THE CONSPIRACY AGAINST THE HUMAN RACE Available for Pre-Order

[Acutely decayed]

Quote Originally Posted by Gray House

Quote Originally Posted by Acutely decayed I was thinking of devaluing pre-existence to justify existence, but without the pay-off of a theistic suicide I'm not sure what you mean by the second part of this. I can think of two possibilities

No neither of these two I think, and nothing to do with personal or mortal suicide.

Originally I was postulating eternal suffering occuring before "our" consciousness, this would (to my mind) potentially justify consciousness as a sort of "escape" i.e. although it is "MALIGNANTLY USELESS" it is a better option than eternal inconceivable suffering - it would also justify reproduction if this removed any quantitative element from the pre-existent suffering. It was not really anything I believed in deeply on a philosophical level just a half-hearted attempt to rationalise/justify continued human existence within the terms of CATHR, as a philosophical exercise. I was slightly irritated at the implication I was a pig also in the text at that stage I seem to remember. Your idea that I was driven in advance to come up with a philosophy "to fit" was correct.

I thought initially I had thought up something vaguely novel. However in CATHR on pg 35 - Mainlanders philosophy, if I understand correctly, is that a God suffers so horribly he splinters into conscious entities in order to commit suicide (this is the pay-off for existence in Mainlanders philosophy, not my idea - it allows the suffering god to die through us - this was the "pay-off" of theistic suicide I mentioned, i was not referring to any form of personal suicide) .

Anyway, to my mind, Mainlanders idea is so similar to what I originally was postulating that there is not a huge difference - (just the "pay-off") - I did not see this at first (I am a bit slow) - so my idea was not original at all, no big surprise there . In both cases our consciousness is seen as at least partly justified by a release from the previous state of existence.

At the end of your post you mention an "unimaginable form of consciousness" the suffering of pre-existence I was thinking of would be that, all we could know is - it was bad - how it could occur without existence would not be conceivable (OK, I am not saying my idea does not sound dumb).

As an aside, I also found myself thinking towards the end of CATHR that just as no poor "non-conscious" creature could predict what was about to hit them, figuratively speaking (i.e. consciousness) what if there is something equally unpredictable (theoretically It could be experienced as good, bad or neither) coming for conscious beings sometime in the future. As different from consciousness as it is from non-consciousness and just as un-imaginable to those it hasn't hit . Something that like a "non-conscious being" could not think of the consciousness coming, we cannot conceive. I am not thinking of enlightenment here but something qualitatively different only imaginable by comparison to what happened before when "consciousness" hit.

	CATHR The Conspiracy Against the Human Race

[qcrisp]

The book arrived this AM. I mean TCATHR, of course.

I don't know when I'll get time to sit down and read it properly because I'm insanely busy at the moment, but I naturally dipped into it after cutting it free of its packing, and, yes, there are some very fine, chuckle-inducing turns of phrase. Writing as fine as this is very rare.

	TCATHR The Conspiracy Against the Human Race

[starrysothoth]

I am sorry to report this decisively negative review of TCATHR by someone named Jonathon Howard:

http://sacramentobookreview.com/phil...he-human-race/

This is the first one I've seen, and it is nasty. Just because I like Ligotti's fiction and find myself fascinated with his thinking, I certainly don't expect universal agreement with the book or praise for it. But this "review" really borders on being rude and nasty.

I hate it when bloggers think they're being hip and snarky by reaching beyond a work's merit to disparage its author.

	TCATHR The Conspiracy Against the Human Race

[yellowish haze]

From the review:

Quote

I’m being kind by not putting the word philosophy in quotes, too.

Well, too bad the author was not kind enough to put the word "reviewed" at the bottom of the text in quotes. Half of this text, which is very short itself and totally lacking in depth, is spent to announce a "review" that follows in the second half.

It comes as absolutely no surprise to me that TCATHR will turn out to be for some readers, to put it mildly, not their cup of tea, but I hope to see them write reviews that look like actual reviews and that those are at least well argued.

