In his famous book Death he argued that eternal life would be an unescapable nightmare, and that if we accept that life is pain then we could explain everything, among with other things. What do you guys think about it?

I'm coming to the end of a fairly long solo trip in another country, and it's been interesting to observe how - for lack of a better word - mechanically life functions when you're watching it from afar.

I watched people going about their daily lives. Work, school, home, recreation, walking to the train station - it all seems so scripted.

Why am I here, and not there? Riding this train instead of driving that car? Speaking this language instead of that language?

And as I'm sitting here in all these liminal spaces, like hotels, airports, and train stations, watching life go by for others, I start to think about my own. These circuits I find myself going in all day, toward... something? Nothing?

It's surreal - you don't realize how deterministic your own life is until you step outside and observe the passage of time for others, the little performances, the everyday rituals, the smoke breaks, the scripted customer service interactions, a mother shouting at her child.

And within all of this, I find myself becoming a bit unnerved. How often am I caught within these loops? How much of my time is spent on autopilot? Why do anything at all?

I'm reminded of something I read a long time ago - the idea that I'm not living in my body - my body is living me, and I'm - whatever "I" am - is just along for the ride.

There's something deeply uncanny about this feeling. Maybe someone who has more coherent thoughts can explicate it better.

Anyway, hope you found this interesting.

Hello, everyone! I’m currently working on a personal project focused on Thomas Ligotti’s book “The Conspiracy Against the Human Race,” and I would greatly appreciate your input. If you had the opportunity, what questions would you ask Ligotti about his book? What topics or questions do you think would lead to an engaging discussion with him? Perhaps there were thoughts that troubled you after finishing the book, or maybe you wished to explore the ideas he discussed further.

Like seriously, why do even the simplest injuries hurt like hell?

Just the other day I stubbed my toes so badly that I nearly pissed myself, and it made me wonder: why is the human nervous system so overly sensitive, given the fact that we can easily do something with our bodies that causes us to feel extreme pain, even when there's very little actual harm involved?

I get that pain is a neccessity, but do we really need such a sensitive system? I'm pretty sure that, if all pain stimuli were to be reduced by 50%, it would still be sufficient for us to keep us from accidentally harming ourselves. But no, we apparently need a nervous system that goes a full 10/10 on the pain scale from even the most trivial things like my example above.

The way our bodies attempt to reduce pain is kinda pathetic too: our bodies do, to some extent, attempt to relieve ongoing pain, but is terribly bad at it. It doesn't even directly reduce the source of the pain, just the way it gets transmitted.

How did evolution allow for this? Wouldn't less sensitivity to pain be more suitable?

Inexplicably, we've been forcibly imprisoned. Why? No one knows. Chaos is the Warden. Order is the Security, armed with batons. No one knows why any of this is happening. Asking why is like repeatedly smacking your head against the wall of your cell. What is the Security guarding? Nobody knows, not even them. They're prisoners, the guards. Everyone is a prisoner. What are you in here for? Who knows? We're all on Death Row, though. Everyone who has found themselves here is guilty somehow, of no-one-knows-what. There are no entrances nor exits here. This colossal prison is a cube of cold and unrelenting concrete. The soil in the yard is wet and lumpy. The whole prison smells strongly of iron. No entrance and no exit, yet prisoners come and go, like phantoms passing by. What's funny is that there's plenty of entertainment. Magazines and televisions and children's toys. Like a bizarre waiting room. Waiting for what? Execution, of which there are innumerable methods. But perhaps "methods" is the wrong term because the way in which the prisoners perish is random and delivered by unreason. Maybe it's more of a circus, a grand slaughterhouse-circus that paints itself a lively crimson on the inside, everything else bone white. The stage is set, but there is no audience. Only clowns without an act. Yet the spotlight is on us. A panopticon's omnipresent gaze misconstrued? Whyever we're here, we were made to be unmade. This is a purgatory without redemption. There is nothing to be redeemed. This is a limbo, where nothing makes sense and everything is unnecessary. Existence is unnecessary. Cruel and unusual. It's just a perdition of pain.

