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April 17, 2022 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
02:26:10
Why are they on Team Evil？
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Time Text
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.
I believe that we are live.
Give me a moment to make sure everything is running in the background.
But in the meantime, I am joined by Arch.
How are you doing, Arch?
Hello, everyone.
I'm doing fine.
Thank you, Sargon.
Good.
Right, so today I just figure.
So I was busy putting together my Warhammer miniatures because I'm that kind of person.
For anyone who wants to know, someone sent me some true to the chap who sent me these.
I'm sorry, I've forgotten your name.
It was a chap from Greece who sent me these true scale assault terminators.
And look at the size difference.
Look at that size difference, right?
And so I've been putting these together.
And I was watching some Warhammer videos.
And I came across this one by a chap called Weshammer.
And I've never heard of this guy.
I don't know anything about him.
So I'm not saying anything good or bad about him.
But I watched this video called The Chaos Gods Are the Good Guys?
Chaos Deep Dive.
And I wasn't very persuaded.
And I thought it was worth looking at because I find the structure of his arguments as to why Chaos might be the good guys of 40k rather backwards, at least looking at it from the human point of view.
How did you find it, Arch?
Again, I don't know this guy either, because frankly, I watch very little YouTube videos, especially 40k context.
I'm like, okay, well, this is what I do.
Frankly, I don't care about other people's opinion on it, if I'm to be blunt.
People asking in the chat, is this a Warhammer stream?
Yes and no, because what we'll actually be examining are the moral arguments for vice.
Because if for some reason you don't know anything about Warhammer, I mean, what's wrong with you?
But secondly, the Chaos Gods are the gods of excess.
They are the gods of absolute excess.
And in the normal, say, we'll call it the conservative framework for virtue and vice, virtue is based on the Aristotelian golden mean, which is the middle point between excess and deficiency.
And the chaos gods are pure excess.
And all of the things that they promote are degenerate.
They're not good for you.
So I'm very eager to hear the argument.
And I want, and I think that what this reveals to us is how he thinks of the world.
Is there anything that you disagree with, Arch?
Well, for me, this is kind of like a question between: is this an interpretation born of a world view, like you are suggesting?
Or is it well, idiocy, stupidity, is the word I would like to choose.
Because what I think has happened here is that the guy has literally fallen for the Chaos God's trap.
He keeps bringing up how Korn is an example of virtue, like his honorable warrior god.
That is the persona Korn puts on when he wishes to fool you into worshiping him.
That is a facade.
And I recall him even saying at one point in this that the catchphrase is that he doesn't care where the blood comes from, just that it comes.
Something like that.
And it's like, yeah, that's not an honorable god.
That's a dishonorable god.
Yes, the honor is a ruse.
It is, oh, you're a warrior culture.
Well, I'm an honorable warrior god as you as well.
And it's the same for all of the other gods.
It's the same for them.
That's what you said.
Excess.
That's the thing.
There are no breaks on this train.
Right, okay.
Well, I guess we'll just get straight into it then.
40k universe, there's probably no greater antagonist than that of the chaos gods.
But what if I was to tell you that everything we think we know about them is wrong?
That they're not the dark and evil entities that we've been told to believe they are.
Now, what if I told you that in the grand scheme of the 40k universe, the chaos gods are actually the good guys?
Okay, so feel free to pause whenever you want, by the way, Arch.
Because I believe you've got the ability to pause it as well.
What do you think of that framing?
I just love that this is the framing we are presented to with the picture of Slinesh in her most demonic form after seeing corn sitting on a mountain of skulls.
And then we are hit with they're actually the good guys.
Like, oh kid.
Can you even imagine?
Like, oh, these are the good guys, are they?
Oh, good news.
Good news.
Let's carry on.
Oh, sorry, God.
It's this is where I mean, like, it's, I'm wondering how much of this is interpretation, how much of this is just weird.
Like, I can't wrap my head around it.
It's like, oh, he's clearly evil.
But is he actually, though?
Yes.
Well, okay, so I think, I mean, it's a good enough time as any to talk about good and evil, right?
So all morality is normative.
So it speaks of how something should be.
And so the question is: is it objective or subjective?
And I think this is a bit of a red herring, actually.
Because who cares is the answer, I think.
The important thing is, from my point of view, is it good?
As in, is it good for me?
You know, I don't need it to be good for the position of every sentient being in the universe.
I don't need it to be good for the universe as an abstract non-personified entity in any way, shape, or form.
I need to know if it's good for me.
What they're saying should be is something I should benefit from, think is morally righteous, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And so, I mean, just looking at this, does it look like it's good for me to go and entangle with that chaos god that's on the screen now?
No, no, it doesn't.
Bit sinister.
And it also, he brings up the point later on where it's like, we cannot, there is no true good or evil, which is true up until a point until we arrive at that framework.
Is this good for us?
No.
And you could spur abroad on that, too.
What are the chaos gods good for?
Well, they're only good for one party, the chaos gods.
Yes, indeed.
Sorry, it takes me off.
Yeah, no, that's exactly right.
Everything that they're good for is good for them, but not for their minions, not for the other people, blah, blah, blah.
And so I find his ethical framework to be very interesting, that it can be so melded that he could find the personifications of evil and say, well, actually, these are the good guys.
That is just so backwards.
It is an interesting position to arrive at.
And he admits it as well.
These are excess for excess's sake.
I think this might be good.
Okay.
In what world is excess good?
And for who?
Again, not for a human being.
But anyway, let's carry on.
Let's make his argument.
What if I was to tell you that it was actually the folly of sentient species that twisted them into a dark reflection of what they once were?
And I know this sounds a little crazy, but what if I was to tell you that every single dark and terrible thing you've ever read about the Chaos Gods was no more than Imperium propaganda?
Right.
This is amazing, isn't it?
They're not at fault for being evil, and you've been lied to about how evil they are.
By the Imperium.
By the people who I'm going to frame as the good guys.
And it's also the.
He makes a fundamental.
He made quite a few fundamental mistakes here, but one of them is that he keeps claiming that the Chaos Gods were not evil, that they used to be just happy, fluffy little things floating in the warp.
No, the Chaos Gods were specifically created from the emotions they embody.
There is no corn without excessive violence and bloodshed.
Wasn't Fluffy Pants Mr. Happy Bunny before that.
And he's never been anything but corn.
And with Slanesh, particularly, since it's the youngest Chaos God, that was born out of vice and has been nothing but vice for its entire existence, right?
Yes, like we literally know that Slanesh was born from the degradation and the obscene ritualistic excess of an entire species.
So yeah, chat, feel free to call the Inquisitor on this guy because this is heresy right here, sir.
Now let's talk about how the Chaos Gods are actually the protagonists of Warhammer 40k.
Now, obviously, I'm being a little bit hyperbolic here, and depending on when you're watching this, I'm a day or two late for April Fools.
But the reality isn't 100% far off from this.
Now, it's true that the Chaos Gods are normally depicted as the number one evil force in the universe, but in truth, it's a lot more complicated than that.
The gods are infinitely complex.
It's easy to think of them as just some crazy, powerful entities and some other far-off universe for us to fight.
But that's just how they're depicted in the stories.
Stories that, more often than not, were written from the Imperium's point of view.
The deep lore shows that they're a manifestation of all emotions, not just the negative ones.
So how did they get here?
Why are they only shown to basically be evil incarnate?
To be honest, the simplest answer to this is this is Warhammer, with an emphasis on the war part.
And that's a very interesting point as well, because this is Warhammer.
These are evil gods.
They are unquestionably evil gods.
And we don't just know this from the Imperium's propaganda, because again, as you mentioned, Slanesh was literally born as she devoured an entire sentient species.
It's just Imperial propaganda, Arch.
They know what you're talking about.
It's deep Eldar Ops.
That's what it is.
When he was saying it, and the picture of Nurgle on the screen, I'm like, mate, if there's anything about this that you can see as good or virtuous, then man, you are a much more open-minded person than I am.
You know what I mean?
Just like if you wanted to create a really hideous monster, it'd look a lot like Nurgle.
Yes.
In fact, he'll make a point later on, which will be very interesting, but we'll get to that at the end of the video because I thought that was just special.
The universe has a certain identity that's come to be expected, and the things that don't fit that mold will often be pushed to the background, even though they still exist.
When it comes to the true nature of the gods, we really honestly can't even begin to comprehend their vast nature.
Hundreds upon thousands of books could be written about their goals, their motivations, and desires, and we would barely even begin to scratch the surface of what they truly are.
Okay, right.
So I love this framing.
So the gods have not.
So the framing so far is that the gods are actually not really at fault.
It was mortals that did this to them.
The only information we have is one-sided propaganda designed to make them look bad.
And they're too complex for your tiny little mortal brain to comprehend.
And so if you take that framing, the chaos gods are actually the heroes.
It's like, sorry, they're not subtle.
Like, it's not like the chaos gods and their messaging is something difficult to divine.
I totally repudiate this position of you're just not big-brained enough to understand why you should let Slanesh pervert your children, right?
You just don't get it.
Yeah, and the thing is, too, this is false.
We know exactly the motivations of the Chaos Gods.
Because they have literally told us.
In the Horners Heresy, they literally told us what their motivations are.
Because the Chaos Gods are not actually all that complex.
Their plans are like their great overarching goals and how they try to go about things are.
But the goal of Korn is very simple: blood, violence, as much of that as possible.
Same for Slanesh, much excess, as much perversity as possible, same for Zinch.
Their goals are incredibly simplistic because that is their driving force.
In this regard, they are simple animals.
Their logic is as follows: I grow more powerful when I do this.
Ergo, I do more of this.
I mean, it's not very complex, it doesn't require a genius to understand.
And I mean, you would think that the messaging from the position of the Chaos Gods would be as simple as possible in order to entice as many wayward souls into their fold as possible as well.
But I mean, he's saying, well, this is all part of the gods' ineffable plan.
It's like, well, maybe.
Maybe.
It might be that.
I mean, look at them.
Just look at these things on the screen.
Like, they don't need a complex plan.
Anyway, let's carry on.
We are all intimately familiar with.
The gods also have a lot of elements to them that we would see as inherently good.
For example, did you know that Korn, the god of blood and skulls, actually teaches his followers to have mercy for the weak as they decapitate them?
Bollocks.
I saw play 40k for like 30 years.
I've never encountered.
I mean, I've had at least three different chaos armies in my time playing 40k.
And I've never encountered a single piece of pro-Korn propaganda that suggested they should take mercy on the weak.
And there's the thing too: mercy.
No, Korn doesn't teach mercy for the weak.
He teaches disdain.
Crucial difference.
Like, where would he get that from?
You know?
Well, the thing is, he talks about this a bit later on about the book Lorga, where he presents, and I'll discuss that in more detail when we get to it, but he is basically presenting the Chaos Gods propaganda, which they present to weak-willed mortals to try and fool them.
Oh, I'm not all bad.
You see, see, I've got this piece of teaching here.
I'm a god of honor, you see.
Which is why you need to behead this old lady and the rest of her family and the rest of this planet.
Like, literally, you need to overrun and murder all of these people for my skull throne.
And if you want to say that that's an act of mercy to kill these old people, well, I'm fine with that, because I don't care from whence the blood flows, just that it does.
I'm sure the old lady didn't find it very merciful.
Did you know that Nurgle teaches us to accept that which we cannot change and not to fear death?
Or what about the often overlooked fact?
No, Nurgle the Stoic, Marcus Aurelius the Nurglite.
God almighty.
But the thing is, well, Nurgle isn't actually about that, is it?
Because Nurgle does change your body.
He does change you, and he actually infects you with the disease so you don't feel pain.
So it's not actually accepting that which can't change.
It's actually escaping it by the blessings of Papa Nurgle, isn't it?
It is surrender.
That's what it is.
And here's the thing, too.
Nurgle doesn't just pop by when you're suffering from a bad cough and go like, can I heal you?
No, he gives you the cough, then makes you die from the cough, and then goes, if you swear eternal loyalty to me, I'll make you sick forever, but you won't die.
Oh, thank God.
I'm so glad.
You know, he's teaching me to accept that which has happened to him.
He's teaching you to accept despair.
Yeah.
That which he has done to me, in fact.
It's not the most gentle of blessings, in my opinion, but oh well.
But it is interesting, isn't it?
That he's presenting the raw, unvarnished pro-chaos narrative as if that's true.
And again, it's based on the idea that, well, they're not at fault because someone else did this to them.
Everything you know about them is a lie, and you're too small-brained to really understand their motives and goals anyway.
So, just trust me, bro, what they're saying is definitely true.
is a way of completely intellectually disarming yourself and just accepting this new paradigm.
Zinch inspires people to read books and seek knowledge to better themselves.
Well, how about how Slaanesh at the end of the day just wants you to be happy?
Decode you, Sargon.
Bollocks.
Just just want you to read books, bro.
And Slaneshlanesh doesn't just want you to be happy at the end of the day.
Slanesh wants you to do this thing that you find pleasurable to the excess of everything else until it's no longer pleasurable.
Yes, and at some point, you'll move on to the next addiction, which will be more extreme than the previous one.
Yeah, and the thing is, there's no end to this until you are an insane, howling, degenerate who has done every vice conceivable, every awful thing that a human being could do to the nth degree, and then, you know, like 10,000 years of doing these disgusting things.
What kind of being are you going to be at the end of that?
You know, just absolutely warped and depraved beyond recognition.
And yet, it's just be happy, bro.
That's not happiness.
Pleasure is not happiness as well.
This is an important thing to note.
Pleasure is a direct sensory experience, whereas happiness is a state of being that persists over time.
When you're not enjoying a sensory experience, you can still be happy.
And so, Slanesh definitionally can't give you happiness.
And in fact, the whole point, as you just pointed out, is that it's a trap.
It's to lure people in.
Go, no, happiness is an orgasm.
Happiness is this drug addiction.
It's like, no, no, no, no, no.
Happiness is none of those things.
Look at your average meth addict.
Do they look particularly pleased with their existence?
Exactly.
Exactly.
But they're desperate for that one extra craving of the hit, aren't they?
Happy doing what you love.
Now, if trillions of people worship and serve them, they can't be all bad, right?
Why would you if trillions of people are addicted and brainwashed into this way of thinking and living?
