#debt: the first 5000 years

[drumlincountry]

I would like, then, to end by putting in a good word for the non-industrious poor. At least they aren’t hurting anyone. Insofar as the time they are taking time off from work is being spent with friends and family, enjoying and caring for those they love, they’re probably improving the world more than we acknowledge.

David Graeber "debt: the first 5000 years".

[theoutcastrogue]

Merry Christmas! Here's to cheer and rest. Now, where did I-? *I start to search my pockets for the gift. The Rogue has already stolen it and is out of the window.* Food for thought for the season - considering to how many places he sneaks in undetected, Santa certainly must have some rogue skills.

Happy holidays! David Graeber appears to agree with you:

"Religious traditions often insist that the only true charity is anonymous—in other words, not meant to place the recipient in one’s debt. One extreme form of this, documented in various parts of the world, is the gift by stealth, in a kind of reverse burglary: to literally sneak into the recipient’s house at night and plant one’s present so no one can know for sure who has left it. The figure of Santa Claus, or Saint Nicholas (who, it must be remembered, was not just the patron saint of children, but also the patron saint of thieves) would appear to be the mythological version of the same principle: a benevolent burglar with whom no social relations are possible and therefore to whom no one could possibly owe anything, in his case, above all, because he does not actually exist."

~ Debt: The First 5,000 Years

[butts-bouncing-on-the-beltway]

Anarchist Book Club Presents:

David Graeber's Debt: The First 5000 Years

Introduction

What follows are a series of brief reflections (part of a much broader work in progress) on debt, credit, and virtual money: topics that are, obviously, of rather pressing concern for many at the current time.

There seems little doubt that history, widely rumored to have come to an end a few years ago, has gone into overdrive of late, and is in the process of spitting us into a new political and economic landscape whose contours no one understands. Everyone agrees something has just ended but no one is quite sure what. Neoliberalism? Postmodernism? American hegemony? The rule of finance capital? Capitalism itself (unlikely for the time being)? It’s even more difficult to predict what’s about to be thrown at us, let alone what shape the forces of resistance to it are likely to take. Some new form of green capitalism? Knowledge Keynesianism? Chinese-style industrial authoritarianism? ‘Progressive’ imperialism?

At moments of transformation, one of the few things one can say for certain is that we don’t really know how much our own actions can affect the outcome, but we would be very foolish to assume that they cannot.

Historical action tends to be narrative in form. In order to be able to make an intervention in history (arguably, in order to act decisively in any circumstances), one has to be able to cast oneself in some sort of story — though, speaking as someone who has actually had the opportunity to be in the middle of one or two world historical events, I can also attest that one in that situation is almost never quite certain what sort of drama it really is, since there are usually several alternatives battling it out, and that the question is not entirely resolved until everything is over (and never completely resolved even then). But I think there’s something that comes before even that. When one is first trying to assess a historical situation, having no real idea where one stands, trying to place oneself in a much larger stream of history so as to be able to start to think about what the problem even is, then usually it’s less a matter of placing oneself in a story than of figuring out the larger rhythmic structure, the ebb and flow of historical movements. Is what is happening around me the result of a generational political realignment, a movement of capitalism’s boom or bust cycle, the beginning or result of a new wave of struggles, the inevitable unfolding of a Kondratieff B curve? Or is it all these things? How do all these rhythms weave in and out of each other? Is there one core rhythm pushing the others along? How do they sit inside one another, syncopate, concatenate, harmonise, clash?

Let me briefly lay out what might be at stake here. I’ll focus here on cycles of capitalism, secondarily on war. This is because I don’t like capitalism and think that it’s rapidly destroying the planet, and that if we are going to survive as a species, we’re really going to have to come up with something else. I also don’t like war, both for all the obvious reasons, but also, because it strikes me as one of the main ways capitalism has managed to perpetuate itself. So in picking through possible theories of historical cycles, this is what I have had primarily in mind. Even here there are any number of possibilities. Here are a few:

Are we seeing an alternation between periods of peace and massive global warfare? In the late 19th century, for example, war between major industrial powers seemed to be a thing of the past, and this was accompanied by vast growth of both trade, and revolutionary internationalism (of broadly anarchist inspiration). 1914 marked a kind of reaction, a shift to 70 years mainly concerned with fighting, or planning for, world wars. The moment the Cold War ended, the pattern of the 1890s seemed to be repeating itself, and the reaction was predictable.

Or could one look at brief cycles — sub-cycles perhaps? This is particularly clear in the US, where one can see a continual alternation, since WWII, between periods of relative peace and democratic mobilisation immediately followed by a ratcheting up of international conflict: the civil rights movement followed by Vietnam, for example; the anti-nuclear movement of the ’70s followed by Reagan’s proxy wars and abandonment of détente; the global justice movement followed by the War on Terror.

Or should we be looking at financialisation? Are we dealing with Fernand Braudel or Giovanni Arrighi’s alternation between hegemonic powers (Genoa/ Venice, Holland, England, USA), which start as centers for commercial and industrial capital, later turn into centers of finance capital, and then collapse?

If so, then the question is of shifting hegemonies to East Asia, and whether (as Wallerstein for instance has recently been predicting) the US will gradually shift into the role of military enforcer for East Asian capital, provoking a realignment between Russia and the EU. Or, in fact, if all bets are off because the whole system is about to shift since, as Wallerstein also suggests, we are entering into an even more profound, 500-year cycle shift in the nature of the world-system itself?

Are we dealing with a global movement, as some autonomists (for example, the Midnight Notes collective) propose, of waves of popular struggle, as capitalism reaches a point of saturation and collapse — a crisis of inclusion as it were?

According to this version, the period from 1945 to perhaps 1975 was marked by a tacit deal with elements of the North Atlantic male working class, who were offered guaranteed good jobs and social security in exchange for political loyalty. The problem for capital was that more and more people demanded in on the deal: people in the Third World, excluded minorities in the North, and, finally, women. At this point the system broke, the oil shock and recession of the ’70s became a way of declaring that all deals were off: such groups could have political rights but these would no longer have any economic consequences.

