You are welcome friend… reading you is like looking in the mirror. You write what I try to have conversations about, you write things I have experienced, lived, died and resurrected from…. Talk soon. Abram’s language to Abraham’s dagger…
I eased into this essay with my newborn daughter at my side telling her, normally I don't do this, but it's James Tayler Foreman. She smiled. As I approached the end I smiled. You arrive at the thing that isn't predictable. The thing that is usually unseen in the woods and the trees of these hyperlandscape things. That we must faithfully go forward to fulfill any great destiny. You made that timeless truth feel tactile, like bits of forest floor between my finger tips.
Jesus himself didn't ask for followers in the sense of how we think of followers today. Today we perceive following and "get behind me satan" as the same thing. Following has become passive, consumptive, inactive, desire without determination. Yet you captured the old way of following. the following in one's footsteps.
In Latin we have this word, praetor, most commonly associated with the praetorian guard of the Caesars. The ones who went forward. But in the original texts of Mark's Gospel we see in the parable of walking on water that it is Jesus who goes 'praeterire'. Peters willingness to get out of the boat and go forward with Jesus is the real miracle. As is every soul who chooses to go forward and become praetorians for the kingdom that is not of this world.
All this to say, I am moved by your essay. I'll be meditating on it for months to come. Congratulations on getting this one over the finish line. My best to you always. Well done.
Thanks for these words, Steven. It was nice to imagine where you were while reading this (which is very much to the point I want to make). I love the bit about praetor and truly following. I think the subtlety of hyperlandscapes makes it easy to lie to ourselves when we’re not “following” with courage. I do it constantly.
Touched by this comment, Steven. Thanks for reading.
I've heard Christian Baxter use the term a few times in conversation. I'm going to have to relisten to ya'lls conversation.
I've recently been thinking how strange it is that Jung's collective unconscious has replaced any notion of a spiritual realm, as if they are different things (the way I see it at least). I've also been meditating on the Cain and Abel story and the door / tent flap at which sin crouches. So it's neat to see you tackling at minimum similar ideas if not the precisely same ideas from the zeitgeist that I'm tangled up in.
As always: brisk, thorough, honest, hopeful and impossible not to map straight onto trending headlines. Protestors and protestees and sideliners. Affable assassins and excoriated victims and disgraced hip hop moguls and click bait articles about body positive swimwear.
Also—I think this is connected—my best 2 moments of 2024 were the birth of my daughter and chainsawing an off-road trail through the thicket on my brother's farm. Both experiences felt analogous to the scene in Altered States where William Hurt turns into a caveman.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I could have sworn I had some hyperpromises to keep.
This comment is so good it upstages my essay. Haha
Just your brief mention of your favorite moments last year makes me feel that relief of being grounded. It’s a big thing we miss and it’s good to get back in little ways.
I truly related to this and I think it actually goes even deeper, to the point that the hyperpredators might not even allow us the sense of even a self, let alone heroism or any form of agency. This is literally a constant ontological crsisi that we need to keep dealing with, and struggle with.
Writing is a hyperpredator in the original article. What is in it for "writing?" Well, that is incoherent. What is in it for the humans who adopted writing? Well, they got to survive better at the significant destruction of oral culture and memory culture and notably, the ontological reality of non-writing cultures.
The problem now with "self" is that as you have near-perfect replication of the self via collection of your behaviors, similar to how photography led to near-perfect replication of the image of the self, then just like it is possible to "copy your photo" on a near-infinite basis, then it becomes possible to copy "you" on a near-infinite basis.
This results in a lot of ontological crisises, if I can just copy Kyle Joachim and then create n-th versions of you in digital form, and besides the obvious manipulation issues(I can predict you, the more I know of you), it also raises the obvious question of who is "you."
Let alone heroism, do you even have agency?
In that sense, the ontological crisis has moved from the association of "self with land" to "self with body" until you have dissolution of "self" at all.
