/lit/ - Literature

>>8753063
This thread is so old

>>8753063
I read like a quarter of his book then stopped to play the Witcher 3 when it came out and have not gotten around to finishing it.

No, he's not. But that book fucking sucks.

>>8753132
Read it and tell me whether or not he's wrong

>>8753063
This guy is not spooky at all.

>>8753147
Why. If it's really that shitty, I'm not ginna bother wasting my time finishing it.

>>8753177
It's not shitty.

>>8753177
>taking /lit/'s opinion seriously

>>8753134
It spooked you too much.

I never got what is so appealing about philosophical pessimism. Life is alright and if you can't deal with the downsides of being alive you're free to off yourself any moment. But you won't. Because you like being alive.

>>8753216
Bad post

>>8753221
No descernible talent

>>8753063
No, but what he said could be and has been said less melodramatically.

But he made an insightful observation into how society marginalizes pessimism and makes all those morbid thoughts somewhat taboo.

>>8753236
>less melodramatically

He wasn't melodramatic enough imo

>>8753216
I used to be into horror but nothing phases me anymore except species-wide existential risk and anti-human ideas.

>>8753256
It has a non-fiction format, so I think you can't go too dramatic without losing "credibility/seriousness".

It scared me a bit in the beginning, but later on I found the book comforting and even humorous in some parts.
It's comforting knowing that there are people out there with similar thoughts and fears and I suppose that's one of the goals of the book.

>>8753224
You really need to read the book.

>>8753292
>even humorous in some parts

u wot

>>8753168
Read his short stories for maximum spooky.

>>8753318
virgin pimping allah made me chuckle

>>8753259

r
u
me?

>>8753259
Ligotti's short stories concern existential risk and misanthropy. That's why we read him.

>>8753259

>>8753410
Could this book be considered a part of the dark enlightenment?

>>8753410
ohmygod he looks like if hp lovecraft and thomas pynchon had babi

>>8753425
no

>>8753063
>tfw completely unfazed by this book because I'm Catholic

>>8753459
>implying you've read it

>>8753425
yes

>>8753381
Yeah, I guess you could see it as funny, but Ligotti would probably say it's a coping mechanism.

>>8753566
He does say that, but also in a humorous way:

Many people in this world are always looking to science to save them from something. But just as many, or more, prefer old and reputable belief systems and their sectarian offshoots for salvation. So they trust in the deity of the Old Testament, an incontinent dotard who soiled Himself and the universe with His corruption, a low-budget divinity passing itself off as the genuine article. (Ask the Gnostics.) They trust in Jesus Christ, a historical cipher stitched together like Frankenstein’s monster out of parts robbed from the graves of messiahs dead and buried—a savior on a stick. They trust in the virgin-pimping Allah and his Drum Major Mohammed, a prophet-come-lately who pioneered a new genus of humbuggery for an emerging market of believers that was not being adequately served by existing religious products. They trust in anything that authenticates their importance as persons, tribes, societies, and particularly as a species that will endure in this world and perhaps in an afterworld that may be uncertain in its reality and unclear in its layout, but which sates their craving for values not of this earth—that depressing, meaningless place their consciousness must sidestep every day.3 Sure enough, then, writers such as Zapffe, Schopenhauer, and Lovecraft only wrote their ticket to marginality when they failed to affirm the worth and wonder of humanity, the validity of its values (whether eternal or provisional), and, naturally, a world without a foreseeable end, or at least a world whose end no one wants to see.

>>8753063
I'm not a native speaker, but I read some of this book in English. What do you think of the author's style?
To me, it seemed typical of YA fiction (and therefore it's difficult to take this guy seriously).

>>8753216
It appeals to me because I make very bad decisions.

>>8753587
Hey that's as if my sixteen year old self got some literary talent and started blurting out articles on a blog.

>>8753653
Read the book and decide for yourself. Ligotti would detest this comment.

>>8753630
>What do you think of the author's style?

It's brilliant. His writing is way too verbiose with extended metaphors to be close to YA.

>>8753587
Good quote. I can't see the humor.

Idk but I like I Have a Special Plan for This World by Current 93

I also found it funny in places, just the unremitting bleakness and over the top pessimism of it all made me laugh.

I think he makes some very valid (if not original) points but for me such an unrelentingly pessimistic outlook seems just as absurd as it's opposite. To say existence is irredeemably awful by it's very nature for me seems a touch arrogant.

Ligotti himself admits "suffering" anhedonia at which point it's just one miserable bloke's view really isn't it.

>>8753587
heh

>>8754254
>those who hold a position i disagree with are [negative charicature]
Real hot argument you've got there

>>8753236
>how society marginalizes pessimism and makes all those morbid thoughts somewhat taboo
Nothing wrong with putting the sick in isolation, if you ask me.