Then, the argument goes, a new cycle began in which workers tried — or were encouraged — to buy into capitalism itself, whether in the form of micro-credit, stock options, mortgage refinancing, or 401ks. It’s this movement that seems to have hit its limit now, since, contrary to much heady rhetoric, capitalism is not and can never be a democratic system that provides equal opportunities to everyone, and the moment there’s a serious attempt to include the bulk of the population even in one country (the US) into the deal, the whole thing collapses into energy crisis and global recession all over again.

None of these are necessarily mutually exclusive but they have very different strategic implications. Much rests on which factor one happens to decide is the driving force: the internal dynamics of capitalism, the rise and fall of empires, the challenge of popular resistance? But when it comes to reading the rhythms in this way, the current moment still throws up unusual difficulties. There is a widespread sense that we are heading towards some kind of fundamental rupture, that old rhythms can no longer be counted on to repeat themselves, that we might be entering a new sort of time. Wallerstein says so much explicitly: if everything were going the way it generally has tended to go, for the last 500 years, East Asia would emerge as the new center of capitalist dominance. Problem is we may be coming to the end of a 500 year cycle and moving into a world that works on entirely different principles (subtext: capitalism itself may be coming to an end). In which case, who knows? Similarly, cycles of militarism cannot continue in the same form in a world where major military powers are capable of extinguishing all life on earth, with all-out war between them therefore impossible. Then there’s the factor of imminent ecological catastrophe.

One could make the argument, of course, that history is such that we always feel we’re at the edge of something. It’s always a crisis, there’s no particular reason to assume that this time it’s true. Historically, it has been a peculiar feature of capitalism that it seems to feel the need to constantly throw up spectres of its own demise. For most of the 19th century, and well into the 20th, most capitalists operated under the very strong suspicion that they might shortly end up hanging from trees — or, if they weren’t going to be strung up in an apocalyptic Socialist Revolution, witness some similar apocalyptic collapse into degenerate barbarism. One of the most disturbing features of capitalism, in fact, is not just that it constantly generates apocalyptic fantasies, but that it actually produces the physical means to make apocalyptic fantasies come true. For example, in the ’50s, once the destruction of capitalism from within could no longer be plausibly imagined, along came the spectre of nuclear war. In this case, the bombs were quite real. And once the prospect of anyone using those bombs (at least in such numbers as to destroy the planet) became increasingly implausible, with the end of the Cold War, we were suddenly greeted by the prospect of global warming.

It would be interesting to reflect at length on capitalism and its time horizons: what is it about this economic system that it seems to want to wipe out the prospect of its own eternity? On the one hand, capitalism being based on a logic of perpetual growth, one might argue that it is, by definition, not eternal, and can only recognise itself as such. But at other times those who embrace capitalism seem to want to think of it as having been around forever, or at least 5 thousand years, and stubbornly insist it will continue to exist 5 thousand years into the future. At yet other times it seems like a historical blip, an insanely powerful engine of accumulation that exploded around 1500, or maybe 1750, which couldn’t possibly be maintained without some sort of apocalyptic collapse. Perhaps the apparent tangle of contradictions is the result of a need to balance the short term perspectives needed by short term profit-seekers, managers, and CEOs, with the broader strategic perspectives of those actually running the system, which are of necessity more political. The result is a clash of narratives. Or maybe it’s the fact that whenever capitalism does see itself as eternal, it tends to lead to a spiraling of debt. Actually, the relations between debt bubbles and apocalypse are complicated and would be difficult (though fascinating) to disentangle, but I would suggest this much. The financialisation of capital has lead to a situation where something like 97 to 98 percent of the money in the total ‘economy’ of wealthy countries like the US or UK is debt. That is to say, it is money whose value rests not on something that actually exists in the present (bauxite, sculptures, peaches, software), but something that might exist at some point in the future. ‘Abstract’ money is not an idea, it’s a promise — a promise of something concrete that will exist at some time in the future, future profits extracted from future resources, future labour of miners, artists, fruit-pickers, web designers, not yet born. At the point where the imaginary future economy is 50 to 100 times larger than the current ‘real’ one, something has got to give. But the bursting of bubbles often leaves no future to imagine at all, except of catastrophe, because the creation of bubbles is made possible by the destruction of any ability to imagine alternative futures. It’s only once one cannot imagine that we are moving towards any sort of new future society, that the world will never be fundamentally different, that there’s nothing left to imagine but more and more future money.

It might be interesting, as I say, to try to disentangle the shifting historical relations between war, the development of ‘security’ apparatuses designed above all to strangle dreams of alternative futures, speculative bubbles, class struggle, and history of the capitalist Future, which seems to veer back and forth between utopia and cataclysm. These are not, however, precisely the questions that I’m asking here. I want, rather, to look at questions of debt from a different, and much longer term, historical perspective. Doing so provides a picture much less bleak and depressing than one might think, since the history of debt is not only a history of slavery, oppression, and bitter social struggles — which, of course, it certainly is, since debt is surely the most effective means ever created for taking relations that are founded on violence and oppression and making them seem right and moral to all concerned — but also of credit, honour, trust, and mutual commitment. Debt has been for the last 5 thousand years the fulcrum not only of forms of oppression but of popular struggle. Debt crises are periodic and become the stuff of uprisings, mobilisations and revolutions, but also, as a result, reflections on what human beings actually do owe each other, on the moral basis of human society, and on the nature of time, labour, value, creativity and violence.

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/david-graeber-debt-the-first-five-thousand-years

[sxrgripp]

this book is so lit

[drdemonprince]

I recently read "Unmasking Autism" and it felt like coming home. (I have been misdiagnosed my whole life.) I was so excited to find community and start meeting other people like me. But now I feel alienated--I feel like online Autism is basically a leftist political identity. It's fair to assume we all care about disability justice, but we don't all have the same beliefs about Israel and Palestine, for example, nor should we have to. Is there Autistic community that is not explicitly political?

You better reread Unmasking Autism because you missed a fuckin lot if you think embracing your disability is not an explicitly political project. Maybe focus on the sections about the American police shooting Black Autistic men, and Israeli military members slaughtering Palestinian Autistic people.

[perksofbeingalittletwat]

David Graeber is smart and insightful and a very good writer but he also has a knack for writing about why whatever I'm experiencing currently is bad. Like I had a feeling my job was bullshit but now I have a whole new vocabulary to talk about just as I start applying for a bunch of bullshit jobs. Thanks Dave.

