"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
Nihilistic Passage of the Day
- Thread starter Dr. Bantham
- Start date
Nemonymous
Grimscribe
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)
"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)
bendk
Grimscribe
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
G. S. Carnivals
Our Temporary Supervisor
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
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"
G. S. Carnivals
Our Temporary Supervisor
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
Nemonymous
Grimscribe
Cyril Tourneur
Grimscribe
Russell Nash
Grimscribe
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.
Nemonymous
Grimscribe
“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.
— 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.
Laurent Barabba
Mannikin
" 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.
Black Plague epitaph.
Nemonymous
Grimscribe
Passage from 'Tristram Shandy' by Laurence Sterne where these knots are used to prevent - or at least indefinitely postpone - the birth of the baby who is the actual narrator of this passage by which means he would not exist at all and neither then would this actual passage exist at all...
"In the case of knots,—by which, in the first place, I would not be understood to mean slip-knots—because in the course of my life and opinions—my opinions concerning them will come in more properly when I mention the catastrophe of my great uncle Mr. Hammond Shandy,—a little man,—but of high fancy:—he rushed into the duke of Monmouth’s affair:—nor, secondly, in this place, do I mean that particular species of knots called bow-knots;—there is so little address, or skill, or patience required in the unloosing them, that they are below my giving any opinion at all about them.—But by the knots I am speaking of, may it please your reverences to believe, that I mean good, honest, devilish tight, hard knots, made bona fide, as Obadiah made his;—in which there is no quibbling provision made by the duplication and return of the two ends of the strings thro’ the annulus or noose made by the second implication of them—to get them slipp’d and undone by.—I hope you apprehend me.
In the case of these knots then, and of the several obstructions, which, may it please your reverences, such knots cast in our way in getting through life—every hasty man can whip out his pen-knife and cut through them.—’Tis wrong. Believe me, Sirs, the most virtuous way, and which both reason and conscience dictate—is to take our teeth or our fingers to them.—Dr. Slop had lost his teeth—his favourite instrument, by extracting in a wrong direction, or by some misapplication of it, unfortunately slipping, he had formerly, in a hard labour, knock’d out three of the best of them with the handle of it:—he tried his fingers—alas; the nails of his fingers and thumbs were cut close.—The duce take it! I can make nothing of it either way, cried Dr. Slop.—The trampling over head near my mother’s bed-side increased.—Pox take the fellow! I shall never get the knots untied as long as I live.—My mother gave a groan.—Lend me your penknife—I must e’en cut the knots at last—pugh!—psha!—Lord! I have cut my thumb quite across to the very bone—curse the fellow—if there was not another man-midwife within fifty miles—I am undone for this bout—I wish the scoundrel hang’d—I wish he was shot—I wish all the devils in hell had him for a blockhead—!”
"In the case of knots,—by which, in the first place, I would not be understood to mean slip-knots—because in the course of my life and opinions—my opinions concerning them will come in more properly when I mention the catastrophe of my great uncle Mr. Hammond Shandy,—a little man,—but of high fancy:—he rushed into the duke of Monmouth’s affair:—nor, secondly, in this place, do I mean that particular species of knots called bow-knots;—there is so little address, or skill, or patience required in the unloosing them, that they are below my giving any opinion at all about them.—But by the knots I am speaking of, may it please your reverences to believe, that I mean good, honest, devilish tight, hard knots, made bona fide, as Obadiah made his;—in which there is no quibbling provision made by the duplication and return of the two ends of the strings thro’ the annulus or noose made by the second implication of them—to get them slipp’d and undone by.—I hope you apprehend me.
In the case of these knots then, and of the several obstructions, which, may it please your reverences, such knots cast in our way in getting through life—every hasty man can whip out his pen-knife and cut through them.—’Tis wrong. Believe me, Sirs, the most virtuous way, and which both reason and conscience dictate—is to take our teeth or our fingers to them.—Dr. Slop had lost his teeth—his favourite instrument, by extracting in a wrong direction, or by some misapplication of it, unfortunately slipping, he had formerly, in a hard labour, knock’d out three of the best of them with the handle of it:—he tried his fingers—alas; the nails of his fingers and thumbs were cut close.—The duce take it! I can make nothing of it either way, cried Dr. Slop.—The trampling over head near my mother’s bed-side increased.—Pox take the fellow! I shall never get the knots untied as long as I live.—My mother gave a groan.—Lend me your penknife—I must e’en cut the knots at last—pugh!—psha!—Lord! I have cut my thumb quite across to the very bone—curse the fellow—if there was not another man-midwife within fifty miles—I am undone for this bout—I wish the scoundrel hang’d—I wish he was shot—I wish all the devils in hell had him for a blockhead—!”
"This little blind creature, only a few days old, turning its head every which way in search of something or other, this naked skull, this initial baldness, this tiny monkey that has sojourned for months in a latrine and that soon, forgetting its origins, will spit on the galaxies..."
"Nothing makes us modest,not even the sight of a corpse."
E.M. Cioran
"Nothing makes us modest,not even the sight of a corpse."
E.M. Cioran
LeglessSaltyDiogenes
Acolyte
"Dont look back. You were dead from the beginning!"
Godflesh- "Like Rats"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cixczzF0A10
Godflesh- "Like Rats"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cixczzF0A10
LeglessSaltyDiogenes
Acolyte
What, yr all cheesed off cuz I ruined yr literary circle jerk with some Flesh? Do tell.
"Pus, poison, blood, s###: Body to Body, to Body, to Body"- "Job", Swans
"Pus, poison, blood, s###: Body to Body, to Body, to Body"- "Job", Swans
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