I wrote this a long time ago after reading Thomas Ligotti’s “The Conspiracy Against the Human Race”. I’ve read it three times now and still enjoy it every time I read it.
Thomas Ligotti is a Floridian writer, philosopher, and Lovecraft enthusiast who specializes in horror fiction. If you’ve watched “True Detective”, Nic Pizzolatto gets his ideas from this book, especially Rust Cohle, played by Matthew McConaughey. The books is inspired by the philosophy of pessimism which is the best and only reason to watch the show (I wrote this a long time ago as I said. I just recently watched season 4 and it was fantastic, but nowhere near the first season’s caliber.)
Here’s the question that Ligotti posits: “Is being alive a good thing?” According to Ligotti … fuck no. Not only does he develop a decent argument as to why it’s inevitably terrible to be a conscious human being, but he also argues that the action of bringing other human beings into the world is absurdly and monstrously cruel.
The tragedy for Ligotti is the evolution of human consciousness. We split off from nature and know for certain that we are going to die. The certainty that we’re going to die and the certainty of human suffering throughout our lives and up until we die, just poof! Gone. Alone, forgotten, as Ligotti puts it “malignantly useless.”
So what happens when a puppet thinks it’s a person and has an individual will and purpose and spirit? Or worse, destiny or meaning? When it thinks it’s important? I’ll tell you what you get, you get a nightmare. A true nightmare. One where the puppet (hint: you) has to stop thinking about that reality in order to function in its puppetly manner.
You can ignore it. Distract yourself, or rationalize your way out of it. You can sublimate it, or channel it into your work, your hobbies, the ones you love, your obsessions, your addictions, whatever. Doesn’t make a difference. You’re just kidding yourself. The best part about it? Once you realize that, you can’t unlearn it.
So there is no hope, no salvation, the future will not save you. Tomorrow will not be a better day. In fact, it’ll probably be worse.
So today, forget the John Waters rule. Drink, smoke, take it where you can get it, fuck school, break things, and don’t listen to your parents. Because they didn’t think twice about bringing you into this fucked up slaughterhouse called life.
There are no happy endings, but it’s a great book whether you fall in line with pessimistic thinking or not.