[susansontag]

anthropologists do generally kill it at writing great non-fiction works tbh, and by this I don’t mean ethnographies but books written for wider audiences. I suppose it’s because ethnographies are stories about human lives anyway but it’s such a fabulous discipline sometimes. tbh even some ethnographies can be read by laypeople pretty easily

[lesbiandarvey]

oh wait did i tell you guys. the other day i woke up from a dream in a blind fury thinking I GOTTA READ THAT BOOK I GOTTA READ THAT BOOK NOW!!!!!! and opened the libby app and put a hold on Debt: The First 5000 Years by David Graeber

[fshoulders]

Putting the cosmos in a sack

I'm transcribing quotes from David Graeber's Debt: The First 5000 Years before returning it to the library, and there are a lot of block paragraphs I agree very strongly with. This one touches (unexpectedly perhaps for a book about the concept of money?) on one of my preoccupations: the pathological cultural belief that humans are not part of an ecosystem.

He is expanding on his argument that the reduction of everything in our lives to market value is originally the product of violence -- only a looting army, a debt collector, or a burglar would see everything in your life as what they can get for it -- and requires a system of coercive violence to uphold.

Even more, by turning human sociality itself into debts, they transform the very foundations of our being-since what else are we, ultimately, except the sum of the relations we have with others-into matters of fault, sin, and crime, and making the world into a place of iniquity that can only be overcome by completing some great cosmic transaction that will annihilate everything. Trying to flip things around by asking, “What do we owe society?” or even trying to talk about our “debt to nature” or some other manifestation of the cosmos is a false solution — really just a desperate scramble to salvage something from the very moral logic that has severed us from the cosmos to begin with. In fact, it’s if anything the culmination of the process, the process brought to a point of veritable dementia, since it’s premised on the assumption that we’re so absolutely, thoroughly disentangled from the world that we can just toss all other human beings — or all other living creatures, even, or the cosmos — in a sack, and then start negotiating with them.

[ctl-yuejie]

reading graeber's "debt: the first 5000 years" atm (yes I am late) and i cannot stop thinking about the parts of sex and the ramifications of making sex (and people) assessable in money through violence and particulary what disruption this has caused in societies where sex wasn't stigmatized (obv not a history of sex, so the main point is somewhere else but the connection was quite interesting)

[drumlincountry]

If history shows anything, it is that there's no better way to justify relations founded on violence, to make such relations seem moral, than by reframing them in the language of debt—above all, because it immediately makes it seem that it's the victim who's doing something wrong.

David Graeber "Debt: the first 5000 years"

[allisgonnabealright-ornot]

Finalmente le ferie!! Tempo di relax, di staccare il cervello, leggerezza, aperitivi, vacanze!!

Io: non ho abbastanza rogna, non so abbastanza, la mia rabbia deve essere guidata, il mio disprezzo non può esimersi dall'essere puntuale.

[kaile-hultner]

Help me dig upward: the Tumblr post

In which I talk a little bit about the hole I’ve been in for a hot minute—and what I want to do to dig out of it.

Hey y’all,

For the second time in a few years I’m starting a GoFundMe. This time, though, it’s not for the site, at least not explicitly. It is to help me get out from under the weight of debt that I’ve been carrying for more than a decade at this point, but which has finally gotten so bad that it’s affecting everything from my sleep patterns to my overall mental health and ability to do the thing that you likely already support me for: this website. 

If you’ve been wondering why the posting has decreased here, or reduced in quality, or why we started 2024 off publishing other writers and then just as suddenly stopped doing that again, this is why: I am out of money, I am in debt, and it feels like I’m living every day in pure, basic survival mode. 

This GFM, in which I’m asking for $10,000, is a moonshot, a Hail Mary. I don’t expect it to raise anything; it will be the last time I ask the Internet for money, whether it works or it doesn’t. If it works, obviously it’ll mean I’ll be able to post more and maybe my mental health will improve and I won’t feel like every moment is a countdown to a terrible ending, and I’ll be able to think of compelling angles to talk about video games again. If it doesn’t work, maybe I’ll figure something else out. Bankruptcy, probably. I don’t know. 

I hate doing this. I hate being in this position. I hate that I’ve already asked for money this year and people have been extremely generous and it just feels like all that generosity just went into a hole. I wish I had something to show for that generosity, or proactively for anything I gain from this campaign. So, if there is something you want me to cover or talk about or look at in exchange for your support on this campaign, just shoot me an email with proof of your donation, no matter how small. It’s kaile@noescapevg.com. I can’t promise I’ll write a bunch of magnum opuses at your request but I will do what I can just simply to show appreciation for your support. 

Anyway, this feels bad to me and I’m already starting to regret it, so I’m going to wrap this up by saying thank you in advance and I owe you my life. I wish that was figurative.

Edit: here is the text of the GFM I posted. 

Hi y’all,

My name is Kaile Hultner. I am an online cultural critic who has been running the video game criticism website No Escape since 2019. My work has been featured in other places like PC Gamer, Polygon and Bullet Points Monthly. And like a lot of people, I have been deeply in debt for years. 

Debt is a very strange phenomenon. As anthropologist David Graeber demonstrated in his book Debt: The First 5000 Years, it is a phenomenon that imparts a kind of moral valence on a person; whether or not that person can pay their debts is a sign of their trustworthiness or virtue as a member of polite society. Yet you can’t go without debt: at some point, at least in the United States, you have to pick up a form of debt – credit – to establish your credit score, without which you can’t rent an apartment, buy or lease a car, or, in some cases, even get a job. Being debt-free can harm this score, as can having a credit history that is “too young.” 

I’ve been in debt for a long time. I’ve been managing my debt for over a decade. Every year for the last six or seven years in particular it feels like I’m losing progressively more and more ground. Seven years ago I had a car; I could do things like deliver Uber Eats and DoorDash and make extra money whenever I ran out. It broke down in my driveway in 2022 and I couldn’t afford to take it to a mechanic to get it fixed. I sold it for $200. I haven’t been able to replace it. I don’t know what I’ll do if I ever need a car for anything. Luckily my day job is WFH. 

