Welcome to the Church
of Cosmic Indifference. I'm
Reverend Randolph. Today, we step
into the works of Robert W.
Chambers, the author who
introduced the appellation "King
in Yellow" into the mythology of
Hastur and Carcosa with his
short story "The Repairer of
Reputations." Let's Dive in.
The Repairer of Reputations was
written in 1895 but it's set in
a 1920 version of New York City.
A version that we may not be
able to trust. See, the main
character of the story, Hildred
Castaigne, is a prime example of
an unreliable narrator. He
describes a New York City with a
strong military presence and
claims that a new suicide
chamber has been installed in a
park near his apartment. But
Hildred also acknowledges that
his personality changed
dramatically a few years back,
when he fell from a horse and
sustained a head injury. He
spent a little time in an asylum
under the care of a Doctor
Archer, who eventually released
Hildred. But as the story goes
on, we get the impression that
that may not have been the best
idea. While he was in recovery,
Hildred read a forbidden play
called The King in Yellow, in
which Hastur, Carcosa, and the
Lake of Hali all figure
prominently--apparently somewhat
changed from their portrayal in
Ambrose Bierce's stories. Or
maybe Hildred just read some
Ambrose Bierce stories and his
injured brain translated them
into something else entirely.
Hildred spends time with a Mr
Wilde, who calls himself a
Repairer of Reputations. Mr.
Wilde has a tempestuous
relationship with a feral cat he
treats as a pet, and he
supposedly keeps a ledger with
all the people whose reputations
he has repaired for varying sums
of money--increasingly exorbitant
sums of money as the story goes
on. Mr. Wilde also has a
manuscript that Hildred calls
the Imperial Dynasty of America,
and he claims to have thousands
of willing revolutionaries just
waiting for his signal--people
who have been given the Yellow Sign.
Hildred believes that this
revolution will make him king.
He even has what he describes as
a golden, diamond-encrusted diadem
in a massive steel safe in
his apartment. But there are a
couple of things standing
between Hildred and the throne.
First of all, Hildred's cousin
Louis has to be taken out of the
picture, and Hildred believes
that Louis must be prevented
from marrying his beloved
Constance. Incidentally, when
Louis sees the crown, it
strikes him as a cheap prop for
some sort of masquerade. And he
calls Hildred's impressive
safe "a biscuit box". Hildred
and Mr Wilde arrange for the
murder of Constance and her
father, while Hildred convinces
his cousin Louis to renounce his
claim on the crown and go into
exile or die. Hildred may have
also killed Dr. Archer in the
meantime. He says he did, at
least. Up to this point, Louis
has been very tolerant of
Hildred's eccentricities. He
doesn't really think of Hildred
as dangerous, but he doesn't
think Hildred is entirely well,
either. When Louis learns of
Hildred's plan, however, he
realizes how dangerous his
cousin really is. Unfortunately
for Hildred, the murderer that
he and Mr. Wilde had commissioned
doesn't kill Constance and her
father. He runs off into the
public suicide chamber, and
Hildred discovers that Mr Wilde
has been killed instead,
probably by his feral cat,
leaving Hildred without a co-
conspirator, and with little
hope of seizing the throne. The
police arrive and arrest
Hildred who spends the rest of
his days in an asylum for the
criminally insane.
As this story begins, we don't
have any indication that
Hildred is an untrustworthy
reporter of facts. But as his
tale continues, we might begin
to doubt everything he's told us.
Those military forces might just
be regular police, and that
suicide chamber may just be a
subway entrance. So let's take a
more detailed look at the world
Hildred believes he lives in,
taking his version of things
with a grain of salt or maybe a
canister of salt. According to
Hildred, America has become
peaceful and prosperous because
it has held self preservation as
the first law. He believes that
America has excluded foreign
born Jews, settled black people
into an independent state of
Suanee, severely limited
immigration, and centralized
power into the executive branch.
He also believes that after a
Congress of Religions, bigotry
and intolerance were laid in
their graves. But it's hard to
imagine who was left to be
bigoted toward and intolerant of
once all the people he thought
of as "undesirables" were
shunted off to other parts of
the world. Robert Chambers wrote
this story in 1895 and Hildred
views shouldn't be mistaken for
Chambers views. But more than
100 years later, we still have a
problem with white supremacy in
this country. There are people
who believe our problems will be
solved if we just get rid of
immigrants who have darker skin
and segregate neighborhoods.
