Pessimistic Passage of the Day...

‘After falling into a pool aged two and experiencing what experts call a non-fatal drowning, S_________ suffered lifelong injuries. “He couldn’t eat, couldn’t talk, couldn’t communicate,” said J________. “He was in pain, had seizures, and his limbs were contorted from the hypoxic brain damage.”’
 
A Defrocked Academic said:
"We could not live if we were wholly alive to all the ugliness of the world."
- Count Stanislaus Eric Stenbock, "The Myth of Punch"
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I find that rather optimistic actually. If we choose to live in denial, and look away from all the horrifying news and disgusting politics, and refuse to take in the sickly destructiveness of people about us, we can live pretty decent lives.
 
The man who’d died was old, the supervisors said. Heart attack. It could have happened at any time. It didn’t pay to get old. If he’d fallen for this little joke they would have watched him and found any excuse to fire him. The supervisors didn’t want old people working for them anymore

They didn’t understand yet that if you live long enough, everything becomes old and dirty. Dirt gets in the narrowest of cracks and you never can get it all out. Live long enough and everyone you know will sicken and die. Dirt finally has a way of taking us all. After Clayborn’s daughter perished in the fire he should have expected his wife’s death, but he had not. After that shock had worn off, though, he had settled into the inevitability of it all. Dirt would have its way.

Losing a child was like losing yourself. Now every month it seemed he lost someone, an old friend or relative died, and he lost another piece of himself. And nothing surprised him anymore.

– Steve Rasnic Tem, Passing Through
 
At times, all the sadness, melancholy, and despair within, as though discontented with their current vessel, in nebulous amounts and gradations disperse into the air I breathe. Even the sky becomes a strange phenomenon manifesting a fatigue of the most abysmal sort. How tragic to be born and to become so insubstantial a person as to be incompatible with both oneself and the universe! How contemptibly effete to neither accept nor revolt against life's vanities!
 
“I know it’s not easy to accept death,” the doctor was saying. He finished wiping his hands, tossed the towel into his black bag, snapped the bag shut. “We all struggle against it, boy, it’s part and parcel of being alive, this brawl, this meaningless gutterfight with death. In fact, let me tell you, son, it’s all there is to life.” He wagged his finger in punctuation, and ended by pressing the tip of it to Paul’s nose. “That’s the secret, that’s my happy paregoric! Hee hee hee!”

KI, thought Paul. KI and 14. What could it have been? Never know now. One of those things.

“But death begets life, there’s that, my boy, and don’t you ever forget it! Survival and murder are synonyms, son, first flaw of the universe! Hee hee h—oh! Sorry, son! No time for puns! Forget I said it!”

It’s okay, said Paul. Listening to the doctor had at least made him forget the tickle on his lip and it was gone.

“New life burgeons out of rot, new mouths consume old organisms, father dies at orgasm, mother dies at birth, only old Dame Mass with her twin dugs of Stuff and Tickle persists, suffering her long slow split into pure light and pure carbon! Hee hee hee! A tender thought! Don’t you agree, lad?” The doctor gazed off into space, happily contemplating the process.

I tell you what, said Paul. Let’s forget it

Just then, the policeman returned with a big quilted comforter, and he and the doctor spread it gently over Paul’s body, leaving only his face exposed. The people pressed closer to watch.

“Back! Back!” shouted the policeman. “Have you no respect for the dying? Back, I say!”

“Oh, come now,” chided the doctor. “Let them watch if they want to. It hardly matters to this poor fellow, and even if it does, it can’t matter for much longer. And it will help keep the flies off him.”

“Well, doctor, if you think…” His voice faded away. Paul closed his eyes.

As he lay there among the curious, several odd questions plagued Paul’s mind. He knew there was no point to them, but he couldn’t rid himself of them. The book, for example: did he have a book? And if he did, what book, and what had happened to it? And what about the stoplight, that lost increment of what men call history, why had no one brought up the matter of the stoplight? And pure carbon he could understand, but as for light: what could its purity consist of? KI. 14. That impression that it had happened before. Yes, these were mysteries, all right. His head ached from them.

– Robert Coover, A Pedestrian Accident
 
"Everything about me gravitates toward death, he once said to me, I was disposed toward death by my procreators, he said, I thought. He always read books in which suicides were discussed, illnesses and deaths, I thought, standing in the inn parlor, describing human misery, hopelessness, meaninglessness, devastation, in which everything gravitates toward ruin and death."

"A human being is sheer misfortune, he constantly repeated, I thought, only an idiot denies it. To be born is a misfortune, he said, and as long as we live we prolong this misfortune, only death breaks it off."