Recently, I’ve been fighting with my old bank over charges it erroneously applied to my account in excess of $1000, causing it to go deep into the negatives. I’ve been slowly, slowly digging myself out of that hole thanks to some close friends and some very kind folks who follow me on the Internet. But it’s caused other debts to exacerbate. And tonight I realized that I am at the end of my rope. I can’t do this anymore. I won’t sit here and say that I’ve done everything right; certainly, more than one bad decision made out of desperation has put me here. I won’t make excuses for that. But I’m tired of being here, in this position. I’m tired of waking up in the middle of the night with heart palpitations because I got an alert from my bank that I’m in the negatives. I’m tired of getting emails and phone calls from debt collectors. I’m tired of living in basic survival mode with no discernible path forward. I’m tired of being tired, of not having the energy to be creative and do the work I’ve built an online presence around for five years. And paradoxically, I’m tired of asking people on the internet for money. 

So I’m going to ask people on the internet for money, one final time. 

I’ve set the goal at $10,000. This is far more than I’m honestly expecting to get, but if I get even a fraction of that I could finally obliterate my debts in a meaningful way. I do have specific milestones that I basically need to meet, otherwise this GFM doesn’t hit its maximum effectiveness, but otherwise the sky is the limit. If I reach the whole amount… I don’t really know what I’ll do. Cry, maybe. 

Milestones – bolded are high-priority

Milestone reached! $750 – gets my old bank account out of the negatives. Eliminates one vector of harassment, allows me to close that account and move on. 

Milestone Reached! $1800 – does the above and allows me to fully pay any late or past-due loan payments missed as a result of the bank issue.

Milestone Reached! $6000 – does the above and allows me to fully pay off all installment loans 

$8000 – does the above and allows me to pay off any remaining debts. 

$10,000 – does the above and allows me to start saving. 

$10,000+ – basically a moonshot, I have no idea what I’ll do with extra. 

I fully do not expect you to donate to this. There are people trying to escape genocides, much more abject poverty, crushing medical debt, and so much more that feel – at least to me – so much more worthy of your attention and money. But just know that if you dodonate something, you have my undying appreciation. I will quite literally owe you my life. 

I’m going to post this now before I get too emotional or lose my nerve entirely, but again: thank you. Even if all you do is read this. 

—Kaile

[sxrgripp]

i bought new booooooks

[the-irreverend]

The Inferno Theory: The Chara Theory to End All Chara Theories

Here we are! Nine years of Undertale. And seeing how Chara is heavily associated with the number 9 (AND THAT TOBY FOX FINALLY TALKED ABOUT THEM), I can't think of a better way to celebrate the occasion than by dedicating this 5000-word-long theory about them? Y'all remember when people used to make long-ass theories about Chara? Yeah, they're coming back with a vengeance! To say I have a colossal hyperfixation is a massive understatement. No character in all of fiction has had a bigger impact on my life than this little rose-cheeked, cocoa-addicted freak. I’ve been a Chara fan for as long as I’ve been an Undertale fan, and you can bet that my understanding of them has changed a lot since. And now I have the pleasure of sharing said understandings with y’all!

Once upon a time, there was an aroace autistic who, like most of y’all, had a very unhealthy obsession with Undertale. And unlike most of you, he thought the Genocide Route was really fun. Most fans talk about how unhappy they felt killing everyone, but for me, I felt like a polar bear at a baby harp seal convention. I got a disturbing level of happiness out of turning everyone to dust. Hell, the only unhappiness I felt was when I couldn’t turn Monster Kid to dust.

Oh well, at least I got a good consolation prize!

I was one sadistic son of a gun, and so I was even more delighted to find out I had a secret admirer/partner-in-crime and that they joined in on the fun because I was such a goshdarn inspiration to them. Not wishing to disappoint my self-appointed partner, I erased the world without a second thought, eagerly awaiting what we might get to do together.

So you can guess I was pretty taken aback when, instead of a warm welcome, they started lecturing me about how I couldn’t accept the world’s destruction and that I was the one fully responsible for it (even though they were eager to take credit for it earlier). I didn’t think much of it at first. Initially, I just thought that they were just irritated that I was undoing what we had worked so hard to accomplish.

But as this game taught me time after time, you should never trust your first impressions. Those first impressions would crumble to dust when they said this.

To say I was completely baffled is an understatement. Why the hell would this prepubescent genocidal maniac be so obsessed over whether or not I think I’m above consequences? So obsessed to the point they would tell me to go to hell if I told them no? It was at that moment I realized there was something more to this character than meets the eye. But for a long time, I couldn’t seem to figure out what that something was. And it didn’t seem like anyone could figure that out either.

I’m very much a veteran of the fan wars that have emerged surrounding Chara. In fact, one might even say I am a deserter of sorts, as I am a former member of the Chara Defence Squad, Offense Squad, and Neutralist Squad. But I’m not gonna be a stuck-up and say everyone’s a canon-ignoring idiot except for me and that I’m the only one who knows what Toby Fox intended Chara to be. Even though I ended up with a very different take than yours (and will certainly argue why it’s the best), I owe you all your discussions a huge debt, and I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t gotten invested in your interpretations, to begin with. Not to mention that, contrary to what some may argue, you’ve made some valid points to complement them.

And while the debate that resulted from Chara’s ambiguous morality has led to a lot of controversy and even toxicity, it has also been a source of some FANTASTIC CONTENT. Like seriously, would we have gotten those badass renditions of Stronger Than You if no one thought Chara was an awful person? Would we have gotten Man on the Internet’s beautiful rendition of Star if no one thought Chara was a good person (turned awful)?

It would be utter hypocrisy for me to ask of you to approach me and my arguments (or anyone who accepts them) with understanding and good faith only to then not do the same to anyone who doesn’t agree with me. In this theory, I will definitely argue why some points made about Chara are flawed; points that you might hold yourself. But that doesn’t automatically mean that you (or your takes) are intellectually or morally inferior to mine. And besides, I’m not Toby Fox.

So with that said, why did I eventually came to disagree with pretty much everyone about Chara? Because, one way or another, I couldn’t find a take that clicked with me personally as I felt there were various inconsistencies and issues holding them back. I looked at YouTube videos, subreddits, Tumblr essays, Twitter threads, and even forums on the Steam Community. But I couldn’t really find what I thought were satisfactory answers to the questions I had about Chara’s motivations, role in the game, and relationship with the player.