One of the great things that this article has made me realize is that we need to think of hypertruths as well.
This one hit me in a really strong way, thank you for writing it. I've been thinking a lot about this kind of thing recently and what it means to reject the algorithms and, as you put it, the other hyperpredators. I have a creative hobby, and there's a lot of pressure to “give in" and I suppose sell out spiritually in order to even get people to notice what I'm making. It's a constant, conscious decision to say “no."
I actually left Twitter and Bluesky (not that everyone has to do this) and got on Substack as a way to write about my experiences, and for me it's just becoming one more algorithm to appease, one more “seven steps to success" echo chamber. I don't know what to do with that yet.
Daniel, I think you really get what Im trying to say. I felt so strongly that people underestimate the power of these predators and the life force they suck out of us. The only chance we have to become whole is to recognize how terrible they are.
Good luck on your journey man. I’m rooting for you.
Thank you, that is really kind! Even writing these comments it's a conscious choice to not "put on a character" if that makes sense.
To me, the more I think about this, the more it seems like all these things have a very strong "principalities and powers" vibe, if not quite the form I would've expected when growing up. Attempting to even use the system often feels like blood sacrifices to manmade gods. It takes something vital from you.
Anyway, your post really helped me gain back my resolve here. It's easy to listen to the whispers that say "nobody will notice, nobody will care, it won't Matter" and think, well maybe a little blood sacrifice? What's the point of all this if nobody cares? But, I've also felt the strength of just being able to say "yeah, no." To believe that all this Matters because of how we do it, and that's where the real fulfillment is. "What does it profit you to gain the whole world and lose your soul?" Or, as you put it, to be the hero.
Loved Apology by Plato, btw. Great work! Now these metaphysical realities have new, rich synonyms for me in ‘hyperlandscape’ and ‘hyperpredator.’
I remember play fighting orcs in the woods behind my grandparents home as a boy. Can I run into a more complicated and treacherous fray as a boy/adult? I pray I am given the courage.
I love it too. The foundational texts are daunting to read sometimes but they are just as readable as the commentary and often way funnier (I think C.S. Lewis said something to that effect).
No, I don’t think it will ever be as grand or noble as fighting orcs in the woods with cousins, I’m afraid.
I read your piece last night at 3am. Now I reread it again. Have you heard of the concept Anamnesis? memory as participation, not nostalgia. There is power to memories.
Very well said. I thought, at the end, you might have gone with Neo’s ‘because I choose to’ but appreciated that you forewent the opportunity in favour of accuracy. Keep fighting, keep believing, friend.
This is cool because I didn’t remember what Neo actually said there, and I just imagined it was something like “because I believe.” I’m glad I didn’t check because I agree this is more accurate.
“I was a teenager, not an unhappily married 54-year-old man named Terry.”
Thankfully, I’m only 49 and can say “happily,” so this isn’t the way your essay speaks to me and speaks to me it does. I posit it might have been the reason I restored my app yesterday.
Just phenomenal. I love the reframing of bureaucracies and algorithms as hyperpredators, and our understanding of them as partial and limited, akin to stick figure sketches on a cave wall.
When you see these things for what they are, they can be properly understood and resisted. It takes a heroic effort to do so. One word I always come back to is “courage”. The common trait among heroes across all stories. And yet who thinks about eliminating mindless scrolling from their life as a courageous choice? A heroic choice? But of course it is.
Interesting piece! I do kind of want to push back on the idea that the modern world has killed the "hero archetype." Imo, real heroism is nothing pagan nor neitshchzean, it's the simple choice to be like Christ and live as he lived. That path remains open in every age, even in the most abstract and placeless ones.
Hm. Curious why you would think this was a pagan or Nietzschean take?
I’m Christian (in fact, my pastor commented on this essay). I use the Bible and Paradise Lost to scaffold the entire second half of this essay. I even wrote a piece called “I see Nietzsche fall like lightning” arguing that the form of heroism you are talking about doesn’t work. So, I agree.
