|
|
Thread Tools | Search this Thread | Display Modes | Translate |
08-03-2008 | #1 | |||||||||||
Town Manager
Join Date: Jan 2005
Posts: 1,821
Quotes: 19
|
Nihilistic Passage of the Day
"We are all atheists about most of the gods that humanity has ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further."
Professor Richard Dawkins | |||||||||||
THOMAS LIGOTTI ONLINE
A Shining Brainless Beacon Of Elegant Mutations And Cunning Annihilations |
||||||||||||
4 Thanks From: | Cyril Tourneur (09-11-2010), G. S. Carnivals (05-28-2010), hopfrog (01-05-2009), Spotbowserfido2 (09-11-2010) |
08-03-2008 | #2 | |||||||||||
Grimscribe
Join Date: Aug 2005
Posts: 4,889
Quotes: 0
|
Re: Nihilistic Passage of the Day
I think I would like 'Nihilism' defined in contradistinction to 'Pessimism', but here goes (thanks to Mr Can):
"From the cosmic point of view, to have opinions or preferences at all is to be ill; for by harbouring them one dams up the flow of the ineluctable force which, like a river, bears us down to the ocean of everything's unknowing. Reality is a running noose, one is brought up short with a jerk by death. It would have been wiser to co-operate wih the inevitable and learn to profit by this unhappy state of things - by realising and accommodating death! But we don't, we allow the ego to foul its own nest. Therefore we have insecurity, stress, the midnight-fruit of insomnia, with a whole culture crying itself to sleep." - from 'The Avignon Quincunx' by Lawrence Durrell ('Constance' 1982) | |||||||||||
5 Thanks From: | Cyril Tourneur (09-11-2010), G. S. Carnivals (11-01-2008), hopfrog (01-05-2009), marioneta (08-27-2014), Spotbowserfido2 (09-11-2010) |
08-03-2008 | #3 | |||||||||||
Grimscribe
Join Date: Jan 2005
Posts: 3,338
Quotes: 1
|
Re: Nihilistic Passage of the Day
Richard Dawkins is a pleasure to read. It is hard to imagine a more clear-headed thinker. When I heard about his book The God Delusion, I was enthusiastic to say the least. There are few books I have looked forward to reading more. But one I can name is The Conspiracy Against the Human Race by Thomas Ligotti. The above quote by Dawkins reminds me of H.L. Mencken's Graveyard of the Gods: http://nowscape.com/atheism/dead_gods.htm | |||||||||||
2 Thanks From: | Cyril Tourneur (09-11-2010), marioneta (08-27-2014) |
08-20-2008 | #4 | |||||||||||
Our Temporary Supervisor
Join Date: Jul 2005
Posts: 26,614
Quotes: 397
|
Re: Nihilistic Passage of the Day
The Mystery Man came over
An' he said: "I'm outa-site!" He said, for a nominal service charge, I could reach nervonna t'nite If I was ready, willing 'n able To pay him his regular fee He would drop all the rest of his pressing affairs And devote His Attention to me But I said . . . Look here brother, Who you jivin' with that Cosmik Debris? (Now who you jivin' with that Cosmik Debris?) Look here brother, Don't you waste your time on me The Mystery Man got nervous An' he fidget around a bit He reached in the pocket of his Mystery Robe An' he whipped out a shaving kit Now, I thought it was a razor An' a can of foamin' goo But he told me right then when the top popped open There was nothin' his box won't do With the oil of Afro-dytee An' the dust of the Grand Wazoo He said: "You might not believe this, little fella, but it'll cure your Asthma too!" An' I said . . . Look here brother, Who you jivin' with that Cosmik Debris? (Now what kind of a geroo are you anyway?) Look here brother, Don't you waste your time on me Don't waste yer time . . . I've got troubles of my own, I said An' you can't help me out So take your meditations an' your preparations An' ram it up yer snout "BUT I GOT A KRISTL BOL!", he said An' held it to the light So I snatched it All away from him An' I showed him how to do it right I wrapped a newspaper 'round my head So I'd look like I was Deep I said some Mumbo Jumbos then An' told him he was goin' to sleep I robbed his rings An' pocket watch An' everything else I found I had that sucker hypnotized He couldn't even make a sound I proceeded to tell him his future then As long as he was hanging around Frank Zappa - "Cosmik Debris" | |||||||||||
"What does it mean to be alive except to court disaster and suffering at every moment?"
Tibet: Carnivals? Ligotti: Ceremonies for initiating children into the cult of the sinister. Tibet: Gas stations? Ligotti: Nothing to say about gas stations as such, although I've always responded to the smell of gasoline as if it were a kind of perfume. |
||||||||||||
5 Thanks From: |
11-01-2008 | #5 | |||||||||||
Our Temporary Supervisor
Join Date: Jul 2005
Posts: 26,614
Quotes: 397
|
Re: Nihilistic Passage of the Day
nihilarian A person who deals with things of no importance, whose concerns are a niggling and nugatory (trifling) affair. The office worker saddled with keeping records of inconsequential details or (an alimenter) feeding a machine, the seller of a worthless or meaningless item, the disgruntled gofer, the subordinate who never gets to be part of the real action - these are helpless nihilarians, some of whom know it all too well ("I have a nothing job"). Many people who deal with matters of no import are not conscious of that fact. They're still nihilarians.