>>8754784
>if you ask me
no one did

pessimism or optimism doesn't matter.
what matters is a rational model of the circumstances.

retarded beasts in human form whining about "bad vibes" and just wanting to ignore all problems are a literal cancer on humanity. Instead of maximizing our potential for innovation, we form humanity around the preservation of elite incompetents who have no vision and care only for their insane addictions.

Basically our world is run by the limbic systems of the elite in the hierarchy. Brainless hedonism.

>>8753216
>I never got what is so appealing about sobriety. Heroin is alright and if you can't deal with the downsides of doing heroin you are always free to kick at any moment. But you wont, because you like shooting up.

t. life junkie

>>8753714
it was a compliment. He gives voice to an adolescent angst typically undignified from its lack of articulation. "I didn't ask to be born". There is something there.

>>8754784
>Shut it down
>its hurting my feefees

>>8753630
>What do you think of the author's style?
nothing special in this book, but his short stories are fucking great, definitely among my favorites

>>8753985
No, actually. I'd say the fact you're getting an overall positive response to the book in the thread, plus how popular it is, proves that people are connecting on it at some level.

While you may find it absurd, I would point to all of the men he quotes in his book as also prove that yes, other people shared this view on existence as just being pain. The popularity and deep emotional connections Buddhism has with its followers would also support this view.

Ligotti is a pretty sweet cosmic horror writer but he's unsurprisingly also a massive edgelord.

>Now it seems I am the one who cannot sleep, especially when I see the moon hovering above our city -- the moon all fat and pale, glaring down on us from within its gauzy webs of clouds. How can I rest beneath its enchanting gaze? And how can I can keep myself from straying into a certain section in town as night after night I wander strange streets alone?

>>8753918
patrician spotted.

>>8753216
You have no understanding of philosophical pessimism, evidently

>>8753918
>>8755388
Degenerate little town > Special plan

He comes a step short of Mahayana Buddhism which has been around for about 2000 years longer than this book, but it's a decent survey of all the other writers who also came short

>>8755398
>"pessimism doesn't get enough recognition"
>"humans don't put enough emphasis on just how bad suffering actually is"
>heh... buddhism did it first...

>>8755525
It did, actually. Practically the entirety of classical Eastern thought is predicated on the notion that all of existence is comprised of transience and suffering in the temporal sphere. Blame protestantism and the hedonism of the west for dissuading people from this belief

>>8755539
t. undergrad

>>8755539
He's talking about the first part actually.
">"pessimism doesn't get enough recognition"
>"humans don't put enough emphasis on just how bad suffering actually is" "

Buddhism doesn't discuss why pessimism is fringe. It's the main point of Conspiracy Against the Human Race; Ligotti admits that he himself can't write more or better than most pessimists, instead he explores why the idea is so ignored and marginalised.

Also, were there any kinds of philosophy that were pessimistic and yet older than buddhism?

>>8755542
I've read Conspiracy against the Human race, Schopenhauer's essays and World as Will and Representation, and everything Cioran has ever written. Most of the crux of what they have to say (Schopenhauer kind of notwithstanding because he goes in depth into western metaphysics) was represented also in the Bodhisattvapatika. Explain to me how what I am saying is incorrect

>>8755395
Agreed, but Special Plan still holds that 'special place' for me.

>>8755552
Zapffe?

>>8755560
the last messiah but that's all I've read because I don't speak Norwegian.

>>8755552
It could be right for all I know, but it's reminiscent of a typical college student's appeal that >"Eastern philosophy has all the answers, myaaan!"

>>8755600
so, without knowing a thing about what I said, you had to shit out a reactionary shitpost on what your idea of the conventional college student is? I don't know why I expected anything different from this board

>>8755739
You're not nearly as smart as you think you are.

>>8755795
I don't claim to be smart, but if I'm going to be criticized, I'd rather it be by somebody that isn't basing their entire opinion on general reactionaryism

>>8755812
So you admit you're a retard and redact all the absurd claims you posited in this post: >>8755539 ?

So where do I start with Buddhist pessimism?

>>8755829
You don't. It's unscientific nonsense.

>>8755852
What's some scientific pessimism?

>>8755860
Thomas Ligotti's The Conspiracy Against the Human Race

>>8754784
Jerk.

>>8755947
Who's the fifth philosopher?

>>8755964
Prof. Adam Lanza (PhD) I believe

>>8753425
maybe

>>8755827
no, because it wasn't effectively criticized. I was just called an undergrad without explanation

>>8755398
Buddhism is baby's dummy.

>>8756403
I mean it's not real pessimism. It's kind of "soothing" pessmism. It addmits the existence and ultimate nature of suffering, but just because it can't stand it, it thinks up some pacifing system. You know, nirvana can be attained by stopping craving - I highly doubt that. Suffering never ends.