I agree with the piece you sent me as well. It’s this essay in a different hat.
The modern world making heroics “impossible” speaks to the difficulty most people find following Christ to the cross. Especially in a world where there is no strong sense of place. I struggle with that, and so do many others. I guess not everyone does, tho, and that’s fine. This won’t be for them haha.
Appreciate the comment. Would love to hear your thoughts.
Got it. I think the jungain language threw me off, since he worshipped neitzsche. I think in general, being a hero in the Christian sense is very simple in the modern age (and god-willing we are not called to the more difficult paths of the earlier ages, such as martyrdom).
American culture does encourage us to try to please man rather than God. So I do have empathy for people who feel like it’s difficult to be set “apart,” in whatever form that temptation takes. I have my own difficulties following Christ.
But at the same time I felt pretty personally liberated when I read “the spiritual life” by st. Theophan the recluse.
He makes it clear that when we do the smallest of things for good, god is pleased and we are sanctified through his grace. The example he gives is so so simple: folding your brothers socks!
After that idk I felt like all of my concern around following gods will alleviated. It’s simple and hard at the same time. Simple because it’s straightforward, hard because it requires that we change.
It’s hard to deny the hero’s journey through the Patriarchs and culminating in Christ. Of course these heroes dont usually get the princess and live happily ever after, they usually have to die spiritually, morally or physically. Though there is beauty and grace in the mundane and simple, there is a glory in the quest and journey that many a “man” longs for… hopes for, and in some cases lives for.
You are welcome friend… reading you is like looking in the mirror. You write what I try to have conversations about, you write things I have experienced, lived, died and resurrected from…. Talk soon. Abram’s language to Abraham’s dagger…
Idea: Practice “hyper-fasting.”
Weekly hour in the woods without glass screens. The Fathers called this hesychia
silence in which hyperpredators suffocate
I eased into this essay with my newborn daughter at my side telling her, normally I don't do this, but it's James Tayler Foreman. She smiled. As I approached the end I smiled. You arrive at the thing that isn't predictable. The thing that is usually unseen in the woods and the trees of these hyperlandscape things. That we must faithfully go forward to fulfill any great destiny. You made that timeless truth feel tactile, like bits of forest floor between my finger tips.
Jesus himself didn't ask for followers in the sense of how we think of followers today. Today we perceive following and "get behind me satan" as the same thing. Following has become passive, consumptive, inactive, desire without determination. Yet you captured the old way of following. the following in one's footsteps.
In Latin we have this word, praetor, most commonly associated with the praetorian guard of the Caesars. The ones who went forward. But in the original texts of Mark's Gospel we see in the parable of walking on water that it is Jesus who goes 'praeterire'. Peters willingness to get out of the boat and go forward with Jesus is the real miracle. As is every soul who chooses to go forward and become praetorians for the kingdom that is not of this world.
All this to say, I am moved by your essay. I'll be meditating on it for months to come. Congratulations on getting this one over the finish line. My best to you always. Well done.
Thanks for these words, Steven. It was nice to imagine where you were while reading this (which is very much to the point I want to make). I love the bit about praetor and truly following. I think the subtlety of hyperlandscapes makes it easy to lie to ourselves when we’re not “following” with courage. I do it constantly.
Touched by this comment, Steven. Thanks for reading.
Yo! Have you written more on hyperlandscapes?
I wrote something years ago when I first thought of it. It was pretty rough, but I developed the idea over time with friends.
I've heard Christian Baxter use the term a few times in conversation. I'm going to have to relisten to ya'lls conversation.
I've recently been thinking how strange it is that Jung's collective unconscious has replaced any notion of a spiritual realm, as if they are different things (the way I see it at least). I've also been meditating on the Cain and Abel story and the door / tent flap at which sin crouches. So it's neat to see you tackling at minimum similar ideas if not the precisely same ideas from the zeitgeist that I'm tangled up in.
