Well, I've finally decided to write here the extract that I mentioned, from the last piece of min to be finished in first draft. The piece has the working title of A Paris Notebook. It's in diary form, and it's really quite personal. I don't know if it's publishable, or if I even want to publish it, though I wrote it with some compulsion and enthusiasm. I hesitated before transcribing here the section dealing with The Conspiracy Against the Human Race for a number of reasons. I think out of context it may not come across exactly as I mean it. Also, I haven't finished reading CATHR, and I don't know if my responses are yet mature. I am basically not someone who likes to peddle opinions as certainties. Nonetheless, I suppose I did start this thread, so I would feel a bit lame not really saying anything in it. So, without further ado, here is the extract in question:
We have arrived at an age, it seems, when reasons not to kill yourself are harder and harder to come by. I feel that we, and particularly I, have somehow 'ended up' here -- 'ended up' is certainly the phrase. Recently I received an e-mail from Thomas Ligotti Online telling me that Ligotti's latest work, The Conspiracy Against the Human Race, a long philosophical treatise on why human life is inexcusably horrible, was available for free download for a limited period. Naturally, I leapt at the chance to read it.
Having read a number of portions of the text in a kind of trance of will-crushing dread, I find that it deals with many of the themes that have occupied me in this notebook, although the conclusions drawn -- not that I have read the final conclusion, which Ligotti tells us at the beginning is, anyway, foregone -- are slightly at variance with my own.
Inasmuch as this is what universal consciousness has washed up on the shore of my consciousness, it is, however, mine. I feel that it is what we have all come to, where we have all 'ended up'.
The treatise runs to upwards of a hundred pages. I will attempt a digest of what I have read here.
For Ligotti, consciousness, and specifically human consciousness, is an aberration in creation, and an obscenity. We are the only animals who are aware that we are alive and that we will die. As he has stated elsewhere, "It's a damn shame that intelligent life ever evolved in the first place." It is imperative for human beings, against all evidence and against all odds, to pretend that there is some meaning to this state of affairs -- the emergence of their aberrant consciousness and the animal mortality of which it makes them aware -- if they wish to survive. However, survival only means further suffering, which is dealt with by further lies about there being some meaning to life. Eventually the entire human race will end, anyway, and eternity will continue ever away from the blip of our existence, so any kind of meaning or immortality stops there. Would it not be better, at least, to reduce the needless suffering by ceasing to procreate?
This, to me, is the only logical and viable atheist position. It is atheism's logical conclusion. I admire Ligotti's thoroughness in taking such a position and fleshing it out. As far as I have read it, the essay seems to leave us with three options from which to choose:
a) lies
b) insanity
c) voluntary extinction
There is some overlap between a and b, if they are not entirely identical. Although they might facilitate our further survival, neither of them makes us proof against pain, and, of course, neither of them will ever bring us final satisfaction.
The text of the essay is impeccably well-written. This is not a question of mere style. Every word seems to fall with due gravitas into its natural place, like water finding its level, giving the impression of something, on its own terms, indisputable. The author has carried this work with him for a long time. This is not academic. It feels like the summation of a life. I do not doubt that this is a serious and considerable work, though I've no idea how the academic cliques might receive it. I am not an academic. I am, however, a bit of a flibbertigibbet. Anything I write in a notebook like this is bound to be a little flighty and flimsy and I do not hope to give the work the response it deserves. I only think that it is most definitely THERE, and cannot be ignored.
There is nothing I can put into words of which I am certain, and this effectively means that I am not an atheist, if for no other reason than that atheism is just another word. When you are not an atheist, the three options previously mentioned begin to look different and change. In particular, the first option may be replaced by others. Some may even be creative enough to come up with more than three options. In my own case, I have never been entirely able to persuade myself that reasons for living are either lies or truth. It seems to me that there may indeed be a meaning to existence. Why? Why not? I mean, why shouldn't there be? Oh, nothing to do with words, of course. I noticed an interesting phrase in Ligotti's essay, in quotation marks. Even most intellectual writers, he says, fall short of complete nihilism and back on "what the heart knows". I can't say I've noticed a great deal of this among intellectuals myself, but it's certainly something that is true of me. At least, the phrase means something to me, however it was intended.
Anyway, there may be a meaning to life, and if so, it is my task as a writer to discover it. Not that I can express it directly. It would have to exist between the lines. I'm entirely aware of how trite and naive that sounds, but there it is. I won't dress it up or down.
As I said, I am certain of nothing I can put into words, but for me the dilemma of existence goes something like this: If evil exists in the world, and it certainly does, then the entire universe must be evil, because a benevolent universe could not possibly support evil. Therefore the universe, if it falls below perfection at any point, and it has, must be evil. So, let's say the universe is evil. In that case, how is it that I am able to experience anything as good at all -- the beautiful things I see, the people who seem always to have had a place in my heart. Where do these things come from in a universe that is entirely evil? You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, as they say, and however many times you add evil to evil, it still equals evil. Good cannot spring up ex nihilo, and therefore can only come from a universe that is entirely good (one that is only slightly good is, as we have seen, already entirely evil). Therefore the universe is entirely good. But if so, where does evil come from? Etcetera.
You could say, theologically, or philosophically speaking, that I swing both ways. It has really cost me more than I can ever explain, and continues to do so.
For me, anyway, the jury is still out. Until a verdict is returned, a unanimous verdict, you might say, I believe it is best to err on the side of caution and refrain from procreation.
Ironically, if all were to adopt such a policy, it would probably preclude any verdict ever being returned, anyway.
