Humanity as an eldricht horror

[RobertSaysThis]

Imagine what humans would look like to beings like that. I remember one sociobiologist saying something like humans are apes who started living like ants, take a step back, picture that from the perspective of an intelligent vaguely ape-like being that didn't, couldn't make that transition, and think about how weird and scary and mind-blowing it might look to them, and of course it would be a source of great power to civilized humans, power that beings constitutionally incapable of civilization could never acquire.

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I mean, I would say that our own species can't really conceive of it either; that there's an extent to which human civilisation is itself eldritch to us as humans. Like our ability to live in a big globalised society isn't because we can comprehend what that means, but because we can sort of mute out the hundreds of thousands of humans around us we don't know, invent stories to justify the world around ourselves and hyperspecialise within a massive system that's way beyond our individual comprehension. Like we're very much still using those mental systems where we live in tiny tribes, I think, and my view would be that human success has a lot more to do with emergent qualities of our interactions in that large society than it does about ourselves as individuals. Humanity is already eldritch; deeply so, and encountering this as a human can be very disturbing.

Anyway, I agree that we're definitely even more eldritch to animals and that thinking about that is an interesting way to think about the whole concept of alienness in general. I wrote a thing about this a while back in the context of Jeff VanderMeer's Annihilation, the novel rather than the film which seemed like it was about something else entirely.

 

[RobertSaysThis]

To them on the one hand we are obviously intelligent thanks to our technology and so on. On the other hand we don't look intelligent; we don't move and act like an organized mind, we look like a mass of herd animals milling about in barely organized mobs. We'd just "look wrong". As a group - which is the level at which they are evolved to think of other entities as people - we probably look like some kind of shambling zombie shuffling around clumsily and more or less aimlessly; our actual intelligence happens on a much lower level.

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This isn't true. We want to think it's true; it's deeply ingrained into us that it is. But it isn't. A lot of what's intelligent about humanity occurs above the level of individual humans, to the point that when as individual humans we observe our collective behaviours and structures it's kind of shocking to see them converge on good solutions to things we haven't always even noticed are happening. We're just facilitating a space where evolutionary processes happen, I think, and a lot of the more impressive achievements we have are executed within that space.

 

[Avernus]

This isn't true. We want to think it's true; it's deeply ingrained into us that it is. But it isn't. A lot of what's intelligent about humanity occurs above the level of individual humans, to the point that when as individual humans we observe our collective behaviours and structures it's kind of shocking to see them converge on good solutions to things we haven't always even noticed are happening.

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But rather more often the act are in ways that are stupid, or outright irrational compared to humans as individuals. When organizations act "smart" it's typically by acting more like a machine than a person.

 

[Cloak&Dagger]

Thinking about it, you could also go in the opposite direction and have a species more social than humans. Imagine a hive species with a collective intelligence, like giant sapient anthill. Not a sci-fi style telepathic hive mind but a species where each hive is a super-organism, with non-sapient components creating a collective intelligence by the interactions between individuals via pheromones or whatever.

To them on the one hand we are obviously intelligent thanks to our technology and so on. On the other hand we don't look intelligent; we don't move and act like an organized mind, we look like a mass of herd animals milling about in barely organized mobs. We'd just "look wrong". As a group - which is the level at which they are evolved to think of other entities as people - we probably look like some kind of shambling zombie shuffling around clumsily and more or less aimlessly; our actual intelligence happens on a much lower level.

A human perspective equivalent would be if we met a sapient version of one of those parasitic species that hijacks a much larger creature (like the "zombie ant fungus"), and only ever saw the shuffling "zombies", never the sapient creature puppeting them. I think that's what human organizations and societies might well look like to such a collective mind; as zombies moving like they are "alive", but clearly not alive.

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They'd still be able to interact normal with us though, diplomatic teams and UN meetings would be a like a handshake to them.

They'd probably give us weird looks when the diplomats invite their diplomat-appendages to lunch 'after work'.

 

[GuillermoDiez]

But rather more often the act are in ways that are stupid, or outright irrational compared to humans as individuals. When organizations act "smart" it's typically by acting more like a machine than a person.

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Think about it though. Things like curiosity seem designed to work for the benefit of the whole: trying new things puts the individual at risks but increases the total knowledge of the group.