It can't be all bad, right?
Right, Arch?
It literally returns me to my meth analogy.
If millions of people are addicted to meth, surely meth can't be all bad.
It's mad, isn't it?
Like, it's such.
I mean, it's a fallacious argument.
It's something that appeals to popularity, but it's just like, well, there are so many obvious things that are bad.
Like, you know, if everyone just started raping dogs, it's like, well, look how many people are raping dogs.
It can't be all bad.
It's like, no, I think it might be.
A very popular position these days, I'll have you know.
All right, sorry, white women, we're moving on.
So many societies turn to the worship of something that is unquestionably evil.
Now, don't get it twisted.
There are many individuals out there who would interpact with things that are without a doubt evil simply for the sake of power.
There are definitely cults that exist that want to see the universe burn and have nothing but ill content for the unforgiving galaxy they were grown up in.
But what about everyone else that worships them?
Why does he be persecuted by the Imperial?
Why does he think that doesn't encompass all of Chaos followers?
Well, that's interesting.
He then brings up the rogue psychers oppressed by the Imperium.
Excuse me, you mean the walking nuclear warheads, so I can at any point introduce a demon invasion to a planet.
Those poor victims of society.
Yeah.
Those Pelfans.
I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that they have an envious existence or anything.
But I mean, if you're an existential threat to an entire planet, it does seem reasonable that someone at least speak to you about it.
Yes, like I'm sorry, but we are going to have to oppress you.
Why?
Because you could end billions of lives with the snap of a finger.
But the way he's framed that, though, is amazing.
It's like, well, okay, look, some people, and we'll call these people progressives, hate the universe that they're in, the world that they're in, and they want to see it all torn down, and so they'll adopt any kind of villainy in order to see that done.
But what about the other people?
It's like, well, what do you mean, the other people?
Like, that's them.
They will justify that with the oppression.
Like, oh, we are oppressed, you see.
It's the universe have fault, really?
Yeah, exactly.
That's exactly it.
The universe forces you to summon a corn demon.
But why does he think that there are just, like, little old ladies with their families and then their little shrine to corn in the corner?
Like, why does he think this?
Like, he's making up a phantom constituency?
Like, I mean, like, I've never encountered any kind of 40k law about chaos that is just a regular person who happens to worship the chaos gods, right?
Because the chaos gods have a purpose.
There's a teleology contained within each of their doctrines.
Like, you can't just be a kind of, you know, fair weather Christian with corn or zench or slanesh or nurgle, right?
You can't just turn up to the mosque once a week and be like, well, yeah, I'm a Muslim, but, you know, I don't do that much about it.
That's not how this works.
In fact, it reminds me of a passage in Libra Cootica where there's a witch hunter in Warhammer interrogating a heretic.
And he's asking questions like, okay, why did you become a heretic?
Stuff like that.
And he begins out like this.
Oh, I was oppressed by my real life.
You see, they didn't understand my art.
So I looked for my muse.
And to begin with, it was all happiness and fairy tales.
Like, he painted better.
He created grand prankings.
He enjoyed the food he ate.
And then the Inquisitor, the witch hunter, is like, yeah, but you killed an entire family and ate them.
But in my new moral framework, that's not wrong.
Yeah.
It was good food.
And it was good for the god.
The god wanted me to do this.
I mean, this is literally how jihadis justify becoming jihadis.
And that's what this video is, but for the Chaos Gods.
Is that correct, Arch?
Are their powers not to be feared?
Their powers are definitely to be feared.
If the rest of the people around you wish to remain alive, then yes, an uncontrolled psycher is absolutely to be feared.
Yes.
I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying it's pleasant that the psychers would have to be sacrificed to the golden throne to keep the emperor alive so humanity can exist.
I'm not saying that's pleasant.
It's a pretty grim, dark universe, as it were.
But the thing is, why does the moral choice of the psycho who is tempted by Slanesh triumph over literally billions of other people who don't want to die a horrible, grisly death?
And again, there's the alternative right there.
Either we sacrifice a thousand psychers too weak to be of use but too dangerous to be allowed to live to the god emperor every day, or the imperium collapses into anarchy and a million years of violence, darkness, and horrible abuse at the hands of laughing dark gods.
Yes.
As dark as is, this isn't a difficult choice.
No.
And it's not, like, it's not pleasant, but it's very similar to the sort of, well, do we drop bombs on Hiroshima?
You know, well, if we don't, millions of people are going to die.
It's not going to be pretty, but we kind of have to do it to get the job done.
So this doesn't, we don't get the bad outcome.
And again, he, but what I love this, people in the chat are like, well, you know, just worship the chaos god, bigot.
Exactly.
That's exactly right.
Because what he's making is the argument from marginalization.
Oh, well, the Slaneshi cultist is completely justified because he's marginalized, you see.
He's marginalized.
And it's like, well, so fucking what?
He's also going to destroy the entire civilization.
He should be marginalized.
I'm sorry.
But maybe that's just me.
What about those individuals that end up worshiping Nurgle, not for his disease and spreading death, but in the desire to no longer feel pain and to spread new life through the universe?
What are the artists, the poets, the musicians who end up aligned with Slanesh?
Hang on now.
Let's go back to Nurgle a second.
Let's go back.
What did you make of that framing?
The spreading of new life.
Well, theoretically, Nurgle is the only chaos god that creates life, in that he creates disease-bearing bugs.
I mean, they are alive, I guess.
Yep, they are life.
Bacteria are alive as they're eating your flesh.
I hate the framing there.
Like, what about the person who just happens to worship the good sides of Nurgle?
Okay.
And the rest?
Are you forgetting about the fact that Nurgle's entire bread and butter is literally despair?
Even if we accept that there's one person somewhere who's like, oh, no, I'm just really fond of flies in general.
What about the 10,000 people that will die to malaria in that settlement?
It's insane, isn't it?
It's a silly idea.
And even then, even then, that comes with the idea that we are supposed to somehow accept that a god, any god who worship who exists purely of excess, would stop at some point and go like, oh, you just like flies.
Okay, well, I won't infect you with the plague then.
Although that goes for every single chaos god, isn't it?
You can't separate the parts of the chaos god out that you think could be framed in a beneficial way with those things that cannot be framed in any other way other than that they are destructive.
There's no picking and choosing.
No, it's a combined package and you have to have them all.
So why would you make an argument?
Well, I mean, it's just these guys who just like the fact that Nurgle means they're not suffering anymore.
It's like, okay, yeah, but everyone else is suffering.
It's okay.
you know epstein made a lot of people very rich but he did have an island but if we ignore the island but epstein did a lot to facilitate science you know he Lots and lots of scientists went to Epstein's island.
It's like, yeah, but you can't really divorce that from the child molestation, can you?
To no longer feel pain and to spread new life through the universe.
What are the artists, the poets, the musicians who end up aligned with Slanesh?
The people who seek to experience joy above all else, who have grown up in a world that sees them as nothing more than a cog in the Imperial war machine, that their art is nothing but a waste of time and resources that could have been better spent creating weapons.
What if the warrior cults are think of the dispossessed artists such there are artists in Austria right now being like, oh, if it wasn't for the emperor.
It does kind of remind you, doesn't it?
Like, could we really judge that Austrian painter too harshly?
I mean, he just wanted to paint originally.
That's literally how it sounds.
It's like, sorry.
No.
He went on to expand on his portfolio in an unfortunate direction, but he really just wanted to paint.
But I mean, you know, if we're talking about excess, then yeah, you know, but anyway, I mean, like, it's all of those things.
It's like, okay, but what about this guy's desire?
It's like, well, then maybe he should control it.
Maybe he should control it in order to not end up raping people to death.
How about that?
Because that's literally where Slanesh ends up going.
So.
That sounds awfully bigoted of you, Sargon.
I know, it's so narrow-minded.
It's not inclusive at all.
And that's the thing, isn't it?
This whole thing is framed through the, oh, but what about the inclusivity of this thing?
It's like, yeah, okay, maybe you could have chosen something better than death gods or rape gods or disease gods or lie gods.
You know, like the people who are drawn to these things are bad people and they should be stopped from being drawn to these things.
That's the responsible thing, that the warp is the reflection of humanity's everything.
There is a god of painting out there.
Who's just the god of painting?
That's how the war warp works, so you don't have to then go to the god of child rape and go, hey, can you help my painting?
Yeah, it's weird.
I mean, it's almost like this isn't really about the painting.
Is it right?
You end up at Slanesh's door?
I don't think it's because you're an artist that you're like.
Yeah, but I just really want to paint.
Yeah, but what do you want to paint, you know?
And should we check your hard drive?
Because I think we probably need to?
Well, i've always been interested in painting.
Uh, pictures of cows wearing ss uniforms biting the heads of puffies puffies yeah, throughout the galaxy that view honorable combat as a way of life.
They're not blood crazed berserkers or mindless killing machines.
They're individuals whose lives revolve around combat, but they have an unbelievably strong sense of honor and tradition sorry, I mean, just look at what's on the screen at the moment.
Like these these, these aren't, these aren't just bloodthirsty demons no, they're honorable warriors.
You see, we're calling upon tradition.
Now it's like what tradition is?
Literally building a skull, of throw a throne of skulls.
And even if here's the thing again, this is the trap.
This is where Corn tries to get you.
He tries to become the least offensive entity.
He can much like a certain movement, for example, yeah and go hey I, i'm just a, i'm just a warrior, god.
Okay bruh, like this is fine.
You like fighting right?
Well, I like fighting too, so we can be friends, right?
Oh, by the way um, maybe you should take a little bit extra interest in the decapitation of that good dude.
Maybe maybe we should make a ritual around this.
In fact, maybe you should I don't know gather up the blood and drink it or something.
Just spitballing here.
It's mad, isn't it?
And this is where it goes.
Oh yeah, and the thing is like you imagine you've beheaded like a thousand people.
You're like you're a Mongol warrior, do you think at that point you're being particularly discriminating about who you behead?
You know your god gives you a reward, whatever it is, you know honor, whatever you know, some feeling of goodness and a thousand people in you're not like well, I mean, i'm not gonna behead that person.
It's like dude, you behead people for breakfast.
Just I, I don't think like in any way you're gonna Be like, oh, I'm certainly not going to behead that person.
You don't even think about it.
...code that can never be broken.
The major takeaway here is that the gods do have a good side, but it's an element that is not often focused on.
In fact, for the simplicity of the story, the gods are traditionally portrayed as evil incarnate, just in four different flavors.
Nurgle is about rot and disease and spreading death across the universe.
Slaanesh is about excess in all forms and pushing their followers to ever-increasing acts of depravity.
Zeench is about treachery and deception.
Well, Korn is probably the most straightforward of them all.
The desire to take skulls and spill blood.
In no way are those descriptions inaccurate.
Nope.
That is, in fact, the purest aspects of the Chaos Gods.
That is what they aim for.
That is their goal.
Any ancillary motive like honor is just that.
It is an ancillary.
It is a tagon.
It is an extra.
And it will be the first thing to be abandoned when the going gets tough and you want to stick to the most purest form of the doctrine.
That's the thing.
Like, none of those descriptions were in any way inaccurate about the chaos factions.
As we, the people who play the game or enjoy the law, understand the universe to be.
Right?
That's it's totally valid to characterize them that way.
But this doesn't make any sense, as the worship of the gods has spread to every corner of the galaxy, whether that be through secretive cults hiding in plain sight on Imperial Hive Worlds or various tribal aliens that exist on undiscovered planets, completely removed from the greater conflict.
And worship of these gods is not a new thing.
For as far as we can tell, it has existed in one form or another forever across millions of different cultures.
Well, no, there's another thing.
They haven't always existed.
They are not intrinsic entities.
In fact, we know when Slanesh was born.
We know when Khorn was born.
Round about the human middle ages, was when he first popped up.
Oh, really?
I didn't know that.
Yes.
These were.
These are not things that were corrupted or have always existed.
These are representation of the darkness of the galaxy.
That's what they are.
And that is also why they are so predatory.
I believe he goes on to explain that basically these are the exist in a sort of quantum state, right?
So it's like there's always been violence and evil or degeneracy or lies or whatever.
And the chaos gods become the personification of those things.
It's like, yeah, okay.
But in every case, they're the personification of an evil vice that is just bad and harmful and selfish and destructive.
You know, nothing good is being.
I mean, look, again, look at the thing on the screen.
You know, like, look at what's being personified here.
It's like, okay, even if there's no point necessarily morally judging the chaos gods for being the thing that they are, it doesn't mean they're not bad for you.
And it doesn't mean you should.
And in fact, that actually means that they are not only bad, they are irredeemably evil in every case, and you should destroy them wherever you see them.
That's what that means.
It doesn't mean take a charitable view of the chaos gods.
Spread across time and space.
Now, we can see a pretty interesting example of this in Lorgar's Primarch novel.
We see that the individuals of his world follow what they call the old faith, which worshipped individuals that bear a pretty striking resemblance to the chaos gods, although they went by different names, and those good aspects of them were what was praised.
They were not seen as evil in any way, shape, or form.
In fact, here is a prayer that they would offer in the name of the primordial four.
Okay, so let's listen to these four prayers, and I will explain why this is a particularly stupid point to make afterwards, right?
O great powers, dwellers in the imperium, here today our thanks for thy creation, and thy merciful aversion of thy divine wrath at our trespasses.
King of storms, lord of blood, here today our thanks for thy strength, and thy protection from the conquest of the impure.
Queen of mysteries, lady of fate, here today our thanks for thy knowledge, and thy watchfulness against the hazards of uncertainty.
Prince of heart, sire of dreams, here today our thanks for thy inspiration, and thy indulgences of our mortal ambitions.
Princess of life, mother of hope, here today our thanks for thy vigor, and thy generosity in times of need and assertory.
Praise be to the prophets, praise Khan, praise Tezin, praise Slanat, and praise Narag.
All right, so the planet he's referring to here is the Primarch Lorgar's home world.
Lorga, who was the first Primarch to fall to chaos.
This entire planet was created specifically to indoctrinate Lorga.
This is a part of the Chaos Gods' plot to trick Lorga into viewing them in a positive light.
Yes, because I mean, it looks to me, I mean, don't get me wrong, this is great framing by the writers of Warhammer of Games Workshop.
