding, identity, and social cohesion, but they also have the power to enforce and sustain hierarchies, manipulate public opinion, and solidify power structures.

This dual aspect of storytelling reflects its significant influence in societies, capable of both unifying and dividing through the central lie that the signifier is an entity akin to the signified.

23. A group, when regarded as a single entity, is a kind of mental fiction.

This principle acknowledges that while we often conceptualize groups as singular entities, this is a cognitive simplification. Each member of a group retains individuality as actually existing entities, whereas the group identity is an abstract construct.

The singular entities described by a group are not a mental fiction, nor are they usually strictly limited by that definition.

24. Entities are replicated within other minds by way of narrative methods.

This principle reflects the idea that our understanding of others and the world is mediated through the stories we construct and share, highlighting the role of narrative in shaping our understanding and internal representation of entities, whether they are individuals, groups, concepts, or events. It suggests that our mental models of these entities are largely formed and communicated through storytelling and narrative frameworks.

Our experience is direct, certain, and present to ourselves, and to no one else. Language is one of the primary ways that humans attempt to bridge that gap, to maintain the illusion of a society when living in groups far larger than actual kinship groups.

25. Ideology is a form of fashion.

This principle suggests that aesthetics, beyond mere surface beauty, play a significant role in forming ideologies, cultural hierarchies, and power dynamics. It emphasizes that our understanding and interpretation of the world are profoundly influenced by aesthetic values and preferences.

“Aesthetics” as based in the “image”, a field of idealized possibilities and desires that run through the whole of our daily lives, composed among other things of what we want to see and how we want to be seen. Much of our ethics might amount to the attempt to make that idealized vision a reality.

26. Performance is a fundamental aspect of social life.

This principle, drawing from Judith Butler’s concept of performativity and the ideas presented in the excerpt, suggests that performance and performativity are fundamental aspects of social life, shaping and reifying social relations, structures, and ethics. It highlights the dual nature of performance as both a real act in the world and a constructed representation that can distort reality.

This might seem a path through which ethics can be materialized from art — as if by a single work you might write a new Gospel through the act of speaking or writing. There is a danger, however, in misunderstanding the function of performativity.

It is not a process that lends inherent truth to the concepts it conveys, but rather, it creates a semblance of reality, often masking their inherently subjective and contingent nature.

27. Interpretation is in part an act of projection.

This principle reflects the postmodernist view that multiple interpretations of any text or artwork are valid. It acknowledges the intersubjective / co-creative nature of understanding and interpretation.

There is no singularly correct reading of a book, movie, album, meme, piece of street theater. This includes the creator’s reading of their own work. Some are however nearer or further from the mark. (Determined by who or what? There’s the rub).

There’s a deeper level to it. Mythic symbols — like a god such as Dionysus — tend to bear a great deal of resemblance on the people investing attention (manna) into that image. This is true whether that reflection is a positive or negative one. As an embodiment of libidinally repressed “homicidal fury” (in Rene Girdard’s words), to Freud, Dionysus was a threat. To Nietzsche, he came to represent the allure of a kind of revolution of the spirit. To Jung, the potential of casting off restriction seemed most salient. And so on.

It might even seem as if we only see the psychology of the person speaking writ large in their symbols and the stories they make of them. And yet it is not quite so. The fact that they aren’t just a simple mirror is the greater mystery, as there’s a character hiding out there within or perhaps beyond the symbol, or at least a bias or tendency, which exists outside our influence, on the other side of the mirror.

Reading List Recommendations

For more explication in the following, begin with the following list:

Philosophy and Systems Theory:

  • “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” by Thomas Kuhn — Explores how scientific theories and paradigms evolve and are influenced by historical and social contexts.
  • “The Logic of Scientific Discovery” by Karl Popper — A critical analysis of the philosophy of science, emphasizing the importance of falsifiability in scientific theories.

Complexity Theory and Biology:

  • “Complexity: A Guided Tour” by Melanie Mitchell — Offers an accessible introduction to complexity theory and its applications in various disciplines, including biology and computer science.
  • “The Web of Life: A New Scientific Understanding of Living Systems” by Fritjof Capra — This book delves into the principles of living systems and their relevance to understanding complex biological and ecological networks.

Semiotics and Phenomenology:

  • “Course in General Linguistics” by Ferdinand de Saussure — A foundational text in the study of semiotics, exploring the nature of linguistic signs and their meaning.
  • “Being and Time” by Martin Heidegger — A seminal work in phenomenology, discussing concepts of being, time, and existence.