I think it is a fact that being born a woman (and gay and that) has been detrimental to my existence. It has set me on a path of non-conformity that has forced me to consider this philosophy and finding it truthful. Maybe that the other way around would have been just as bad in theory, but the difference being that I would have not been conscious about my predicament.

Being a lesbian, you are already completely apart from your species. Much and almost all of human society has a prevalence of 'male centeredness' and that is just the one thing that is completely irrelevant in my life. It's not like male centeredness is somehow a way to optimism. But it does a good job at hiding 'the truth' for most people. Being unable to take part in that, I am doomed to float around in the abyss.

My deviancy means I get the 'privilege' to have a birds-eye view of humanity and existence. I have no distractions that prevent this. Even before I got out of my teens I had come to the conclusion that life is not worth living and that humanity was pretty awful. Feminism brought some understanding, but no solution to this.

I don't wallow in self pity. One could describe my life as 'fine'. I have a decent job, a home, even a girlfriend. I don't have any material discomfort or health issue. I live in a society that is egalitarian at least by law so I have options.

But meaning and fulfillment (even if fake)? I don't think I will ever have that.

If you had the decision, would you choose to live a life of blissful ignorance?

Time is a moving continuum between the future and past. There’s no present. Since that is the case, what is ‘the moment’? Just seems like phony and vague coping. Which is fine…it’s all coping. But don’t misinterpret ‘meditation’ for ‘loving life’.

Statement #1: for majority of people wage labor system brings suffering and unhappiness. I would say more than 70% of population easily. I'm being generous here.

Statement #2: majority of people are deeply selfish and unnecessarily cruel people. They are very materialistic, hardly care about others, and exist more on a level where they don't have to ever self-reflect.

These 2 groups don't necessarily fully overlap, however if we look at it from utilitarian perspective, we can hypothesize the following and think about an analogy:

- Imagine a massive slave plantation, maybe 90% of people in population work on that plantation

- There are objectively kind and caring people but they are small minority of people

- Majority of people truly enjoy to look down on others and would gladly walk around the plantation with a whip, but it's just they believe that they temporarily lack the metaphorical "whip"

- The minority of people who don't work on plantation and whip every single person daily end up whipping more "cruel" people than "kind" people in absolute terms.

So, if we think about it from the perspective that the world should be "just" and those who enjoy the suffering of others should be punished, then the status quo does appear to satisfy this requirement somewhat (not fully, but definitely more than 90% of such people get "whipped" daily by having to work).

In the end, even if we don't live in the world where absolute majority of people are happy and where we have to earn our right to be alive, we at least know that absolute majority of cruel and materialistic people suffer under status-quo.

All the mental health problems, mental breakdowns, tears, family fights, attempts on their own lives, long working hours, preventable deaths due to lack of healthcare, alcoholism, depression, sense of being devalued due to not "succeeding" by getting the "whip", etc - all these things are tools that are used daily to "whip" them and since they lack the ability to reflect on reality around them, the effect of psychological stress (or "psychological warfare" in this case) could be said to be an eternal daily punishment for them.

DEATH CROWNING INNOCENCE /1887/ by GEORGE FREDERICK WATTS

When I reflected on the life of the sensitive, conscious being who calls himself "human," I realized, through examining the stages of his development as a living organism, that the only period in his life that can be considered its pinnacle is the first decade—from ages 1 to 10. During this particular phase, he experiences everything for the first time. For instance, a sprinkle of sugar on his tongue will have a profound impact on his entire body, and even the simplest natural sights will bring him immense joy because he is seeing them for the first time with eyes that have not yet grown accustomed to them. These are unique experiences that cannot be repeated in the decades to come.

From this perspective, with each passing year, as he grows older, he slowly and steadily descends from this peak. This magical, wondrous world will gradually be tainted with grayness, and he will begin to understand the mechanics of nature’s machinery and how it works. The delicate, sugary dome that once surrounded his rosy, small world will be shattered. His growing knowledge will allow the nightmarish truths of reality to seep in, unveiling vast expanses of meaninglessness and futility everywhere, an emptiness that cannot be filled, and a predetermined path leading inexorably to a cold, damp, and muddy grave.

