H-he's wrong, right? I'm barely smart enough to digest

>>8862366
Read East of Eden to pick yourself back up.

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Existence is only bad if you make it bad. If pessimists spent all the effort they spend whining on improving their lives, they'd see how beautiful the world is.

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>>8862366
It's a bit feels over reels even though it's compelling. Pic related is more of a rational approach to the problem.

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>>8862639
t. privileged normie

>>8862639
Pessimism is not whining

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The next step after pessimism is mysticism.

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He's not wrong, but his arguments are futile.

We can't un-birth ourselves, and bar some kind of insane and impossible technique we can't stop humanity from continuing to have children, or to stop those who want to live and exist from doing so on a world-wide scale.

There are always nukes, I guess.

Heretical though it may be I think I like Ligotti over Lovecraft - though I still love Lovecraft

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>>8862669
This, the greatest problem with antinatalism is that it's too idealistic an ideology to ever be implemented on any meaningful scale. Even the best arguments can't trump instinct in this case.

My greatest hope is omnicide by AI takeover now. It's getting more and more plausible each day. Garbage time is running out.

>>8862366
Ligotti is an absolute loser. Pessimism to the point of absurdity.

I understand that by reading a good book and enjoying it what I'm actually doing is looking at some paper and experiencing chemicals in my brain. However, the knowledge of this doesn't mean I have to deny myself the pleasure of it because it's 'vacuous' or meaningless. So what if we are 'cursed' with consciousness? I would rather understand the world and then die under a bridge with a bottle of vodka in my hand than be a fucking goldfish swimming around its bowl.

>>8862684
>I would rather understand the world and then die under a bridge with a bottle of vodka in my hand
Spoken like a true non-alcoholic non-depressive romanticising his Hollywood memes.

>>8862651
>>8862653
Pessimists who don't have arguments? Shocking!

>>8862685
I said it for romantic effect.

>>8862686
Why don't you give an argument for 'how beautiful the world is'.

>>8862693
Normal, healthy people think the world is beautiful. The burden of proof is on you.

>>8862704
>Normal, healthy people
Relative and false.

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>>8862704
This has to be satire.

>>8862729
>Being so mentally ill that you think that anyone who isn't governed by pure self hatred is being satirical
I pity you, desu

>>8862704
Normal people don't think about the beauty of the world. They just assume it's beautiful. The wide eyed folks who espouse about it are usually outliers. Plus, what the fuck is beauty? That's a pretty subjective thing to base living on.

>>8862704
I am healthy and for the most part happy, but acknowledge that existence is essentially suffering, but that it is also finite and will eventually end. I feel that such an acknowledgement allows me to come to terms with shitty things that happen to me, and in part contributes to my happiness.

In one of Schopenhauer's aphorisms, he says something to the effect of, "Be patient and understanding towards other people, because that's what you and I need as well, given the circumstances that we're in." Pessimism is a humanism and none of you detractors understand it.

>>8862743

Is this what you're referring to?

"In fact, the conviction that the world and man is something that had better not have been, is of a kind to fill us with indulgence towards one another. Nay, from this point of view, we might well consider the proper form of address to be, not Monsieur, Sir, mein Herr, but my fellow-sufferer, Socî malorum, compagnon de miseres! This may perhaps sound strange, but it is in keeping with the facts; it puts others in a right light; and it reminds us of that which is after all the most necessary thing in life—the tolerance, patience, regard, and love of neighbor, of which everyone stands in need, and which, therefore, every man owes to his fellow."

>>8862743
>X is a humanism
Your life is a pseudanism haha

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>>8862693
I believe that it's true, the word we live in indeed is beautiful to the human eyes by its complexity, its shades, its diversity and the beauty of what Nature creates.

The Universe is also very beautiful, large and complex.

>>8862747
Yeah, that's the one.

>>8862749
Oh, I am slain

>>8862747
>>8862743
Which work of Schoppy's is this in?