But this is very obviously some kind of pagan cult that is being mimicked here, some ancient pagan cult.
And I think there are fairly good reasons why the monotheists decided to stamp those out, right?
I mean, you can go and research what these cults used to do.
It's not very pleasant, and it's not very wholesome.
Yeah, and again, this is the trap.
This was a world created by the Chaos Gods to make Lorgar think, well, humanity must have religion, because look at how much of my original homeworld's beliefs and systems were based on religion.
Surely if we didn't have these kind, benevolent guiding deities, we would be unable to prosper.
This is literally the chaos gods trap that he is falling into here.
Let's carry on.
Now, this is just one example of the infinite variations of their worship across the universe.
But much like religions in the real world, many of them depict similar events and entities, just written in different ways.
The chaos gods are no different.
They have been worshipped across time and space by millions of different cultures, and each of those cultures praise them for a specific element.
In reality, the gods are just not as black and white as we think they are.
Okay, so here we go.
Now we've abolished the moral opprobrium that is attached to the evil vice that we usually associate with excess violence, excess indulgence, disease, and lies.
Now, these are as morally just as telling the truth, as restraint, as honor, as cleanliness, right?
These are as truth.
Like, these are all now moral equivalents in his view.
Right?
He says, well, I mean, people have worshiped them everywhere.
Therefore, these things must be basically the same.
And they're not the same.
This is a very, very sophistic argument that he's giving.
And again, it is.
Even if, even if, again, we say that other cultures have worshipped a part of corn that is the honorable warrior.
It is a facade.
It is a trick.
And he's falling for it.
Hook Line and Sinker.
Yes, you don't get to delineate the honorable facade of corn with the bloodthirsty monster that just kills everything.
Because at the end of it, the bloodthirsty monster kills everything.
Yes.
It is the is the same goddamn entity.
Yes.
It's wild that he's trying to draw these distinctions to me.
And again, it's just.
This is, I think, how the progressive mind works.
That's the thing.
Like, it goes through this self-abnegation.
You can't understand what you're dealing with.
And then, well, just take their word on it.
Take their propaganda at face value because our propaganda was all lies.
And now everything is a moral equivalent.
And I mean, look at that.
You know, this is just as good as the opposite.
And it's like, that's not true.
That's just not true.
And like, you know, there are a million 40k stories that show that.
But anyway.
They do not represent a single element.
Korn, for example, is the god of bloodshed and murder, but he's also the god of honor and tradition.
Yeah, one of the things he the bloodshed and the murder man It's exactly like.
It gets more ridiculous the more you hear it like, oh yeah, he's also the god of honor, all right, but I'm being killed right now by a three-headed burning dog.
There's a bloodthirst rap aging yeah, but think of the honor and the tradition, the tradition of killing people.
That's literally the only tradition that Korn has, I'll have.
You know, the SS was steeped in a lot of tradition though, so I guess we should just be fine with that too.
And it's so detached, though.
Right, because imagine this guy he's, he's just going about his life and someone actually you know who is a chaos devotee does appear to him.
It's like sorry, are you gonna be?
Like yeah well, I mean, I don't like that.
He just murdered 20 people in the shopping center in front of me.
But I mean tradition honor, or you know, the plague bearer, or the rapist, or whatever the, the unremittent lies of Zench like is he just?
Like if it was happening to him, he would be like, oh my god, this is horrible, this is an abomination.
God, I wish there was some space marines around to murder all of these people.
Like that's what you'd be begging for, you would breaches.
That doesn't really get focused on is his code of mercy for the weak.
There is no honor in fighting somebody that can't defend themselves, although code of mercy for the weak.
I mean he he's right in that there isn't any honor in just killing a weak person but he doesn't care because the blood flows and he literally again the god is literally telling us i don't care who you kill i just want the blood like i'm the god of blood It's not the skulls of defeated champions for the skull throne.
You know, that's not the maxim, it's just skulls.
Don't care where the blood comes from, just bring me those skulls.
And hey, i'm willing to say that Corn probably values the skulls of champions more than a grandparent sure, but he'll take grandpa's head too.
I mean, I value a really well cooked steak, you know, but if i'm hungry i'll take the salad.
You know what I mean?
Like yes, cares not where the blood flows from, only that it flows.
Now, that's sort of a misconception.
We do not see a direct manifestation of Corn in the stories.
We only see his followers and his demons that act as a proxy for his will.
Oh, it's not real Cornism.
Yeah, it's not real Cornism.
I don't know which level of apologia we are on here, but it's it's far.
Oh, my god, that is just.
Uh, so i'm gonna break out some whiskey, I do.
I forgot that this got this good right.
So that that is amazing.
That is amazing.
It's like, well, look we.
We haven't had a divine revelation from the god himself, and I know that every single one of his followers.
The only thing that they can say is, blood for the blood god, skulls for the Skull Throne.
We don't care from whence the bug comes, but are we sure that's a direct in into Injunction from the God himself, or could it be that all of his followers, in every time period, all across the galaxy, were simply wrong about the core of his teaching?
We don't know.
See, if I read the blood of the book of blood in this particular fashion, it's actually a rather sympathetic tale, you see.
Very interpretive.
But I love the what he's trying to do here is open up sort of philosophical wedges, right?
It's like, well, it could be that it's just all of the followers are wrong, and actually Korn's quite a peaceful god, and just somehow his holy texts just keep getting misrepresented.
It's like, it could be that.
Could be that.
But let's assume it is that, right?
Then the fault still lies with Korn, surely, where he's like, look, I've got a doctrine that I'm going to impart to my prophets in the material realm, but for some reason, it always turns them into mass murdering psychopaths, right?
The fault is surely with you, because the next prophet that you ennoble with this bloodthirsty doctrine, I know what he's going to do.
And so, like, it doesn't even matter if the intent of Korn was good.
Not that it is, but let's assume that it was.
It doesn't matter if the consequence is every single time, mass murder.
Like, what at some point you might think that if Korn truly was this benevolent deity, he might stop and go, I try to teach honor to everyone, and yet they keep killing old people.
Yeah, so Thor in the chat, maim, kill, burn.
I know you're misunderstood.
This isn't real cornism, you know.
So, so, Khan, you don't know anything about corn.
I don't know who this chap is, but he knows more about corn than you do.
It's just like, why would you, why would you attempt to create actually, actually, it's not real cornism.
I love it.
I love it.
I've really enjoyed this video.
Like I said, I've no problem with the guy who's made this video.
Like I said, it was like April the 1st or a couple of days afterwards.
So maybe this is all a big joke, blah, blah, blah.
But I just find the arguments fascinating.
Fascinating.
Let's address that too, though.
Because this is, we've had recent experience with another person whose basic defense is, bruh, it's a joke, bruh.
That's why I'm going to make an answer response video to you.
This is not delivered like a joke.
At no point does this sound like, haha, I'm being funny, bruh.
No, no, he seems to be making the argument.
Yes, this sounds like an argument being made.
And that's the thing.
I don't think the person who made the video is stupid at all.
I think they're obviously quite clever.
They've put together quite a sophisticated argument.
That's the thing.
But it's sophisticated in the progressive framework.
And this, I think, is instructive as how progressivism normalizes vice and denigrates virtue.
And I think that's pernicious.
And this is an example of that.
And like with all religions, most people do not follow their teachings to the letter.
People tend to get fixated on a singular element and then base their lives around that.
There's a vast difference in the knowledge levels of a trained religious scholar who has spent decades studying religion versus the casual follower who's probably skimmed the first few chapters of their holy book.
Religions of today have been used in the past to I love this.
I love this.
You just don't understand it's real cornism.
Like if you were a corn scholar rather than a mass murderer, you'd know more about being a worshipper of corn.
I mean, this is literally the argument they're making against Isis.
Yes.
And I also want to point out, too, like, this is also a false argument.
It's like, oh, you see, if you were a scholar, you wouldn't misunderstand the text.
Reminded me again, wasn't it the Pope who, after talking to the primary religious scholar of the time, announced the first crusades?
Yes.
But in the defense of Christianity, it wasn't something that the Christians really agreed with.
Like the Orthodox Pope, the Orthodox patriarch totally disavowed it.
He was like, no, there's no way this can happen.
I mean, it was clearly not real Christianity.
Yeah, like, because that was the thing.
We have two of the foremost experts on this field.
We have the Patriarch and the literal goddamn Pope.
And one chooses to interpret something differently.
This is not a question of theological knowledge.
This is a question of expediency in that case.
Just knowing about a thing is not enough to give you the perfect interpretation or guarantee against malicious.
I've read Urban II's decree at the, I can't remember which council, it was Clermont or something, where he explains, and he's not really appealing to religion.
What he's saying is the Turks are taking over the Holy Land and we need to take it back for Christ.
And it's like, okay, but what does the Bible say about it?
I don't care.
I'm the Pope.
I'm literally God's bishop on the earth.
You know, like, I'll say, and this caused a massive schism.
This is a problem theologically.
But again, who exactly would the Cornate scholars to whom we'd be appealing to by name?
Well, you know.
That's another good question because I'm pretty sure Korn hates all scholars, pretty much equally, frankly.
He doesn't strike me as a particularly studious deity.
I mean, there's a reason that you don't get any psychic powers as Korn in 40k, isn't there?
In fact, the colours of Korn worn by many of his demons and bloodhounds literally impede psychic power because he hates it.
Oh, do they?
I didn't know there was actually a specific law reason that they were red.
That's actually, oh, I don't know.
Not for the colour red, but the colour.
I say the choker.
Oh, right, right.
Okay.
I don't remember.
Those are colours of corn, which is why many cornered demons actually have saving throws against psychic powers.
Learning things as well.
But yeah, no, I love this.
Who would the scholar be?
Because, like, I mean, like, the most prominent one is what?
Khan the betrayer?
Karn, yes.
He is probably the closest Korn has to a prophet, shall we say?
A pure champion on the earth or in the universe.
So, I mean, if his battle cry is burn, kill, maim.
That seems to be a pretty.
I don't know.
It's not open to a great deal of interpretation.
Yeah, I mean, if that's the distillation of his doctrine, again, just saying, well, it's not real cornism.
It's like, okay, well, okay, let's assume it's not.
But what makes this chap an authority on that?
You know, how is he a greater authority on what real cornism is than Khan the Betrayer?
Just out of interest.
Well, I might not be able to answer that question, but I can answer how Korn would want to see this dispute settled, however.
I already know that one, yeah.
Yeah, first put one scholar up against the other with roaring chain axes.
Exactly.
And when I'm placing the bet, I'm definitely not placing it on this chap.
Yeah, like whoever wants to take on Khan, step up and prepare your arguments well.
Justify some pretty horrific stuff, even if that went counter to the entire message of their sacred text.
Certain lines and paragraphs were butchered and contorted to fit the goals and ambitions of whoever was in charge at the time.
Notice this Islamic apologia here.
So, well, people have just been misinterpreting the holy text for this entire time.
So, yeah, but I'm sure they're not doing that with Khorn's holy text.
You don't get this consequence if this is somehow a misinterpretation.
I don't think anyone has truly misinterpreted Korn's intent in this regard.
Nor do I think it is possible.
Nor do I think it's possible with the other gods either.
Like, that's the thing.
To bring this away from Korn, none of the gods are particularly diffuse here.
Like, their true goals are very obvious, and they don't try to hide them when you're deep in.
Again, this is why they use the shell corporations, the shell gods, to be like, oh, no, no, no, you should worship me now, and then I'm going to show you just how deep in.
It's the classic cult, you know?
They start with the, oh, we're just a big, happy family.
And then once you're fully connected to the family and you've cut all ties with your actual family, shit gets more interesting.
Nick Rikita in the chat, hey man, points out chaos gods reward specifically the incorrect implementation of their ethos.
And the thing is, that's totally true.
Like, good point.
Yeah.
Like Korn smiles down upon the warrior and goes like, well, you've read my book wrong, but here, have wings.
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
Why are you now the demon prince?
It's like, well, I mean, all I did is murder loads of people.
I know, it's a wrong reading, but I'm still going to benefit you for it.
It's like, sorry.
Yeah, there's just no defense of this that makes any sense.
That's an excellent point, Nick.
Yeah, that's a really good point, man.
And from my perspective, for somebody to say they understand and know the will of a creature that is a billion times more complex and advanced than them is in itself blasphemous.
These are into the...
Go on.
Oh, I wouldn't, I wouldn't want to be blasphemous towards the god of murder.
That would be a very poor thing.
The self-abnegation.
Oh, you just can't understand real Kornism.
You know, it's just like, come on.
How many skulls do we need before we get the feeling that this guy's a bad dude?
And trying to understand him is, in fact, blasphemous.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You are literally sinning against Korn by trying to understand why he kills so many people.
Hold on.
Now, this is some proper progressivism right here.
Like, you can't understand why we rape kids, and asking the question is transphobic.
Oh, no, they literally said homophobic when it came to the don't say gay bill.
Ah, you're not allowed to groom kids.
Well, why are you such a homophobe?
It's like, uh, what that's true.
The whole Florida bill.
Like, hey, you can't teach this in schools.
Hold on.
Are you against the gays?
What?
No.
Why did you bring the gays into it?
That was a weird self-report.
Like, what the hell's that got to do with anything?
I love where this goes.
Let's carry on these that measure their IQ in the tens of billions.
They are everywhere and nowhere and have always existed and never existed at the same time.
Okay.
I don't think Korn's IQ is in the tens of billions.
I just don't believe it.
Why?
Does he not strike you as the intellectual to he doesn't?
Yeah, he strikes me as a man who doesn't do much reflect, or a god that doesn't do much reflection at all.
And I'm not saying that's bad either.
I'm not saying Korn is an unworthy god because he doesn't spend a lot of time on the shitter thinking through his plans, right?
Just saying I don't think that's his deal.
And again, the very imposition of IQ and intelligence is the wrong way to go about this.
It's not that the gods are particularly smart, it's that these are instinctual things.
Like, I agree that you can't understand the rationale of a creature who literally grows more powerful from feasting on the blood of people.
That's a difficult frame of a mind to set yourself in.
I mean, why do we think that there is a rationale there?
It just seems to be satiating a sort of primal instinct.
Yes, exactly.
Like, that is the rationale.
