Is Your Personal Philosophy Similar to Ligotti's?

[ToALonelyPeace]

I've been reading Ligotti's interviews. My favorite is this one where he stated many of the things I want to say but never could formulate.

Quote

This absence of understanding on the part of others is something that a great many people must live with. There are plenty of forms of suffering for which an individual is accorded all kinds of concern and benefits. The reason for this is that most people have suffered in a multitude of the same or similar ways, even it’s just a broken bone. Others get nothing simply because what they suffer is relatively rare. I’m not saying that this state of affairs is just or unjust, deserved or undeserved. It’s just the way it is.

Mr. Ligotti and I have much more in common than I previously thought when I posted in this thread. My pessimism stems from childhood suffering which as much as I tried to explain over and over again, can never be adequately expressed. I was born poor and sick in a third world country. I remembered in first grade there was a lesson where we had to cut a cat out of colored papers. I didn't have any paper or scissor and was terribly worried because the teacher would beat you up if you had nothing. I looked around and finally found some scraps in the trashcan to cut the cat out but I was still worried whether that was considered stealing or not (I got into trouble stealing a colored eraser before). If the teacher found out and reported it to my dad, I would get beaten up again. Sometimes I would get beaten up for reasons I didn't understand. If I had any reprieve, it was due to my severe asthma and stomach problems making me unable to breath or eat. The adults left me alone, since they thought I faked my sickness and if I was left alone I would stop faking it. And what could I do? Where to turn when society's design was to crush me? I couldn't place all the faults on my parents either, because they were poor and beaten themselves. Poverty made their love brutal but they didn't understand that and it wasn't because of stupidity. They were teachers, educated members of society, and didn't lack understanding in history, logic, or philosophy. So why?

And I have many more "Why?" for the world, such as Why poverty? Why injustice? Ligotti mentioned in an interview he wished people would be more concerned with justice. I am a pessimist because the impossibility of justice haunts me. I know the saying "only idealists become pessimists" but this seems to suggest everyone should be born with the preconceived view that this world is impossibly ####ed up and one shouldn't expect anything. How could I have known in the womb the torture and death I would witness and I myself would suffer? That when I ask "What was it all for?" I can only receive the answer "It is the way the world is" ? Sometimes my disgust with life is too much to swallow and I feel I would scream like a lunatic and they would lock me away for good. I envy the stone for its everlasting silence without effort because any moment now I might explode and everything would fall apart again.

[Frater_Tsalal]

Well, I think that most people fall into two dominant categories: those who look towards the future and those who look towards the past. And though I try to move with the times I've always pretty much fallen into the latter category, being prone to nostalgia, though I'm aware that it's easy to look at the past with rose-colored glasses. I can't really say that I idealize the past... sometimes I just miss it.

The city where I live (Woonsocket, Rhode Island) came to prominence due to a number of textile mills and factories that sprung up along the sides of the Blackstone River back in the 19th century. By the time I was born in 1980, many of those mills had fallen into decline and a great majority of them were boarded up and abandoned. I always thought those buildings had a derelict glamor, and perhaps the fact that my grandfather worked at one for so many years has something to do with it (though I wouldn't have wanted to actually work in one, as they were very dangerous: one shift my grandfather saw someone's arm get ripped off by one of the machines). I think that's one reason why, when I discovered Lovecraft's work in college, I responded to it so much, because in some ways the seedy and derelict towns he described (such as Innsmouth: essentially, 19th century industrial cities that had fallen on hard times) reminded me of the city I myself lived in. Sadly Woonsocket is now a "city on the move" (to quote a loathsome slogan adopted by the place), and many of those old and abandoned mills have been torn down and replaced with generic office buildings: I can see why the city would want to do so because they were eyesores and fire hazards, and yet... and yet...

One of my favorite buildings in Woonsocket is a place known as St. Ann's Church, another of those old-time churches. The place closed down around the year 2000 and there was talk of it being destroyed. Luckily a number of years ago some non-profit group purchased the place, renovated it, and now they hold tours there every Sunday. I went on one of these tours years ago (again, back in 2010), and I'm really glad it wasn't torn down because while the exterior is impressive, the interior is even more amazing. It houses the largest collection of fresco paintings in North America, and has even been dubbed "The Sistine Chapel of America" (for the curious, here's a link to the place's website: http://www.stannartsandculturalcenter.org/) The fact that this incredible church is located in Woonsocket, Rhode Island (of all the places in the world) is even more astonishing: I liken it to wandering through a dump and stumbling across a Salvador Dali painting. Shortly after the tour I took I managed to get my hands on a copy of a book that was put out by the church (in 1990) to celebrate the parish's 100 year anniversary. It was through that book that I found out a lot of details about what the city was like back in the day, and it made me sad when I realized how much of that's been lost: practically an entire culture.

One more nostalgic digression. I've never been a big fan of my parent's church, despite attending Mass there religiously every Sunday for the first 18 years or so of my life (by the time I was around 18 or 19 I no longer considered myself a Catholic). It's very bland-looking in terms of architecture: I joke that it looks like a typical post-Vatican II church, despite the fact it was actually built back in the 1950's. I try to avoid going there as often as I can, but I make a few exceptions: Easter, Christmas, Mother's Day, Father's Day, and sometimes anniversary masses done in tribute to my deceased grandparents. My least favorite aspect of the church is the music director, who has an extremely nasal and grating voice. I do, however, enjoy going to the midnight Mass with my family at Christmas every year. Mainly because that Mass is the one time of the year they have a special guest singer. This guest singer is an old gentleman, always immaculately dressed in a suit and tie, and he only has one role: after Communion, the band plays "O Holy Night," and at one point during this song the old gentleman sings the version of the song in French, and he has a really beautiful voice, almost like an opera singer. It's something I've always found intensely moving, and it strikes me as sad and out of place in some ways... of course, back in the early 20th century, more people in Woonsocket spoke French than English, so I assume that all of the Masses must have had singing like that. To me the old gentleman is both symbolic of the city's fading French-Canadian heritage, and also of the fading nobility of the Catholic Church... two relics of the old school. I don't know... maybe one needs to be a lapsed Catholic to truly find it poignant.

[Druidic]

Only on really bad days. And I have my share.

But I prefer the wisdom of "The Happy Pessimist."

[gveranon]

Quote Originally Posted by Zaharoff

Our residency here is brief; I hold the hope that everyone has the chance to grow and flower.

This makes me think of Ligotti's Chymist: "Now rose of madness--BLOOM!"

[cannibal cop]

When I first discovered antinatalism, years ago, my initial reaction was skepticism. I still held some naïve hope for the future, still believed that, against all the odds, there was something worthwhile to strive for. All that homely wisdom about how life, in itself, was a gift, and something to be cherished and preserved at all costs.

Now I finally understand how hilariously, hopelessly wrong I had been all along.

My own personal philosophy is that I can not trust my senses or stores of information about anything and that I have no reason to prioritise matter over mood or history over the imagined or to believe in anything merely because I believe in it.

A common question I get asked is how do I function with this belief without falling into a type of schizophrenic breakdown of self, and the answer is that it's ####ING DIFFICULT.