How dark is this and how deep is gonna fuck me up...

Indeed. Just more ramblings by some godless lunatic. Heed them not and carry on if you so wish

Read Cioran. Go all the way.

If that's all this book is, I can take it off my list, been taking that shit as part n parcel since highschool.

Comments like this make me feel like the demiurge is harassing me personally. I was just looking around online earlier today to maybe buy something to read from him, but couldn't decide what to get.

He is actually mildly funny and self aware. I read him while having pretty intense depressive episodes and he made me feel mildly better.

enlightenment is an accident. the idea of a practice making you more "accident prone" has been argued ad nauseam

Below Reddit-tier

>"We're all biological automatons and our consciousness is basically just a side-effect of an evolutionary arms race. Any notion of meaning is you imposing your feel-good chemical rose-tinted glasses on the world. The world doesn't care and it's all ultimately meaningless. Anyone trying to convince you otherwise is just high on their own supply, trying to fulfill their duty as a biological replicating machine, trying to recruit you to their cause"
In short, baby's first venture into nihilism? Seems like it'd impress normies, but I reckon most of Yea Forums is already through and beyond this.

These practices don't disagree. People just seem to misunderstand that a state of equanimity, and a practice of exhausting the mind and thinking are nevertheless conducive towards awakening. Kensho is not rare in Zen for these reasons.

even normies should know better. its just the materialist worldview , what most people already believe whether they can express it well or not

>even normies should know better. its just the materialist worldview
Fair point. The real step upward is acknowledging and overcoming the materialist worldview.

look at this meat puppet

so Camus?

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Id be pretty butthurt if i looked like this too

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HO-LY SHIT, THIS IS THE FIRST TIME I'VE HEARD THAT JOKE IN A LIGOTTI THREAD, AND BOY, IS IT FUNNIE AND ON POINT, LET ME TELL YOU FRIENDS

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that's one of the better pictures of him too

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looks like a heifer

>franklin the turtle can't get some good ol in and out because he's ugly as shit and tries to overcompensate by writing pseudo philosophical drivel on how akshually sex is bad ok
lmao

you hit the proverbial nail on the fucking head, user.

>Don't talk to me or my nightmare of being ever again

>"We're all biological automatons and our consciousness is basically just a side-effect of an evolutionary arms race. Any notion of meaning is you imposing your feel-good chemical rose-tinted glasses on the world. The world doesn't care and it's all ultimately meaningless. Anyone trying to convince you otherwise is just high on their own supply, trying to fulfill their duty as a biological replicating machine, trying to recruit you to their cause"

The amount of unverifiable beliefs and assumptions implicit in this worldview is tremendous. What's funny is how it pretends to be theory-neutral or unbiased and accuses anyone with a contrary view point of having rose-colored glasses.

Le Low-Test Face.

Why do atheists see suffering as a problem or somehow cosmically unfair and worse than pleasure? If the world is meaningless then suffering is value neutral, it's like complaining that there's more Purple flowers than Red Flowers...Atheists and Nihilists have no grounds to judge anything or make statements about the meaning of things, they have lobotomized themselves.

How does someone learn to recognize something like this?

Eh, he just aged badly. Might have been quite a qt in his youth, before putting on all that lard. Those eyes are really expressive.

mad chinlet?

So you're saying his worldview is born ultimately from his terrible particular cirmustances that he tried to generalize to the whole human condition?

it's a woman
acknowledging, yes, overcoming? no
>If the world is meaningless then suffering is value neutral
From a philosophical non-human perspective maybe, from a human perspective (one you can't escape) suffering is not value neutral.

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If you find Ligotti depressive you ain't going to go far in life; it's babby tier nihilism.

ok, what are some deeper down the rabbit hole authors?

It isn't meant to be taken seriously at all. Ligotti was just attempting to create the ultimate horror story, a wall of noise of bleakness with references to more serious philosophy sprinkled in to spook you even more.

>it's babby tier nihilism.

as opposed to nihilism for mature grown-ups?

Liggotti tier antinatalism is what you read when you run out of Rick and Morty merchandise to spend your neetbux on

I think this works pretty well as a summarized source of pessimistic philosophy up to the current year from a weird fiction author that is known for being an antinatal and nihilistic hardliner. Unless I’m mistaken, TL was one of the first to introduce Zapffe as another major source for English readers.

I’m a pretty big TL fan, but when I read this again (on audiobook) I was kinda over it. It’s so relentless that I kept saying to myself, “Alright dude, I fucking get it, life sucks.”

My buddies and I have started to refer to Ligotti as the Morrissey of weird fiction.

