/lit/ - Literature

I read "The Call Of Cuthulu" yesterday and I didn't think Lovecraft was actually going to be racist because I don't believe in racism accusations anymore but my god, this dude seriously had people issues.

He was going out of his way to call anyone non full-blooded European savage, halfwit, bad in combat, slow, irredeemable, filthy. It cringed at how much of an issue this guy had with outsiders and I'm not a sensitive person but he seriously had issues.

Was he just a writer of his place and time or is he a unique specimen?

Also Lovecraft general thread.

>>12921979
>>what if knowledge were a means to deepen unknowing?

It is, indeed, a powerful line. It's a very Christian line, as well. Consider Saint Teresa of Avila. She is among the wisest of all the Catholic saints, a Doctor of the Church; but she's fundamentally a mystic, someone who relates to God on a miraculous level. She knows God in a way that transcends knowing. A knowledge that is a not-knowledge. Both everything and nothing. "I am an empty cup," as the Taoists say, and there's some wisdom in that.

And I think Land is useful in this regard, to illuminate things about the modern world, as you say. Yet there is something in Land, or his children, that nonetheless troubles me. Mark Fisher begins to get at it, but his analysis of things is only limited. To wit: I think the god Land perceives coming into the world is a terrifying thing. Land seems to think that there's something beyond it which is beneficial; but I'm not nearly so confident as he is. Again, this goes back to my idea of entities outside the material. I think there is something of Satan in the marshaled forces of Late Capital; that there is a whiff of brimstone in Land's cold, tentacled god. And I think it is the duty of Christians to oppose this. It's pure instinct on my part, I know. But I think that we cannot sit idly by while Capital rises triumphant. I think there is a folly in acceleration, that assumes the monster they are beckoning into the world will die a natural death once they've summoned it. This seems frightful and dangerous to me. One shouldn't summon demons with full confidence that they'll be defeated. As C.S. Lewis writes, in the final book of the Chronicles of Narnia: "People shouldn't call for demons unless they really mean what they say."

This is a danger I think a lot of people supporting acceleration flirt with. You all naively assume that what follows in the aftermath of collapse will be good. What if it isn't? What if instead the end of norms and rules unleashes demons into the world? Real demons, not the demons of philosophical arguments? And this is where the /x/ part comes in. Land and others speak of a cold, cruel god. I guess they assume this isn't a REAL threat, a metaphysical threat, a threat that could alter the fabric of the cosmos. But what if it is? Or, maybe some demon, a real demon, won't be summoned at the end of it all. But what if the world that's created is one that makes you long for such a thing?