Existentialism:

  • “Existentialism is a Humanism” by Jean-Paul Sartre — A concise introduction to existentialist philosophy, emphasizing human freedom and responsibility.
  • “On Truth and Lie in a Non-moral Sense” by Friedrich Nietzsche — Examination of several cogent concepts.

Narrative Psychology and Myth Studies:

  • “The Hero with a Thousand Faces” by Joseph Campbell — Examines the common patterns in global myths, highlighting the significance of storytelling in human culture. The monomyth reduces differences and conflates similarities, which poses both a conceptual tool and a potential cognitive risk, if unexamined.
  • “Acts of Meaning” by Jerome Bruner — Explores the role of narrative in shaping human perception, cognition, and culture.

Folklore and Myth Studies:

  • “Mythologies” by Roland Barthes — A collection of essays analyzing modern myths and the semiotics of popular culture.
  • “The Power of Myth” by Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers — A dialogue exploring the enduring power of myth in human society.

Manuel DeLanda:

  • “A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History” — DeLanda applies the concepts of nonlinearity and self-organization to interpret the course of history, offering a unique perspective on social and biological systems.
  • “Intensive Science and Virtual Philosophy” — This book tackles the topic of virtuality and its relation to reality, emphasizing the role of topological thinking in understanding complex systems.

Jean Baudrillard:

  • “Simulacra and Simulation” — Baudrillard’s exploration of the nature of reality, simulation, and the hyperreal offers critical insights into the impact of media and technology on society.
  • “The Consumer Society: Myths and Structures” — An analysis of consumer culture, exploring themes of consumption, social stratification, and the creation of modern myths.

Peter Godfrey-Smith:

  • “Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness” — An intriguing exploration of consciousness through the lens of cephalopod intelligence, blending philosophy, biology, and the study of the mind.
  • “Metazoa” — extends this exploration into the history of evolution beyond cephalopods.
  • “Theory and Reality: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Science” — This book provides an accessible introduction to the main themes in the philosophy of science, from logical positivism to scientific realism and antirealism.

John Gray:

  • “Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals” — Gray challenges the commonly held beliefs about what it means to be human, questioning humanism and our perceptions of human progress.
  • “The Silence of Animals: On Progress and Other Modern Myths” — A contemplative work that critiques the idea of human progress and explores the value of contemplating the world beyond human-centric narratives.

Additional Recommendations:

  • “Narrative Machines: Modern Myth, Revolution & Propaganda” by James Curcio — This work examines the role of narrative and myth in shaping cultural and political realities.
  • “Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny” by Robert Wright — An exploration of cultural evolution, arguing that human history is marked by a trend toward increased complexity and cooperation.
  • “Chaos: Making a New Science” by James Gleick — A seminal work on chaos theory, illustrating how the principles of chaos are evident in various scientific disciplines.
  • “The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge” by Jean-François Lyotard — This book examines the status of knowledge in the computerized societies of the West and the legitimization of knowledge in the postmodern era.
  • “The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World” by David Abram — An examination of the relationship between human perception, language, and the natural world, advocating for a more ecologically attuned way of living.
  • “The Society of the Spectacle” by Guy Debord — A critical theory of media and consumer culture, examining the ways in which reality is constructed and consumed.
  • “Finite and Infinite Games” by James P. Carse — Explores the concept of life as a series of games, each with different rules and outcomes, influencing our perception of identity and reality.

Return of the Divine

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By rahkyt

Source: Sacred Space in Time

The skies have always given us our Gods, gods and goddesses, powers and principalities. All peoples, all places, have watched the skies. The stars, the planets, the clouds, the storms, the winds, hail, snow, rain and other things that have fallen from the heavens to earth. Nature has provided us with a bounty of environmental effects that we have anthropomorphized, given character, personality, intentionality.

Who is to say that celestial events of the past, witnessed the world across, did not conspire in essence to form the major and minor religions? That staggering immensities of planetary proportions – great arcs of lightning, waters in brobdingnagian amounts, comets and meteors in impossible numbers, falling to earth, from the skies – did not happen, cowing oceanic humanity, awakening abject fear and humbling terror, awing them into prostrate proselytization of an improbable yet undeniable extraterrestrial consciousness that made it or themselves undeniably known and unavoidably apparent to our distant ancestors, to their everlasting dismay and chagrin?

And who is to say, that these events do not occur cyclically? That collective terror has not resulted in a collective forgetting and mythologizing; that some events, are, indeed, too terrible to admit are true? That the Gods, gods and goddesses, existence – in all of their material and immaterial awesomeness – are too horrific in essence and action to admit are real and extant, somewhere, out there?