"But everything is nonsense, whatever we say, he said, I thought, no matter what we say, it's nonsense, just as our entire life is one great nonsense. I realized this early on, I'd barely begun to think when I realized it, we only speak nonsense, whatever we say is nonsense, but naturally whatever is said to us is nonsense too, just as whatever is said at all is nonsense; only nonsense has been spoken in this world so far, and also, he said, as a matter of fact and naturally, only nonsense has been written, what we have in writing is sheer nonsense, for it can only be nonsense, as all history proves, he said, I thought."


Thomas Bernhard, The Loser
 
“Imagine a performance hall after the show.

The lights are off. The stage is empty. The costumes are hanging on hooks: “self,” “love,”“nation,” “progress,” “hope.”
Sweat still clings to them. The audience has gone home, thinking the performance meant something.

On the floor: a pile of cooling meat and tangled nerves that, ten minutes ago, answered to your name.

Without the brightly colored lights and thick makeup, there are no “persons,” no “lives” in any deep sense, only molecules settling their accounts under the rule of entropy.

We just happen to be the part where the universe briefly hallucinates a plot.”

“From the perspective of physics, existence is simple and merciless. There’s an uneven spread of energy, hot here, cold there, and that imbalance keeps driving things. Heat flows from hotter to colder. Structures appear, shift, and fall apart as this leveling process rolls forward.”

“In that blind game, some lumps of matter learn strange tricks.”

“The same chemistry that invents the self then has to invent ways to mute the horror of being temporary.

So we get gods, utopias, revolutions, wellness movements, productivity cults, spiritual awakenings, personal brands. We get systems of thought that insist we are more than dissipative structures, that we are chosen, progressing, evolving toward something higher.

We get people who say the universe bends toward justice, or toward enlightenment, or toward love.

Strip the slogans away and you just see clever apes trying very hard not to admit they’re clever apes. You see an entropy engine trying to convince itself it runs on reasons.”


Vernon Lee Preitauer, The Theater Of Entropy
 
„I do not want to play, she said at last. If I cannot win, I do not want to play.

You have no choice, Nature said. You were made for this. You will be born into a body, and you will feel the hunger, and you will spend your life trying to feed it. You will love, and lose, and hope, and be disappointed. You will taste joy—real joy, sharp and bright—and you will watch it slip away. And through all of it, you will long for more. You will long for something permanent, something complete, something that does not end. And you will never find it.”

—

„You are projecting your own feelings onto an indifferent object and calling what you see 'beautiful' as though beauty were a property of the tree itself. It is not. Beauty is a human invention, a trick of the mind that evolved to help us make choices — to prefer the ripe fruit, the healthy mate, the safe landscape. You have mistaken your own biology for the nature of the universe.”

—

„It is a real experience of a false perception. That is the definition of an illusion. You feel wonder because you believe, even for a moment, that the tree means something, that it has some connection to you, that its beauty is a gift from the universe. But the universe gives nothing. It simply is. And the moment you understand that, the wonder dies — replaced by the cold knowledge that you are alone, that nothing is watching, that there is no meaning behind any of it.”

—

„I am not afraid. I am honest. You are the one who is afraid — afraid to look at the world without your comforting stories, afraid to admit that life has no purpose, that suffering has no meaning, that death is the end. You wrap yourself in illusions because you cannot bear the naked truth.”


Operette Morali: Small Moral Works (A Modern Retelling of the Classic)
Giacomo Leopardi
 
“Disease, old age, and death cannot be avoided, nor can poverty in the vast majority of cases, which means that nine times out of ten it would have been better for human beings not to have been born, and that's why reasonable and sensible people don't multiply.”

“The worst criminals are no longer murderers, but those who call us into this world without any idea of what will become of them or what kind of existence they have prepared for us. Instead of blaming society, which is a machine for crushing men, we should despise our fathers and mothers if we don't feel comfortable in it.”

Albert Caraco
 
From the foreword in The Denial of Death:

“Becker’s philosophy as it emerges in Denial of Death and Escape from Evil is a braid woven from four strands.

The first strand. The world is terrifying. To say the least, Becker’s account of nature has little in common with Walt Disney. Mother Nature is a brutal bitch, red in tooth and claw, who destroys what she creates. We live, he says, in a creation in which the routine activity for organisms is “tearing others apart with teeth of all types—biting, grinding flesh, plant stalks, bones between molars, pushing the pulp greedily down the gullet with delight, incorporating its essence into one’s own organization, and then excreting with foul stench and gasses the residue.

The second strand. The basic motivation for human behavior is our biological need to control our basic anxiety, to deny the terror of death. Human beings are naturally anxious because we are ultimately helpless and abandoned in a world where we are fated to die. This is the terror: to have emerged from nothing, to have a name, consciousness of self, deep inner feelings, an excruciating inner yearning for life and self-expression—and with all this yet to die.

