Mythology is Dead and Capitalism Killed It
Our God Is The GDP
Hi, I’m Max Murphy! A failed creative turned existential imbecile. These days, I write The Murphy Memos where we explore the absurdity of existence with crappy jokes.
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Humans find meaning through stories. As history marches on, those stories change with the times.
Suddenly, the story of Oedipus nailing his mom doesn’t have the profound spiritual significance for you the way it did for the older generations (those sick fucks).
You need something new.
These hero myths have taken many forms from religions, worldviews, even political ideologies.
But what happens when our guiding star is the GDP and our greatest stories are told in Excel spreadsheets?
The Rise, Fall, and Decline of Mythology
In the last 500 years, we’ve seen a radical change in the stories we tell ourselves.
The Medieval peasant had the religion of Christ with visions of heaven. The industrial proletariat had the worldview of Marx and visions of communism. Today, we have the story of the market and visions of the GDP going up 2% this year.
The story we believe is supposed to be the answer to The Big Why. But marginal economic growth does not suffice as an answer, as evidenced by the shocking popularity of cynical nihilism these days.
We’ve traded divinity for the dollar and sold our souls in the process.
Our culture’s heroes are billionaires and business owners. And if you’re reading this newsletter, you’re smart enough to know that you’ll never be one of them.
Neither will I.
No wonder most people are opting out of this story - we know it’s a fucking lie.
Tragically, we seem to be trapped. Stuck in a story we don’t like, but unable to break free. All we can do is complain about it on the internet and fantasize about dying because that’s the only escape.
Doomers. Doomers Everywhere.
Have you ever noticed that popular fiction is always so negative? It’s always a story about a dystopian government dominating our lives (Orwellian fiction), a zombie apocalypse (The Walking Dead), or even a natural disaster killing us all (Don’t Look Up).
We’re incapable of imagining a brighter future or a happy ending.
In all likelihood, there’s a good chance we are fucked and we are all gunna die miserably.
But its an entirely different thing to BELIEVE IT.
Like, fuck man. That’s dark.
One of my favorite writers is
who challenges this dark paradigm, “I'm tired of dystopian novels. If even our writers can't imagine a better future for humanity, how can we create it?”As much as I admire her optimism, I cannot bring myself to believe there is any hope. Wanting to create a brighter future is one thing, but the hard part is creating a story that gets us there.
How does one do such a thing?
A story EVERYONE can believe, that answers The Big Why, and takes us to a utopian paradise where everyone gets free cupcakes and the only torture happens in the bedroom?
Tragically, such a story will never be created because the only people who might create it are too busy selling you over-priced t-shirts.
Stealing Culture Before It’s Created
We’ve ventured through the bleak abyss of our modern mythology, only to stumble upon the final boss in our quest for meaning: pre-corporation.1
It’s like the villain in every dystopian tale who knows how to twist your deepest desires for their own gain.
Except, this isn’t a story.
It’s the uncanny reality Mark Fisher warned us about—where every revolutionary idea, dream of utopia, or possibility for change gets swallowed, digested, and spat out by the machine as a sanitized, sellable shadow of itself.
As Fisher explained, “What we are dealing with now is not the incorporation of materials that previously seemed to possess subversive potentials, but instead, their precorporation: the pre-emptive formatting and shaping of desires, aspirations and hopes by capitalist culture.”
Imagine a utopia, any utopia—clean energy, universal love, an end to hunger—and give it a minute. Okay, now check your Instagram feed. See? It’s already a hashtag, a lifestyle brand, and a limited-edition sneaker line.
This isn’t just the commodification of our dreams, it’s the death grip of pre-corporation on our collective imagination. Our visions of a brighter future are being repackaged and sold back to us, stripped of their power to change much of anything.
Take Squid Game for example, a gut-wrenching condemnation of capitalism that ends up as… wait for it… a silly game show and a merchandise goldmine.2
It’s the perfect example of pre-corporation in action. A story that starts as a mirror to our darkest realities becomes part of the entertainment carousel, spinning us around so fast we forget what we were upset about in the first place.
So long as commerce and culture are interconnected, and stories are dependent on profitability, we will never escape the labyrinth of lies that is 21st century capitalism.
Fisher explained pre-corporation in Capitalist Realism. I’d also suggest watching this video for more context around the idea and how it relates to popular culture.
Squid Game was not only recuperated by content creators like MrBeast, but also by Netflix itself that announced a season 2 that will be adopting the games from season 1 into a game show.