His rationale is: this makes me more powerful.
I'm going to pursue this course of action.
It really genuinely is that simple.
And we can tell because that's all the chaos gods do.
Not at any point has Korn suddenly decided, I'm going to try peace for a bit and see how that works out.
Hmm.
And people in the chat making a point, you know, okay, this might fairly describe Zench.
Okay, yeah.
But Zench's entire modus operandi is essentially gaslighting you.
Like, why would I worship the god of gaslighting?
It seems just the god of contrarianism.
Even if we say that Zeensch would be like, okay, no, I'm going to completely flip my script now because I've won.
He will literally continue doing that until he's won again, and then he's back to the same thing.
They are as much concepts as they are physical creatures.
To lay your eyes on the true form of such a thing would probably cause your head to explode.
Oh, yeah, we are just not worthy to look upon Nurgle and analyze what Nurgle's motives are.
I hate this.
You're not smart enough to understand.
Well, then why would I even take your opinion on it?
Like, you're going to make the argument that I'm just not smart enough to understand the argument.
It's like, sorry.
No.
The argument is perfectly logical.
They are promoting evil, and I don't want to see evil promoted.
Hence, the Imperium did nothing wrong.
And again, it's not difficult to point out that this is evil.
Like, this is not a complex moral issue.
Is that you're a demon with a spot on a skull and a pile of skulls.
This is not a morally complex picture.
No.
You know, where do you think you fall in this picture?
You know, just saying.
As the human mind was not meant to process something so magnificent.
Korn, for example, is infinite.
But the thing is, as well, he's like, okay, they're concepts.
Yeah, they are concepts.
Vice.
Vicious concepts.
Concepts that make you weak.
Concepts that make you enslave.
Concepts that make you suffer.
That's what the chaos gods are and were designed to be by Games Workshop.
And that's what makes them interesting, to be honest.
That they are specifically evil concepts from the point of view of a human being.
That's what makes them interesting and engaging.
You know, they're not good and they will never be good.
Infinitely complex, even if we don't give him credit for that.
But the human mind is not.
So his followers are often portrayed as nothing more than blood-drunk barbarians focused on a single element of his teachings.
And speaking of those teachings, stories are what are the other elements of his teachings?
God, I feel like we are overlaboring this fucking point because we are, and it's because he keeps making it.
Like, Korn does not have another serious teaching.
Again, it is the trap.
It is literally the trap, which has been fallen for here.
Again, Hook, Light, and Sinker.
Korn, the only reason Korn will put on a facade is because he thinks, hmm, if I just tell you to kill children right off the bat, you might object.
You might not.
However, if I couch this in slightly more flowery terms, you might be more open to it.
And hey, it's not like we don't have plenty of examples of that throughout human society.
For example, you know what?
Isn't equality good?
Wouldn't absolute equality be great, in fact?
Now, kill your neighbor.
It certainly produces a lot of skulls for the skull throne.
But seriously, what other teachings does Korn have?
That's just one aspect of his teachings.
Okay, well, lay out the rest of them.
I'll weigh them up.
Maybe the rest of them are so good that the constant unremitting barbarism is justified.
The only teachings I can come up with is kill and kill psychers in particular because I don't like them.
Main, well, you can burn as well.
Yeah, no, I've never seen much in the way of other teachings, honestly.
Be strong, I guess.
But even then, be strong as in be strong so you can kill your neighbor.
Like, it's not strength for strength's sake, it's strength for killing people's sake.
Strength for murder's sake.
But nobody ever talks about that aspect of corn, I tell you that.
Nobody ever gives them credit for starting the gains movement.
Yeah, have you ever been to a Corn 8 gym?
Of course not.
They're buff.
You know, look at you.
You're a weakling.
Come on.
Written down and written hundreds of times over.
They are translated and retranslated over and over again until their original meaning has been twisted and contorted, specifically to represent not the and yet, interestingly enough, everyone across the galaxy in millions of different civilizations eventually all arrive at the exact same interpretation.
It's just a mistranslation, bro.
It's a fucking frequent mistranslation.
It's the only mistranslation, in fact.
It's just really funny to me that this argument's being made.
Let's carry on.
The will of the god, but the will of the man in charge of interpreting the meaning of ancient holy words.
Over time, this religious institution can be twisted a million different ways from Sunday, the original meanings completely lost to time.
And since the chaos gods are a direct manifestation of our own emotions and belief, this plays into their current nefarious state.
They have been morphed into the essence of evil rather than that of their original neutral design.
Now, here we go.
There we go.
The chaos gods, it's not their fault that they're evil.
You see, the moral fault doesn't lie with the god of death or excess or lies.
It's not their fault.
No, no.
I mean, they used to just be neutral.
That's right, neutral from whose perspective?
Not the person getting their head chopped off.
No victim of corn has ever been like, well, I mean, at least he used to be neutral.
He's just misinterpreted.
This is ridiculous, ridiculous framing.
Here in the real world, we can see the effects of this on major religions of our time.
And I'm not making a judgment here, but I think it's safe to say that a holy book being written centuries after the events it depicts, and then being rewritten over and over again, can contort its meaning.
Now, imagine that on a scale that spans all of space and time.
Their teachings being interpreted or put to paper by hundreds of thousands of different species.
And then those writings are rewritten and re-translated over and over again into infinity.
Now, this argument would hold more weight if the chaos gods weren't real in the context of the 40k universe and constantly creating new champions Champions with new divinely inspired doctrines, right?
Like, if, yeah, you know, that's fair.
You know, you could be like, well, this religion was just misinterpreted.
Sure.
But how many champions of chaos do there have to be who are literally given direct blessings from the chaos gods and then a direct connection to the God that tells them, go out and follow my teaching, that has come out to exactly the same thing as you pointed out earlier.
That's a really good point because this is a it's a synonym, it doesn't follow, right?
He's comparing them to our gods, like our religious text.
All right.
But to the best of my knowledge, God has never stepped down from the heavens and created another Jesus and gone, right?
So you read this wrong.
Here's the FAQ.
Well, that's actually exactly Muhammad's argument, right?
So, I mean, that was what Muhammad was claiming, that the Bible had become perverted by real people, and this is why he was the seal of the prophets.
It's like, yeah, okay, well, why are there so many different adaptations and interpretations of the Quran?
If that's the case, well, you know, God has been lax in his frequently asked questions.
But the chaos gods aren't.
That's the point.
Yeah, they're real.
Exactly.
In the context of these things, they're not lax.
They keep creating champions who know exactly what the God wills them to do because the God literally tells them.
And it's like, okay, again, this attempt to try and shield the chaos god from criticism.
Oh, the problem isn't the god, it's the followers of the god.
It's like the followers of the god that the god chooses, empowers, and rewards for doing the things that the god says.
And you're like, yeah, but it's not the god.
And if the god truly does have a billion IQ, you'd think at some point he'd get wise to the fact that people are misreading his holy text.
Yeah, and the divine inspiration that he bestows on individuals directly.
Like, again, if they were so smart, how could it keep fucking up like this?
Or, and again, this is just, you know, what's the better are we just to assume the most logical, most straightforward, most simple solution, which is the gods themselves are actually evil and they're designing to create all of these evil, destructive champions?
That's the one I'm going to go with.
Needless to say, the pamphlets that they hand out at the chaos meetings probably don't accurately depict the will of the gods.
So before we dive into each one of them, we should understand a couple of key fundamentals.
The first is that the gods are not good or evil.
This is a concept that doesn't really exist with them.
Okay.
How do you feel about that, Arch?
Well, the thing is, I can agree in that the gods themselves are simple beings of energy.
They're going to get whatever gives them energy.
All right, sure.
But that still means that they're killing us by the thousands.
That still means they're killing every sentient species by the thousands.
That still means that their literal ethos is the antithesis of everything that is to be alive.
So, from my point of reference, no, they seem like pretty goddamn bad guys.
And I'm not going to excuse them by going, well, you know, we can't judge them.
They're just doing this out of instinct.
Okay.
If a lion broke out from a zoo nearby and was eating your family, would you look at it and go, oh, it doesn't know any better?
Or would you shoot it?
Well, when it was starting to chase you, you'd definitely look at it as if it was evil.
Yes.
The thing is, it's not just that, though.
It's notice how the products of corn, the products of the chaos gods entirely, actually, they don't end up as being human, right?
They end up as being warped demons in some way.
Like, look at any of them.
They get, you know, horns coming out of them.
They get weird demonic mutations.
They get, you know, wings or tentacles or whatever it is.
They become something that's not human.
And it's like, okay, well, who's that good for?
And if the answer is human beings, well, no.
You end up as something that's not a human being by going down these roads.
And so if you want to end up as a human being, and in fact, the best kind of human being that you can be, you don't go down any of the roots of corn because they are specifically vices that turn you in human.
And so if we're talking about good and evil in the relative perspective of from a human's perspective, the human that wants to be the best human that they can be and remain as intact as possible and have moral virtue, well, none of the chaos gods are good for that.
In fact, they're all evil all the time, without exception.
I mean, you see what I mean there, right?
Yes.
Yeah.
So it's one of those things.
It's like, you can sit there and go, well, they're not good or evil.
It's like, well, from whose point of view?
Like, if you're talking about the point of view of like the abstract entity that is the universe, maybe not.
But can you even imagine having the concerns of the universe?
Like, what concerns could the universe even have?
Like, it's not unreasonable for us to ground ourselves in human concerns, since we are humans.
So from that perspective, the chaos gods are absolutely and irredeemably evil, which is why Games Workshop wrote them that way.
You be the villains.
And uncomplicated villains at that.
You know, very, very easy to understand villains if you're a human being, which most of Games Workshop's customers are.
Some of them, of course, are progressives.
They are.
I can recognize his core argument that to them, our morality is pointless.
The problem is, I'm not them.
Yes.
I'm never going to stop being a human.
Therefore, as far as I'm concerned, all morality may as well revolve around being a human.
And if it doesn't, then it's not really morality.
And I don't care.
Like, okay, if you want us to talk about the Chaos Gods as if they're essentially a kind of pestilence, a kind of vermin that have to be stamped out because they're going to be bad for us, okay, fine.
Even though we can actually identify the evil will that underpins them.
I mean, it's not like the Chaos Gods are sat there going, I just can't help it, bro.
I just can't help it.
No, they're actively, malevolently trying to hurt you.
Like, they're trying.
They're lying to you.
They're deceiving you.
They're trying to bring you in with bribes and lies and offerings and temptations.
And it's like, so it's not like they're without will.
It's not.
They are acting upon you maliciously.
Yes.
And so we can quite happily characterize them as evil.
On that one, too.
Like, the more of that agency we attribute to them, the worse they become.
Yeah.
No, that's exactly right.
Because it's explicit as well.
That that's all they do.
That's all their agency is focused around in order to grow their power as a vice.
And so you're exactly right.
The more we agree that that is the case, then the worse they become.
And don't be wrong.
This is what we agreed that they're smart and intelligent, the worse they become.
If they were, if they started with, oh, they're all brainless, okay, that could be an excuse.
But we started with, oh, we simply can't understand because they're so galaxy-brained.
Yeah.
And so, okay, they're hyper-intelligent evil gods.
So?
Whooped you do.
Yeah.
Don't accurately depict the will of the gods.
So before we dive into each one of them, we should understand a couple of key fundamentals.
The first is that the gods are not good or evil.
This is a concept that doesn't really exist with them.
They are.
Right.
And this is just a maxim that we totally reject.
This axiom on which he grants us.
The gods aren't really good or evil.
Wrong, they're evil.
Moving on.
Are what they are.
They are the primordial forces of the universe.
They are the collective emotions, thoughts, and desires of every sentient creature that has ever or will ever exist.
Right.
Now that's fascinating as well, right?
Okay, so what he's saying there is that none of your thoughts and feelings are bad.
So when you have a malicious thought that you've done something wrong, right?
If you've ever like kicked your dog or out of anger or something like that, and then looked at it and go, oh, God, that was awful.
Why did I do that?
I shouldn't have done that, you know?
Then that wasn't wrong.
That's what he's saying.
There's no moral punishment or penalty that is ascribed to that.
It's like, no, you're wrong.
that is bad if they are simply reflections of our morality and our morale yeah no that's correct Because if they are simply reflections of our morality and they can't be good or evil, then our morality cannot be good and evil.
Yes.
Again, mass murder is not an evil act.
Yeah, it was just a reflection of the universe.
It's like, sorry, no, that this is again the progressive erasure of the moral load on one side and the raising of the moral load on the other.
It's like, sorry, no, this doesn't balance them out.
Like, they are still bad things, and if you did them, it would be immoral.
Each god is made up of millions of different traits and ideals.
To put it in terms of good or evil is only an attempt by us mortals to try to categorize and understand the impossible.
Okay.
So?
Now, the second thing.
Literally just so.
Okay, I mean, don't get me wrong, right?
Like, you could say that about anything.
Like, you don't understand.
Sorry, go on.
We have refuted this argument thoroughly, because the moment you spotted that, this can be dug down to morality itself as reflections of morality.
Like, at that point, his only position can either be to go, oh, I didn't think of that, or morality doesn't exist.
There are no good and evil.
In which case, the Nazis did nothing wrong.
The Soviets did nothing wrong.
The Japanese did nothing wrong, etc.
there is no such concept as doing something wrong in order to justify the chaos gods not being moral.
Like that's, but, but moreover like notice how he's expanded this again.
Like, well, I mean, you just don't understand the intrinsic and eternal complexity of the Chaos Gods.
It's like, okay, but I mean, you could apply that to anything.
Anything in the universe.
You don't really understand.
Like, you look at the direct sensory perception you have of the thug with the knife as he stabs you.
And this guy could be like, yeah, but you don't really understand the atoms in that knife.
You don't understand the motivations and the complex series of events that have been going for, well, about four billion years since the advent of the invention of life.
And you don't understand any of these things.
So you can't really understand why this guy stabbed you and took your wallet.
Like, so you can't judge him.
It's like, no, that's wildly deterministic and totally breaks any causal connection between moral choice of the agent.
So what you're saying is nobody is a moral agent.
Like literally nobody.
And the only people who could be moral agents would be themselves gods because they would have to know everything.
They would have to be omnipotent to be able to make a moral judgment.
