MALIGNANTLY USELESS

MALIGNANTLY USELESS

have you even read the book?

>“As a survival-happy species, our successes are calculated in the number of years we have extended our lives, with the reduction of suffering being only incidental to this aim. To stay alive under almost any circumstances is a sickness with us. Nothing could be more unhealthy than to “watch one’s health” as a means of stalling death. The lengths we will go as procrastinators of that last gasp only demonstrate a morbid dread of that event. By contrast, our fear of suffering is deficient.”

OP saw it on reddit today

Yep

I've been posting threads about this book on Veeky Forums for longer than you've been alive, champ.

How is this "malignant" and "useless" at the same time? I have seen medical words being used in non-medical situations in newspapers a lot recently. Is this a meme now?

>“As a fact, we cannot give suffering precedence in either our individual or collective lives. We have to get on with things, and those who give precedence to suffering will be left behind. They fetter us with their sniveling. We have someplace to go and must believe we can get there, wherever that may be. And to conceive that there is a 'brotherhood of suffering between everything alive' would disable us from getting anywhere. We are preoccupied with the good life, and step by step are working toward a better life. What we do, as a conscious species, is set markers for ourselves. Once we reach one marker, we advance to the next — as if we were playing a board game we think will never end, despite the fact that it will, like it or not. And if you are too conscious of not liking it, then you may conceive of yourself as a biological paradox that cannot live with its consciousness and cannot live without it. And in so living and not living, you take your place with the undead and the human puppet.”

Pack it in guys OP hasn't even read his meme book

>trying to discredit Ligotti by claiming CATR is a "meme book"

Nice coping mechanism

*CATHR

“Perhaps the greatest strike against philosophical pessimism is that its only theme is human suffering. This is the last item on the list of our species’ obsessions and detracts from everything that matters to us, such as the Good, the Beautiful, and a Sparking Clean Toilet Bowl. For the pessimist, everything considered in isolation from human suffering or any cognition that does not have as its motive the origins, nature, and elimination of human suffering is at base recreational, whether it takes the form of conceptual probing or physical action in the world—for example, delving into game theory or traveling in outer space, respectively. And by “human suffering,” the pessimist is not thinking of particular sufferings and their relief, but of suffering itself. Remedies may be discovered for certain diseases and sociopolitical barbarities may be amended. But those are only stopgaps. Human suffering will remain insoluble as long as human beings exist. The one truly effective solution for suffering is that spoken of in Zapffe’s “Last Messiah.” It may not be a welcome solution for a stopgap world, but it would forever put an end to suffering, should we ever care to do so. The pessimist’s credo, or one of them, is that nonexistence never hurt anyone and existence hurts everyone. Although our selves may be illusory creations of consciousness, our pain is nonetheless real.”

this makes me want to have a cheeky drink

What's stopping you?

once i take a cheeky drink i can rarely refrain from finishing the bottle and then my suffering is increased greatly the next day, and then i need to have another drink to dull the pain which leads to more drinks, and so on

This meme book is just a prelude to Veeky Forums's eastern philosophy phase

>“Michelstaedter’s biographers and critics have speculated that his despair of humanity’s ability to become disentangled from its puppet strings was, in conjunction with accidental factors, the cause of his suicide by gunshot the day after he finished his dissertation. Michelstaedter could not accept a stellar fact of human life: that none of us has control over what we are—a truth that extirpates all hope if what you want to be is invulnerably self-possessed (“persuaded”) and without subjection to a life that would fit you within the limits of its unrealities (“rhetoric,” a word oddly used by Michelstaedter). We are defined by our limitations; without them, we cannot suffice as functionaries in the big show of conscious existence.”

Still, start with the Greeks.

>CATR

Personally, i prefer Stephen King's Danse Macabre.

No don't start with the Greeks that's dumbest shit ever
It's called information theory
Chaos physics
Start with math then programming

Has any one of these "philosophical pessimists" ever talked about their fear of trust in ""optimist"" things ?

>MALIGNANTLY USELESS
that's the spirit!

fear of trust in optimist things? Do you suspect that philosophical pessimists actually believe that they know they are wrong but state their beliefs as absolute? If you do, you've advanced to a level of mastery over philosophical pessimism that busts down their doors and eats all their chickens.

Chicken a la king

1 (4.5 ounce) can mushrooms, drained, liquid reserved 1 green bell pepper, chopped 1/2 cup butter 1/2 cup all-purpose flour 1 teaspoon salt 1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper 1 1/2 teaspoons chicken bouillon powder 1 1/2 cups milk 1 1/4 cups hot water 4 cooked, boneless chicken breast halves, chopped.

Go no further, lest ye be further warned!

“For optimists, human life never needs justification, no matter how much hurt piles up, because they can always tell themselves that things will get better. For pessimists, there is no amount of happiness—should such a thing as happiness even obtain for human beings except as a misconception—that can compensate us for life’s hurt. As a worst-case example, a pessimist might refer to the hurt caused by some natural or human-made cataclysm. To adduce a hedonic counterpart to the horrors that attach to such cataclysms would require a degree of ingenuity from an optimist, but it could be done. And the reason it could be done, the reason for the eternal stalemate between optimists and pessimists, is that no possible formula can be established to measure proportions and types of hurt and happiness in the world. If such a formula could be established, then either pessimists or optimists would have to give in to their adversaries.”
― Thomas Ligotti, The Conspiracy Against the Human Race

Now this i can agree with, Ligotti needs to ease off his emo shit

Why would he not express himself knowing that it is just that?

Soap and shower is the superior "dude life sucks lmao" writer.

Ligotti describes existence as MALIGNANTLY USELESS (always in caps for some reason). Useless because it has no ultimate purpose and there'd be no consquences of any sort if nobody or nothing existed. And malignant because it inevitably puts every living being into a path towards disease and suffering.

>for some reason

he's a bad writer

>MALIGNANTLY USELESS

I find it rather humorous myself. KNEE SLAPPING HAW HAW