The closing scene of the series "Six Feet Under" remains one of the greatest TV scenes you can watch..

Where "Alan Paul" shows us the absurdity of life in a terrifying and frightening way, everyone falls like autumn leaves; it doesn't matter whether you die now or in twenty years, it doesn't matter whether you live a luxurious life or live a life of poverty and suffering, it doesn't matter whether you choose to live within a traditional or modern system, whether someone accepts you or not, your wars that you fight are just farces when you collide with the fact that we are just postponed funerals..

The distress here is that it comes in a hurry and goes in a hurry! To live with a pang in your heart that you don't know where it came from, perhaps loss, perhaps nostalgia, perhaps dreams.. But the speed with which your life ends makes you unable to know the reason. Life takes upon itself the task of choosing a path for you to follow, no matter what your wishes are, you must realize at some point that you are chasing a thread of smoke, playing with you like an acrobat plays with a brick of life, you do not fall, but at the same time you do not know the meaning behind that rotation..

"Fatiha Murshid" says in her novel (Point of Decline): "Prison is not only that which confines you between cement walls. Some of us are prisoners of their bodies, and some of us are prisoners of an idea, feeling or belief that prevents them from seeing the horizon... Everything that blocks the horizon from us is a prison and the imaginary walls remain thicker and more oppressive".. The characters of the work live inside imaginary prisons, great ambitions and rosy dreams, and ideas capable of changing the world.. They forget that they are mortal creatures! At any moment, their paper can burn, suddenly fall without warning, their plans can fly away as if they never existed!

The ability to know your true size within this universe that has existed for millions of years is the shock that we experience in the final scene of this work. You can live under the shock for days and perhaps months, because you will realize the truth that everyone is evading, the truth that we refuse to believe. You will see life slipping away from you as if it were a scene from a tape that was retrieved, a tape that another creature found and decided to see what was inside it, to find millions of years of human life as if they were a few seconds.

Welcome to our weekly WAYR thread. Be sure to leave the title and author of the book that you are currently reading, along with your thoughts on the text.

Comment your thoughts about hope

Christianity comes up with "Original Sin" which negates life by default. Man here is fundamentally born with an inborn sin that needs to be cleansed.

However, Christianity also follows the old genesis conception of "Be fruitful, and multiply" which promotes natalism. But if life is essentially a consequence of sin, why there needs to be recreation of sin and putting people lives' at stake?

I find Christianity to be a highly pessimistic religion. But the problem is instead of embracing it, it does otherwise. (Moderate) natalist religions like Judaism, or (moderate) antinatalist religions like Buddhism, or the religions standing between - Islam and Hindusim, at least acknowledge either. But Christianity is the most problematic among them.

Christianity should've had embraced itself in order to counter original sin, but it did the opposite. Under Christianity we are all doomed and bound to create more "dooms"!

Unfortunately, I often see pessimistic validations in the world:

1. People in the United States talking about putting “care packages” together for their local homeless population. While this is an act of kindness, a bigger act of kindness would be to get together and petition the city/ the state/ the federal government to do more to help homeless people.

(Now think of this from the vantage of the homeless person: here one’s plight is bleak. The realization that the kind of world humans have made is one where they force homelessness on some people, and that even the best citizens are often only motivated to hand out a “care package” a few times a year. But how wonderful this makes the citizens feel about themselves! Woe unto those who see the world through this lens, and yet find themselves in these conditions!)

But it’s like this with many adverse conditions that humans face — including war.

2. I saw a high level academic brag about feeding his dog filet mignon. I immediately thought about how humans treat their pets better than their fellow humans. It’s likely this man would despise a homeless man if he passed him on the street.

Nevertheless, it’s also true that the world contains far more conscious, intelligent and compassionate humans, it’s just that they tend to be more rare.