David Grambs - Dimboxes, Epopts, and Other Quidams | |||||||||||
"What does it mean to be alive except to court disaster and suffering at every moment?"
Tibet: Carnivals? Ligotti: Ceremonies for initiating children into the cult of the sinister. Tibet: Gas stations? Ligotti: Nothing to say about gas stations as such, although I've always responded to the smell of gasoline as if it were a kind of perfume. |
||||||||||||
3 Thanks From: |
11-01-2008 | #6 | |||||||||||
Grimscribe
Join Date: Aug 2005
Posts: 4,889
Quotes: 0
|
Re: Nihilistic Passage of the Day
BRILLIANT! | |||||||||||
09-11-2010 | #7 |
Grimscribe
|
Re: Nihilistic Passage of the Day
|
(Dictated while taking a stroll) I have come to realizewhat a superbly contrived marionette man is. Though without strings attached, one can strut, jump, hop and, moreover, utter words, an elaborately made puppet! Who knows? At the Bon season next year, I may be a new dead invited to the Bon festival. What an evanescent world! This truth keeps slipping off our minds.
- Tsunetomo Yamamoto, The Hagakure |
|
5 Thanks From: | G. S. Carnivals (09-11-2010), marioneta (08-27-2014), Russell Nash (09-11-2010), Spotbowserfido2 (09-11-2010), teguififthzeal (09-20-2014) |
09-11-2010 | #8 | |||||||||||
Grimscribe
Join Date: Sep 2008
Posts: 935
Quotes: 0
|
Re: Nihilistic Passage of the Day
Definitely, believing in other than nothing is much more exhausting. Just imagine someone like that girl in my own family, who had a massive stroke because an anesthetist was celebrating a party and was unavailable for hours, and couldn't be born by C-section, the girl didn't breathe regularly, and most of her brain died at birth, when the guy finally showed up. The girl had several surgeries done later on. She couldn't see, eat, etc., and died within 4 years, which was considered by many to be a miracle. A miracle?! Don't make me laugh. How impossible it is to explain this accident believing in something, and how easy believing in nothing! Not really nothing but simply in that we exist for no reason, immersed in a Universe that doesn't even care if we keep going breathing or die. | |||||||||||
I know who you are
|
||||||||||||
12-29-2013 | #9 | |||||||||||
Grimscribe
Join Date: Aug 2005
Posts: 4,889
Quotes: 0
|
Re: Nihilistic Passage of the Day
“Unseen or at least unremarked, I orbit the camp. That’s what I want: a place in which I have no part. I want to ride through space like wind in wind and sleep on the void, and be a go-between with nothing but between. I only know useless knowledge. The camp spins there to one side of me like so many floating candles collecting in a weak eddy. What I feel inside myself is fierce and calm; it’s a ruthless desire for an immortality of perfect weakness where I can be a tirelessly efficient functionary turning things over from one end of the message circuit to the other and back again, so that I never stop going back. As long as I’m going back, logically speaking, I yet won’t be back, only now am I getting under way. No one sees you while you’re in transit and the moment you arrive is the moment you have to turn around and leave again, provided there is some return correspondence, and even if there isn’t, it doesn’t matter, because there’s nothing to do but wait for some other message which will sooner or later have to go out and take you along with it.”
— From MEMBER a novel by Michael Cisco published by Chomu Press in 2013. This is to be added to my favourite quotes, first quoted in my review of MEMBER here. | |||||||||||
3 Thanks From: |
01-28-2014 | #10 | |||||||||||
Mannikin
Join Date: Jan 2014
Posts: 28
Quotes: 0
|
Re: Nihilistic Passage of the Day
" We are a spectacle to the world. Let the great and humble, by our example, see well to what state they shall be inexorably reduced, whatever their condition, age or sex. Why, then, miserable person, are you puffed with pride? Dust you are, and unto dust you shall return, rotten corpse, morsel and meal for the worms."
Black Plague epitaph. | |||||||||||
Thanks From: | Druidic (08-26-2014) |
Bookmarks |
Tags |
day, nihilistic, passage |
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Thread Starter | Forum | Replies | Last Post |
Clown Passage of the Day | G. S. Carnivals | Themed Quotations | 158 | 11-28-2013 11:58 PM |
Dream Passage of the Day | G. S. Carnivals | Themed Quotations | 326 | 08-18-2013 12:02 PM |
Sideshow Passage of the Day | G. S. Carnivals | Themed Quotations | 55 | 04-05-2012 03:12 AM |
Erotic Passage of the Day | Bleak&Icy | Themed Quotations | 87 | 05-22-2009 07:42 PM |
Hysterical Passage of the Day | Viva June | Themed Quotations | 13 | 11-17-2008 03:15 AM |