And then, one day, I found those answers. It all happened when I asked myself: “What if Chara didn’t turn against me… because they were always against me from the start?!”

I don’t mean that Chara only saw you as a means to an end. I mean that YOU were the end. What if Chara didn’t use you so they could screw over the monsters but they used the monsters so they could screw over YOU.

You probably think I’m insane, don’t you? And you’re right! I AM INSANE! AND SO IS THIS WHOLE DAMN THEORY!!! But somehow, someway, it just works!! And I’ll show you why and how!!!

What you are about to read is the culmination of six years of reading and critiquing Chara takes and theories of every kind and quality, whether it be Judgement Boy’s Who is the Real Villain of Undertale to Wandydoodles’ Oblivion Theory. Six years of examining the arguments and counterarguments of Chara defenders, offenders, and neutralists alike. Six years of looking in every corner of the UTDR fandom. From the tranquil lands of Quora. To the dark recesses of Reddit. To the intellectual wastelands of Twitter. To the fiery hellsite of Tumblr. So, without further ado, get ready for some of the most pure, unadulterated, high-octane, universe-collapsing neurodivergence you’ve ever seen in your life!!!!!

Part 1: The demonic heritage of the "demon who comes when people call its name".

Have you ever had one of those moments where you’ve asked yourself, “What the actual hell is this guy talking about?” I bet you’re having that moment right now. Everything about their character post-death, including their motives, their methods, and their relationship with you, is perfectly reflected in one of their most famous (or rather infamous) lines:

When most people hear the word demon, the first thing that comes to mind is a being made of pure evil whose only purpose in life is to destroy all things good in the world. Right?

Well, yes, but actually, no. It’s a little more complicated than that. To argue that Chara is a demon because they’re simply “an evil little twerp that enjoys being evil” doesn’t do them or their role in Undertale justice (although that hasn’t stopped people from trying to argue that). To understand why calling themselves a demon is EXTREMELY important, we need to dive into the wonderful (and totally not controversial) world of religious beliefs!

In ancient and modern religions, demons are a little more complex than just ethereal jackasses with a vendetta against virtue and righteousness. Though they vary from faith to faith, most demons have a specific set of qualities and tropes that make them integral to whatever faith they’re in. You also see these demonic qualities in fiction that’s derived or inspired by religions, and since Undertale’s lore and worldbuilding have a heavy emphasis on the spiritual and divine, you can see them in Chara. Since Undertale is a game of “Western” origin, you can definitely see they share qualities that are all too familiar with devils of “Western” religions. In classic devil fashion, they target those with weak integrities or suspect morals; they tempt you with the promise of fulfilling your desires at your and everyone else’s expense; they’re able to control your body as you grow their power through your sins, and hell, they even do the thing where they make a deal for your soul. Also...

But though it's evident that Chara encourages you to do “evil,” THEY THEMSELVES are not responsible for it. Yes, Chara encouraged you to kill, but YOU are the one who acted on those encouragements. In fact, YOU are the one who encouraged THEM to help you out! They walked down the dark path with you, but you didn’t really give them anywhere else they could walk. You had all the power and every chance to turn back and no reason to keep walking. And yet you persisted.

But that does beg the question, why did you walk it at all? What could possibly inspire you to give all of these characters happiness, satisfaction, and peace and then rip it all away? Because you decided that giving everyone the most satisfying ending was not satisfying enough for you. Because there was more that you could experience for yourself, even if it meant making everyone else experience something absolutely horrific. It wasn’t enough for you to fill the glass only halfway. You needed to fill it to the brim. You wanted to reach the absolute. Even if doing the Genocide Run was a bad experience for you, you CANNOT deny it was a fulfilling one. And Chara knows it, too. It ain’t exactly a coincidence that fulfillment and fullness are recurring motifs in Chara’s character.

Like all demons, Chara is able to tempt the wicked and sinful by targeting our greatest weaknesses and deficiencies. It’s no different from how Succubi and Incubi target those who succumb to the sin of lust. That’s why you won’t go after my aroace ass anytime soon. But I digress.

But Chara doesn't just tempt us by exploiting our need to fill the glass to the brim but also because of how they exploit the satisfaction we get from watching it fill up, that is to say, the satisfaction that comes from trying to achieve fulfillment.

We humans are addicted to progression as much as we are to completion, and in an RPG like Undertale, the satisfaction of progression comes in the form of NUMBERS. Not just the numbers that flash on the screen when you battle enemies but also the ones that go up when you finish said enemies off, whether it be your hit points, experience points, and so on. And Undertale isn’t any ordinary RPG; it’s one where its RPG elements are interwoven into the fabric of the game’s universe. Because of that, Chara is able to use these elements in their world to influence those outside of it.

But Chara does not just influence us through the numbers that increase but also the ones that decrease. That’s why the first thing they do when we reach Snowdin is give us a tally. 

It’s not just there to measure progress. It’s also there to incentivize us to keep progressing. It gives us a small dose of satisfaction that’s enough to distract us from the mundanity and misery of the murder run, like a loading bar on a loading screen. And just like with loading screens, the farther it progresses, the harder it gets to turn away. Why would you want all the lives you’ve taken and the stats you’ve gained to amount to nothing? Why would you want to hit reset and go through those brutal fights with Sans and Undyne again? You can’t empty out the glass, not when you’re that much closer to filling it to the brim. Speaking of Sans and Undyne, it’s quite interesting that even though they barely know you, they know exactly why you won’t take your foot off the pedal, so to speak.

But that’s not the only thing driving you, isn’t it? Chara knows that there was something else that was spurning you along. Something more powerful and more dangerous than your addiction to progression and completion: PRIDE. 

Perhaps the real reason you kept giving in to sin until it was far too late was because you didn’t think it would be too late. You didn’t hold back because you thought you would be able to go back. You thought you could just absolve your sins with the press of a button like you did in countless worlds before. You thought you could dive in, touch the bottom, and come back out of the water. But what were you getting into? How deep would you have gone? And would you have gone in if you knew you couldn’t possibly return? You know you wouldn’t. And Chara knows it, too. That brings us back to the dialogue I showed you at the beginning of this theory. The one said changed everything I knew about this character, and I firmly believe that this is the MOST important line of dialogue in the entire franchise.