Hey guys, when i was younger I've read some pessimistic books but i dont think i really understood completely.. recently ive read the conspiracy against the human race and it was written in a simple way that was easier to get, im not depressed but i sometimes get hit with existential dread that is making me hate life/ my parents and lament the fact they brought me to this world.. can you suggest me some books, fiction or nonfiction that can help me deal? I have a void in my heart that makes it hard for me to get excited by this life

I ponder this question often, but I think it’s the latter…that humans fear dying, and misinterpret it for ‘loving life’.

Think about the human response to Covid, for example. We shut down life/living because we were terrified of dying. We went so far with it that we made it a point to save the elderly, at the expense of children living their lives. “Stay home for grandma” is what people would actually say. In other words, we essentially gave up living in order to prevent dying.

I'm sitting here in my house, in one of the most privileged corners of the world, feeling bleak. Life is a struggle: work is stressful and hard to balance with "free time"; free time is anxiety educing - the space merely allows worries, fears, guilt, obsession, confusion, and so on to arise; romantic relationships are a never-ending struggle that continuously foreground our fallibility, friendships are frustrating and inadequate, whilst isolation is unbearable. Death is terrifying.

I realise I'm being self-absorbed, and remind myself of my many privileges. Doing so brings to mind the horrors those with less privilege face: the nonhuman animals bred into captivity merely to be molested, exploited, and slaughtered to satisfy human hunger for their flesh, secretions, skins, or superfluous scientific data; the human and nonhuman animals whose homes have become, or are rapidly becoming, inhospitable due to the intensifying climate crisis; those humans - who make up the majority of us - who are oppressed under global capitalism, colonial occupation, imperialism, war, modern-day slavery, discrimination, and supremacisms that otherwise marginalise and other their lives, cultures, and identities. All the while systematic nonhuman animal exploitation continues to rise, global and national inequalities continue to grow, the powerholders continue to accelerate us toward ever-intensifying climate catastrophes, and the Right gain more and more power across the globe.

Some time ago I heard an interview in which a highly oppressed women said she lacked the privilege to be pessimistic. I've never been able to shake this. I speak with pessimism because I have the privilege to be glum; I have the physical, temporal, and emotional space to resign to cynicism and negativity about existence, "progress", and the capacities of human beings. But my pessimism is only supported by the reality that such an outlook is a prerogative of the privileged! If life's this uncomfortable from the perspective I'm seeing and experiencing it from, then the suffering of the worst off is hard to comprehend...

A person I respect once said to me that the Left - all those committed to fighting oppression, inequality, and injustice - is fighting a battle it will likely never win, but at the same time we can never give up. I feel this summarises my position well: I am deeply pessimistic about the prospect of the human animal - as a collective - bringing an end to its intra- and inter-species violence, its narcissism, its destructive domination of the Earth and beyond, and I'm yet to be persuaded that life brings anything near more good than bad to those experiencing it. However, to give up fighting for those who already exist - to give up on our opposition to oppression, inequality, injustice - is to act out of a pure egotism rooted in the privilege of pessimism.

To be clear, I say this not as a criticism of pessimism - I remain wholly convinced by it - but as a reflection on its limitations with regard to what I feel is a duty we owe to our fellow sentient beings, especially - or exclusively - those with less privilege than us.

How is Imagining another reality after death saying YOU will be saved not egotistical and self centered? "I'm praying for you" to me is like a sick way of establishing moral superiority. The religion is centered around us humans. Has it ever occurred to them that the story is not about us? Just like it wasn't about the dinosaurs. To me the christian religion is nothing but a big cope that fantasizes an escape and is an easy cop out to life's existential questions. It's a lazy, cowardly, and idiotic solution for people that never crically think or question rationally anything of their blind faith because they don't want their illusions they've built destroyed. It is selfish because instead of actually thinking of a solution in this reality they instead distract themselves with BS of paradise. A waste of time and takes away thinking from our own reality. Mind virus brain rot.

This overall forced positivity in society really always bothered me as well. People tend to get so defensive over it and are easily concerned about either isolating the negative individuals opinion or the person itself.