As always: brisk, thorough, honest, hopeful and impossible not to map straight onto trending headlines. Protestors and protestees and sideliners. Affable assassins and excoriated victims and disgraced hip hop moguls and click bait articles about body positive swimwear.
Also—I think this is connected—my best 2 moments of 2024 were the birth of my daughter and chainsawing an off-road trail through the thicket on my brother's farm. Both experiences felt analogous to the scene in Altered States where William Hurt turns into a caveman.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I could have sworn I had some hyperpromises to keep.
This comment is so good it upstages my essay. Haha
Just your brief mention of your favorite moments last year makes me feel that relief of being grounded. It’s a big thing we miss and it’s good to get back in little ways.
A tour de force of thought and writing: resonant and inspiring. Well done!
Thanks, Chris!
I truly related to this and I think it actually goes even deeper, to the point that the hyperpredators might not even allow us the sense of even a self, let alone heroism or any form of agency. This is literally a constant ontological crsisi that we need to keep dealing with, and struggle with.
It does go even deeper, yes. They can’t be beaten and they are part of the force that makes the self. But we believe.
This feels right, but then again, what's in it for them? Seems like there's plenty of self to go around
Who is the "them" here? The "hyperpredators?"
Writing is a hyperpredator in the original article. What is in it for "writing?" Well, that is incoherent. What is in it for the humans who adopted writing? Well, they got to survive better at the significant destruction of oral culture and memory culture and notably, the ontological reality of non-writing cultures.
The problem now with "self" is that as you have near-perfect replication of the self via collection of your behaviors, similar to how photography led to near-perfect replication of the image of the self, then just like it is possible to "copy your photo" on a near-infinite basis, then it becomes possible to copy "you" on a near-infinite basis.
This results in a lot of ontological crisises, if I can just copy Kyle Joachim and then create n-th versions of you in digital form, and besides the obvious manipulation issues(I can predict you, the more I know of you), it also raises the obvious question of who is "you."
Let alone heroism, do you even have agency?
In that sense, the ontological crisis has moved from the association of "self with land" to "self with body" until you have dissolution of "self" at all.
One of the great things that this article has made me realize is that we need to think of hypertruths as well.
This one hit me in a really strong way, thank you for writing it. I've been thinking a lot about this kind of thing recently and what it means to reject the algorithms and, as you put it, the other hyperpredators. I have a creative hobby, and there's a lot of pressure to “give in" and I suppose sell out spiritually in order to even get people to notice what I'm making. It's a constant, conscious decision to say “no."
I actually left Twitter and Bluesky (not that everyone has to do this) and got on Substack as a way to write about my experiences, and for me it's just becoming one more algorithm to appease, one more “seven steps to success" echo chamber. I don't know what to do with that yet.
Daniel, I think you really get what Im trying to say. I felt so strongly that people underestimate the power of these predators and the life force they suck out of us. The only chance we have to become whole is to recognize how terrible they are.
Good luck on your journey man. I’m rooting for you.
Thank you, that is really kind! Even writing these comments it's a conscious choice to not "put on a character" if that makes sense.
To me, the more I think about this, the more it seems like all these things have a very strong "principalities and powers" vibe, if not quite the form I would've expected when growing up. Attempting to even use the system often feels like blood sacrifices to manmade gods. It takes something vital from you.
Anyway, your post really helped me gain back my resolve here. It's easy to listen to the whispers that say "nobody will notice, nobody will care, it won't Matter" and think, well maybe a little blood sacrifice? What's the point of all this if nobody cares? But, I've also felt the strength of just being able to say "yeah, no." To believe that all this Matters because of how we do it, and that's where the real fulfillment is. "What does it profit you to gain the whole world and lose your soul?" Or, as you put it, to be the hero.
Loved Apology by Plato, btw. Great work! Now these metaphysical realities have new, rich synonyms for me in ‘hyperlandscape’ and ‘hyperpredator.’