PART 2: THE PART WHERE I (PRETEND TO) DESTROY 9 YEARS OF ESTABLISHED FANON!

When I say that that little blurb about being above consequences is ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL, I do not say that lightly. It isn’t just important to Chara's character, but the game of Undertale as a whole! Anyone who’s serious about Chara’s character should never take this for granted because Chara sure as hell does not.

It’s not just our refusal to accept the world’s destruction that’s a huge-ass deal to Chara; it’s the arrogance and complacency that accompanies it, rooted in the position and privileges we have as the player. It matters to them so much that they’re willing to completely forgo bartering for our soul (which they say they want) if we don’t admit that we have that belief!

And yet, despite Chara taking this subject so seriously, the people who are analyzing their character ironically don’t. Generally speaking, most people simply brush this line off as nothing more than something they do to help them on their quest to achieve their goals. So, with that said, let’s talk about what those supposed goals actually are.

In all my years of reading and assessing countless Chara theories and interpretations, I’ve discovered that everyone actually agrees on what Chara's goals are. They just can’t agree on why they want them. Said goals are A) reach the absolute, B) max out their numbers/power, C) erase the world, and/or D) eradicate all monsters. But what if it’s actually the other way around? What if those things were the means to an end rather than the ends themselves?

What if the true goal of the “demon who comes when people call its name” was just like that of the demons of old: not to be your partner in crime, but to torment and punish you for your crimes? To make you face CONSEQUENCES!

I’m not making this argument simply because it makes Chara look more badass (though I think it totally does, lol). I firmly believe that Undertale’s post-Genocide content is written so that Chara’s character can only make sense if that was Chara’s goal from start to finish. Because if Chara’s endgame was any of those four I mentioned earlier, their character kinda falls apart because they're awfully inconsistent about fulfilling them. And those inconsistencies are evident in the Second Geno Ending.

Discrepancy 1) They say they will “appear time and time again” to help us “eradicate the enemy and become strong,” and yet they call us perverted for eradicating everyone time and time again.

You can argue that they didn’t want us to recreate the world in the first place and just move on to another world, but if so, why let us come back at all? And if it’s to get our soul, why do they keep around this world after we have it? This leads us to...

Discrepancy 2) They tell us to ERASE the world and move on to the next, and yet they allow us to restore it without a hitch after we give them our SOUL, seeing how there’s no black void when we start the game again.

If Chara was powerless to stop us from coming back, this wouldn’t be such a big deal. But they CLEARLY DEMONSTRATE that they’re able to stop the player from restoring the world, as seen in the first post-genocide ending. And yet they don’t use this power after the first time the world is erased (WHICH YOU WOULD THINK THEY WOULD WANT TO USE SINCE THEY WANT TO ERASE THE WORLD AND MOVE ON TO ANOTHER)! Seeing how the world is back again without us doing anything makes the restoration of the world like something that Chara CHOSE ON THEIR OWN VOLITION. And what makes this all the more damning is...

Discrepancy 3) They tell us they’re down bad for increasing our ATK, DEF, EXP, and LV to the max and erasing the world and everyone in it, and yet they TELL US TO DEVIATE FROM THE ONLY ROUTE THAT ACCOMPLISHES THAT (which, as stated before, they call us perverse for doing it again).

So, let me get something straight. You tell us you want to ”eradicate the enemy” and “ erase this pointless world,” and yet not only are you allowing us to undo all of that, you want us to do something INSTEAD OF THAT??? It’s funny how you lecture us about how we cannot accept the world’s destruction BECAUSE, APPARENTLY, YOU WON’T EITHER!!!!! Also, before I forget...

Discrepancy 4)

WHAT KIND OF MISANTHROPE DEDICATES THEIR WHOLE LIFE TO WIPING OUT HUMANITY, GETS GIFT-WRAPPED A CHANCE TO DO THAT, AND THEN JUST PASSES IT UP?!?!?!

On behalf of misanthropes everywhere, I am DEEPLY disappointed in you!

So it doesn’t matter if you believe Chara is always evil, good, or detached from morality entirely. Because Chara has the same goal across all versions, they all succumb to the same inconsistencies!

Funny how most people see them as this embodiment of the addictive nature of levelling up and consuming everything in a piece of media and all that jazz WHEN THEY SEEM TO CASUALLY GIVE UP ON IT!!!!!!

And if you argue they want a Soulless Pacifist Run when they suggest “another path,” then ask yourself, what does that give them that a Genocide Run doesn’t? Keep in mind, aside from a scribbled-out photograph, we don’t see how many monsters or humans they killed besides the main characters or how much power and stats they gained from it. And it’s not like we see them erase the world afterward since only the genocide run has that infamous wall of red 9s. Not to mention, the genocide run is the most secure way of accomplishing their goals since they have the backing of the player. Not only that, but it’s also the safest and most efficient way to erase everyone and increase stats to the fullest, and we all know how Chara feels about efficiency.

So Chara has no reason to pick the Soulless pacifist ending over the Genocide Run if they want to achieve their end of increasing numbers and consuming the world… unless those things were a means to an end rather than ends themselves.

Indeed it is coming together! That’s the other reason their statement, “You think you’re above consequences,” is so damn important! They’re not telling us why we sinned, but it reveals they intend to make us suffer for those sins, and how.

That’s why Chara is seemingly so inconsistent about erasing the world. Because it was never about the world. It was all about YOU.

[SIDE NOTE: I’m sure many of you will point out that if Chara wanted us to get a Soulless ending in this world, then why would they encourage us to “move on to the next?” I don’t think this is too big an issue for two reasons. First, this line is meant to emphasize that, like all demons, Chara is inescapable and that no matter what world you go to (within their own universe), Chara will always follow you now that you’ve unleashed them. Second, because their goal concerns us and not the world they’re a part of, their character avoids the aforementioned inconsistencies that hamper the other Chara theories much more severely, in my opinion.]

Part 3: Contrapasso

Now I’m sure some of y’all might think that Chara doesn’t need to yearn for our torment to achieve the impact of the Soulless ending and that just because Chara is a demon doesn’t automatically mean they need to screw us over. You are right in that not everyone who makes a Faustian Bargain needs to have malicious intentions toward the people they’re taking advantage of (Kuybey from Madoka Magica is a great example of that). But Chara does need it! Not only does it make their character more narratively cohesive, but also makes their character more thematically impactful. And it’s more in tune with their demonic nature for them to want to torment us.

