/lit/ - Literature

>>3663858

I guess some writers are so good that they can write quite detached from themselves.

I have a friend who writes awesome advertising and technical manuals for electronic products which he loathes.

>>3663858
Every single person who purportedly believes in a 'mechanical, materialistic world' turns out to be a hardcore gnostic mysticist if you actually care to examine his real views.

Every. Single. There are no exceptions, Lovecraft included.

>>3663858

Have you never been scared your worldview may be wrong?

This seems a plausible motive to me.

Because Lovecraft's greatest fear and pathos that he wanted to convey was the terror at humanity being unable to comprehend the scope of reality in the slightest. There's nothing saying that the two viewpoints can't mesh. That might even be the point: the crazy shit is the "truer" expression of reality, but we can only comprehend this tiny and limited perspective of it.

>The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.

>>3663870

so plato with space monster?

>>3663874
That would be pretty cool actually. Someone should do some cosmic horror or magical realism based on a literal interpretation of some of Plato's allegories.

I imagine Lovecraft sitting down at his typewriter, wondering if he should write a polemic on materialism which nobody would care about or buy, or wonderfully imaginative escapism which the pulps were clamoring for, and he clearly had a talent for. Must have been a tricky decision.

>>3663858
>in a mechanical materialistic world.
An uncaring universe is much more terrifying than an outright evil universe. At least the evil universe recognizes your existence.
In Lovecraft's universe, humans always phase things that are utterly indifferent to humanity, ancient gods that could stomp us like ants, but may or may not actually do. The world is terrifying because our extinction may not even be noticed by the thing that makes us go extinct. Cults pray and sacrifice to something that doesn't care about being prayed to or being given sacrifices. Just like in reality.

>>3663858 (OP)
>in a mechanical materialistic world.
An uncaring universe is much more terrifying than an outright evil universe. At least the evil universe recognizes your existence.
In Lovecraft's universe, humans always face things that are utterly indifferent to humanity, ancient gods that could stomp us like ants, but may or may not actually do. The world is terrifying because our extinction may not even be noticed by the thing that makes us go extinct. Cults pray and sacrifice to something that doesn't care about being prayed to or being given sacrifices. Just like in reality.