>>8862651
Indians from the most poo laden streets of back alley mumbai are some of the happiest people i know. t. Slumdog millionaire

>>8862781

On the Sufferings of the World, in his Studies in Pessimism.

>>8862785
When your world is a small box, simply seeing the sun from the top is a joy

>>8862788
Thank you

>>8862704
That seems like a stretch, isn't it more apt to say that the average person is busy enough not to think about the world? I don't know too many people who actually appreciate the world they're living in, many of the working class types I know just think of life as a means to an end. "I live to continue living a good life," it doesn't mean entirely that they're happy and healthy with the world at large.
Ultimately, I think it boils down to being alone with your thoughts. Be alone with them for too long in isolation and you'll come to the assessment that life doesn't matter. The remedy for most people is probably keeping busy through hobbies, socializing and work, maybe.

This is just my guess, I obviously am not objective.

>>8862750
Compared to what?

>>8862704
muh appeal to the masses;

You made the claim that the world is beautiful, so no the burden of proof is actually on you

The world just is.

>>8862639
not an argument

>>8862366

I tried. I just didn't understand the foundational premise of this. My life has had ups and downs but it was good for the most part.

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>>8863573
>My life has had ups and downs but it was good for the most part.
Oh shit, stop the presses everyone - the world is a wonderful place and no one should ever feel bad anymore - and it's all thanks to this single anon having a good life.

Wew. Glad no one has to suffer anymore!

>>8862750
I think you're on the right path for optimism. Beauty and love is what existence offers us demanding nothing in return. Pain and suffering exist, this is true, but its only through these that I can actually become someone.

>>8862931
Why must it be compared to something to be beautiful?

>>8863872
>Why must it be compared to something to be beautiful?
Beauty does not exist in a vacuum. For something to be beautiful there must be a comparison to something not.

A beautiful painting is beautiful in comparison to childish scribbles.
A beautiful woman stands out among a sea of normal or ugly ones.
Parts of the world are beautiful precisely because many parts aren't

You can always just kill yourself. Personally I think anti-natalism and nihilism and all that are stupid, not because they're clearly wrong, but because their conclusions are stupid. Oh good, you've shown that you should off yourself. Clearly there are people that have a passion for life and find it worthwhile, so go kill yourself and leave the rest to their impulses.

>>8862366
you can make an argument that an experience, even if that experience is bad, is better than no experience at all. same goes for existance

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>>8863601
can you not be a dumbass strawmanning pedant? Refute this position: "Life involves suffering, but also periods of no suffering and joy, and I have internally deemed this suffering worth it." It's fucking air-tight, which is why suicide is such a personal choice. Some people think it isn't, some people do. Someone's psychological tolerance for suffering, and how much it affects them could have pretty good variability.

>>8863878
I disagree. Beauty already exists in a vacuum. If we call something beautiful, then we are saying it contains some quality that we understand to be beautiful, but the nature of that quality is entirely our own creation. We have created the idea of beauty. And yet, acknowledging this, there is still beauty. So certainly, once we create the idea of beauty we create the idea of ugly, but the genesis of beauty is not ugliness.

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>>8862669
I agree on the Lovecraft/Ligotti thing though I still like Lovecraft over Ligotti. I still don't know why Ligotti is sometimes paraded around like Lovecraft 2.0 or something. Ligotti is amazing and a thoughtful writer as was Lovecraft but they're too dissimilar I think.

Pic related, ordered this a few days ago. Should be here this afternoon. I hope it's good.

>>8862669
>>8862677
You fucking retards he already stated this on that same book fuck

>>8862750
There is nothing in this universe that is beautiful. Last sentence on the book.

>>8862634
wtf does a book about a psychopath who grows beans have to do wth human teleology?

>>8862639
>has a icture of Rodger

nice strawman

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>suffering is bad

When will this meme end?

>>8862662
I would only become a mystic to commit the most absolute and through suicide

>>8862689
Its still retarded

>>8862704
>muh burden of proof

actually the one making the positive statement has the burden of proof. You don't have the burden of proof to demonstrate the absence of something. The person asserting there is something has the burden of proof. In this case its any kind of tangible value in life.