I feel like rationality and searching for an objective truth inevitably lead to meaninglessness of universe. Such as, you have to keep searching for truth and reach to it in the right way. But through this process it alienates the subjective experience of human being from the world living in it. For example, what does truth really mean if the entire universe exists but "I" do not.

Therefore, I believe instead of searching for a factual truth of the universe, the only way one can overcome the meaninglessness of universe is through creativity and aesthetic means that do not have any "right process" of doing so.

As my hands touched him and my skin brushed against his cold, smooth, pale flesh—devoid of blood, as though it were a part of a meticulously polished marble statue—and as my gaze, filled with profound interest, remained fixed upon his lifeless face, empty of any sign of vitality, I came to a realization deep within myself: we are merely generators of an unrepeatable formula. With every flaw, every talent, every ailment, we are patterns that cannot be replicated—a singular snapshot imprinted uniquely within the fabric of time, impossible to reproduce. And yet, the cost of our arrival here has been exorbitant. There is no coherence in this equation, for in the end, existence is nothing more than a cliché of a losing bargain.

Imagine that it is an interdisciplinary program, pulling from Philosophy, Theory, Film, Art, Literature, etc. etc. What would you want to see included? Not only thinkers who identify themselves as pessimists, but artists who's work encapsulates a pessimistic & dark aesthetic (Zdzislaw Beksinski for example).

The optimist often accuses the pessimistic perspective as complaining.

I disagree, here's why:

First let's look at Spinoza's simple idea that what increases our power brings pleasure, and what decrease our power brings us pain.

Pessimism brings a sense of power to me, and thus, pleasure. I get pleasure from thinking about this place as a shit hole. It's not a complaint, it's an ever-producing wellspring of power (pleasure) for me. There is something about seeing this place with the correct lens that puts a pep in my step, even though the realization is "dark".

The optimist will never understand this though, because they cannot fathom increasing their power in this way. They are only capable of increasing their power in "positive" ways, which is actually limited if you think about it.

It really seems to be that almost everyone is deriving their meaning off their own pleasure. I don’t know how else to look at it. What does pessimism have to say about hedonism?

What are some popular music songs with pessimistic lyrics?

Here are some songs that I would consider quite bleak:

• Gary Jules - Mad World
• Kansas - Dust in the Wind
• Mylene Farmer - Disenchantee
• Johnny Mandel - Suicide is Painless
• Stromae - Alors on Danse
• Black Sabbath - Paranoid
• Monty Python - Always Look at the Bright Side of Life
• Lilly Wood & The Prick - Prayer in C
• The Verve - Bittersweet symphony

Any further suggestions are welcome!

What if Mainländer was wrong, and instead of achieving non-being through the act of redemption, we reincarnate a number of times until finally achieving non-being? I like to use this analogy: imagine that life and death are not like a common candle that, once lit, can be extinguished with a single blow. Perhaps it is more like a trick candle that lights itself several times before it is finally put out. This could unfortunately (for me and others) challenge promortalism, making life and death meaningless, which would perhaps make existence even more lousy.

(Por favor déjenme publicar en español, me fue muy difícil traducir al inglés).

I am convinced that the greatest value of pessimistic philosophy is its liberating potential for catharsis. Pretending to be "functioning" people, to bargain for a cause that transcends us, to love our work and, in general, to wake up every day with a smile, is torture. An anguished mask that mass society has designed for its subordinates who, thanks to religious and cultural indoctrination, have stopped seeing it as a mask and have begun to believe that that was their true face. Pessimistic catharsis allows us to get in touch with our true personality, to get rid of the burden of having to pretend to be something we are not. I don't care if having a negative outlook makes me less exploitable, and therefore more likely to have a difficult and socially complicated life. Even if I pretended, I would still have a difficult life because no matter how many layers of falsehood we put in front of our eyes, we will always be conditioned by our true personality, which is undergirded by every cloud. It may not be visible, but it is there, and it recalcitrates when we try to feed it with blatant bullshit. Realizing one's nature simply makes us aware of it, and that is worth more than any optimistic falsehood.

End of rant