>"We're all biological automatons and our consciousness is basically just a side-effect of an evolutionary arms race. Any notion of meaning is you imposing your feel-good chemical rose-tinted glasses on the world. The world doesn't care and it's all ultimately meaningless. Anyone trying to convince you otherwise is just high on their own supply, trying to fulfill their duty as a biological replicating machine, trying to recruit you to their cause"
cringe

You know what hurts the most? The lack of a definitive answer on the great themes of life. Today it seems like every perspective is equally valid and/or relative. Nihilism? Ok. Antinatalism? Ok. Theism? Ok. Atheism? Ok. Gnosticism? Ok. God isn't real? Checkmate you cant prove it. God is real? Checkmate you can't either.
The individual is left alone in finding HIS answers.. And this is both a blessing and a curse, the former because each has their repsonsbility, the latter because no one seem superior or definitive over another. I'm not the kind to resolve this uncertainty by taking refuge in an ideology or another, so I stagger in this endless panorama of perspectives, reading everyone and trusting no one.
There is no institution or authority that cares about the individual's search for answer because we live in a society far removed from our ancient environment, whose main objective is turning people into consumer and whose economic values permeate every corner. So i drift from book to book, philosophy to philosophy, like a bird nesting in a different place every season, as the crude flow of time continues and i finally drop as clueless as when I started.

>inb4 cringe
K

I enjoy Ligotti's fiction, but I thought TCATHR was shit.

this obviously isn't ligotti
it's interesting that antinatalists all look like this though

>The amount of unverifiable beliefs and assumptions implicit in this worldview is tremendous.
Not really. Those are fairly reasonable assumptions; at the very least they're much more reasonable and empirically grounded than Christian dogmas or any other form of theism. That humans are basically biological machines has been clear ever since anatomy became a thing. We have plenty of empirical evidence of the fact that our bodies work like machines, and yet there is very little evidence (if any) of the existence of some immaterial soul as upheld by the theists. That the world is meaningless is another reasonable assumption; the burden of proof is on those who claim there actually is a meaning, and judging from the very diverse attempts at finding meaning that occurred throughout human history (and how they all ultimately failed) it seems very reasonable to assume there might be no meaning after all.

>What's funny is how it pretends to be theory-neutral or unbiased and accuses anyone with a contrary view point of having rose-colored glasses.
If you had actually read the book you would have noticed that Ligotti himself points out how he is not trying to proselytize and convert people to antinatalism. He believes books like his own are in demand only among a restricted circle of people with pessimistic tendencies. He does realize some people have a pessimist bias, and he himself is not unbiased. The fact taht to his eyes any optimist is wearing rose-colored glasses is an inevitable result of his bias, just as all optimists believe that pessimists are wearing gray-colored glasses.

>Why do atheists see suffering as a problem or somehow cosmically unfair and worse than pleasure?
Because avoiding pain and seeking pleasure seems to be part of our programming as biological machines. No matter how self-aware we become, we still seem to obey our basic programming, just as all stones obey gravity and never refuse to fall to the ground.

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>God isn't real? Checkmate you cant prove it. God is real? Checkmate you can't either
Do you feel the need to prove that fairies do NOT exist? I do not understand why people say things like "You can't prove that God doesn't exist!" No shit, Sherlock: is there anything that we can prove to be non-existent? The only reasonable way to go about it is to assume that something does not exist until proven otherwise, just as we assume that a suspect is innocent until proven guilty. The juvenile attempt by theists to turn the tables on the atheist by reversing the burden of proof is ludicrous. If we applied to everything these absurd standards for asserting non-existence then we would never be able to deny the existence of anything and we would be reduced to an awkward form of scepticism in which we would always wonder whether or not there is a fairy or a unicorn hiding in a bush over there. Yet theists usually don't suspend judgement on the existence of such fantastical creatures, they pick and choose and they only apply to God these stringent standards of proving non-existence.

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cringe

>empirically grounded
>anatomy
>empirical evidence
>very little evidence
>proof

yeah, do you think it is a coincidence that when all humanity's endeavor was directed to understand reality all modern aberrations were basically non-existent?

Pic related was in a way even scarier, because it's in an academic format, but says roughly the same thing; if you want to be a normally functioning person you have to constantly delude yourself and believe in things to cope with life.

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>we're all biological automatons

stopped there, its stuff like this that makes me wonder if this book isnt just some elaborate form of horror philosophy. That is, the idea of determinism is itself terrifying and perfect as a subject of a horror writer. But is itself so self-contradictory and nonsensical that it cant be believed seriously.

It's not as heavy a book as people make it seem. It makes a strong case about the curse of consciousness and antinatalism, but isn't as soul-crushing or depressing as, say, Journey to the End of the Night or other doomer literature. It actually has moments of absurd humour, believe it or not.