At what point, is rationality trumped by practicality? Scientists have recently admitted that we have not even identified 1% of all of the creatures living on this planet. They’ve “discovered” a new moon that circle this earth, new planets in this ancient solar system, new particles at the quantum level, new forms of matter, new energies posited, all indicative of our lack of knowledge and our shared and overwhelming, human insistence that our mere belief in a comprehensive science and its findings is instead the Totality of all that Was, Is, and Ever Shall Be. And that nothing outside of that belief – bolstered by a fledgling science barely a millennium in the formulation – is worthy of formal acknowledgement.

Hubris. Ignorance by definition. Ignoring the Wisdom of the Ages. In the public sphere, at least. The collected oral traditions of the world’s Indigenous peoples. The facts provided by the study of metaphysics and their implications to material science. The discounting of a full half of the human capacity to experience; the subjective, mental realm in favor of the surface, objective reality, alone.  Even when the scientifically-minded among us do give some credence to at least the potentiality of worth being implicit in these other forms of knowing, that acknowledgement is cavalier and pompous, obviously condescending and over-confident of its right to judge, appropriate and dismiss other knowings by sheer force of self-righteousness and arrogance.

Where do you fall along this spectrum? Do you presume to know? Or do you just believe? Can you admit as much, even to yourself? Let alone, others? Perhaps we have a long way to go, collectively.

As civilization cycles along predictable lines of social and material evolution tacit admittance that it is, in fact, a continuing spiral, should be cultivated. Just as our solar system cycles around the sun it spirals as well, the sun leading us thru time and space in the cyclical, galactic dance around the Milky Way’s central Spiritual/Black Sun/Hole. As Above, So Below. And that is where we are now, where other civilizations potentially have already been. At a certain space in an eternal cycle, spaced evenly along an infinite spiral.

What we individually think, has already been thought. What we say, has already been said. There is indeed, nothing new under the sun and even our attitudes of knowing and general sense of cultural – or other superiority complexes – ascendancy is an affectation of awareness, a perhaps unavoidable side-effect of life in the echo-chamber of human arrogance.

Perhaps we should pray that the more rational and less intuitive and “spiritual” among us are correct and the Multiverse is empty of all intelligence of the non-human variety. That our ancestors were indeed simple and dull-witted – despite all evidence to the contrary – and prone to fanciful ramblings and that nothing had come out of the sky or happened in the heavens except those things and types of events we are well familiar with.

Because if they were correct and terrific events did indeed traumatized humanity collectively at some point in Gaia-Sophia’s archaic past, the procession of the cycle and turn of the spiral is here and such events may be  scheduled to happen again, at a higher and more rarified level.

Ignorance is bliss. Do you choose belief? Or knowing? And are you willing to do what it takes, to truly know? Or are you confident enough in you beliefs to continue on, without seeking further information? If not, you may return, now, to your regularly scheduled programming. If you so choose.

Into the black hole: an interview with comics author Grant Morrison

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‘Annihilator,’ antiheroes, and the creation of modern myths

By Adi Robertson

Source: The Verge

More than almost anyone, Grant Morrison has plumbed the weirdness that lies at the heart of comics. Since the 1980s, he’s helped redefine the superhero genre, producing surreal, fourth-wall-breaking titles like Animal Man and Doom Patrol, as well as popular iterations of Batman and Superman and the DC Universe-wide Final Crisis storyline. The Invisibles, one of his best-known works, slowly unfurled from a straightforward story about a team of countercultural rebels into a mind-bending deconstruction of reality itself. His nonfiction book Supergods analyzed superheroes as mythological archetypes that we create and rework to express the basic elements of being human.

Morrison’s career is too long to neatly summarize, but one of its central themes is the highly permeable boundary between fiction and reality. His upcoming six-issue series, Annihilator, is no exception. Drawn by artist Frazer Irving, it’s about a screenwriter named Ray Spass struggling to write a sci-fi blockbuster about a rebel named Max Nomax, who has been exiled to the penumbra of a black hole for committing “the ultimate crime.” Soon, he’s writing not for a studio but for Nomax himself, who is simultaneously a fictional character, the ur-template for Byronic antiheroes throughout history, and a real man who gives Ray seven days to write him a past.

Devil deals and black-hole prisons notwithstanding, Annihilator doesn’t have the otherworldly trippiness of some of Morrison’s best-known work. In some places, it’s a take that to Hollywood banality; in others, it’s an attempt to distill fictional characters down to their most basic essence. With the first issue out tomorrow, we talked to Morrison about myth-making, originality, and the dark undercurrents of modern fiction.

Interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Annihilator feels less packed with surreality than some of the things that I remember you for. It seems more traditionally designed and plotted.

You’re absolutely right. It was deliberately designed to seem more like a Hollywood thing, and that’s why it was the perfect project for Legendary, who are a Hollywood movie studio. So when they came to me and we talked about doing comics with Bob Schreck and Thomas Tull, this was the idea I thought was most appropriate for Legendary, because it was about filmmaking, it was about Hollywood, it was about the movies. So yeah, I mean, it’s a lot more real than some of the stuff that I write. But also it, as you’ll see, it goes into pretty bizarre areas. But I find that the mundane and the fantastic are pretty closely linked anyway, so I kind of enjoy doing both.

Ray Spass reminds me a little of the Stephen King prototype, the down-and-out writer.

The thing about Ray is that he’s not entirely down and out, he obviously has a little bit of money because he buys quite a nice house at the beginning of the book. But I think morally he’s down and out, and creatively he’s down and out. But he was based very much on a bunch of different people that I actually met in Los Angeles and found quite fascinating. People who’d live and work in Los Angeles on a pretty regular basis. So I was kind of basing it on my observations of people in the town.

You’ve talked about how Annihilator is sort of all about Los Angeles.

Absolutely. As I’ve said, obviously you start to cover similar ground, but I find the place fascinating. I’ve got a house there, and I’ve spent a lot of time there and I have a lot of friends there, and while there’s a certain softness and glamor and glitter to Los Angeles, I think what’s really interesting is what’s underneath. It’s a very dark place, and it has connections to this strange occult stuff, the whole Church of Satan and Anton LaVey, which I’ve mentioned before, or the Jack Parsons Jet Lab connection, or the Manson family, of the Doors and the Snake and the underground caverns that they used to talk about. And I think it’s got a very strange undercurrent that I find quite fascinating, because it’s completely at odds with the way most people think of Hollywood, probably.

And it’s a town of devil deals, it’s a town of people selling their souls for fame or success or money, so I think it’s got a very strange atmosphere. I tried to capture that, with Frazer [Irvine’s] help, in Annihilator.

It’s an incredibly dark comic.

At the same time, hopefully what we tried to do with it was make it funny, because I think if you’re trying to confront the dark in that sense, I think it has to at least be leavened with humanity’s great gift, which is a sense of humor. So hopefully it’ll at least give you a few laughs as well.

There were a couple of bits that were really fantastic. I loved the “cure for death” page, because it totally captured something being fantastic and then going to the next page and saying, “Wow, that’s also really overwrought and dramatic. But still great.”

That was like, the period at the end of that sentence, which sounded so full of bravado, and then you turn the page and have the sense of everything as a vast, black hole that doesn’t go away.

How do you approach creating an archetype like Max Nomax, compared to just using an actual existing character? You’re reinterpreting both, but how do you deal with them differently?

I was trying to do Ray Spass as a contemporary screenwriter who’s working in Hollywood right now,

and right now, Hollywood, as you know, is pretty obsessed with superheroic characters or, as you see, pretty archetypal characters. It’s easy to understand what Batman represents, for instance. So I was, I wanted to show that he was doing that kind of movie, that he was trying to create a hero for the 21st century, in these fraught and fretful times we live in.

So then I got to thinking about characters like Batman, and Hamlet, and that kind of high-cheekboned, Byronic, antihero character that’s kind of haunted all of our literature and so many of our movies and books and TV shows, and it was really just about going back. Because ultimately I thought that all tracks back to Milton’s Satan to be honest. So I kind of was telling a story about a devil, through the medium of science fiction. And I think the character came to me through these different angles, and then I thought about the different portrayals of that character in popular culture, so we connected them to Fantomas, you know, the early 20th-century surrealist hero who was kind of a pulp fiction character, or to characters like Diabolik from the 1970s Italian comic books, or Criminale, who was another, a character who dressed in a skull suit and went around robbing people and shooting things.

They were very dark antiheroes, and I was kind of trying to track the lineage of those guys right back to the original, and build up Nomax from basically Milton’s Satan via lots of these other portrayals of the ultimate rebel antihero poet dissident character that we’ve been haunted by.

What’s the difference to you between something like this, an archetype of something classic, and just a cliche?

Who knows? I think it just depends on how you deploy them. Perhaps it can easily shift into cliché — I mean, as long as I don’t feel it’s a cliché, then I’m fine with it. But I think if other people start to see that, then yeah, obviously it becomes embarrassing. So hopefully Nomax won’t be a cliché. We’ve tried to give him a personality that’s pretty strong and pretty direct, and again quite funny; he’s got a certain take on things. So I think the only way to do it is to be aware of its origins, and kind of the ubiquity of these figures, but at the same time give them enough personality that… Max Nomax is very different from the other iterations of the dark man I’ve mentioned, so hopefully he has his own personality as well.