Because demons represent something more terrifying than evil itself. They represent the terrible price of embracing it, a price that all evildoers fear more than anything, and that all demons want seek to inflict upon us. Like most demons, Chara isn’t encouraging us to sin to fill the emptiness in our soul (or even their own). They did it to perpetuate that torturously empty and unfulfilled state for all eternity, a state which even themselves now endure.

Now, you’ve probably noticed that I’ve talked a lot about the themes of fulfillment and emptiness, and it’s for a good reason since those themes are heavily featured in Undertale. I mean, how could it not? Because concepts of demons, hell, and sins (which are explicitly mentioned in the game) are deeply intertwined with the concept of emptiness. The theologian Thomas Aquinas once defined evil as not a presence but as an absence (of that which is good). Darkness is the absence of light; war is the absence of peace; bigotry is the absence of tolerance; pride is the absence of humility, etc. You see this reflected in not just Christian theology but also fiction as a whole, as a lot of villains are motivated by a desire to obtain something that they believe can’t be without. Whether it be wealth, status, recognition, power, the death of an individual, or even just sadistic pleasure.

Since demons are beings that are inseparable from evil itself, the life of a demon is forever cursed by unceasing and unbearable emptiness. Hell, the word damnation originated from the Latin word damnum, which literally means loss! They’re not exactly partying in hell while your immortal soul is being slow-roasted for eternity. They’re burning in that lake of fire and brimstone along with you! They can’t end their damnation, not because they don’t want to but because they simply can’t. They’re fated to be bereft of the satisfaction or fulfillment found in Heaven or Earth, a fate that is worse than death in every sense of the word, especially since they can’t experience death anymore. Because of that, a demon embodies what is perhaps the most terrifying form of evil of all: not one rooted in a desire to rid the emptiness and unfulfillment within themselves, but a desire to inflict them upon others. Because as a wise philosopher once said:

We see this horrific state of mutually assured suffering everywhere across fiction. From goofy, lighthearted tokusatsu's...

...to nightmarish sci-fi dystopias...

...to a little indie game made 9 years ago.

Oh yeah. Don’t think I was gonna talk about emptiness without mentioning everyone’s favourite homicidal fauna-turned-flora, especially not with lines like this.

Take one to know one! And it can’t be a coincidence that the game emphasizes the theme of emptiness when giving the spotlight to the three characters that have committed the most “evil”: Flowey/Asriel, Chara, and YOU.

Quite the unholy trinity going on here, eh? It truly is fascinating how the emptiness led us to work with each other to exterminate all monsters. And it’s also interesting how the unique kind of emptiness we have eventually led us to work against each other. Whether it be Flowey wishing to preserve his sentimentality for his long-gone sibling, us players wanting to maintain our (perverted) sentimentality for the world of Undertale, or Chara weaponizing these sentimentalities to exact their misanthropic hatred.

Remember how I said that Chara was a lousy misanthrope because they keep letting us bring back the humans they wanted annihilated when they were alive? That does make them a lousy misanthrope… unless their misanthropy found a higher priority target: YOU!!!!! Chara’s desire to torment us didn’t come out of thin air. The same hatred that drove them to wipe out the humans of their world years ago is the same hatred that’s driving them to get at the humans of our world, even if it means destroying those who once embraced them. And now, that hatred is more potent and destructive than ever before, so much so that it’s no wonder Toriel was able to feel it when she endured that fatal blow after the Geno Run began.

Do you think witnessing what soullessness did to sweet little Asriel wasn’t already terrifying and tragic enough? Just try to imagine what it could‘ve done to a vengeful, traumatized, chocolate-addicted problem child so consumed by hatred that they poisoned themselves just for a chance to wipe out their own kind. All of that hatred of humanity is still alive and well, and now it has no humanity to hold it back. 

And what could be a more fitting target for a MISANTHROPE that calls themselves a DEMON… than a HUMAN that wants to play GOD?

After all, the only thing demons love more than tormenting mortals is warring with Gods.

Why else do you think that Chara winks right at you if we make Frisk stay with Toriel? Because that’s who the Soulless Ending was meant for. It’s when they’re finally able to unleash all that animosity and hatred that’s been lurking behind that smile ever since we killed everyone in the Ruins. It’s the moment that they’ve been patiently waiting for because they knew that’s when it would hit you the hardest.

And what makes the Soulless Pacifist Ending very special compared to other “bad endings” isn’t simply because they destroy those we pretend to care about (may I remind you that you did do the genocide run, after all). But they destroy something much more valuable to us as the players: OUR OMNIPOTENCE. Chara doesn’t destroy people for the sake of destroying them. But because in doing so they destroy our arrogant belief that nothing could possibly challenge the invisibility and invulnerability we players take for granted.

It's all too human that those with the most power are the least willing to lose it (or even take responsibility for it). And in a world where we should have absolute power, we thought there would be no consequences for abusing it. So what could be a more fitting and frightful punishment than having to actually face them? Missing out on the best ending in a video game is one thing. But to forever lose the power to achieve it ever again?! Now that’s terrifying!

Throughout myth, legend, and religion, sinners are often punished in a way befitting of the sin they’ve committed. In Greek Mythology, Tantalus was damned for trying to feed the Gods the flesh of his murdered son with eternal hunger and thirst despite being within arm’s reach of water and food. In Dante’s Inferno, those who succumb to wrath are forever doomed to fight each other in a river of mud. And since Undertale is no stranger to concepts such as hell, sins, and demons, you can damn well be sure that there’s going to be damnation fitting for the sins that drove you to complete the genocide run.

You completed the Genocide Run because you believed ending their lives would be fulfilling. Now, you can no longer get any fulfillment out of saving their lives.

I mean, where else can you get your precious fulfillment? Those paltry neutral endings? They only offer a fraction of what the pacifist ending offered. And the genocide ending has been drained of its satisfaction like the pacifist! Would you do all that tedious grinding and brutal boss fights just to hear your so-called “partner” lecture you again on perverted sentimentality and say you should choose another path, even though there’s nothing that they could offer? Of course not. In the end, you’re just like poor Tantalus agonizing in the pits of Tartarus, feeling the water vanish from his hands just before it touches his lips.