>>8862750
yes, diversity is its strength

>>8862662

Ligotti himself is at the doorway of Spirituality for most of the book.

>>8862684
>I would rather understand the world and then die under a bridge with a bottle of vodka in my hand than be a fucking goldfish swimming around its bowl.
I like the imagery you used here. Also, I agree.

>>8863905
its not air tight because the suffering is merely the upset of the set of circumstances which are most conducive to your continued existence. Well the universe is full of such upsets. Meanwhile the joy is only an amelioration of the deficit in how fully these circumstances are being fulfilled. You dont require joy if you are dead

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>>8862737
>Plus, what the fuck is beauty? That's a pretty subjective thing to base living on.
This gentleman might have something to say on that.

>>8862366
Is there a more nihilist book than this? And don't rec Ray Brassier because that's like decoding fucking hieroglyphics

>>8864292
The Day My Butt Went Psycho

>>8864292
Anything by cioran

>>8862366
>implying you need to be smart to enjoy life
a vast number of "intellectuals"(read: rhetoricians) are dead inside. just take that into account the next time you decide to take their word on the experience of living and think you have to fucking debate them to get out of the hellhole they want to project onto you.

>>8864059
So what's his answer to it?

>>8862366
>>8862366
Pretty sure it's a pasta, but anyway just keep yourself away from these sorts of stuff. Yeah, existence is terrible but if you don't feel like killing yourself and you live a relatively comfortable life just make use of your time to produce as much fun as possible. There is so much out there to enjoy, and your mind is the authority of what's worthy and meaningful.

>>8862648
Benetar's assymetry is bullshit though, it's essential an entire book of him trying to justify a conclusion he already had.

>>8862366

I think he's overrated.

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>>8862648

>>8865820
Suffering (the purely phenomenological aspect of it) being ceteris baribus a negative to be avoided is probably the safest assumption you can base moral reasoning on. Denying the asymmetry basically forces you to support Austrian basements.
http://theviewfromhell.blogspot.fi/2008/07/austrian-basement-and-beyond.html

>>8865820
How is it bullshit?

>>8866440
Would like an answer to this.

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>he enjoys life

>>8862669
>we can't un-birth ourselves

WITH ALL THAT DIES TO BECOME UNBORN

>>8862733
>he thinks the hatred is self-directed

hehe, try again kid

*flicks cigarette on ground*

There is no rebuttal because there is hardly an argument. Just flat assertions of his feels > reals depressive realism. Antidote: go outside and do things you like and quit whining about shit you can't change. Cut away the self-obsessed, self-conscious whining and become a Catholic or some shit, if you really need to.

I admire Ligotti very much but I admire him for the achivements of his fiction, not his "philosophy," which is just a mildly deranged worldview. Writing TCATHR was probably the biggest mistake of his career (after The Agonizing Resurrection of Victor Frankenstein perhaps), as it leads the angsty teens who read this ridiculous vomit to disregard his fiction. I read one commentator rejoicing at the release of TCATHR because it relieved Ligotti's readers from having to go through the trouble of reading his fiction to distill his philosophy. Blasphemy, if you ask me.

If you truly are serious about your feels, the Ligotti book you need to read is My Work Is Not Yet Done. Also the book that Elliot Rodgers should have mimicked if he wasn't the loathsome pussy that he was.

Eh, I'm having a good time. The sheer unlikelihood of being alive and everything I do with that life feels significant to me. Being conscious of myself makes me feel like a god, capable of creating new order and new meaning.

>>8868601
cringe

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This thread is like a brilliant exposition of how people don't understand the fact-value distinction.

All of the pessimistic materialists here should try to understand that there is a difference between explaining what things are, and how you should live your life.

The former is easily explainable by science, the other not so much.

Find some transcendent meaning in your life and devote yourself to that, and never give up.

>>8862366
>dude im miserable so therefore everyone else must be miserable too!
t. every anti-natalist that exists.