There are elected officials
right now in the United States
of America who promote the idea
of white-dominant culture. And
there are people in the
supposedly civilized nation of
the United States who believe
that some people are less human
because of the color of their skin.
So let me be very clear
about the stance of the Church
of Cosmic Indifference. We
affirm the inherent worth and
dignity of every person. Many
systems in place in the United
States have been established on
a very different principle, with
a bias favoring white males. If
we want to be a nation that
lives up to the ideal of liberty
and justice for all, we have to
foster some systemic change. If
we want well-being and wholeness
in our own lives, we have to be
aware of how our lives are
interconnected with everybody else's.
Here's the thing: one
truth that we see in the
Repairer of Reputations is that
it doesn't solve any societal
problems to get rid of the
people that you label as
"undesirable." In this story,
Hildred still encounters people
who are homeless and destitute.
In Hildred's reality, there are
still people who want to kill
themselves because life is
unbearable. They may just be
taking the subway, but that's
not what Hildred thinks is
happening. There are still
reasons for people to murder one
another and try to orchestrate
uprisings for the sake of
claiming power over other people.
There are still mental health
issues that aren't being
adequately addressed. The
problems human beings create for
themselves don't go away just
because the people Hildred has
labeled as undesirable or
different have been eliminated
from the picture. Now we don't
have any reason to trust
Hildred's report of world events
or national policies. It's the
view of a character who is
unstable and unreliable. But we
see a lot of this happening even
at the national level right now,
from the highest political
office all the way down to your
aunt that you think about
unfollowing on Facebook every
week. People cast other human
beings as the problem. The
"undesirables." People call other
human beings animals or worse.
People talk as if getting rid of
certain groups would solve all
of our problems and make the
country safe, make the country
prosperous even. But the color of
a person's skin, the country of
a person's heritage, these
things are not at the root of
the problems we face. That's an
illusion. We do this in our
personal lives, too. We look
around us and see what external
factors we can blame for the
problems that we experience in
our lives. We blame other people
for our challenges or we're
envious of people who seem not
to struggle in the same ways
that we struggle. We think often
that our personal lives would be
better if we could just remove
some problem people from our
path. But that's just an illusion,
too. Now, yes, there are some
individuals who make life more
difficult for the people around
them. I don't mean to say that
no person causes problems for
other people. Some people do
behave in a way that's harmful
to the people around them and to
themselves. The illusion is that
we can solve our problems just
by finding the right person or
group of people to blame for it
and eliminating them from the
picture. Whether you want to
label the group as "undesirable"
because of the color of their
skin, or their religion, or their
sexual orientation, or income
bracket, or political affiliation,
or whatever. We could get rid of
every person we want to put in
the category of "undesirable," and
we'll still have some challenges
to overcome. At some point we
have to look at ourselves and
recognize our role in creating
the problems we face and our
role in keeping those problems
in place. On the national stage,
some people seem very reluctant
to own their own role in
creating or perpetuating the
injustice, disparity, and
inequity that keeps fueling
societal anxiety. It's easier to
blame people and dehumanize
others than to own how our
decisions cause harm to other
people. And in our personal lives
we're often reluctant to own
our role in creating or
perpetuating the challenges that
prevent us from living more
fully. I'm not saying it's all
right to blame the victim of
someone else's abusive behavior.
It's absolutely appropriate to
hold individuals who do harmful
things responsible for their
actions. Harmful behavior should
have consequences for the people
who engage in the harmful
behavior. In our personal lives,
maybe we strive to identify
specific individuals who engage
in specific behaviors and not
label an entire group as the
problem. Some people don't do
that, though. They hold an
unwarranted belief that an
entire group of people are
blameworthy, in which case the
person with the prejudice is the
one causing harm, not the group
they label. I guess it needs to
be said that the victims of
racism or bigotry are not
responsible for changing that
behavior. It isn't the
responsibility of black
Americans to end racism. They're
taking action to educate the
rest of the country and the
world. They're taking action to
foster meaningful, systemic
change. They aren't the cause of
racism, though. If they take
responsibility for shifting our
society, maybe it's because it
seems clear to them that no one
else is going to. But we should
all care about ending racism.