 

[Skelm]

But rather more often the act are in ways that are stupid, or outright irrational compared to humans as individuals. When organizations act "smart" it's typically by acting more like a machine than a person.

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And when they do act smart it's often based on amplifying some individual's ideas. Someone comes up with a strategy, or makes a new discovery, and other people put it to use. Organizations generally can't come up with ideas better then the best idea generators inside them, but you could imagine a species for which this wasn't the case and whose organizations really are entities separate from the individuals inside them.

 

[Graviator]

To them on the one hand we are obviously intelligent thanks to our technology and so on. On the other hand we don't look intelligent; we don't move and act like an organized mind, we look like a mass of herd animals milling about in barely organized mobs.

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We can get even more uncanny then that.

The hive aliens have observed and carefully interacted with us for years. Then they see a major crisis. The shambling lump of a society quickly forms an intelligent mind within itself, a smaller but more organized group within the larger mass. The mini-mind deals with the crisis in a way that they recognize as intelligent, then dissolves. Later analysis shows that it seemed to be implausibly efficient, because the analysis overlooks some outside help.

In other words, it looks like we can act like an organized mind by their standards, and they think we're better at it than they are. We just don't usually bother.
It also leaves them wondering what it'd take to get the whole civilization to organize, and what it's capable of when it does so.

 

[Geedubs]

​

 

[We Just Write]

Ah yes, humans as Fae.

 

[Geedubs]

Yeah, basically the problem with posing humans as eldritch abominations is, well, both you (the writer) and your readers are probably humans, so human behaviours are actually pretty understandable - it's about as far from eldritch as you can get. In order to portray humans (and not post-humans) as eldritch abominations you need to write from a genuinely non-human perspective, which is obviously pretty difficult to do.

 

[Saluriel]

Antz did a good job of that without modifying humans in any way

 

[Fallen-Baron]

Quick question, if I wote a little snippet and placed it here, would I get nommed on or would it be fine?

Cause this thread may be giving me ideas.

 

[We Just Write]

go for it

 

[Yama951]

I'm reminded of a short HFY story where the aliens of a diplomatic trade deal group realized that humanity are unknowing quantum observers stabilizing reality with what we observe directly.

They didn't went mad, in fact decided to keep the fact secret to get a good deal until the end of the negotiations and decided not to think too deeply at the implications of humanity maybe the only "real" things in existence.

 

[Skelm]

I'm reminded of a short HFY story where the aliens of a diplomatic trade deal group realized that humanity are unknowing quantum observers stabilizing reality with what we observe directly.

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Greg Egan wrote a book Quarantine based on a similar premise, though in that case the aliens sealed off the solar system to prevent any further quantum collapse.

 

[TerrorCooper]

I'm reminded of a short HFY story where the aliens of a diplomatic trade deal group realized that humanity are unknowing quantum observers stabilizing reality with what we observe directly.

They didn't went mad, in fact decided to keep the fact secret to get a good deal until the end of the negotiations and decided not to think too deeply at the implications of humanity maybe the only "real" things in existence.

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Ha! And if someone wanted to expand that into a universe, then the reaction of Christianity could be 'that glowing warmth of being proven at least partly right/having part of your beliefs justified', since, if I'm remembering right, the Christian doctrine does have humanity as the Custodians of God's Creation. And what good is a custodian if they can't keep what they're custoding at least somewhat stable?

 

[Terra Novan]

Basically, how could Humanity as a whole be written as a being of great eldricht power? Not individual humans, not some hypothetical transhumanity, bog standard everyday humanity taken as a whole.

One possible route would be from the perspective of fantasy beings who can only 'exist' in a meaningful sense as long as humanity fins their existence in some way amusing, or so long as humanity doesn't cease seeing a need for them in their worldview.

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I have this idea of Fantasy verse, where Humanity is sired by The Death herself, to be the agents of mortality. Would that count?

 

[RoyalNoises]

In general with themes like this I try to extrapolate from nature, and what parts of humans actually are different from most other life forms, and how we'd look to an observer with more common traits.

Consider for example, humans look like we should be incredibly clumsy. Our mode of movement is very different from almost every other animal. Two legs, no tail. Bodies held straight upright. Yet not only do we rarely fall, we move with unusual grace and balance.