The third strand. Since the terror of death is so overwhelming we conspire to keep it unconscious. “The vital lie of character” is the first line of defense that protects us from the painful awareness of our helplessness. Every child borrows power from adults and creates a personality by introjecting the qualities of the godlike being. If I am like my all-powerful father I will not die. So long as we stay obediently within the defense mechanisms of our personality, what Wilhelm Reich called “character armor” we feel safe and are able to pretend that the world is manageable. But the price we pay is high. We repress our bodies to purchase a soul that time cannot destroy; we sacrifice pleasure to buy immortality; we encapsulate ourselves to avoid death. And life escapes us while we huddle within the defended fortress of character.

The fourth strand. Our heroic projects that are aimed at destroying evil have the paradoxical effect of bringing more evil into the world. Human conflicts are life and death struggles—my gods against your gods, my immortality project against your immortality project. The root of humanly caused evil is not man’s animal nature, not territorial aggression, or innate selfishness, but our need to gain self-esteem, deny our mortality, and achieve a heroic self-image. Our desire for the best is the cause of the worst. We want to clean up the world, make it perfect, keep it safe for democracy or communism, purify it of the enemies of god, eliminate evil, establish an alabaster city undimmed by human tears, or a thousand year Reich.”
 
Meatbonesleather said:
The root of humanly caused evil is not man’s animal nature, not territorial aggression, or innate selfishness, but our need to gain self-esteem, deny our mortality, and achieve a heroic self-image. Our desire for the best is the cause of the worst.
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An interesting perspective, certainly, but this part does not quite ring true to me. The answer might equally be all of the above, or none of it at all.
 
cannibal cop said:
An interesting perspective, certainly, but this part does not quite ring true to me. The answer might equally be all of the above, or none of it at all.
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To your credit, your response is polite. Myself, being of an admittedly harsh nature, I found the quote to be a load of garbage. There's a saying to the effect of that one can often judge to merit of an article or book from the very first sentence(s). The second sentence of the quote states "The world is terrifying". Wrong. The world is NOT terrifying to any capable well-adjusted person. Any physically healthy person of average or better intelligence incapable of dealing with the world on it's own terms needs to 'go back to the old drawing board'. The problem isn't with the human race, it's with the individual.
 
Athammaus said:
To your credit, your response is polite. Myself, being of an admittedly harsh nature, I found the quote to be a load of garbage. There's a saying to the effect of that one can often judge to merit of an article or book from the very first sentence(s). The second sentence of the quote states "The world is terrifying". Wrong. The world is NOT terrifying to any capable well-adjusted person. Any physically healthy person of average or better intelligence incapable of dealing with the world on it's own terms needs to 'go back to the old drawing board'. The problem isn't with the human race, it's with the individual.
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That statement does sound at best hyperbolic and fairly ridiculous when applied to the terms of day to day human life today. But I believe there’s a valid point there. The world only appears to us as a peaceful and pleasant place, if it does, because of centuries of civilized effort by mankind to make it so. In its natural state it’s a world where most alive today might agree with that sentiment. Just losing power for a couple of weeks not long ago was enough to convince me of that.
 
Fragment of Interview With a Nihilist from The Dark Side by Alan R. Pratt

„Philosophy has argued itself out of existence. Theologies? Devotees either adopt a defiant fundamentalism or abandon the spiritual life altogether. Who'll be surprised when internecine squabbling unleashes a bloody jihad? You can smell exhaustion, defeat in the sciences, too. Science-the last bastion of certitude, the savior... the modern God!—has abdicated to chaos, conceding that its claims have been exaggerated... that it's incapable of providing satisfactory explanations or prescribing cures... that when all is said and done, mighty Reason's paralyzed by nothing. Another irony. Insights gleaned from centuries of discovery shatter the myth that we were ever anything more than a sack of mucus, of foul-smelling emulsions, and electrochemical processes. Quelle surprise!
So we've picked away the scab of illusion and touched the oozing ulcer beneath. It's finally clear that the structure of meanings we've evolved over three thousand years has been an appalling mistake... we've no idea how to salvage the situation. From my enlightened perspective, every indicator points to a dying way of life, toward disintegration-toward Nothing. Any heartening prophecies or utopian dreams of rejuvenation should be handily dismissed... they're vacuous fantasies of the blind, valuable only as a stimulant for contemptuous laughter.
What to do... yes, what to do? For the vast majority—the walking dead—there's only increasing chaos, anxiety, and despair. See all of the creatures there? There they are, hunched over the wheel, speeding down the interstate, hurtling to nowhere, into a future that doesn't exist, into nothing.
For a select few, on the other hand, those enlightened by the darkness, the endgame offers the marvel of disintegrative poetics. Maggots, blow flies, pestilence, disaster, carnage-the astonishing, grotesque absurdity of it all!—isn't just intriguing, it's spiritually fulfilling. Imagine! centuries of disintegration culminating in our time. And even for the timorous nihilist, such as myself...mea
culpa... too apathetic to capitalize on lawlessness and chaos, too weak to sever himself from the whole sordid mess and drift into the impenetrable darkness of the Void, even for him there are fortuitous opportunities. With the spectacle of a civilization in the fatal convulsive spasms, there's the daily round of gratuitous violence and destruction, all tinged with hopelessness; the necrophilic satisfaction of contemplating the colossal ruins; and the challenge of provoking Nothing to expose panic yet untapped.... Odd, but I find myself frequently yearning for the final blows.
You object? What would you have me do? Whether you celebrate it, laugh at it, denigrate it, conceal it, lash out at it, or struggle with it, nothing alters Nothing. Only the nihilist is completely synchronized with the times; only the nihilist can assert moral superiority, nay, moral
perfection! To think nihilistically is a divine way of thinking.”
 
