On Mankind

Piranesi

Piranesi

Mystic
Timon will to the woods, where he shall find
The unkindest beast more kinder than mankind.
--- Timon of Athens, IV, i.
 
Man, n. An animal so lost in rapturous contemplation of what he thinks he is as to overlook what he indubitably ought to be. His chief occupation is extermination of other animals and his own species, which, however, multiplies with such insistent rapidity as to infest the whole habitable earth and Canada.
--- Bierce.
 
If there's one thing you can say about Mankind
There's nothing kind about man

— Tom Waits, "Misery is the River of the World"
 
The history of mankind according to Colonel Wingless:

”’Icelin, the history of mankind is a story told in the worst possible taste and with an artistic vulgarity which would bring a blush to the cheeks of even a fashionable novelist. It is full of false melodrama, purple passages, sinister coincidences, and a sickening want of humanity. We can’t deny a certain dignity to men for their resignation to the degradations piled on them by the law of creation, but I fancy a man flatters himself who sees any grandeur in the history of the human species. It’s my experience that the only people who see any grandeur in the history of mankind are those who have attained leadership of some sort by trading on our worst instincts.’”

--- Michael Arlen, Hell! Said the Duchess (1934), a most bizarre and thrilling novel.
 
Judge Holden speaks:

The man who believes that the secrets of this world are forever hidden lives in mystery and fear. Superstition will drag him down. The rain will erode the deeds of his life. But that man who sets himself the task of singling out the thread of order from the tapestry will by the decision alone have taken charge of the world and it is only by such taking charge that he will effect a way to dictate the terms of his own fate.

--- Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian
 
"We are our own worst enemy."


---njhorror THOMAS LIGOTTI ONLINE The Nightmare Network (2014)
 
Last edited:
“It occurred to me. . .that aberrance is a wholly human construct. There were no such things as monsters outside the human mind. We are vain and arrogant, evolution's highest achievement and most dismal failure, prisoners of our self-awareness and the illusion that we stand in the center, that there is us and then there is everything else but us. But we do not stand apart from or above or in the middle of anything. There is nothing apart, nothing above, and the middle is everywhere - and nowhere. We are no more beautiful and essential or magnificent than an earthworm. In fact - and dare we go there, you and I? - you could say the worm is more beautiful, because it is innocent and we are not. The worm has no motive but to survive long enough to make baby worms. There is no betrayal, no cruelty, no envy, no lust, and no hatred in the worm's heart, and so who are the monsters and which species shall we call aberrant?”
- Rick Yancey, The Final Descent
 
-This was the first thing I thought of upon seeing this post, but I got beaten to the punch; however, I think the lyrics, some of Waits' best, are worth reading entire:

“The higher that the monkey can climb, the more he shows his tail.
Call no man happy till he dies,
there's no milk at the bottom of the pail.

God builds a church and the devil builds a chapel, like the thistles that are growing 'round the trunk of a tree.
All the good in the world you could put inside a thimble, and still have room for you and me.

If there's one thing you can say about mankind, there's nothing kind about man.
You can drive out nature with a pitchfork, but it always coming roaring back again.

Misery's the river of the world, misery's the river of the world.
Everybody row, everybody row;
misery's the river of the world.”
 
Not one of Dylan's best songs, but I've always liked this one, and it's perfect for this thread.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UkEx4BDhRjw


Man thinks ’cause he rules the earth he can do with it as he please
And if things don’t change soon, he will
Oh, man has invented his doom
First step was touching the moon

Now, there’s a woman on my block
She just sit there as the night grows still
She say who gonna take away his license to kill?

Now, they take him and they teach him and they groom him for life
And they set him on a path where he’s bound to get ill
Then they bury him with stars
Sell his body like they do used cars

Now, there’s a woman on my block
She just sit there facin’ the hill
She say who gonna take away his license to kill?

Now, he’s hell-bent for destruction, he’s afraid and confused
And his brain has been mismanaged with great skill
All he believes are his eyes
And his eyes, they just tell him lies

But there’s a woman on my block
Sitting there in a cold chill
She say who gonna take away his license to kill?

Ya may be a noisemaker, spirit maker
Heartbreaker, backbreaker
Leave no stone unturned
May be an actor in a plot
That might be all that you got
’Til your error you clearly learn

Now he worships at an altar of a stagnant pool
And when he sees his reflection, he’s fulfilled
Oh, man is opposed to fair play
He wants it all and he wants it his way

Now, there’s a woman on my block
She just sit there as the night grows still
She say who gonna take away his license to kill?

​
 
"I hope to-morrow will be a fine day, Lane.
It never is, sir.
Lane, you're a perfect pessimist.
I do my best to give satisfaction, sir."
— Oscar Wilde (The Importance of Being Earnest)
 
He took an apartment which looked onto a lively square. He worked during the day, but around five in the evening he would stand at the window of his apartment, which he left dark behind him, and breathed into his very blood how long the brightness lasted, deployed by snow and the cold, how there was a pressure from extinguished light-sources. He took it as a grant to him. In this city where he was nothing, where he was a nothing fought with other nothings for bread, for clothing, for a place in the tramcar, he felt for the first time for many years one thing: the drift. Let machines be whatever they are, and humanity and knowledge, but one thing at least is sweet: to feel in your neck, in your eyes, which protrude a little, in your nostrils that flare, how light begins.
— Gottfried Benn, Diesterweg (1918)
 
"I'm tired of this back-slappin' "isn't humanity neat" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes."
— Bill Hicks
 
Last edited:
" Jacob went to the window and stood with his hands in his pockets. There he saw three Greeks in kilts; the masts of ships; idle or busy people of the lower classes strolling or stepping out briskly, or falling into groups and gesticulating with their hands. Their lack of concern for him was not the cause of his gloom; but some more profound conviction--it was not the he himself happened to be lonely, but that all people are."


Jacob's Room by Virginia Woolf
 
“We're so self-important. So arrogant. Everybody's going to save something now. Save the trees, save the bees, save the whales, save the snails. And the supreme arrogance? Save the planet! Are these people kidding? Save the planet? We don't even know how to take care of ourselves; we haven't learned how to care for one another. We're gonna save the fuckin' planet? . . . And, by the way, there's nothing wrong with the planet in the first place. The planet is fine. The people are fucked! Compared with the people, the planet is doin' great. It's been here over four billion years . . . The planet isn't goin' anywhere, folks. We are! We're goin' away. Pack your shit, we're goin' away. And we won't leave much of a trace. Thank God for that. Nothing left. Maybe a little Styrofoam. The planet will be here, and we'll be gone. Another failed mutation; another closed-end biological mistake.”
― George Carlin
 
“But William Stoner knew of the world in a way that few of his younger colleagues could understand. Deep in him, beneath his memory, was the knowledge of hardship and hunger and endurance and pain. Though he seldom thought of his early years on the Booneville farm, there was always near his consciousness the blood knowledge of his inheritance, given him by forefathers whose lives were obscure and hard and stoical and whoose common ethic was to present to an oppressive world faces that were expressionless and hard and bleak.”

―John Williams, Stoner
 
“I expect nothing of man, and disown the race. The only folly is expecting what is never attained; man is most contemptible when compared with his own pretensions. It is better to laugh at man from outside the universe, than to weep for him within.”
― H.P. Lovecraft
 
"There is something in the inmost core of you… something that lets you laugh in a way that only the Elder Gods ever laughed. Something that makes you see a kind of jest in horror and disillusionment and death."

Fritz Leiber - "Adept's Gambit"
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top