Humans are also megafauna. The average land vertebrate is about the size of a beagle, and thanks to the existence of corvids and cuttlefish we know that size is not particularly necessary for intelligence.

So, it's easy for me to imagine a scenario in which humans are A: Extremely large, and B: Weirdly vertical and elongated.

Therefore I suggest that our ominous, creepy appellation whispered among those who fear to use our true name lest we answer the call should be "The Tall Folk."

 

[Memphet'ran]

In general with themes like this I try to extrapolate from nature, and what parts of humans actually are different from most other life forms, and how we'd look to an observer with more common traits.

Consider for example, humans look like we should be incredibly clumsy. Our mode of movement is very different from almost every other animal. Two legs, no tail. Bodies held straight upright. Yet not only do we rarely fall, we move with unusual grace and balance.

Humans are also megafauna. The average land vertebrate is about the size of a beagle, and thanks to the existence of corvids and cuttlefish we know that size is not particularly necessary for intelligence.

So, it's easy for me to imagine a scenario in which humans are A: Extremely large, and B: Weirdly vertical and elongated.

Therefore I suggest that our ominous, creepy appellation whispered among those who fear to use our true name lest we answer the call should be "The Tall Folk."

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I think this ultimately gets to "humans are eldritch beings, but the traits that make us so are precisely the traits we think of as most essentially human." The really unusual and awesome-in-the-classical-sense feature of humans is that we're smart enough to be general optimizers, and the other unusual and awesome-in-the-classical-sense features of humans are things that either support that or flow from that (our hands, the domus). Trying to portray this is tricky; in a sense your intelligence makes you an eldritch being to a deer, but precisely because it doesn't have your intelligence a deer probably can't conceptualize such a thing as "intelligence" or "eldritch being."

When I approach this I'm inclined to try to thread the needle of imagining beings that could view our awesome-in-the-classical-sense traits from the outside while still being able to conceptualize them. So my original suggestion was civilization from the perspective of beings who are as individually smart as we are (or smarter than us!) but who are fundamentally incompatible with it.

Another angle I can think of is humans from the perspective of beings who are as smart as us but who don't have hands or anything equivalent to them (think about those tragic deer people from All Tomorrows). These intelligent but handless beings would be as individually smart as us but with a very limited ability to manipulate their environment they could never even reach stone age on their own; they could only watch human progress with awe and envy (or they might develop some sort of symbiotic relationship with humans, kind of like dogs). Though I think I wouldn't write that as "humans are eldritch horrors," I'd write it as an examination of the idea of hands as something kind of like a cartoon superhero power; hands don't have that fundamentally-alien-and-scary edge that makes for a good "eldritch horror" trait, they just make so many things so much easier. I think civilization/the domus complex would work well as an eldritch horror trait because it's so entangled with violence and domination.

 

[TerrorCooper]

Was re-reading this thread, when I had an idea; Humanity, to other species, is like a combination of Slenderman, Fiddlesticks The Ancient Fear (in his current form) and a more mutilated version of the true appearance of the sheep in the comic linked back on page 1. As in, our appearance can be described as the mutilated, burnt corpse of one of their own that has been reanimated, distorted and swathed in furs and cloths dyed in seemingly impossible colours and patterns. But our voices are like those of sirens, merfolk (the sort that sing beautifully) and the most beatific singers (voice-wise) to ever exist all fused together into one heavenly choir. Few short of the most strong-willed or alternatively-tasted-in-music being able to resist our persuasions and charisma for long.

 

[Avernus]

In general with themes like this I try to extrapolate from nature, and what parts of humans actually are different from most other life forms, and how we'd look to an observer with more common traits.

Consider for example, humans look like we should be incredibly clumsy. Our mode of movement is very different from almost every other animal. Two legs, no tail. Bodies held straight upright. Yet not only do we rarely fall, we move with unusual grace and balance.

Humans are also megafauna. The average land vertebrate is about the size of a beagle, and thanks to the existence of corvids and cuttlefish we know that size is not particularly necessary for intelligence.

So, it's easy for me to imagine a scenario in which humans are A: Extremely large, and B: Weirdly vertical and elongated.