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>western pessimism

just one more step lads, you can do it.

>>8868702
You probably think this was incredibly witty and truthful.

>>8868712
>im able to know others and how they create meaning for themselves!
Neck urself m8.

>>8868702
>dude i'm fine therefore it's okay to bring people in the world who will hate it and greatly suffer
t. every pronatalist

You might as well say it's okay to fuck people in the ass without their consent because you enjoy getting buggered.

>>8862651

Eh. Been to poor towns in rural Nepal. People are in such a great mood most of the time.

Also, I'm pretty sure the kid in that picture didn't read OP's book, or has access to an internet to be snarky on, but I could be wrong.

I'm only a bit past halfway rn but my favorite part so far is where he talks about consciousness being a defect or mistake of evolution and the reason for it possibly being a conscience-less 'whole' outside human existence which intended consciousness as a means to think itself. What do you think, could it be a possibility?

>>8868753
>eh

Why do faggots always write like this?

>>8868595
Good stuff anon

If you didn't grow out of this book, you are a pleb.

>>8868770
Several of his stories hinge on this. Was thinking immediately of "Severini":
>he did not take me into the swamp to exist as a fungus exists or as a foam of multi-colored slime mold exists.
>Deliver the self that knows the sickness from the self that does not know. There are two faces which must never confront each other. There is only one body which must struggle to contain them both.
The whole puppet motif runs in the same vein. Also Mark Samuels' "The Black Mould," another great weird story.

Anywho, the only reason there's a space for thinking such thoughts is that nobody has given a better explanation. I think Ligotti cites Nicolas Humphrey, the neurologist, who gives almost the exact opposite of Ligotti's account. With headless optimism, though equally lacking in any certainty or authority on the matter. There really is no way of knowing and I doubt if some psychologist conjured up a worthy description it would satisfy Ligotti and his cohorts. Better not to think about it. As it is, Ligotti's philosophy is adequate for spooking teenagers with existential dread, but there's hardly more to it than that.

Who's to say that animals, fungi or slime molds don't experience the world too in some way anyway? His whole approach relies on anthropocentrism and disproving him would require testimony from another species. The closest we got to that is reading Frans de Waal and Donna Harraway.

>>8862669
Lovecraft is boring, ligotti is great. Lovecraft stories are like comics.

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>>8868599
IF I WAS UNBORN
I WOULD HAVE NOTHING TO BE GRATEFUL FOR

This was intended as a shitpost but in writing it out it strikes me that the lyrics of that song present a totally opposite view to Ligotti's. Him and David Tibet are such close friends and seeming ideological allies, maybe there's a trace of irony in Conspiracy Against the Human Race.

>>8868753
>dude i went backpacking in asia so people aren't dying of hunger

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>>8862366
>why existing isn't that bad
Because if you didn't exist then you wouldn't be able to tell people how terrible existence is

>>8868816
*shoves you onto the ground*

Maybe there is kid, who knows. Hehe.

>>8868847
what cunt

>>8868872
*stops*

*draws scimitar*

*turns head to the side*

you say something, kiddo?

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>>8868889
Miene Respektigung.

>>8868595
That ice cream one is fucking hilarious

>>8864233
>wtf does a book about a psychopath have to do with yuppie culture in the 80's

What the hell, was The Conspiracy Against the Human Race the only book you've read?

>>8862639
I used to be incredibly pessimistic and whine. Now, I kind of marvel at the sheer awfulness of living. It's a staggeringly terrible, but it's sort of hilarious at the same time.

>>8868595
>Morrisey on the list
kek I do love the guy, though

>>8871486
You must have some stories to tell.

>>8871486
Isn't that just being an absurdist?

>>8862366
He's not a good writer. Celine, Cioran, Houellebecq, are better pessimists.

Also I don't know why, the idea of a really moralistic pessimism just feels dumb to me. Maybe the lack of humor about it, like they're cosmic pessimist with the mentality of SJWs. Like blaming parents all the time, people on antinatalist forums seriously complaining that the government doesn't provide them a guaranteed way to commit suicide, it's just so pathetic.