Racism causes harm to our entire
society. Instead, we often hear
or even suggest, that black
Americans ought to be model
citizens, to take extra pains not
to seem threatening. To vulnerably
explain their experience, and
educate everybody else. To behave
perfectly all the time. Black
Americans are the ones most
obviously wounded by racism, but
our entire society is harmed by
racism. And perpetuators of
racism engage in self-harm and
societal harm without even being
aware of it. Maybe it's easier
to talk about these things when
we think of behavior as
problematic or harmful, rather
than thinking of people as
harmful. When we recognize that
people are not completely
defined by their worst behavior,
maybe we can address the real
problems of harmful behavior
more easily. And maybe we can
recognize our own responsibility
for setting healthy boundaries.
Of course we have to ensure that
boundaries are maintained. We
can come up with a lot of
boundaries for police officers,
for instance. But we also have
to enforce some consequences
when those boundaries are
crossed. Otherwise the
boundaries don't mean anything.
Even having clear boundaries
won't prevent us from ever being
harmed by another person's
behavior. But we don't have to
accept a permanent label of
victim. We may have to learn new
ways of being in order to create
the kind of wholeness and well-
being we want for ourselves and
the world. Sometimes it's just
very easy to look around us and
point to all the things outside
of ourselves that create
challenge. And we often fail to
even examine whether we
contribute to that challenge or
that problem in our lives. If we
want to live into a best
possible version of ourselves, if
we care deeply about a
meaningful vision we're casting
for our lives, we can own that
vision. We stand the best chance
of experiencing fullness of life
when we take personal
responsibility for it, taking
responsibility for our own part
in things doesn't just apply to
major life decisions or major
societal problems. Several years
ago, I was collaborating on
teaching a course with a very
capable co-leader. We planned
each session meticulously, and I
would leave our planning
meetings feeling like everything
was clear. Then we'd get to the
class and there would be some
confusion. We wouldn't be in
sync. It was as if we hadn't
planned the material at all.
Both of us were capable and
knowledgeable, but it was still
tempting to blame her. Things
were clear to me, so she must be
the one getting confused. She
must be the one knocking our
carefully laid plans off track.
This is an easy assumption to
make. What I was able to do
instead, though, was take a step
back and consider what I could
do differently. And in our next
planning meeting, I took notes a
little more intentionally, and I
went over what I understood the
plan to be before we parted ways.
It turns out we were leaving our
planning meetings with
completely different impressions
of what we had planned. It's
startling to realize that other
people don't understand things
exactly the way I do. But when
we were able to clarify our
expectations and truly agree on
a plan, the class went smoothly.
When we can take appropriate
responsibility for our role in
smaller things, we can more
easily take appropriate
responsibility for our role in
big visionary things. I could
have thought of my co-leader as
the problem. I could have blamed
her and felt unreasonably
confident in my own
understanding. Or I could have
seen her as a threat. I could
have assumed that she was
sabotaging the course
intentionally, out of some
unexpressed animosity she was
harbouring toward me. Our
imagination can go in a lot of
different directions. None of
that would have helped the
situation. Taking responsibility
for saying "I want to go over
things to ensure that we both
understand our plan the same way"
made a big difference. In a way,
it was also setting a boundary
about how we would collaborate.
I was defining my own behavior
in taking responsibility for
ensuring clarity. That's what
boundaries are. They define our
personal behavior or the
behavior of an organization.
Boundaries declare what we allow
and what we create. Boundaries
aren't about people. Boundaries
aren't about keeping people out.
Boundaries are about behavior,
so setting boundaries are also a
way for us to follow through on
a commitment to separate people
from their behaviors. People
aren't the problem. Behaviors
are the problem. So I may set a
boundary that I don't condone
racist jokes. If my uncle
decides to tell a racist joke, I
can speak up and say, "Not cool.
I don't participate in racist
humor. It's not okay with me." My
uncle could decide not to tell
any more racist jokes. His
behavior was the problem, not
him. Who knows? He may stop
telling racist jokes altogether.