And it's like, that's a ridiculously high standard to just make a moral judgment of the god of death over there that's cutting your head off.
I don't know why we would.
Is that even though we have an exact date when one of the gods, Slanesh, was born, as their birth was heralded by massive warp storms that ravaged the galaxy for thousands of years, and the inevitable climax of their creation tore a hole in our universe and left a festering wound in reality that we know today as the eye of terror.
A place where the physical and immaterial universes overlap.
However, from the gods' perspective, Slanesh has always existed.
The gods have always been and never were simultaneously.
Again, like this is just the wrong interpretation of 40k's law, but fuck it.
Like, there are bigger issues at hand.
Okay.
The warp is weird, to say the least.
And speaking of the warp, the third thing you have to understand is that from our mortal perspective, it wasn't always the realm of chaos.
It wasn't always this twisted and dark realm that houses infinite demons and a malice for the physical universe.
In its simplest terms, the immaterium is a shadow.
It is a reflection of the physical universe.
It is a realm made up of not atoms and molecules, as it has no physical substance, but a universe of the intangible, a realm of emotion and thought, of ideas and concepts.
It is a mirror of our own universe.
It is directly influenced by the thoughts and emotions of those in the realm of the physical.
To understand this, we have to examine the universe long before humanity crawled out of the primordial ooze.
Now, there was a period in time more than 60 million years ago where the universe was rather peaceful.
We can be sure there were wars happening, but they were localized to specific planets.
But on a whole, the Milky Way was a pretty chill place to live.
Now, that all changed with the war in heaven, the great battle that spanned the entire galaxy.
A war like nothing the universe had ever seen before and has yet to see again.
Now, this was a war between the Necrons and the old ones, and before actually, my Tism's feel free to correct the law.
I'm not any kind of lawmaster, so you know, feel free to correct.
I feel it's almost petulant to correct minutiae in a wider point here, but they weren't the Necrons, they were the Necron Tur.
Well, that is pedantry, yes, yes, yes, but still before their great battle had ever even reached is everything else otherwise reasonably well characterized.
Uh, yes, like we don't know that the galaxy was peaceful, and we certainly don't know it was a chill place to live because the necrons were literally writhing in eternal agony under a radioactive star that doomed them to slow withering death.
But we don't know anything about this period, so I'm not gonna object specifically, right?
Really started heating up?
The Necrons were on a galaxy-spanning conquest to purge everything in sight.
Well, that doesn't sound very peaceful.
Yeah, I'd also like to point out there on the whole peaceful galaxy thing, I just remembered that big flying thing there off in the middle distance that looks like the Grim Reaper.
That's a god.
That's a Catan.
Yeah, that's a star vampire.
It eats stars, so well, I mean, if they're going on this galaxy-spanning crusade to wipe out all life, I just question the characterization of the universe being a pretty chill place.
Well, I suppose he means before that war, but even then, the Catans existed before that as well.
So, uh, but surely this desire to wipe out life doesn't come out of nothing.
No, it's again, it's because the Necron Tyr, um, they were a hyper-advanced civilization under an irradiated sun.
It had screwed their genes up to the point that they would always die slowly in horrific agony from radiation exposure.
Classic 40k was the worst thing we could imagine.
They were pretty pissed off about their lot in life, uh, to put it mildly, and they hated the shit out of the old ones because the older ones were an even more hyper-advanced civilization that could have fixed the Necron Tyr if they had deigned to do so, but they were just like, bruh, bad luck.
It's not our problem.
Yes.
Which for some reason, the Necron Tyr took rather poorly.
Well, I can understand why.
Day after day, week after week, quintillions of souls flooded into the immaterium.
Wrathful and hateful souls that had their perfect way of life obliterated by an ancient alien force.
The peaceful universe that existed before was twisted and corrupted with hatred.
Like if you add a drop of poison to a cup of water, that single element would spread out and corrupt the entire thing.
Okay, okay, let's let's assume this is all at law accurate, right?
And this is being used as the framing device to justify mass murder of human beings who don't even exist as a species yet.
Is that correct?
Yeah, that's a good way to look at it.
Because some ancient aliens, a long time ago, I don't know, enslaved black people or something.
Right now, the people now have to be punished and have to accept the punishments from the chaos gods.
Because God forbid, we blame the chaos gods for doing something bad.
They're not allowed agency, even though they're the most intelligent things to have ever existed, right?
They're way more intelligent than you.
You can't understand them, but they don't have any agency.
You have the agency, and what you have to do is accept the vile things they do to you.
This is pretty 60 million years ago.
But that's a hell of a sell, isn't it?
It's like, okay, well, that's one argument, right?
That's one argument.
Now, what's the other argument?
The argument is the Emperor is going to eradicate all of these, and you won't have to do that.
It's like, sign me up to Team Emperor.
Sign me up to Team Imperium, man.
Okay.
The venomous emotions of hatred, despair, wrath, and every other negative emotion you can think of poisoned the sea of souls and thus began the corruption of the physical universe.
Now, these emotions surely existed before, but they were not the dominating emotional force that governs the universe in the 41st millennium.
After the war, hatred came to dominate the universe, and the warp became a reflection of this.
Now, not much is known about the gods at this time, but before the war in heaven, by all accounts, the warp had been full of peaceful entities.
Bullshit.
Again, if we have to ascribe morality to these creatures who are a simple reflection of us, it's not that they just existed and chilled beforehand.
The warp was literally a tool used by the old ones.
Like, the Eldar, for example, could craft magnificent structures that defied all laws of physics because they could create a god that went, oh no, physics don't, they don't apply in this particular area.
It wasn't that they were there, or again, it brings me back to the fact that the chaos gods didn't always exist.
It wasn't that Nurgle was just chilling in his garden, like, I don't feel like killing anyone today.
No, it's that Nurgle wasn't a thing, like, he didn't exist.
He was born specifically from despair to embody despair.
Yeah.
The personification that is the intellectual entity that is the god might not have always existed.
That's fine.
But now it does exist and it has a will of its own.
We can ascribe agency to that will.
Yes.
These were twisted beyond recognition.
They became hateful and venomous monstrosities that preyed on the souls of the newly departed.
Now, although this new influx of negative emotion twisted the warp into the realm of chaos we know today, those good emotions still exist in our modern physical universe, and thus they play a part in its reflection.
The realm of chaos is not hatred made manifest, but a collective of all emotions.
And the gods are no different.
However, the universe and thus its reflection have become wildly out of balance.
Also a point of pedantry there.
No, the gods are not the warp and the warp are not the gods.
Those other gods he keeps talking about, the gods of good, they do exist, but they are infinitely less powerful than the god of corn.
Korn is not the god of the honorable warrior, the god of the honorable bore, exists.
Korn is a different entity.
He is the blood god.
There are specifics here.
Like the four main powers are called the four main powers because they are the main powers, not because they are everything within the warp.
But that's very interesting as well, because again, once again, what he's trying to do is say, well, look, they're not irredeemable, right?
And because they're not irredeemable, well, now we've taken them out of one category, which is things to be destroyed at all costs, in all times and all places.
And it's trying to move it slightly more, if that's the very far left sort of position, he's trying to move it more to the center.
He's like, well, you know, let's actually be nuanced about this.
And what's this going to do?
This isn't going to open up dialogue with the chaos gods or the other gods in the immaterium.
This is just going to create death and destruction and havoc.
That's all that's going to be the product of that.
Yes.
But for some reason, we have to try and pretend as if these things, again, are moral equivalents, which I don't think they are.
So let's examine each one of these gods.
And to not turn this completely into a chaos propaganda video, we will examine both sides of them.
Now let's start with probably the most well-known of the chaos gods, Korn.
Now, Korn is the god of wrath, the god of blood and skulls, and basically the literal concept of violence.
But Korn is more than this.
He is also the god of honor and tradition.
He sees no victory in taking skulls in his name from the weak.
There is no honor in preying on the elderly or children.
So in a sense, their skulls are worthless to him.
Now, Korn teaches that.
Is that true, Arch?
No.
He still takes.
We've gone over this point again already, so I won't labor it too much, but let me put it like this.
Even if you are an honorable warrior and you go to war, what is an honorable war in the 41st millennium?
How are you an honorable bomber pilot, for example?
How are you an honorable artilleryist?
You are going to be fighting a war.
You are going to be inflicting pain, suffering, death, and misery on untold thousands.
Not just those who have agreed to it.
Like, you're not fighting a war between yourself and your samurai buddy.
You're fighting over resources.
You're fighting over land.
You're fighting over territory.
Hell, even if you're fighting for just simple honor, that will be the ruination of your opponent, the ruination of his family, the abruptation of his lineage.
He makes it sound as if conflict isn't this innocent thing that just exists in a bubble and doesn't affect anyone.
As if it's a game of chess.
Yes.
Yeah.
To become more powerful is the ultimate goal, but power is gained through hard work and tradition.
This is the path of a dedicated warrior.
I mean, hell, I agree, but here's the thing: the chaos gods don't do push-ups to gain their power.
I just love it.
It's the tradition.
Oh, well, if it's tradition, it must be good.
What's the tradition?
Murdering people.
Oh, that's traditional.
Bloody violence.
Yeah, people said mostly peaceful bloodletters.
Exactly.
It's just traditional bloodletting.
And again, it's the more extreme the act, the greater the power the chaos gods gain from it.
Yeah, yeah.
Thus, they will naturally encourage the more extreme act.
Like, even if we, even if we say, right?
And here's the thing.
He keeps saying, oh, he sees no victory in killing an old person.
No, he does.
He just doesn't see as much of a victory.
He'd prefer if that old person was a more powerful person to be slaughtered, but he'll still take them.
I mean, he kills, like, they destroy entire planets, don't they?
Yeah, like, you can look at a quarter-death cult, for example.
There's even pictures in this video of quarter champions holding up the heads of what is obviously just regular humans.
A chaos space marine fighting a regular human is like Arnold Swachenegger killing a puppy, okay?
There's no honor in that, but you don't see them just break into a house.
See, there's an old person inside, and goddammit, go on to the next house.
No, they should be.
I love the idea, the image of just a giant seven-foot bearmont in armor with this giant chainax bursts in the door.
He's sad.
Oh, shrugs his shoulders, bit deflated, just walks out.
Sorry, didn't mean to bother you.
You're just an old woman.
You know, like bollocks.
Bollocks.
It's very nice about that.
Oh, I'm sorry to disturb you, good, a good honorable woman.
Are there any warriors hiding here?
Yeah, you don't happen to have a space marine around, a loyalist around, do you?
You know, I wanted an honorable combat.
Bollocks.
It's just such.
Why?
Why would you make this frame?
i just don't understand it one who trains every single day with a sword and never takes time off one that hones their path and becomes the ultimate conqueror corn teaches to crush your enemies and to seek as much power as possible but also to honor your opponents the goal is not to be a bloodthirsty tyrant the goal is not to be a serial killer corn teaches that to engage in battle also let me point out this to To honor your opponent.
That sounds nice.
This is another fluffy place.
Honoring your opponent.
What does that honoring tale exactly?
Oh, having your head chopped off and having your skull offered up to a demon entity.
Yes.
This is very much so the Aztec way of honoring their enemies.
No, no, that's exactly right, isn't it?
It's like, look, we're honoring.
Look, don't you understand the honor that is bestowed upon you when your head is given pride of place on Korn's throne room?
You know, you're there.
That's your skull.
That's impressive.
It's not someone else's skull we're putting up there.
You know, put a little plaque underneath that says who you are so other people can be like, oh, God, you killed that guy.
How impressive?
Don't cry.
Okay, I know I'm stabbing you through the heart and ripping it out and tossing it down the stairs, but by doing this, I'm making sure the sun rises.
And again, like, they'll overrun entire planets if given the option.
Like, it's not like there are corn daycare centers where they put the children of the honorable warriors that they've killed.
Like, what the fuck are you talking about?
That would be beautiful, too.
Just a hell planet where the bloodletts are taking care of the children of slain champions.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Just, you know, well, we've got a sort of pension scheme for the widows, you know.
Shut up.
It's the most primal and honorable path a warrior can take.
There is nothing more human than meeting your equal in battle and overcoming impossible odds.
To do this, you must look your opponent in the eye and then overpower them through your own force of will and strength.
Also, you point a boy just left them and pull the trigger.
Also, we are the impossible odds.
We are the thing that is going to give you this honor by just attacking your planet and killing everything on it.
Like, this wasn't, again, a game of chess.
Chaos invades, and it's like, yes, this is honorable.
We'll overcome these amazing odds.
It's like, well, you could just not invade.
It would be more honorable not to just murder a bunch of people who weren't suspecting it.
Oh, the problem is, this is the person who doesn't understand what war is.
Point of is literally like, oh, it's honorable warfare.
Have you seen any of those footages out of Ukraine?
There's just an artillery position or an AA system, and it's just sitting there.
Nobody's reacting to anything.
It's just in the woods.
And then, boom, the entire field explodes.
Do you think the people inside they always like, oh, honorable, combatu?
You read the reports of the Reddit Battalion, and it's just like, yeah, this was just bad.
Honorable combat is a fucking fiction.
There's no army throughout history that has gone like, yes, we might lose, but at least we were honorable about it.
Well, I mean, there are some cases of like, you know, single combats and things like this, where, you know, in the ancient world and the medieval world, you have what I guess is the apex example of a Cornet-style honorable combat, but that's certainly not the 41st millennium's view.
Like, this just doesn't happen.
And even then, that was often also done with an objective in mind.
If you kill the enemy's champion, you demoralize their army.
Like, that has a direct military purpose and a point.
And most importantly, earned through hard work and discipline.
Oh, he's the god of bootstraps.
Just put yourself up for the bootstrap flags.
Oh, but it's really hard work chopping off all these heads.
I know you've got to get to it.
You know, the more heads you chop, the better you become and the less work it becomes.
Now get cracking.
Use magic or ranged weapons or anything that would give you an unfair advantage is unthinkable, the corn.
Dishonorable.
I would also like to point out there are corner titans.
Like, fucking bullshit.
Well, look at the background here.
This is a fucking bloodthirster.
Anything that will give you an unfair advantage.
Like a demon, a giant demon from another dimension.
