the conspiracy against the human race a contrivance of horror

It kind of bored me- which is precisely what a hope-clinging millennial would say in dismissal (that way millennials often say “boring” when they mean “offends me but without officially crossing established offense-lines), but I don’t mean it like that. But I had a hard time getting through the book, and not because it depressed me. I’d be interested in reading his fiction.

On a sentence level, Ligotti is clearly a very capable writer. The book is honestly something of a mess. This alone makes me a dodger of the grim truths of reality in the cosmic pessimist book, but I never expected any thanks for flak-catching for Rust Kohle anyway. Instead of basing my review on how much I agree or disagree with cosmic pessimist Ligotti, but on how much I got out of the book. I don’t think I’m going to resolve the cosmic pessimism/cosmic optimism question on my moribund blog or facebook wall.

Longer-term secular trends, like the uncovering of just how prevalent mental illnesses like depression are, help too. At the end of the day I do what I can to make the world better (or foil those who’d make it worse) but I’m not convinced of the ultimate existential validity of what I do- who can be? Recent events, between climate change, reversion to fascist barbarism, and now pandemics, give the pessimist position more of a hearing than you’d get even ten years before. Certainly enough to avoid hand-waving it away as though I’m above it. And still… I can see cosmic pessimism’s point. Born white, male, middle-class (if downwardly mobile), American, to loving parents, in the late twentieth century, I’ve been dealt a hand so high in the top percentages of hands dealt that I don’t know how many zeroes would go to the right of the decimal point. These ranged from “hopepunk” Whedon-loving liberals to youthful revolutionaries somewhere on the post-Lenin evolutionary tree- cosmic pessimism was a big no no to them and a wide range in between. I remember when “True Detective” Season 1 came out and Matthew McConaughey’s cosmic pessimism (influenced, the showrunner admits, by Ligotti) provoked much eye-rolling from people who, as I recall, were mostly unified by their belief in a better future. As Thomas Ligotti, renowned horror writer points out in this dip into the nonfictional (or anyway philosophical), not a popular position.

Thomas Ligotti, “The Conspiracy Against the Human Race: A Contrivance of Horror” (2010) – Cosmic pessimism! The belief that existence is fundamentally worse than non-existence, generally coupled with the idea that consciousness in specific was a dramatic evolutionary mistake.

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The conspiracy against the human race a contrivance of horror