"He eventually fell in love with his failure, possibly head over heels, he was stuck in it to the very end. In fact one could even say that although he was unhappy in his misfortune, he would have been even unhappier if he had suddenly lost this misfortune of his, if it had been taken away from him from one moment to the next, which was proof that at bottom he wasn't unhappy at all, but happy, if only because of and thanks to this misfortune of his, I thought. There are many who are happy at bottom precisely because they're so steeped in misfortune, I thought, saying to myself that Wertheimer had actually been happy because he was constantly aware of his misfortune, was able to wallow in his misfortune. Suddenly this thought no longer seemed absurd to me, namely that he began to fear that for some reason unknown to me he might lose his misfortune, which is why he went to Chur and Zizers and killed himself there."

Thomas Bernhard, The Loser
 
They'll always say to you that it's okay.

They'll always say to you that it's alright.

Under no circumstances will they say to you that it's not okay.

Under no conditions will they say to you that it's not alright.

If only once in the course of all time, if only once in the course of your life, they would say to you that it's not okay, that it's not alright. If only once they would give you the satisfaction of hearing it spoken. Only once allow you to ride on those wonderful words, and soar upon the spit and the sneer and the astronomical relief hearing it said, only once.

They will never say it's not okay. They will never say that it has never been, nor will it ever be the least bit right, in the least degree.

Have they mentioned that you could get by quite easily, without knowing a single moment of what we call joy, or what we call pleasure. That you can exist for many years, a lifetime in fact, and be estranged from anything we might call happiness or simply relaxation, yet continue to flourish right up to the very second that your own headstone looms into view.

You know that it's true, but have they ever mentioned this to you?

Have they ever mentioned that no one could get by, that nothing alive could remain so forlorn without the fear of hurt and dread of harm. Without feeling the frustration, or the anguish, or the full hell of unmitigated torment that is woven into everything that lives and comprises the very threads holding it all together and true.

Have they ever mentioned this to you?


Fragment of Things They Will Never Tell You by Thomas Ligotti
 
Two poems from Death Poems, Thomas Ligotti

The Shape You Are In

For the sum total of truth
you must go to the body.
Forget everything else.
The body can tell you
all there is to know—
if that’s what you want.

The intestinal system
is especially brilliant.
As a philosophical disputant
it is infallible, a real genius.
One wave of cramps
and you bend to its logic.

Ultimately, though, the body
cares nothing for your welfare.
After confiding its wisdom
it takes off for parts unknown,
leaving you a forsaken wreck
by the side of the road.

But that is the way of the body.
You are bound to surrender
to its most eccentric turns.
In the end, your pleas are in vain:
whatever the body says goes.
And as it goes, so do you.


Writing Home

Dear Mom and Dad,
I always wanted to ask:
when you went through the motions
that brought me to this dubious world,
did you ever pause to think
that I might rather you didn’t?
Were you so possessed
you could not pause to consider
the full repercussions of making it?
Of course, it behooves me
to extend the benefit of the doubt,
to attribute to you some vague notion
that you acted in my interest, saving
me from my peregrinations in nonexistence,
a stranger to being, bumbling in darkness
for the light of life on this earth.
Such is a common rationalization,
and so I must allow its hold upon you.
Yet I must also posit that all you wanted
was to be in with the crowd, the ancient mob
that cheered you on with mad eyes, flared nostrils,
and spittle-dripping chins—those ones
whose approval you secretly sought.
All of these are plausible explanations
for what you did in a chamber cut off
from cool reflection in favor of the primal rite.
Whatever your reasons, the fact remains
of my emergence from that dilated aperture.
Whatever your excuses, I must confess
I’ve always lamented the day you met.
All that aside, I just wanted to take some time,
having reached the moment in which
I’ll make an end to what you began,
to say that I forgive you.
 
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