Alternatively, the Chaos Space Marine dressed in the highest tech available in the entire goddamn universe, wielding a motorized chain axe with a demon trapped inside it.
Don't want any unfair advantages.
Now, come here, Imperial Guardsman.
Shoot me with your flashlight.
I'll give you a free shot.
These are the cowards' tools.
There is nothing.
There's an awful lot of coward-recorded berserkers out there.
Can you describe to me what the Lord of Skulls is?
The Lord of Skulls is a walking behemoth.
driving behemoth tank literally with the lower body of a tank and an axe the size of a shopping mall with a with a giant cannon sticking out of its skull okay this is not this is not a fair fight to anyone I am here for honorable combat.
I'm 50 feet tall and I weigh 300 tons.
It's like, fucking, what are you talking about?
My blood is mortar metal.
Like, I saw.
Nothing honorable about hiding in the shadows and striking your opponent's back.
This is a weakling's way of fighting.
Now, various warrior cults across space and time have worshipped corn.
In our own world, this can take the form of knight households or samurai casts or all manner of honorable and powerful nations across history.
Imagine, imagine saying knights, medieval knights worshipped corn and not Jesus.
Even if we skip that one too, again, we go back to the honor, right?
The samurais, again, this guy probably has a scene here, but he yeah, he probably has no idea what samurais were.
They primarily used the bow.
Like, the katana was a fallback weapon.
And even then, you know what the samurai did to their defeated opponents?
They chopped their heads off in enormous quantities and piled them up.
Like, if you want to have a sword.
Maybe they did follow corn.
They're probably the closest.
But the idea that, like, you know, medieval knights, I mean, like, the Knights Templar were disbanded, shall we say, under the charge that they had begun worshiping a god called Baphomet, which is probably a mistranslation of Muhammad.
This is what happens when you start worshiping something other than the church-approved doctrine of Jesus.
Like, they were not like knightly orders worshiping corn.
And when you piss off the French king, in the case of the Obviously, they weren't.
Obviously, they were just very rich, and the French king wanted their money.
But, uh, anyway.
All him, even if he went by a different name at the time.
However, these aspects of Korn have been forgotten.
He's depicted as an entity that demands only blood.
The honorable aspects of him have taken a back seat, and his followers certainly do not follow his teachings to the letter.
What about the bloodthirsters, then?
Like, what about the blood letters?
Like, you bring up okay, that that reminds me, right?
Because that's a good point.
The blood letters and the bloodthirsters are the literal personifications of corn.
Did they misread the holy book too?
And what the space breeds even meant to do.
Like, the hold up a copy of the corn 8 text and go, well, look at line 77 here.
You're misinterpreting this one, buddy.
I think it's a bit late for that.
Like, why would you say that while having a picture of the demons on the screen?
Now, we see hordes of corn berserkers ripping and tearing their way across the cosmos, destroying everything in their path.
What is this thing in the back right?
Yeah, okay, that's a mage of sigma shit.
Yeah, that's what that is.
Yeah, but like, is this we are we to believe that this thing here thinks about honor and fairness and decency and cowardice and bravery?
Like, come on.
Like, look at what you're showing us, man.
Yep.
Not to mention, again, you are looking at like the bloodhound, for example, there.
Yeah.
That is a literal personification of corn.
That is a portion of corn.
It is a demon of corn.
It has one person.
Yes, the very idea that these things somehow misunderstood their bosses' orders.
Yeah, but this guy in the back, did he misunderstand?
Like, fucking hell.
He's just super.
See, this is what the problem.
He comes out of the cornered gear gym.
He finally reads the book and he's like, God damn it.
I shouldn't have gone so buff.
Look at the fucking iPhone.
He's blood drunk with power, looking to take skulls no matter who or what they come from.
Now, this is definitely part of corn, but it is not the whole.
Oh, I don't care.
I don't care if literally a part of corn is murder everyone and take their skulls.
It's like, yeah, but you've got to understand the nuances of corn.
It's like, sorry, I'm a bit hung up on the murder, being murdered and having my head taken.
Like, I can't get past it.
I'm really sorry.
That's really important to remember, as it is a reflection of his teachings being bastardized over the millennia.
It's more representative of the hateful state of the galaxy, and less so corn himself.
Why are we in defense of corn?
Like, what is the motive for doing this?
Genuinely.
I want answers.
Chat, do you have answers?
Like, why would you take the literal personification of violence and be like, well, look, it's not really his fault.
Like, what's the deal?
The thing is.
If I were to, like, try and theorize into this guy's motivations for this.
Like, one of them would be that he just had this thought and he's like, hold on.
This is a pretty cool interpretation, isn't it?
I'm going to run with this.
Alternatively, and again, it was the amount of.
See, I don't want to.
I don't want to call it progressivism, no matter how much it might look at it.
Because it is.
I've been at this point too, where I was small and stupid and I had a cool thought.
I was like, wow, this is a cool thought.
And then I didn't think about it.
And when I did think about it, it's like, man, I'm an idiot.
Like an hour later.
But the thing is, this is what progressivism does.
It tries to create moral equivalences and then amplify any kernel in whatever it is that's being condemned to make it the representation of what the true thing is.
It's like corn's truly about honor and decency.
All of the demons and all of the cultists, they just get it all wrong.
It's like, okay, but that's not true, right?
The rification, the real example that you point to is the bloodthirsty murderer.
So what you're saying is, hypothetically, corn could be this, but when we look in the theoretical real the fancy real world of the 40k universe, corn is not that.
You know, corn is the opposite of that.
And so you have essentially lied in order to create this false equivalence.
And that's what progressivism does all the time.
You know, it's like, well, there is a special clause, a kind of little carve-out that I'm going to focus entirely on and pretend that the rest of it is a mistake or something unconnected or something that we can just ignore.
It's like, sorry, no, this is not okay.
This is not the way things are done.
And that's the thing, too.
Like, I feel like a lot of this comes across as a defense mechanism to go, oh, I want to make this point, but I'm afraid people will mock me for it.
So I'm going to try and put it across in a different way, either using the humor, claiming satire, etc., to avoid critique.
But again, like, where does it stem from, though?
What's wrong with us just condemning the chaos gods?
It's not wrong for us to do that.
All they represent is vice.
It's not wrong for us to condemn them unequivocally.
We don't need to get like there's an corn values of really powerful enemy.
Therefore, there's an element of honor there.
It's like, so what?
You know, so what?
Nurgle will prevent you from suffering.
It's like, okay, kind of, but so what?
You know, we can see the evil design.
We can see the evil consequence.
We can see that it turns you into some kind of inhuman monster.
There's no need for us to have to include them in our moral constituency.
We don't need to have them as things we consider to be moral agents.
They can just be unvarnished evil.
That's okay.
You know, that's good.
That's bad for them, but they're bad.
That's good for us, and we're good.
That's okay.
About corn.
What about this?
We'll get to that later.
Yeah.
That's a good point about that.
Brother Nurgle, does the Lord of Pestilence have a good side?
So the most important.
Oh, yeah, look at this picture.
Sorry, let's get to this guy's good side.
Yes.
My God.
Important thing when it comes to understanding Nurgle is that he doesn't just represent death and disease.
He's also the god of life.
He's not just that, Arch.
He's not just that.
I mean, he is that.
The god of death and disease.
He's not just that.
He's got a great...
He is the literal god of despair, but...
I mean, he's also got a great collection of sunglasses.
Like, you just, no one talks about this.
You know, his record collection is amazing.
And occasionally, occasionally, he's a great singer, you know, but no one talks about it.
They always focus on the death and disease.
I will hammer you know that Osama bin Laden was actually a big fan of Sir Nelmers of Western culture.
Austere scholar.
Austere scholar, yes.
Life, death, and the cycle of those two things.
When one life ends, new life begins.
When something dies, its body produces bacteria.
Trillions of tiny creatures spring from existence.
The dead body nourishes the land and other animals, and when they die, the process repeats anew.
This is a cycle that can never be broken.
It ebbs and flows, speeds up and slows down, but it never ends.
It is one of the fundamental realities of the universe.
All life must come to an end.
But this is not something to be feared, as the process of life and death is beautiful.
And there is peace in knowing that it can't change.
Change.
Sorry.
Okay, right.
Have you seen any beauty represented on the screen?
Is there anything?
I have been told healthy at any size and all that.
Exactly.
Chat.
You know, give me the time stamp of what you think beauty is in any of this.
I mean, if we can go back just a second, like, look at this picture, right?
Just look at these fucking plague bearers.
Like, where is the beauty?
Everything about the plague bearers.
And there's a, there's a, I can't remember the name of the fear, but there's a particular fear that is of split flesh, right?
where you've got little holes in the flesh and that's a trick phobia or something.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's, yeah, I can never pronounce it.
Right.
But there's this particular fit, and it's obviously because, evolutionarily speaking, people who have flesh like that have some sort of horrific contagious disease.
And you can see it on this plague bearer in the front's belly.
You can see the little holes in the open wound, right?
When you are looking like this, this is just, you just need to know this is something you need to get away from.
Be afraid of this.
Be disgusted by this.
The disgust reflex, as Jonathan Haidt will point out to you, is there for a reason.
It's to protect you from something that's bad for you.
Like, there is nothing about this that's beautiful.
And this, this whole like, oh, well, it's the cycle of life.
It's like fucking Lion King, where it's at the, you know, Hakuna Matas or whatever.
No, this is a big cope for what these evil, disease-laden monsters are going to do to you, which is what's really going to happen.
Like, there is nothing beautiful about this.
Never ends.
It is one of the fundamental realities of the universe.
All life must come to an end.
But this is not something to be feared, as the process of life and death is beautiful.
And there is peace in knowing that it can't change.
Change is anathema to Nurgle.
All that lives must die, and all death produces new life.
Now, even if we accept life as a cycle, what does Nurgle offer a normal sane person?
Well, the first thing is that the followers of Nurgle are made practically immortal.
Oh, brilliant.
That's just brilliant, isn't it?
What's a normal sane person?
What are you going to be immortal?
What, like this guy?
This guy on the screen.
I'm going to end up like that guy.
His point is, there is no escape from the cycle of life and death.
What can Nurgle offer you?
An escape from the cycle of life and death.
All right, so what you're telling me is this is a god that literally just uses that weakness of humanity to further his own goals.
Like, if this is not a maybe there's a reason that there is an inevitable death at the end of life, if this is what it looks like when you escape that cycle, maybe you'd be better off dead.
Yes, that's exactly the point, isn't it?
Looking at all of these, you would be better off dead than being these people with weird fungus on their skin and holes in their chest.
Like, when it's tentacles instead of hands.
Like, you would literally be better off dead.
I'm pretty sure these are literal plague zombies, too.
So I guess it's your option.
Would you like to eternal life and eat your family or death?
They become incredibly resilient to pain and disease.
When you're lying on your deathbed, afflicted with something that cannot be cured, there comes a moment where you will feel completely alone.
The doctors have all given up on you, and you only have a few days left to live.
Your family and friends are supportive, but how could they know what you're going through?
It is at this time, your final moments, when he whispers in your ear.
He tells you not to be afraid and that this is all part of life.
But he is also sympathetic to your position, and he understands that you are in pain.
It is in this moment, when you are at your most vulnerable that he grooms you, yes, that he absolutely grooms you.
Like, sorry, this is like if anyone presents when someone is in the most despairing position of their entire life at the very end, wherever it is, and you're presented with an option, that person is not doing it in your best interests.
Otherwise, they would have at your strongest presented you this.
You know, if it was rational, if it was decent.
This is grooming.
This is basically coercion.
Not to mention as well, basically coercion.
This is coercion.
Because who do you think gave you this disease, this incurable plague from which there is no escape?
It's just the blessings of Papa Nurgle.
I don't know what you're talking about.
Precisely.
And indeed, there was a chapter in Libra Cootica which put it precisely like that.
There was a bunch of people dying from a horrible plague, and they were all really sad about it, obviously.
And eventually, one of them succumbs and he gives up the pain.
There's a long story of like, ah, finally, like the pain, death will claim me.
And he realizes, oh, wait, this was the blessing.
Papa Nurgle has opened my eyes, you see.
This was his gift to me.
It is literal grooming.
It is, I have killed you, but don't worry.
It was to make you stronger.
But don't worry, you're not even going to die.
You're going to be like this forever.
That Nurgle offers you a deal.
Now, Nurgle can't change what's already happened.
He can't take away your sickness, but he can take away the pain, and he can allow you to continue living.
The cycle of life never changes, but he can basically hit the pause button for you to stagnate at the moment in time right before your death.
And in a sense, be reborn in his image.
And that's stagnate you.
It exists.
To stagnate you at your weakest, at your absolute lowest.
And then he'll turn you into himself.
And keep you there forever.
To be at your worst, most foul position for all time.
No hope of recovery, no hope of release, no hope of death.
No, you're just there.
I mean, like, why would this be advertised as a positive?
This is the worst thing.
It would be better to be dead.
You need to be at your lowest ebb forever.
It's cruel.
Those that accept this offer have their lifespans extended indefinitely.
Their bodies still rot and their sickness gets worse and worse.
But they don't feel pain anymore.
And they will spread his message through the galaxy, teaching all they come across to embrace despair, to accept disease as a gift from the grandfather, and do their part to spread his love across the cosmos.
Now, Nurgle This is meant to be the positive for Nurgle, right?
Yes, I believe so.
Like, this is just awful.
Anything you wanted to add to that?
No, he will have to elaborate on this point a bit later, which I think is the best point to leap on it.
Okay.
And his followers are pretty horrific to look at.
They represent decay and rot.
The primordial fear of death that we all share has completely encompassed basically everything about them.
They are individuals who have given themselves over to despair.
They no longer feel much of anything.
Pain, emotion, desire, all has been stripped away from them.
And although, from our perspective, this is something of a horrible fate, to fully embrace despair is seen as a blessing.
But despair by who?
Who is it seen as a blessing by?
Because as you just said, from our perspective, this looks fucking awful.
Again, he's actually going to go on to basically say that wouldn't it feel good to just give up?
To just stop working out, to stop being healthy, to stop allowing society to impose its silly restrictive standards of, you know, living a decent life upon you.
And that's where he's heading towards this.
That despair is good, that weakness is good, that you should just give up.
Because what can you do?
