As someone who suffers with a pervasive undercurrent of dissatisfaction and anhedonia, this book is absurdly refreshing. Does /lit/ read Ligotti?
I read his fiction.
>>7708768
I'm interested in reading Ligotti more thoroughly, but he's quite heavy on the nihilism! Can you recommend a quote/section of his that isn't overwhelmingly crushing?
>>7709062
>overwhelmingly crushing
Isn't that the point?
Most of his short stories are quite fun if you don't look into them too much.
>>7709062
Not from that book, no. I definitely wouldn't pick it up if you're susceptible to existential anxiety. It's just nice to hear someone who relates to and can articulate my experience, even though I have little hope of getting better.
>>7708768
>suffers
>pervasive
>undercurrent
>>7709088
Yes, but I had an easier time absorbing Cioran, who has a weird sense of humor. I was not aware of his short stories, so I'll look into those. Thanks!
>>7709097
What would your word choice be, faggot?
>>7709155
Not him, but probably something faggier, based on his droll greentexting.
>>7709192
>faggier
>,
>based
>droll
I read this book in work recently and coped out a bunch of quotations.
Would anyone like me to spam them?
>>7709232
Why not just link to the epub?
>>7709232
Sure.
>>7709232
Yes please!
>>7709199
>greentext
>fag
>>
>hurdur
Apologies in advance if any of these are boring or make no sense without wider context.
>On Wittgenstein's views on the reason for life
p.26 - The twentieth-century Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein once said or wrote, “I don’t know why we are here, but I’m pretty sure it is not in order to enjoy ourselves.”
>On the common usages of Zappfe's four defensive mechanisms
p.26 - How many have not found their minds chasing off thoughts of death, or even of life in its more grisly phases, because they could not abide this consciousness (isolation)? How many have not felt themselves nestled in their church, country, or family bosom because they could not abide this consciousness (anchoring)? How many have not sought to divert their minds from any thought whatever because they could not abide this consciousness (distraction)? And how many have deterred their minds from real torture by derealizing it in paintings, music, or words because they could not abide this consciousness (sublimation)?
>On self-consciousness and the absurd Sartreian solution of becoming a puppet / actor
p.26 - Our problem is that we have to watch ourselves as we go through the motions; our problem is that we know too much that we are alive and will die. And our solution is in the turns we take in a world where we live as puppets and not as people
>On sects and the origin of "bugger"
p.22 - The Gnostic sect of the Cathari in twelfth-century France were so tenacious in believing the world to be an evil place engendered by an evil deity that its members were offered a dual ultimatum: sexual abstinence or sodomy. (A similar sect in Bulgaria, the Bogomils, became the etymological source of the term “bugger” for their adherence to the latter practice.)
>On the value of philosopher
p.23 - The value of a philosopher’s thought is not in its answers—no philosopher has any that are more helpful than saying nothing at all—but in how well they speak to the prejudgments of their consumers. Such is the importance—and the nullity—of rhetoric.
>On Schopenhauer's anticipation of Zappfe
p.25 - Schopenhauer anticipated Zapffe when he wrote: “Let us for a moment imagine that the act of procreation were not a necessity or accompanied by intense pleasure, but a matter of pure rational deliberation; could then the human race really continue to exist? Would not everyone rather feel so much sympathy for the coming generation that he would prefer to spare it the burden of existence, or at any rate would not like to assume in cold blood the responsibility of imposing on it such a burden?”
>On superfluous consciousness and personal suffering
p.17 - We are the species that knows too much to content ourselves with merely surviving, reproducing, dying—and nothing else.
>On consciousness urging us to be more than what we are
p.17 / 18 - This is the tragedy: consciousness has forced us into the 18 paradoxical position of uselessly striving to be something other than what we are—hunks of spoiling flesh on crumbling bones.
>On depressing writings and marginality
p.33 - Sure enough, then, writers such as Zapffe, Schopenhauer, and Lovecraft only write their ticket to marginality when they fail to affirm the worth and wonder of humanity, the validity of its values (whether eternal or provisional), and, naturally, a world without end, or at least one that continues into the foreseeable future. Anything else is too depressing to be countenanced.
>On communities of like-minded social deviants
p.59 - Maybe you could try living in a community of “like-minded” social deviants. However, they had better be so alike that they are clones of one another or the day will come when someone steps over the line and factions begin to teem. Our brains will always discriminate—that is their nature
>On working hours and the reason for continued employment
p.60 - During much of the twentieth century, social thinkers worried about technology becoming so efficient that human beings would be freed from devoting the plurality of their time to labor, which includes those hours spent preparing for labor and recovering from labor, leaving workers with a surplus of leisure and not enough distractions to fill their days. Attuned to auguries of a palmy future, these observers had qualms that this boom of idleness would trigger an existential meltdown, one characterized by the perturbations of those who were unused to contending with a surfeit of uncommitted hours. As usual, the predicted apocalypse did not arrive. Workers never quaked in horror before leisure’s abyss or recoiled at the thought of having too much time on their hands. Theoretically, a life of leisure for all is possible. But the Few will always want to procure more and more wealth and power. And for this they need workers willing to spend the plurality of their time working.
>On the necessity for pessimistic writers to write well
p.100 - Readers will put up with the most vapid prosaist as long as he supplies them with comforting lies. If you have nothing but bad news and bitching to offer, then you had better write with a silver pen
Conspiracy against the human race was okay. I wish he didn't waste so much time on Hp Lovecraft but he is a horror writer too so it shouldn't be shocking he likes him so much. I did like when he brought up optimist being dismissive as fuck, which is an interesting topic.