The ultimate triumph of Chara isn’t making you suffer a total defeat, but perhaps something much worse to you as a gamer: a pyrrhic victory. It’s like having a Twinkie that's been drained of the creamy center. Everything is still there except the thing you treasure most. You’re damned to play a challenge forever deprived of any and all fulfillment you once got from it, a satisfying journey that will always be doomed to reach a dissatisfying destination.

In the end, Chara leaves you with the world exactly as they described it the first time they met you face-to-face: POINTLESS.

You can have the world exactly as it was before (and the people within it). But in the end, Chara will always have the last laugh.

Figuratively and literally.

Welcome to hell!

Part 4: Why Consequences Matter

Woooooo!!! Man, that was quite the read, wasn’t it? And yeah, I wasn't kidding when I said this is going to be autistic as all hell! I don’t doubt you have a lot of thoughts in your mind, and then you’re gonna share them by the time you’re finished reading this post. Some of you might think this is the Chara theory to end Chara theories. Some of you believe that this is the worst thing that has happened to this fandom since Sebastian Wolff. Some of y’all, I’m whitewashing them because I argue they’re driven by a desire to punish the wicked by any means necessary. Some will think I’m demonizing them because I say that they’re, well, a demon. 

[SIDE NOTE: Just so I don’t miscommunicate what I believe about Chara’s morality, here are some key points to take away from this theory. A) Chara sought to make you pay for the evil you committed. In fact, the idea that the Soulless Ending is Chara punishing our sins has been around for a while, especially by those who think Chara was “corrupted. B) However, in this theory, Chara's actions are all done with the intent of accomplishing that goal. This means that Chara was aware of what they were doing, they wanted to do it, and that THEY KNEW IT WAS EVIL. C) But you still have to remember that Chara is also A LITERAL CHILD. And D) They’re a child who endured a great deal of hardship (and possibly trauma), which made them so embittered and vengeful. Also, E) Remember that they’re also soulless, just like Asriel when he was Flowey.]

But I think most of you were gonna look at this interpretation of Chara and feel the same thing that I have about most of yours: a take that’s not without issues, but not without a fair bit of interesting points.

But regardless of what you think of this theory overall, there’s one thing I won’t leave up for debate: I deeply treasure Chara’s character. Not just because I think they’re fun, cool, or interesting but also because I firmly believe they’re invaluable Undertale. And yet, at the same time, I think they’re severely undervalued by the fandom. And who can blame them?

The characters of Undertale speak very little of Chara, and Chara speaks for themselves even less. But just like Johan Liebert from the anime Monster, even though they’re not seen too often, they still manage to exert a massive presence and impact within Undertale’s narrative. And that presence is made all the more impactful because they perfectly represent the themes of the narrative: and that theme is CONSEQUENCES, or more accurately, the CONSEQUENCES OF VIOLENCE.

From the violence that drove Chara to climb Mt Ebott to the violence their brother Asriel inflicted in hopes of being with them forever. From something as grand as a war between two civilizations to something as small as dismembering a snowman. Everywhere you look, you will see that violence (and its repercussions) haunts the story and characters of Undertale. But what makes Undertale stand out from other media that tackles this subject is that it’s not just an integral part of its narrative but also its metanarrative. The most ingenious way it does this is by giving meaning to the actions/mechanics that we take for granted, specifically monster encounters.

Our Lord and Saviour Toby Fox said it best:

Because the monsters of Undetale are treated as something more than just enemies to be killed, there are going to be consequences for choosing to kill them away. Some argue that it goes too far in how it admonishes you for killing even a single monster, even to the point of being preachy (I’m looking at you, ScottFalco, but that’s a response for another day).

That argument is deeply flawed because it fails to account for the fact that without these ramifications, the game’s themes would be rendered null and void. The last thing that a game with a narrative centred around the consequences of violence can afford to do is afford you the luxury of avoiding them. And that principle especially applies if you dare to choose nothing BUT violence. //////If you were to bring them all back as if nothing happened, then your decision to commit genocide would be completely meaningless, which would totally disservice Undertale themes regarding violence. There needs to be consequences. LASTING CONSEQUENCES. Undertale can’t drive home its messages and them without lasting consequences. Undertale can’t deliver those consequences without Chara in the driver’s seat. And Chara’s character can only be at their most narratively cohesive and thematically impactful if seeking to make us suffer consequences was their intended destination.

Regardless of whatever detail about Chara you’re discussing or what side of the discussion you’re on, one thing is very clear: they’re absolutely essential to Undertale in the same way that Mephistopheles is essential to Faust, the Cenobites are essential to Hellraiser, and Kuybey is essential to Madoka Magica. And they’re the only ones with the means, motives, and deep-seated misanthropy to hold this whole damn game together.

Sans is right. We deserve to be burning in hell for what we did to those poor monsters. And I can't think of anyone more qualified to have us humans “burning in hell” than a self-proclaimed demon with a seething hatred of humanity.

And how fitting is it that the skeleton who judges our sins is followed by a human child who punishes us for them?

BUT HEY, THAT'S JUST A THEORY!

A CHARA THEORY!

THANKS FOR READING!

[drdemonprince]

please please please yall read books like Debt: the First 5000 Years by Graeber and Dawn of Everything by Wengrow & Graeber and An Indigenous People's History of the United States by Dunbar Ortiz. once you understand the sheer diversity of human history a little bit better, and understand fully that the united states is a stitched together blanket of stolen individual properties painted with blood by roving settler militias, you will see why this country is not redeemable or reformable, and why states like Israel are not as well.

i used to believe in electoral politics too. but once youre really about abolition, global decolonization, and land back as fundamental cornerstones of your politics you will not be willing to sacrifice the wellbeing of Black and brown peoples worldwide for tiny table scraps like a rainbow flag on a cop car.

having a democratic politician in office IS having a rainbow flag on a cop car, and the cop car is the united states military. if seeing that feel-good symbol plastered on a tool of mass genocide makes you feel any safer then you were never the person the guns were aimed at in the first place. do you care about the people still staring at the barrel of the gun? or are you satisfied to sacrifice their lives for your own short-term emotional comfort?