Or maybe he just doesn't say
them around me. The boundaries
we set are about behaviors, not
people. And they're about our
behavior most of all. Part of
setting boundaries is including
meaningful consequences. If you
set a boundary of "I will not
try to engage in a conversation
when you're calling me insulting
names," that's a reasonable
boundary. But we often make the
mistake of thinking we can
control other people. Boundaries
are about us. What we will do.
Boundaries are about what we
allow and what we create. So
after I set that boundary of "I
will not try to engage in a
conversation when you're calling
me insulting names," if that
other person continues to call
me insulting names, it doesn't
make sense for me to insist that
they stop. My boundaries aren't
about them, so the consequences
have to be something within my
control. Maybe if you're on
social media, you unfriend or
block someone, that's a
consequence you control. If
you're in person, maybe you
leave the room. That can be an
intentional consequence. We
could enforce our boundaries
with consequences that don't
reflect our life-affirming
values. That's often what we do
when we feel anxious about
someone behaving badly. We
enforce our boundaries by
throwing something or hurling a
few insults of our own, somehow
escalating the situation instead
of living into our vision for
who we want to be. That
typically doesn't help anything.
So it's best for us to consider
the consequences we'll enforce
ahead of time. When we set a
boundary. It might even be
helpful for others to know what
those consequences are. This
works in larger organizations, too.
Imagine if a police force said
"we have a boundary that our
officers will not use excessive
force in performing their duties."
Great boundary. What happens
when an officer steps over that
boundary, though? If there are no
consequences, the boundary
doesn't mean anything. And the
consequences aren't intended to
be punitive. My boundary of
taking time to ensure that my co-
presenter and I were on the same
page wasn't intended to demean
or insult anybody. A boundary
that we won't participate in an
exchange with someone who's
calling us names isn't about
punishing them for bad behavior.
It's about what we want to
create in our lives. It's about
protecting our vision for the
wholeness and well-being we
nurture in our lives and the
world around us. So it's not
unreasonable for a police force
to have consequences for
ignored boundaries. They're
protecting their vision of what
they will allow and what they
will create. They're preserving
relationships with the people
they're supposed to serve. They
would be saying "This matters.
This boundary matters." So when
we see a video of a white police
officer killing an unarmed black
suspect, we're horrified and we
demand justice. But when we
learned that this officer had 18
incidents of excessive violence
on his record, we see a pattern
that should have been stopped a
long time before it resulted in
another unarmed black victim of
unwarranted police violence. It
shouldn't take 19 incidents of
harmful behavior for a person,
especially a person with
responsibility for public safety,
to experience meaningful
consequences that help them
reassess their behavior and make
some change. Either a boundary
wasn't really set or that
boundary didn't have any
consequences attached to it. As
a society, we absolutely must
hold people accountable. And one
way we can do this is by
compassionately calling
attention to the boundaries that
we set to define what we will
allow and what we will create.
We can do this as a society and
we can do this in our personal
lives. Boundaries help us call
attention to problematic
behaviour rather than
problematic people. And
boundaries help us take
responsibility for what we allow
and what we create. Even when we
find ourselves the victims of
other people's behavior. Even
when other people's behaviour
has caused us grievous harm,
there are usually things we can
do to healthily address those
wounds and find healing so that
we can move forward. We can
identify the individual who
caused the wounds. We can
identify the behavior that
caused harm, but we don't have
to allow that wound to define us.
There is so much more within us
that we could let define our
lives. We don't have to be
defined by other people's behavior.
As we continue to see
anxiety in our world manifest in
blaming and dehumanizing other
people and avoiding personal
responsibility for the suffering
we contribute to, may we remember
Hildred's experience of the
world that removing groups of
people from the equation didn't
remove suffering violence or
human need. If we want to build
amazing, purposeful lives, we
can take some responsibility for
that creation. If we want to
contribute to a better world, we
can recognize our role instead
of just pointing out all the
problem people in trying to get
rid of them. And if we care about
others, we'll set clear
boundaries with meaningful
consequences, instead of blaming
and ostracizing. When we set clear
boundaries, we care well for
ourselves, too. May you have the
courage and the vulnerability to
live into these truths with
integrity to your life-affirming
values.