>>8755980
His experiments in anti-humanism are fascinating desu

>>8753147
It does not

>>8754254
>>8754266
This board will never take atheism seriously because everything is clouded in irony to save people on this board the effort in being sincere

MALIGNANTLY USELESS

>>8757149
this desu

>>8756444
You put too much stock in nirvana. It is associated with cessation of suffering, but it's not in the way you seem to suppose. One still endures physical pain and mental tax, but by accepting that this is fundamental to existence and not resisting when it happens, the pain ceases to truly hurt. It is the expectation of freedom from pain that ultimately causes one to suffer.

>>8753473
I pirated the epub

>>8753425
I don't know

>>8757379
Did you read all of the words?

>>8755964
Houllebeque?

Is someone able to give me an actual reason one should engage in philosophical pessimism instead of actually committing suicide? If the bottom line is that the totality of experience is an irreparable suffering, then why bother even engaging in it instead of just offing yourself? Or, at the least, not causing more suffering by engaging in it, since it presents no solutions and only furthers how noticeable suffering is. The very fact that it exists is a testament to its own untruth, just like supposed suicide cults that remain very much alive.

>>8757881
To be fair, Ligotti admits (in Conspiracy, in some of his short stories, and in some interviews) that claiming pessimism is the true worldview would make him as big a charlatan as anyone peddling any other belief system. He does not regard Conspiracy as a philosophical treatise, but as merely an accumulation of thoughts he's had over the years, some of which were explored in various ways in his fiction.

As for an-heroing, well, I quote Ligotti:

>It really doesn’t work to tell someone who’s already alive that it’s better not to have been born. They’ve already been born. It’s too late for them. So they make the best of things. They try to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative. Even pessimists for the most part follow this course. It would be suicide not to, and committing suicide is really hard to pull off in cold blood. Almost no one kills themselves because they think nonexistence is preferable to existence, or because they want to avoid any extraordinary psychological or physical suffering that may be awaiting them. Suicides wait until things are so awful that they can’t stand being alive anymore. Sometimes they’ll kill themselves when it looks like things are going to become really awful in the near future, but there are a lot of pressures against being a proactive suicide. And when it comes around to facing the facts, almost everyone is afraid of death, so they do what they can to hang on as long as they can. They choose the path that they perceive to lead to the lesser of two horrors and keep following it until they keel over dead. And no hedonistic philosophy is going to convince them or anyone else that this isn’t the way to go.

>Zapffe was the first pessimistic philosopher to my knowledge who actually came up with a non-hedonist reason for why it would be better not to have been born and not to give birth to others. His observation was that human consciousness, an evolved trait of our species, turned our existence into an untenable paradox. According to Zapffe, it’s one thing to experience suffering and then die. But it’s quite another thing to be acutely conscious that this is our life -- to be aware that we suffer for no good reason and have only a decline into death, or death by trauma, to look forward to. In order to cope with our consciousness of these realities, then, we must smother our consciousness as best we can by using various tactics. The result is a whole species of beings that have to lie unceasingly to themselves, not always successfully, about what they are and what their lives are really like. If we didn’t so this, the rug would be pulled out from under us and we’d have to face up to the fact that we’re a race that can’t come to terms with its existence. Thus we devise ways to mute, distract, and otherwise obfuscate our consciousness so that it doesn’t overwhelm us with what we’re up against in being alive.

>>8753216
>you're free to off yourself any moment. But you won't. Because you like being alive.
Humans aren't rational agents that make choices in a vacuum. We're instinct driven organisms just like the rest and we're the offspring of a selection of a couple of billion years of creatures that evaded death. That is not an easy thing to overcome.

You're not free to do anything, once you are spawned into existence you're along for the ride.

>>8757252
This hit the nail on the spot for me, this book seems useless.

>>8753425
Can you repeat the question?

>>8757881
its as good a coping mechanism as lying to yourself and its somehow less odious. I don't know, whatever works for you.

If someone wants a more neutral/scientific take on coping mechanisms I recommend pic related.

https://thepiratebay.org/torrent/15472453/The_Psychology_of_Adaptation_To_Absurdity_-_Seymour_Fisher

>>8759126
Summary please?

>>8753177
It's not shitty at all. I've found that the conclusions he reaches are a bit drawn out and odd at times - but if anything, he's a good source for Zapffe his works (only the last messiah is translated in English I think) as well as Mainländer.

>>8757252
>>pain ceases to truly hurt
Again, I highly doubt that it is possible. We don't see that anywhere. It's just a soothing belief.

>>8759126
Interesting. Thanks.

>>8754838
>Basically our world is run by the limbic systems of the elite in the hierarchy
good stuff anon

>>8755566
No, I'm saying The Last Messiah is different to Eastern Buddhism and doesn't rely on it for its conclusions.

Unless what you are referring to is the >Life is shit and horrible
but even then, Zapffe calls out human consciousness as the cause, not some innate part of reality. Just like Ligotti does.

>>8757252
there is nobody on earth who has been able to stop feeling pain or make it cease to hurt. They can learn to deal wtiht he hurt, to manage it but it will always still hurt. Every time.

What is this "pain"?