>>8871486
>Now, I kind of marvel at the sheer awfulness of living. It's a staggeringly terrible, but it's sort of hilarious at the same time.
That's always the step after reaching despair, unless you kill yourself first.

Look at Kafka - DFW was right in saying there's a kind of hilarity in his works. The despair reached by his characters, and those who surround them, in the midst of an uncaring and at many times an actively hostile world acting in the most seriously despite being absurd - it's all terribly funny because it's so awful and worse, so true.

>>8871602
I think you should have more empathy for people like Ligotti. There is clearly something extremely wrong with them for reality to appear that way.

If life is that miserable for them do they not deserve an easy way out? the push of a button rather than something as daunting as a gunshot or stabbing

>>8871609
I think Kafka actually used to read his writing to his friends in a humorous context.

>>8871622
I can honestly imagine that this is true.

And far be it from me to seem to be making fun of Kakfa - I love his work, and I certainly understand the despair and suffering and absurd futility. It's just that it's so true that laughing might be the only way to reconcile oneself with it.

>>8862686

poopy

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Reality is by its very definition against the pessimists. Logic is inherently optimistic.

- Kejsaren

>>8864235
how was that better than there being no one to be condemned to hell in the first place.

>>8871684
Hell is the default, accepting it is the only way to achieve heaven

>>8871684
>Here humans, have free will
>Oh fuck, you used that against me? Shiiiit
>Beeteedubs now you'll die, commit sins, and go to Hell
>Here's my son - he'll stop that though
>Hope you feel bad he's suffering for you!

>>8868729

THIS
H
I
S

>>8868729
every action you execute can cause suffering, even suicide. you can't win, you can only try, and promoting antinatalism hardly solves the problem

>>8870356
wtf does CATHR have to do with Brett Easton Ellis?

>>8871602
>Houellebecq
>not the ultimate prosaic whiney cunt

at least Ligotti has some killer quotations

How many hardcore nihilists do you guys suppose would reconsider their views if they were to do acid or mdma?
I'm impartial in this debate, so that wasn't intended as an argument against nihilism or anything. Just a thought, anyone here have a life-changing drug experience?
LSD definately helped me out of my angsty unhappy teenage phase, and gave me my first experience where I felt true love for myself
And are there any good works on philosophy/drugs?

>>8868601
*removes fingerless gloves*

*removes wrist weights*

*places hand on katana*

>>8872355
Probably a lot.
They did experiments in the past before stricter ethical conditions were placed on psych experiments. They gave acid to normies in a controlled environment and 99% of people rated it a positive or at least neutral experience.

As someone who has done a bit of drugs / psychs I have a similar experience to you. I found acid did a lot to help myself work through anxiety, self-love/self-esteem and love for others. As well as my place in the world and generating meaning. It's up there in my top 3 most important life lessons. I take psychs periodically to 'clean out my mental cobwebs'.

I like a lot of what terence mckenna has to say in terms of what psychs can do to better understand your human psyche and what 'really matters in life'.

>>8872482
Oh and to add, I like some of what Alan Watts has to say.

I personally live by his quote of "If you get the message, hang up the phone"

>>8864270
For someone so brilliant and revolutionary, he believed some really dumbass things.

>>8862662

what is this demiurge-apologist bullshit

'I'm too lazy, apathetic and anxious to deal with the responsibilities of life. My life sucks and it's my fault.

Oh no, hold on a minute, I know what... all life sucks! That's it, haha xd! Look at it all, wars and so on that I didn't give a second thought until it was useful for my new narrative, how could one possibly view life as anything but futile.

It's not my fault, it's life's fault!

Ahhhhh, I may be sad but at least that's a burden I can handle and I know that anyone who seems to be doing better in life simply hasn't understood that life is bad so therefore actually I win by not participating in these illusions. I own the truth thank you very much.

All is well... I mean... bad, all is bad hehe!

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>>8862704
>The burden of proof is on you.

I've seen this before