Therefore I suggest that our ominous, creepy appellation whispered among those who fear to use our true name lest we answer the call should be "The Tall Folk."

Click to shrink...

That reminds me of the novel Mother of Demons, where the locals call humans "demons" in part for much that reason. The local animal life never evolved legs; the native sapients slide around like snails instead. One result of this is that human movement looks very wrong to them, their brains have problems even processing humans walking and just see humans as moving about on top of a sort of flickering tangle.

 

[Laplace]

A howling self abortion, a beast with ten thousand heads, each seeking the annihilation of the other. Plunderers of creation, when they see a mountain they crack it open to gnaw on the bones, when they see an ocean they ignore the beauty to use it as a cesspit. Unsatisfied with the bounties of nature, they grow weeds and eat the rotting fruit of their own creation. Sometimes roused to compassion, they cast it away without care for they as one do not remember but to glorify their atrocities as kind. They blindly fumble at baryonic lordship and squander it to dig a pit ten feet deep and gnaw at their own bones.

It is best that they had polluted their homeland long ago. It is best that they locked themselves in a cage of deadly orbits. Otherwise we would sing the tune of blind idiot gods.

 

[Jemnite]

Beast of endless cruelty that slays its own flesh and seeks to cull yet more. Robber of endless greed they bore their world to oblivion and yet sought to conquer more. Yet what was most horrifying was not the eagerness they slew their own kind nor the rapacity with which they plundered. It was that of their ideas.

For they, wicked beings that consumed their own mother's flesh in self abortion sought to spread their ways and make others like them.

If you register a signal resonating from the once blue marble do not answer it. Do not take their words to be truth, do not respond, do not listen. For if you do you may inherit their ideas. The strong will set the weak to labor and carve the earth in two. The hateful will exterminate their own kind from the world before setting their eyes to another. They are dead yet and still they inflict suffering upon the world. It is a curse from beyond the grave.

It is called human.

 

[Avernus]

Getting back to @Memphet'ran's idea of how a less social species would look at humans, imagine a species that did manage to civilize itself but had to do so by consciously and explicitly creating the social mechanisms we handle more-or-less instinctively.

We look like a race or telepaths or seers who all the time just seem to know what to do, what others are thinking and how to get along with each other. Where they have rigid and detailed rules of behavior that have to be followed to the letter lest everything fall apart, we have (by comparison) vague guidelines that we ignore half the time yet everything works anyway. We can tell where other humans are looking without speaking to them, we can communicate "telepathically" with subtle social cues like that. We can predict or even manipulate the behavior of others just by becoming familiar with them, and sometimes without even that.

A howling self abortion, a beast with ten thousand heads, each seeking the annihilation of the other. Plunderers of creation, when they see a mountain they crack it open to gnaw on the bones, when they see an ocean they ignore the beauty to use it as a cesspit.

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Beast of endless cruelty that slays its own flesh and seeks to cull yet more.

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Those seem less "humans are eldritch abominations" than it does "humans are evil"; humans are being portrayed as being perfectly understandable, just monstrous.

It also lacks any explanation as for why the observing species would be any different. Humans are actually nicer than most other Earth species after all; less violent, less cruel, more generous, more considerate of others. We're simply more powerful, not worse.

 

[Laplace]

Those seem less "humans are eldritch abominations" than it does "humans are evil"; humans are being portrayed as being perfectly understandable, just monstrous.

It also lacks any explanation as for why the observing species would be any different. Humans are actually nicer than most other Earth species after all; less violent, less cruel, more generous, more considerate of others. We're simply more powerful, not worse.

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That is exactly the thing. All sophonts shed their beastly natures when they join with the stellar tides. They renounce zero sum competition. They leave their avatistic natures behind. Yet, impossibly, this prehistoric throwback, this unthinking beast, they storm about their gravity well broadcasting their unthinking ideology, calling all that join them to shout and scream and kill and revel. Their law is that of nature, and nature is something we have replaced with nurture. I sometimes wonder. Is this what we will all fall to? Satiating evolutionary impulses with the fruits of higher thinking. Mindlessly converting the universe to a bacterial urge to survive at all costs.

(also i don't see why eldritch can't be evil. half of the above posts in this thread is hfy jerking off about how hardcore we are because we can eat... spices. And similar things in that vein.)