	TCATHR The Conspiracy Against the Human Race

[Cnev]

Quote Originally Posted by starrysothoth

I am sorry to report this decisively negative review of TCATHR by someone named Jonathon Howard: http://sacramentobookreview.com/phil...he-human-race/ This is the first one I've seen, and it is nasty. Just because I like Ligotti's fiction and find myself fascinated with his thinking, I certainly don't expect universal agreement with the book or praise for it. But this "review" really borders on being rude and nasty. I hate it when bloggers think they're being hip and snarky by reaching beyond a work's merit to disparage its author.

I'm not sure I would even consider that a review. He spent the first half of his "review" bull####ting about nothing pertaining to the content of the book, and then once he does begin to touch upon the content, he doesn't. IMO that review did nothing for or against Ligotti. It was an ignorantly negative and shallow review, and it made his point absolutely worthless.

	TCATHR The Conspiracy Against the Human Race

[Evans]

My first question was ''Is this reviewer being paid?'' The review was no more in depth or well thought out than a a lot of Amazon

People are perfectly entitled to disagree with or dislike The Conspiracy Against The Human Race - I personally disagree with much of it, though I really admire the man (Ligotti) for publicly taking up a stance that will seem unpalatable - but that's no excuse for resorting to such childish name calling and ad hominem attacks. Also, the nature of the review really does not speak well for the writer's self confessed Amateur Philosopher status; the argument ''Your philosophy annoys me so much I wont even attempt to refute it'' is not going to help win any Nobel Prizes.

[matt cardin]

I saw that review when it first appeared recently, and similarly recognized its ridiculousness. All the reviewer did was to reveal his inability and/or unwillingness to A) consider the book sympathetically, and/or B) understand it. An actual criticism of CATHR or any other book that rises to the book's level and directly engages with it is a fine thing, but this one, obviously, fell short.

But at least it was amusing, because the reviewer's (childishly) vehement reaction to CATHR pretty much demonstrated the book's point about the violently negative response that most people will automatically give to any expression of authentic pessimism. I just wish the guy had been adequate to the task. It would have made for a really interesting read.

	CATHR The Conspiracy Against the Human Race

[Ascrobius]

In many ways, sadly, responses like this are exactly what I expected from many people. This particular "review", was not only not a real review, but I would suggest that posting something like that and calling it a review is irresponsible and intellectually dishonest. Like Tom has said before, if you think the work is an abominable piece of garbage, at least support your argument(s) as to what you disagree with and why you disagree with it in an intelligent way. This "reviewer" clearly failed on both accounts.

[The New Nonsense]

I think Jonathon Howard felt a touch of the chill one encounters when experiencing cosmic horror for the first time and had no choice but to flee. Then, at a perceived safe distance, he hurls insults in a vain attempt to make it all go away, like a child plugging its ears and shouting to drown out the world. Sorry, Jonathon, there is no safe distance, nor escape.

"... there is nothing to do
and there is nowhere to go
there is nothing to be
and there is no one to know..." -TL

[starrysothoth]

I'm inclined to agree that Mr. Howard is desperately trying to marginalize the horror laid out by Ligotti with poor insults. Having written a few reviews myself, I can say this piece barely qualifies as one. In hindsight, maybe it's yet another example of TCATHR's power that this paragraph is the closet thing there is (so far) to a really bad response.

I was somewhat hesitant to post this link here because I knew it would redden a few faces (I know it did mine). I'm always looking for all the commentary I can find about TL's work, good or bad, and unfortunately, this bottom-of-the-barrel post was the only negative thing I saw out there about TCATHR. What really pisses me off is that Howard effectively calls Ligotti a bad writer.

Whatever one thinks of TCATHR, I don't see how anyone can claim it's poorly written/thought out. I've read a close friend of mine long excerpts from the book. She's a practicing Catholic, very optimistic, and actually became a bit visibly flustered/horrified at contemplating the ideas. However, even she had to admit it's very well crafted, and she easily saw the deep contemplation put into the argument.

This is the type of response I hope to see online one day from someone who disagrees with the philosophy expressed in Conspiracy. I see plenty of legitimate angles a person could adopt to critique it. Howard's emotional and smart assed comment is not one of them.

	TCATHR The Conspiracy Against the Human Race