Each week we pronounce
Curses and Blessings, knowing
full well that nothing in the
cosmos is going to answer our
requests or respond to our
petitions. We don't Curse people
for their identity, we Curse
them for their behavior. We
don't promote the idea that
people are undesirable, or that
people are the problem, or that,
by eliminating a group of people,
we'll eliminate some problem that
we face. At the same time, we
recognize that some people
engage in harmful behaviors,
and that's why we Curse them,
because we recognize that
there's a difference between a
person's identity and a person's
behavior. And we realize that
in order to let go of pain or
resentment in our own lives so
that we can experience healing
and wholeness, we first have to
admit that the wound exists.
Then we can decide what we want
to do with our pain or anger or
resentment. We might choose to
just let go of it, or we might
take some other meaningful
action that's within our power
and is in alignment with our
life affirming-values. Whatever
we decide, practicing a curse
opens the way for us to
acknowledge the pain or
resentment and move forward.
When we pronounce Blessings,
it's a way for us to express our
gratitude, our hopes, our
connection with one another. We
can do more than just pronounce
a Blessing if we want to, or
we can let the Blessing be
enough. When we hope for things,
though, when we have a
meaningful vision for the world
or for our lives, articulating
that hope or vision can help us
act in accord so that we can
meaningfully respond with
integrity to the things we value.
We don't withhold Blessings from
anyone because the indifferent
cosmos treats everyone with
equal disinterest. With all of
that being said, I now proclaim
this week's Curse and Blessing.
We curse Reagan in the name of
Penumbral Mynoghra, for throwing
to the wolves a colleague and
collaborator while disavowing
any personal responsibility or
ownership for miscalculation.
Great, She-Daemon of the Shadows,
while Reagan's betrayal may have
preserved Reagan's dignity and
spared her the immediate
ridicule she feared would be
consequent to her team's inter-
mutual oversight, may Reagan's
associates fade into the shadows,
the bonds of camaraderie being
severed irrevocably, and may
Reagan suffer the unexpurgated
ramifications, being left to bear
the full culpability for her
errors, without the safeguard of
allies to denounce and abandon.
May Reagan languish in
desolation, Dark and Disconsolate
Mother, until such time as she
make amends for her
transgression of the sanctity of
partnership.
We bless Sophie in
the name of Nyarlathotep,
Moon Presence and Crawling
Mist, as does The Illimitable
Masked One, Sophie
diligently and devotedly wears
diverse masks to fulfill
multifarious workplace
expectations, as well as
complete a research dissertation
to attain a college degree.
Abiding Haunter of the Dark, may
Sophie be imbued with
immaculate endurance, and despite
the cyclopean adiposity
of stress that looms over Sophie,
May she be borne up, Ethereal,
Floating Horror and Black Wind,
carried ever forward towards
success as she defines it by
buoyant passion and indefatigable
commitment to the vision Sophie
casts for her life. May Sophie
embrace her limitations with
gentle compassion and hold
herself to reasonable
expectations as she exults in
fullness of life. Hear us, faceless
Nyarlathotep, Crawling
Chaos. We speak these Curses and
Blessings into an indifferent
cosmos, expecting nothing and
receiving in accordance with our
expectations.
If you would like
a blessing from the Great Old
Ones, or if you would like us to
Curse those who offend you, that
you may release your resentment
and carry that poison with you
no longer, please visit our
website at cosmicindifference.org
or seek us out on
Patreon at patreon.com
/cosmicindifference. Our
book, Lessons from an Indifferent
Cosmos: How Cthulhu Can Help You
Be a Better Human, is also
available on Amazon. It includes
36 lessons on our opportunity to
take personal responsibility for
creating lives of purpose and
meaning, drawing on the weird
fiction of H. P. Lovecraft and
other authors who have
contributed to the Cthulhu
Mythos. You can also subscribe
to our channel here, of course.
May you see clearly your role in
creating and perpetuating the
challenges you face so that you
might be empowered to take
meaningful action, resisting the
temptation to blame others and
claiming ownership for your own
wholeness, well-being, and
fullness of life. Go with peace
and courage.