>On work as warfare in slow-motion
p.101 - Earning your bread by the sweat of your brow is traumatic and damnable. It is combat in slow motion.
>On Cioran's two major accomplishments
p.102 - Cioran counted among his greatest accomplishments his success in breaking himself of the habit of cigarette smoking and the fact that he never became a parent
>On tolerating alienated individuals
p.104 - These individuals of an extreme alienation are tolerated by the world’s normal citizenry only if they do not disturb the peace, break any laws, or go off their medication
>On Insiders and Outsiders in the literary world
p115 - The literary world may be divided into two unequal groups: the insiders and the outsiders. The former are many and the latter are few. The placement of a given writer into one group or the other could be approached by assessing the consciousness of that writer as it is betrayed by various aspects of his work, including verbal style, general tone, selection of subjects and themes, personal statements and public manifestos, etc.
That's all from spamfag.
>>7709272
>Maybe you could try living in a community of “like-minded” social deviants. However, they had better be so alike that they are clones of one another or the day will come when someone steps over the line and factions begin to teem. Our brains will always discriminate—that is their nature
I disagree with this, arguments are merely circumstantial to obtaining greater truths. The early Greek are admired, not for being alike each other, but because their thinking took so many turns, and that was especially due to them being so individualist and different. Sounds to me that Ligotti was afraid of conflict.
>>7709309
He's still alive.
>>7708768
Yes. I love that book.
What keeps you going though? The only reason I haven't killed myself is I don't have the energy to go out and get a gun. I tried hanging, but it was very uncomfortable in my test run and I don't want that animalistic struggle for air to be my last moment.
>>7708768
I read part of that book, I'll pick it up again soon when I need it.
I always find hardcore pessimism refreshing to be honest.
thanks quote-kun
What's the IMDB for books?
Is goodreads reliable with their measurement from x/5? It seems sometimes to be dragged down by contrarian retards but maybe it's good overall idk enlighten me /b/
>>7709348
I have passive suicidal ideation, but I haven't acted on it yet. Working out helps me not feel as suicidal. I'm pretty active on nootropics/RC boards searching for answers to regain some pleasure and feelings but it seems like there really is no sustainable cure . I don't suggest you get wrapped up with chemical fixes; just increases awareness of your condition and makes it worse.
>>7709464
I wouldn't give a fuck about online scores if I were you. Just read what you want.
>>7709492
>I don't suggest you get wrapped up with chemical fixes
too late :(
I liked the idea of working out, I do run, but it doesn't make me feel away better. Everything just feels like a pointless distraction. As soon as I stop I just wonder why I'm wasting my time.
I don't even know if I really want to feel better. I feel like the only way to feel better would be a lot of self-deception. I'm trying to find a better way to look at things but I can't see it.
I think it was best put in Notes from Underground: "which is better—cheap happiness or exalted sufferings? Well, which is better?"
I don't know what to do with my life. I know suicide wouldn't solve anything, but at least I wouldn't have put up with anything anymore.
>>7709464
Goodreads seems to be full of contrarians. So many people writing reviews that shit all over classics, while not really explaining WHY they don't like them. Somehow they're always the ones that get the most upvotes, too.
>>7709992
Worse are the users who give philosophical works shitty reviews because they didn't agree with them.
>>7709958
Have you considered meditation? Not to deceive yourself but to let go. I also think I would be beneficial for anhedonia because of the brain changes it spurs.
I'd better take my own advice desu. I don't want to be like this indefinitely.
>>7708768
Undercuts are for fags
>>7710113
Any specific works to check out?
>>7710284
Mindfulness in Plain English has a good, basic description of Vipassana. Just ignore the woo.
>His entire doctrine, if it can even be called that, if there could ever be such a thing in any sense whatever, is based on the non-existence, the imaginary nature of everything we believe ourselves to be. Despite his efforts to express what has happened to him, he must know very well that there are no words that are able to explain such a thing. Words are a total obfuscation of the most basic fact of existence, the very conspiracy against the human race that my treatise might have illuminated. . .Words are simply a cover-up for this conspiracy. They are the ultimate means for the cover-up, the ultimate artwork of the shadow, the darkness — its ultimate artistic cover-up. Because of the existence of words, we think that there exists a mind, that some kind of soul or self exists. This is just another of the infinite layers of the cover-up. There is no mind that could have written An Investigation into the Conspiracy against the Human Race — no mind that could write such a book and no mind that could read such a book. There is no one at all who can say anything about this most basic fact of existence, no one who can betray this reality. And there is no one to whom it could ever be conveyed.
>‘That all seems impossible to comprehend,’ I objected.
>‘It just might be, if only there actually were anything to comprehend, or anyone to comprehend it. But there are no such beings.’
>‘If that’s the case,’ I said, wincing with abdominal discomfort, ‘then who is having this conversation?’
>‘Who indeed?’
>>7711064
>wincing with abdominal discomfort
Only true thing here.
Joking. Though, it would be nice if he could stop being such an edge lord and focus on his presentation.
https://philosophynow.org/issues/45/The_Last_Messiah
Just read this, lads.
[email protected]
Trying to come off 5 yeah opiate habit, feeling pretty dissilusioned with life, anyone want to chat/discuss/commiserate would be welcome. Currently reading lots of Buddhist stuff and meditating, also physical exercise to boost mood in some small way.
Hit me up with whatever, at least dick pics might make me laugh and viruses will give me something constructive to do while I fix them.
Yay.
>>7711565
>hotmail.com
This is probably the source of all your woes to be completely sincere frienderino
Nigotti read too much Schopenhauer and wanted to be Nietzsche. What a fucking NEET. typical guineas