I remember play fighting orcs in the woods behind my grandparents home as a boy. Can I run into a more complicated and treacherous fray as a boy/adult? I pray I am given the courage.
I love it too. The foundational texts are daunting to read sometimes but they are just as readable as the commentary and often way funnier (I think C.S. Lewis said something to that effect).
No, I don’t think it will ever be as grand or noble as fighting orcs in the woods with cousins, I’m afraid.
I read your piece last night at 3am. Now I reread it again. Have you heard of the concept Anamnesis? memory as participation, not nostalgia. There is power to memories.
Would love to hear more about that. Also, perception is largely memory by the time we are adults. The question is, how do we navigate
Great piece. Your writing is always very cozy to me.
Very well said. I thought, at the end, you might have gone with Neo’s ‘because I choose to’ but appreciated that you forewent the opportunity in favour of accuracy. Keep fighting, keep believing, friend.
This is cool because I didn’t remember what Neo actually said there, and I just imagined it was something like “because I believe.” I’m glad I didn’t check because I agree this is more accurate.
“I was a teenager, not an unhappily married 54-year-old man named Terry.”
Thankfully, I’m only 49 and can say “happily,” so this isn’t the way your essay speaks to me and speaks to me it does. I posit it might have been the reason I restored my app yesterday.
Just phenomenal. I love the reframing of bureaucracies and algorithms as hyperpredators, and our understanding of them as partial and limited, akin to stick figure sketches on a cave wall.
When you see these things for what they are, they can be properly understood and resisted. It takes a heroic effort to do so. One word I always come back to is “courage”. The common trait among heroes across all stories. And yet who thinks about eliminating mindless scrolling from their life as a courageous choice? A heroic choice? But of course it is.
Interesting piece! I do kind of want to push back on the idea that the modern world has killed the "hero archetype." Imo, real heroism is nothing pagan nor neitshchzean, it's the simple choice to be like Christ and live as he lived. That path remains open in every age, even in the most abstract and placeless ones.
@chamelonnotes has a good essay on this difference here, if you're interested: https://open.substack.com/pub/cryptochamomile/p/christianity-and-the-masculine-ideal?r=wt31t&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
Hm. Curious why you would think this was a pagan or Nietzschean take?
I’m Christian (in fact, my pastor commented on this essay). I use the Bible and Paradise Lost to scaffold the entire second half of this essay. I even wrote a piece called “I see Nietzsche fall like lightning” arguing that the form of heroism you are talking about doesn’t work. So, I agree.
I agree with the piece you sent me as well. It’s this essay in a different hat.
The modern world making heroics “impossible” speaks to the difficulty most people find following Christ to the cross. Especially in a world where there is no strong sense of place. I struggle with that, and so do many others. I guess not everyone does, tho, and that’s fine. This won’t be for them haha.
Appreciate the comment. Would love to hear your thoughts.
Got it. I think the jungain language threw me off, since he worshipped neitzsche. I think in general, being a hero in the Christian sense is very simple in the modern age (and god-willing we are not called to the more difficult paths of the earlier ages, such as martyrdom).
American culture does encourage us to try to please man rather than God. So I do have empathy for people who feel like it’s difficult to be set “apart,” in whatever form that temptation takes. I have my own difficulties following Christ.
But at the same time I felt pretty personally liberated when I read “the spiritual life” by st. Theophan the recluse.
He makes it clear that when we do the smallest of things for good, god is pleased and we are sanctified through his grace. The example he gives is so so simple: folding your brothers socks!
After that idk I felt like all of my concern around following gods will alleviated. It’s simple and hard at the same time. Simple because it’s straightforward, hard because it requires that we change.
It’s hard to deny the hero’s journey through the Patriarchs and culminating in Christ. Of course these heroes dont usually get the princess and live happily ever after, they usually have to die spiritually, morally or physically. Though there is beauty and grace in the mundane and simple, there is a glory in the quest and journey that many a “man” longs for… hopes for, and in some cases lives for.