And the thing is, like, again, like, you know, I'm happy to say, well, this is an April Fool's joke or whatever.
Yeah, yeah, that's all true.
But the problem is the logic of the argument is presented in a way that is also presented for things that we are expected to accept.
You know, and that's the caricature of the Warhammer 40,000 universe really brings it in sharp focus as to why actually these arguments are bad.
You know, like I said, I don't know anything about this guy.
No animus against him or anything like that.
And so if that is the case, then great.
You know, then he's done a really good job of really rebuking the left-wing form of argumentation that tries to normalize things that are obviously and self-evidently evil and minimize things that are obviously and self-evidently good.
There is not just to be miserable.
This acceptance of it is basically to accept what cannot change.
That there is no point in struggling against the cycle of life.
Nurble teaches his followers to find inner peace in this acceptance.
There is a bit of a contradiction here, though, isn't there?
Nurgle, oh, you can't struggle against the cycle of life.
Except I won't let you die.
Except I'm going to give you eternal life.
Yeah.
So isn't it your absolute lowest?
Yeah, I mean, it doesn't actually follow, does it?
Give up and stop caring about everything is the biggest relief one can imagine.
In the novel The Lords of Silence, we see a guardsman who has been captured by the Death Guard.
In one of their twisted experiments, they literally remove his heart.
But he's been touched by Nurgle and thus cannot die.
His heart remains beating in the Death Guard Lord's possession.
And if he was to leave the ship, he would surely die.
So the Death Guard do not put him under any lock and key.
They let him freely roam around their ship and go wherever he wants to.
Over time, the touch of Nurgle gets stronger and stronger, and he begins to lose himself to his corruption.
After a few weeks, he looks at himself in the mirror and is shocked by what he sees.
His hair is falling out, his skin is oily and pockmarked, his teeth have begun to rot.
And on one hand, he's horrified by what he is becoming.
But on the other, there's this massive sense of relief.
You see, in the guard, he led an incredibly rigorous and restricted life.
Every moment of every day was part of a routine.
And it suddenly dawns on him that since he's been aboard the ship, he hasn't even polished his boots or brushed his teeth once.
Something he would have been reprimanded for or possibly beaten in his old life.
And it's like a massive weight has been lifted off of his shoulders.
The voice in his head that is telling him how horrifying this is slowly gets smaller and smaller over time.
And the idea that there is no hope for him to ever escape slowly begins to be accepted.
Now, this example, I think I'd rather just polish my boots.
Yeah, this is the point I was talking about.
We have now arrived at the position where you have a character who lived a regimented, good life.
He fought for his emperor.
He had a sense of duty.
He had a sense of belonging.
He had a place he needed to be.
He had a regime.
He was probably fit and healthy by the standards of the Imperium.
Yep.
And all of this has now been taken away from him.
He cannot return.
At no point can he return.
He has no hope of escape.
His heart is literally held in the grasp of a terrible monster.
And this is the point at which Nurgle comes for him and says, hey, isn't this fine?
Why should you care about social responsibility?
Why should you better yourself?
Why should you remain healthy or regimented?
Can't you just give up?
And this is presented as a positive.
As a liberation.
That's what it's presented as.
Because it's presented as if the regimentation is a form of oppression.
And again, again, I'm more than happy for the author of this idiot to be like, ah, no, it was a satire.
You're taking this the wrong way.
It was just satired idiot.
And I believe that that would be the case, right?
Because obviously no one's really going to be in favor of the chaos gods.
But listen to the argumentation.
You will hear the same arguments.
Oh, these are standards of whiteness.
You know, having discipline, having order, having these things.
These are all forms of oppression.
And they're actually exclusionary against those things that aren't disciplined and aren't ordered.
And therefore, wouldn't it be better just to give them all up?
It's like, no, because the consequences of giving them up is actually really unappealing.
These things are not equal.
These things are not the same.
...is going to sound super weird, but just bear with me.
How often do we in the real world wish that we could just give up?
Maybe it's something we don't ever acknowledge out loud or even directly think about.
The concept is pushed all the way to the back of our minds by the rigorous structures of society.
But wouldn't it be nice to just stop trying?
I mean, if this is a Poe, he's a good one.
Yeah, this is what I mean too.
Like, if this is a joke, he's certainly dedicating himself to the bit.
Wouldn't it be nice just to give up?
Arch is like, yeah, I mean, I'll let my kids know.
Yeah, you're not going to school today.
Why?
Because I can't be bothered to take you, you know?
We haven't got any food.
Yeah, I couldn't be bothered.
I just gave up.
Just gave up.
You know, like the appeal to this kind of self-indulgence is, again, it really strikes me as being a core facet of left-wing ideology.
Yeah, and surrender to despair, that despair is a positive.
It's absurd.
Yeah, I mean, it's actively subversive.
To just not care anymore about anything.
We force ourselves to go to the gym, we brush our teeth, we do our hair, we shower, and we force ourselves into awkward social situations because it's expected of us.
Actually, I kind of like doing those things.
Yeah, like brushing my teeth.
I'm not being forced to do this.
I do this because I'd like for my teeth to not fall out.
And not even that.
I like the feeling of being clean.
Like, you know, on a day off, I don't actually have to shower if I'm not leaving the house, but I'll shower because I like to feel clean.
You know, there's a tangible difference.
It's not even about the future consequences of not brushing my teeth or having a shower or whatever.
I like the feeling of it.
You know, you become habituated into these things and you gain pleasure from having done them.
I like exercising.
You know, if I don't ride my bike to work these days, I feel lazy.
In fact, this happened to me last week.
All last week.
Pete was like, oh, he hasn't, you know, if you want to lift into work, I was like, no, I'm going to ride my bike into work, which is why I've got it, which is, you know, part of my exercise regime.
And I'd feel really bad if I didn't.
I don't feel bad when I'm riding my bike.
I feel bad when I'm not riding my bike, you know?
We live by the laws of society, and thus every action we take is structured to living up to its ideals.
There we go.
See, oh, society.
Society bad.
Society constraining me.
Society is oppressing me.
That's what he's getting at with this.
Yes.
Even if we don't...
Wouldn't it be nice to just give up?
Yeah.
Wouldn't it be nice to say, not really?
Maybe in the moment.
Maybe, maybe in that instant, where you're like, yeah, okay, I'll let it all go.
You can see how there would be a kind of if for some reason you were some kind of millennial who was incapable of appreciating the good things in life.
You could see initially how that would be a relief.
You know, I'm so congenitally lazy that I literally not going to do anything and I don't care.
Oh, that feels good.
But then it starts feeling bad.
You know, things start falling apart.
We do the things we do for a reason.
And this will not be a little bit or acknowledging.
You put yourself in those awkward social situations to get a girlfriend.
You put yourself in those awkward social positions to hang out with your family in the holidays, etc.
You achieve that.
These are good things.
And I remember too, like, as a child, I didn't understand this.
Like, I hated going on just like a cabin vacation with the family, for example.
And I was like, oh, I'm going to have to hang out with my family for like a week.
Ah.
Now I value that because it's a good thing.
I get to hang out with family, people who love me, people who I love in turn, you know?
Yeah, people who you wouldn't otherwise get to see either.
You know, you have to put an effort in, but the effort is worth it.
Every moment of our lives is spent doing what we're told to.
It's what is expected and demanded of us.
But what if we didn't have to?
You'd look like this guy on the screen.
Yep.
That's it.
Again, it's what's good for a human.
If you don't want to end up like this guy, you do the right thing.
This is your aspirational end point.
What if we didn't have to do anything?
To realize that nothing matters and we're all just part of a never-ending cycle of life, death, and rebirth.
From what perspective?
Things matter to me, a human to give in to despair and accept that nothing can change.
The embrace of despair is a horrifying concept to us, as well it should be.
But to someone who has been blessed by Nurbal, this realization is an incredibly profound moment.
Now, without question, we can obviously see the darker elements in play here.
It's interesting.
I have trouble believing this is genuinely satire because he, because of that, right?
It's like, yeah, yeah, to us, it looks bad.
But to a devotee of Nurkle, you know, it's like, but why would you carve that out if this was satire?
You'd go full ham, right?
You'd be like, no, no, no, this is good.
And it would be better if everyone was doing this.
And again, it's the surrender part of it.
Like, and you could extrapolate this to almost anything.
You know, if you're a sex slave on Epstein's Island, life is probably going to look pretty bleak until you realize, hold on.
Maybe if I don't have any choice, this is better than being dead, which is what he's saying here.
Like, if the alternative is death, maybe a horrible existence as a flesh-eating monster is preferable.
Or maybe not.
But the nobility of the human mind often comes from strength in the face of adversity.
Like, this is the point.
Like, this is how we recognize strength of character in a person.
They may well be in an unchanging.
This is why, like, those people who lose a limb and then go on to run a marathon on like a wooden, not a wooden leg, a metal replacement and stuff like that.
This is why they're heroic.
Like, so if I lost the leg, I'm not going to fucking run a marathon.
You know, and those people who are like, you know, I don't care how hard it is, I'm going to do it.
That is genuinely heroic.
Like, this is the total opposite of that.
This is genuinely a celebration of the weakest and most pathetic aspects of what it is to be a human.
But on its surface, Nurgle teaches you to accept what you can't change, that life and death are part of a glorious cycle.
No, he doesn't.
That death is not something to be feared, but celebrated.
Then why don't you just die?
Why do you have to be kept alive forever?
To make peace with that and know true freedom.
To borrow from Disney, we all must take our place in the great circle of life.
Unless you follow Nurgle.
Yep.
But notice this.
You will always be for the outside of it as a monster.
But notice how this is being framed.
This is true freedom.
It's like, okay, well, I don't really want true freedom if I end up like this.
A mountain.
And you know, about it, I've always been against Disney buying Warhammer 40k, but if they did, Nurgle would make a pretty good Disney princess.
So let me know in the comments what you think about that.
Yeah, I agree with Matchne.
I think it's based.
Okay, so now moving on from Nurgle, we have to talk about his brother Zinch, and his followers have a pretty different view on things.
So Zinch is basically the polar opposite of Nurgle.
Whereas Nurgle is all about stagnation and a cycle with no variation, Zinch is all about change.
He teaches that there is no great cycle, that nothing has to stagnate, that fate and destiny are what we make of them.
The future is malleable and unknown, and that's what makes life worth living.
He's depicted as the god of treachery and magic, of deceit and forbidden knowledge.
His followers are shown to be relentlessly deceptive, often attracting politicians and others who would seek power through duplicitous means.
To be fair, that is a pretty base interpretation of politicians in general.
Yeah, I fully agree with the narrator at this point.
No objections.
Yeah.
Those who seek his favor are quite commonly scholars, philosophers, and would-be practitioners of the arcane arts.
Totally agree.
This describes academia in a nutshell.
Postmodern gobbledygooks set to deceive you.
That's exactly what we're dealing with.
I mean, honestly, this is actually totally based.
Those who see knowledge as the most treasured and valuable asset in the history of the universe.
But Zinch isn't just some mad, spell-slinging trickster god.
Change by its very nature can take infinite forms.
Zinch teaches his followers that they are in charge of their own destiny.
If there's anything about their lives that they don't like, they have the power to change it.
Their fates are in their own hands.
Anyone who has power over you now may be working underneath you tomorrow.
The gambler who's down on his luck may strike it big on the next round of cards.
He preaches that you can lift yourself out of poverty with your own force of will through knowledge and the desire to make a change.
You have control of your own future.
Now, although knowledge is seen as dangerous by the Imperium of Man, knowledge is a fundamental force when it comes to bettering yourself and changing your own destiny.
So I'm just going to pause it here, right?
This is a good, this is great.
And this is why Zinch is my favorite chaos god.
This is a really great characterization.
But the thing is, you're not as clever as you think you are, and things can always get worse.
Change is not innately good.
But again, the narrator is doing a great job characterizing this.
What do you think?
I think he makes a couple of very good points that also, well, point out your false as well.
Okay, your boss might be underneath you tomorrow, or you might not have a boss.
You might be out on the streets.
You might hit it off big on the next round of cards, or more likely, you're going to keep losing a bad card game.
Exactly.
And this is the fundamental deceit of Cinch as well, isn't it?
Like this weird, optimistic, it might be you this time.
So yeah, but is it going to be?
Is it going to be?
It is the exact same logic that lotto companies prey on with normal people.
It literally is.
Yeah.
Could win millions.
You're not gonna, though.
But the lottery example is a really good one as well, because even if you let's say you do win millions, okay, to what benefit?
Like, look at the look at what happens to lottery winners.
They end up losing it, ruining their families, and losing everything.
Like, change is not always good.
And in fact, merely conserving that which you have is difficult enough and enough of a reward in and of itself.
And indeed, change solely for the purpose of change will also inevitably screw you over, inevitably, because the moment you are that millionaire, the moment you are the boss, well, you're now the thing that needs to change.
Yeah.
That's right.
There's no structure.
There's no foundation there.
There's nothing you can rest upon.
Yeah.
That's a great point.
The cycle of change is forever.
Now, Zinch is the god of all knowledge.
His libraries are full of every secret and every story that has ever taken place across a million universes.
And admittedly, he isn't all-knowing when it comes to the future.
There are infinite potential futures stretched across infinite universes.
But the unknown is not something to be feared.
It is something to be embraced.
Change is a powerful force.
Every single moment across the galaxy, change happens an infinite amount of times.
There are infinite decisions being made in every moment, each causing a change and countless different paths the future may take based on the outcome of those decisions.
However, in the storyline of 40k, this is often portrayed as a negative thing, especially when being juxtaposed to the relentless control and persecution of the Imperium.
The thing is, he's making a really good pitch for Zench here, but he's leaving out the fact that A, Zench is the god of deception as well.
So any change promised is not going to be the change you expected.
And B, some things need to accumulate for you to have anything good.
As you previously pointed out, change for change's sake means that you also are the thing that is changed.
Yes, and this is also one of the cool things like about Zinch.
Zinch is in many ways the devil's bargain, you know, the classic devil's bargain, treating with the daredevil.
The devil is always going to have an out.
The devil is always going to have an angle.
No matter how much you think you're tricking the devil, the devil is always tricking you.
The house always wins.
That's the thing.
It's gambling.
You know, this is the gambler's god.