The female characters that I’ve seen so far tend to be love interests and prostitutes. I’m wondering if that’s something that’s going to change?

It’s actually about that; there’s a character who comes in in Issue 3 who’s really central to the entire thing, and it’s kind of about the attitude of men to women in Hollywood. Again it’s something that you’ll see unfold, but actually part of the story is about the way men treat women. About how the screen treats women.

How do you do that without just replicating it? How do you depict that without it just being another part of Hollywood — talking about how men treat women but just treating them the same way?

By making the character strong, and by giving her things to do, which aren’t necessarily the traditional things that happen in stories like these. And that’s honestly what it’s all about, as you’ll see, I think. The female character who enters this story is very important to how it plays out.

Do you think these themes and myths are all something that are already set, and we’re just going back to a monomyth? Or are we still developing new archetypes, and new myths, and new ideas?

I honestly.. from having observed it, I think we keep going back to what are basically six human default personalities. We have these different characters: there’s the comedian, there’s the lover, there’s the stern judge, there’s the critic… I think people have always developed gods and ideas like that around these basic default states of the actual human personality. I think it’s just part of how we’re made up. It’s almost like the periodic table of being human. And I think no matter how modern these characters look, I’m not entirely convinced…

I think certain things like the atom bomb created a new archetype, and we saw how that appeared in fiction, and in pop culture. So yeah, there’s probably the potential for new technologies and new ideas to create their own archetypes, but I honestly think the human personality hasn’t changed much over our entire span of time. I know I live in the 21st century, so I have no idea what people felt like in the 1300s!

But that’s kind of my take on it, right or wrong, I kind of think we do go back to the same well often, because I think these are the characteristics we recognize in ourselves and others as being kind of universal.

Are there types that you wish you’d been able to write so far that you haven’t? Or that you’re interested in?

I guess as a writer you’re often drawn to characters like Nomax the rebel, because a lot of writers like to self-imagine themselves as rebels against society when in fact most of the time we’re just part of society. I’ve kind of tried to write about characters that I felt at least some connection with, but I think through my life I’ve always written about people who are slightly at right angles to society, and maybe that’s just… maybe I need to write more about kings and queens and dukes.

You were talking about Annihilator and darkness and this being a place that we are culturally right now. Do you think there’s something that follows that, something that we’re going to be moving into?

It’s hard to say, because we seem to be very enamored by darkness. Things just keep coming out like True Detective, which came out earlier in the year and was really talking about darkness and nihilism, and that obviously was inspired by a lot of the same books I read when I was working on Annihilator. But that was a great show and it really seemed timely and important and modern. I think whether it’s created by the media — because really as we know, most people are living better lives now than they have at any time in history, most people are safer, especially in the Western world, the child mortality rate has gone down, the chance of dying has lessened — so we actually live in a much better world, but our entertainment seems really very interested in the dark areas of experience. It goes all the way from the zombies to the obsession with war and violence that we have. I don’t know if it’s just because we’re so comfortable we can afford to play with these things, or if there is just something wrong with humanity.

Besides True Detective, what are you looking at right now in terms of contemporary artists, authors, etc.?

Not an awful lot of stuff. I tend to just lock myself away and work. But again a lot of stuff kind of relates to what I’m doing. I picked up a book quite recently called Luminarium by Alex Shakar, an author, and it just seemed to be talking about the same stuff that I’m talking about in Annihilator. It’s all about the abyss at the center of our lives that we try to forget about and we make stories about and we orbit around. So I’m just… I’ve been reading a lot of that, and then nihilism, like Raymond Brassier, the nihilist philosopher, and Thomas Ligotti, because I really wanted to get down into the dark areas of human experience.

If it doesn’t sound too grandiose, what kind of stuff do you think people are going to be mining your work for, and everybody else’s work for, in 40 years? The way that we’re looking back at things from the mid-20th century and reinterpreting them?

I don’t know. I think honestly it will just be more Batman. I think a lot of us will be forgotten in 40 years. I really don’t expect — my work is talking about the world I’m in, with the people that I live in the world with right now, so I never think about the future. I honestly think I’ll be forgotten in two generations, and what will be there is Sherlock Holmes and all the stuff that we’re kind of fascinated with, unless people break out of their nervous fear of the future and start to innovate again. Right now it seems like everybody’d kind of rather look backwards than forwards, because forwards seems a bit scary.