And it seems like there are so many possibilities, but you'll always end up with the one you didn't want.
You always.
The fate of those who work for the Imperium have all but physical chains binding them to their destinies.
There may be room for advancement for those that prove their worth, but in the Imperium of Man, only in death does duty end.
Why is that bad?
Like, you can.
Oh, you're in chains.
What do you mean I'm in chains?
Well, you can advance, but you'll always have duty.
It's like, yes.
And this is why the Imperium of Man is the right thing.
Yes, having duty means having purpose.
You know, you don't find yourself in this nihilistic worldview where you're looking constantly for change or something else when you have a purpose.
You know, it's not bad that the Imperium is characterized this way.
And even if we take it in the most fascistic way possible, the most absolutist control, which the Imperium absolutely does have, why does it need to do this?
Could it be because there are enormous malevolent space gods?
Well, I mean, the picture on the screen, really.
Yes, exactly.
We're not being fascist for no reason in 40k.
We've got a pretty good reason, actually.
But it's wild, isn't it?
It's wild.
But again, he's making a really good argument for Zench.
He's framing the argument very, very persuasively, actually.
So, again, if this is all a big satire, man, you've done really well on this.
It's very rare that you find an individual such as the rogue traders who were able to carve out their own destiny.
For the vast majority of humanity, they're shackled to the will of the God Emperor, toiling away in his factories, working on his engines of war.
Well, yeah, anything sounds bad if you frame it like that.
Like, or they're blessed with security and safety and decency and a place to sleep and a family and a job, food in their bellies.
The irony is, of course, that this is the brightest conceivable interpretation of chaos whilst also being the darkest possible interpretation of the Imperium.
But remember, oh, all you've ever heard about the Chaos Gods is just Imperial propaganda.
It's like, okay, but all I'm hearing about the Chaos Gods and the Imperium is chaos propaganda.
A zinch represents an opportunity to shatter those chains, to spit in the face of the Imperium and embrace whatever destiny you want.
But a word of caution to those would-be truth seekers: those who delve too deep into forbidden lore may not like what they find.
Fate and destiny are fickle, inflexible things, and those who worship the Lord of change may find themselves wishing for the security of those bindings once more.
Case closed.
Point made.
And good point.
You know, change for change's sake, well, might end up well.
So we have one god left to go, and let's talk about the god of excess.
Now, Slanesh is the youngest chaos god, and we know it's not just excess, though.
It's sexual excess, sensual excess.
Pretty much the exact date they came to be.
However, as I mentioned before, from the gods' perspective, they have always been.
Slanesh is the god of excess, hedonism, and depravity, and much like the change brought on by his brother, excess can take on infinite different forms.
Slanesh teaches their followers that whatever activity brings you pleasure, you should pursue it indefinitely.
Oh, God, Vorsch is just like, you know what, that's a good point.
Like, it's the worst thing in the world.
Is there anything that Jeffrey Epstein would have wanted to hear more?
Probably not.
Now, pleasure is not something the Imperium puts in high regards.
The pleasure of man interferes with their work, and that if you're going to find joy in anything, it should be in the service you provide to the Emperor.
Yeah, or be a weird Kuma who's got a really suspicious hard drive full of images.
Your choice?
That pleasure should only come from duty and nowhere else.
Now, Slanesh teaches us that this is a hotload of garbage, that there's nothing wrong with feeling good.
And although often depicted as a sex god, joy can come from anything, not just pleasures of the flesh.
Are you a painter or a musician or an artist of any form?
If creating beautiful things makes you happy, then that's what you should always be striving for.
Now, again, why is it that Slanesh always presents itself as the god of immediate sensual pleasure?
Because art, what he's referring to here, art is not pleasure in the most direct sense.
What he's talking about is satisfaction.
And I'm well aware of this when I'm painting my miniatures.
Like the actual engagement of it sometimes is a chore, right?
You know, you actually, you know, the time it takes to do it.
Oh, God, I've got to do five marines all in the same way, blah, blah, blah.
But after you've finished, you get satisfaction from it.
It's not an immediate sensual pleasure.
And so he's mischaracterizing what it is Slanesh I think is actually presenting.
It's also again that we could return back to the interpretation thing.
Slanesh always comes across as one thing and it is always excess.
Like, halting this at one point in time and going, but what about a painting is pointless because that painting will always be corrupted into something much worse.
I mean, look at Lucius here.
Look at his armor full of lost souls who are desperately seeking one more high, like the god of kumas.
God, it's awful.
In itself, is not evil.
In fact, most would agree that doing what makes you happy is a pretty admirable goal.
Depends what makes you happy.
Yeah.
And again, being happy, being happy is not the same as sensual pleasure.
Like, happiness is a state of affairs that persists over time.
You can be in, like, when, like, you know, if I fell off my bike or something, scuff my knee, I'd be like, oh, that hurt.
But I wouldn't be like, oh, now I'm unhappy.
You know, now I must leave my wife and abandon my children because I'm not happy with my life.
You know, that's not what happiness is.
Happiness is not cooming.
Countless groups, societies, and religions across time and space have also breached the pursuit of happiness as the most important path a person can take.
But that's not what Slanesh is offering.
The desire to create a world where everyone is free to do whatever makes them happy, where there are no taboos and joy is the ultimate goal.
Sounds like people who have got a real problem with the age of consent.
Doesn't it?
Well, yeah.
This is precisely it.
It's excess.
Even if we begin with the sexual excess, right?
It will always continue on to the next taboo, regardless.
Like, even if your first sexual obsession, ah, I'd like to fuck my wife in the ass, right?
Okay.
Then that'll move on.
Because it's Slanesh.
Because there are no barriers.
And if there are no barriers, and if indeed it is a moral action to seek pleasure purely for pleasure's sake, there's literally no act of hedonism or horror that is too great.
In fact, it becomes a virtue when you do it.
I mean, this is giving license to literally everyone who does something terrible like that.
Like, you know, what if there were no boundaries?
It's like, yeah, I guess the rapists would be thrilled.
Like, this seems like a very pro-rape position.
Because it is.
Slanesh is the god of love, passion, and desire, and without Slanesh, the galaxy would somehow be a million times more bleak and miserable than it is in 40k.
Really, we're going to characterize all intimacy as Slaneshi now, are we?
Yeah.
Again, like, it's dumb.
It is too broad a bloody net to cast.
Because it's not, it is excess.
Lanesh isn't all of these things.
It is the excess of these things.
So all of this sounds pretty good, right?
No.
No.
It sounds like there are going to be loads of rapists on the march.
Like, not even thinking what they're doing is bad.
Well, this is not how they are depicted in the lore.
The audience has shown multiple examples of excess taken to such extremes that it becomes the polar opposite of joy.
It becomes a depraved horror story.
You see, an individual who gives themselves over completely to the pursuit of joy will quickly get bored of the things that originally made them happy.
No matter how much they liked it in the beginning, inevitably, they will have to kick it up a notch, so to speak, to experience the same level of pleasure once again.
This is a very slippery slope that leads to addiction and depravity.
The painter that originally enjoyed painting beautiful landscapes under the influence of Slanesh ends up with gas chambers.
Where are we going with this?
But to be fair, he's making a good argument against Slanesh here.
I shouldn't interrupt him.
May turn to using their own blood on their canvas.
And once that stops being artistically fulfilling, they may take to the streets in search of victims to use in their twisted art galleries.
Now, this may sound like a pretty extreme example, but it's exactly what happened to Serena DeAngelis, one of the remembrancers aboard Fulgrim's flagship, who visited the very same temple dedicated to the worship of Slanesh that the Emperor's children discovered.
And like them, she would eventually descend into excess and madness.
All of this is covered in the novel Fulgrim, but we'll cover that in a future video.
So if there's anything I want you to take away from this video, it's that the Chaos Gods are infinitely complex, with more facets and ideals than people give them credit for.
Hang on, hang on, then.
I mean, has he not just made amazing arguments against the Chaos Gods?
Yes, then Serena de Anglis is one example given in the Horrors Heresy series, which is the excess of it.
The problem is, he keeps putting this in an exception.
Like he's like, oh, but this is how it's painted in the law.
And this is how it happens.
We have no example of this not happening.
Well, the law is the canon, right?
And the law is the construction of the reality of the 40k universe.
So when he's appealing to some kind of real 40k universe, well, that can't be found outside of the law.
It's what the law is.
Yeah, which is again why I'm thinking that what he's trying to do is make a subtle point about reality, like our reality, when he's mentioning a lot of this, by essentially defending the potential act by going like, oh, but this wouldn't be bad if done to this point.
Except, of course, the Chaos God would never do that, because again, excess for excess's sake.
I mean, I've come to the opinion that this is actually a subtle way of saying the Imperium did nothing wrong.
The Chaos Gods and the progressive arguments for them are all evil in and of themselves.
And suffer not the heretic to live.
Blessed is the mind too small for doubt.
And various other Imperial catchphrases.
And in the universe of 40k, they make for some pretty compelling antagonists.
But what if the warp had never been truly corrupted?
What if it had never become the realm of chaos?
What if hatred and vengeance and the desire for bloodshed and war had never been allowed to infect the sea of souls?
If the gods were not locked in their great game to dominate the universe, could things have been different?
If the galaxy was at peace, would the chaos gods' negative aspects be what have come to dominate their personalities and thus the desires of their followers?
What if there were no dark gods?
What if all we had was the god of honor, of life, of knowledge, and of love?
Are we as a collective sentient species responsible for the current state of the immaterium?
Is the current state of that universe and by extension its gods a result of the folly of man and our infinite flaws?
No, because this happened long before mankind existed.
Was it 60 million years ago?
Well, that was the necromatia.
The chaos gods popped up a lot later again.
Again, he's presenting a weird, weird kind of mixed up position here.
He's claiming that the chaos gods were somehow corrupted by humanity.
That is not what happened.
Because that's right, is humanity bad.
The warp is a reflection of us.
Like, this are aspect of us, the horror and the bloodshed, are aspects of humanity, but of the wider galaxy as well.
But that does not mean that there were peaceful, lovable creatures in there before.
These gods he mentions do exist.
The god of honor does exist.
It's like with the orcs.
The orcs believe that painting their vehicles red makes them go faster, and because of how the way A of the Warp works, their vehicles go faster when they paint them red.
But when he was saying how are not these gods, but when he was saying how the Immaterium was flooded with bitter souls that were killed millions of years ago during the war in heaven, it's like you can't blame us for that.
That's not our fault.
We didn't do that.
We didn't exist.
We were still monkeys in the trees at that point.
Like, why are we the problem?
And then it's like, oh, well, you came into existence in a terrible universe.
Okay.
Is that our fault?
Do we blame ourselves for that?
Or do we uphold the virtuous order of the Emperor?
That's the question.
At the end of the day, it's that this isn't a problem for us.
This is simply the universe in which we exist, and it is not the folly of man, if anything.
It is simply the folly of everything, all sentient creatures.
No, what it is, the folly of accepting any of these vices to be the equivalent of virtues.
This is specifically what the virtues are here to avoid.
Like, if you look at Zench on the left, the virtue is telling the truth.
Telling the truth maintains things that are real.
With Nurgle, obviously, it's cleanliness and hygiene.
With Slanesh, it's restraint and moderation.
And with Korn, it's peace.
Like, these are the virtues in contrast to the vices.
And you can see the difference.
These do map onto reality.
These are real things that you should think about in your real life.
Let me know what you think down in the comments because I'm genuinely curious what you think.
And I'll leave you with this final thought.
The followers of chaos are often referred to as the slaves to darkness.
They are completely withholden to the whims of their dark masters.
But if the chaos gods are a reflection of us, their power being directly tied to the emotions and wills of man, so much so that in the war-torn future of the 41st millennium, their noble and honorable sides have all been but pushed into complete obscurity.
In this sense, are the gods not actually slaves to us?
Yes.
In fact, that is the one proper point he finally arrived at.
The gods are a reflection of us, but they are reflections of specific parts of us.
There was never an honorable part of corn.
It has never existed, not at any point.
The gods were created to be reflections of us or specific parts of us.
In the case of corn, it is violence, it is bloodshed.
There was never an honorable god of death.
Or murder.
Or a decent god of perversion.
A clean god of disruption and pollution.
By being these things, we know that they are not good.
Well, I think that's the end of the video.
So, I've got to say, I actually really enjoyed the video.
Like, I actually enjoyed the guy's arguments.
They were persuasive in their way.
The thing is, it strikes me a lot as a little bit of my first philosophy, kind of.
Sure.
Because I don't necessarily think he is making the progressive point, yet at some point, I think he is consciously making the progressive point.
I found it difficult to explain.
No, no, no.
He's using progressive argumentation for the Chaos Gods.
But I don't even know if he necessarily believes or understands that that is what he is doing.
I mean, I'm prepared to be charitable and say that this was essentially an April Fool's video that he released later than April Fool's.
And this is just a bit of fun to apply left-wing argumentation to the Chaos Gods.
Because the thing is, I actually agree that this could be applied, right?
You literally can apply progressive morality, the relativistic progressive morality, to the Chaos Gods and seek to be inclusive of them, which means you have to magnify those things that could be framed as virtues about the Chaos Gods, even though, of course, they are entirely subsumed in vice.
And this is what progressives do to any faction that we would normally keep out of our moral consideration because of the things that are actually bad about them.
And they can't accept that things are irredeemably bad either.
This is like, it's got to be, oh, no, no, no, no, no, you've got to understand.
It's like, no, I don't have to understand.
Some things are bad.
Like, looting in California is bad in all cases.
I don't care who's doing it.
I don't care how historically oppressed those people have been called.
Like, in all cases, it's bad for them to do that.
And so this is what he's doing with the Chaos Gods.
Perhaps, perhaps.
To me, it does not come across as satire.
But then again, right now, I find it hard to determine what is and isn't satire anymore.
Yeah, who can tell?
Our world has gotten to the point where it's become very, very difficult to differentiate.
But no, I've got to say I really enjoyed this.
And one of the nice things about having a channel that's not monetized is I don't have to do any super chats.
So thanks everyone for joining us.
You know, I'm like, if for you know, for the guy who made this, you know, no judgment or bad blood or anything like that, you know, this was just fun.
And I thought the video was very good.
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