>>empirically grounded
>I don't care for empirical evidence and only believe in fairy tales
Okay.

>But is itself so self-contradictory and nonsensical that it cant be believed seriously.
What makes it self-contradictory in your opinion?

empiricist retard

It's been over a 100 years since Nietzsche now and people still haven't grasped it. We are biological automatons, machines, but there is nothing deterministic about it. Biology just is. Nature is spontaneous, and only as a truly natural being can you create your own freedom, and overcome the determination which lies not in nature, but your own thought.

>We're all biological automatons and our consciousness is basically just a side-effect of an evolutionary arms race.

I think its a contradictory viewpoint that relies mostly on (ironically) wishful thinking to be believed. A determinist has no basis to even think they have a self or that they can think in any meaningful way. Nobody can really make any forceful argument for determinism, its just radical skepticism.

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>I'll call him names and that will prove my point!
You sure showed me.

>i can apprehend non-empirical knowledge through empirical methodology

it is like trying to explain to a dog that what he perceives is but a small portion of a still lesser reality

Because its tiresome, you literally presume empiricism to be true and then go on a spiel about what is "reasonable". Of course there isn't going to be empirical evidence of the soul, the soul is an immaterial concept.

I'm riddled with ennui and it made me laugh when I read it, I think people overrate how "dangerous" this book is. It's mostly just a popular explication of Schopenhauer, Zaffe, Metzinger and some others with a bit of lit crit thrown in.

>A determinist has no basis to even think they have a self or that they can think in any meaningful way.
Why? Computers can work in a deterministic universe, so we might just as well be able to think. And if you think we can't have a self under determinism, then under what circumstances we could have it?

>Nobody can really make any forceful argument for determinism, its just radical skepticism.
I don't think it is skepticism. A determinist believes in the uniformity of nature and in the possibility of empirical induction. Those are positive statements and a genuine skeptic would doubt them, whereas determinists accept them as true, even if some of them may accept them only with some qualifications and reservations. Also, can we make any forceful argumen in favor of indeterminism?

based

>Of course there isn't going to be empirical evidence of the soul, the soul is an immaterial concept.
But what other intersubjective ground do we have for knowledge besides empirical evidence? Any rationalistic or spirtitualist attempt at "proving" some proposition through non-empirical methods always comes off as solipsism. And even though it is a meme, it is still a fact that empirical science just "works", whereas when it comes to non-empirical doctrines there are dozens of them but none of them seem to produce anything worthwhile besides a pretension of "understanding" alleged "higher truths" far removed from empiricism.

>computers can work in a deterministic universe
thats just begging the question because you believe humans are merely biological computers. How would you know computers can work in a deterministic universe when you might not actually be in one?

We can have a self in a universe where there are really existing immaterial concepts. If mind or intellect is something that is real, like the radio signal to a radio then we have a basis for consciousness and free will.

>A determinist believes in the uniformity of nature and the possibility of empirical induction

I agree they do tend to believe that, my point is that if they were really honest about it they would admit they have no basis to say they "believe" anything. How can a computer believe something?

It doesn't have to be either-or. We rely on empirical evidence to know a lot of things. But to say that it is the only ground for knowledge doesn't work. Did you come to know that through empirical evidence? You actually rely on a whole bunch of unjustified beliefs about what "works" and what is good or bad evidence for things that are all non-empirical.

>kind of a cool fiction book
>shitty philosophical arguments

>hurr durr existential solipsism but also everything is determined by the cosmos
It doesn't resist a serious philosophical analysis, beyond performative wankery.

Why do so many find this materialism/nihilism/determinism yada yada more "existentially terrifying" than solipsism? Solipsism is my demon. There is no way out of one's own head. Whatever the self actually is, or if it exists, all I know is what I experience personally and every single day I have instances of synchronicity that force me to believe that this experience I'm going through, life, is tailored to be my own deeply personal hell. Layers upon layers of doubt and cosmic mockery constantly shaming me for my paranoia and weakness but so damn convincing that I can't fight it off. Claustrophobic inside myself. I feel like I'm being waterboarded. Talking to other people is unbearable for the questions it raises in me, and even while knowing what "delusions of reference" are I cannot defeat them. At the same time, I am filled with the urge to grab people and shake them and scream in their faces and demand to know if they are real or not. Is this all their is? When I die, will the veil be lifted? I imagine a scene like the ending of the Wizard of Oz, where the true forms of all the people from my life will gather around me and maybe the nature and purpose of this nightmare will be made clear.

How do other people deal with this... feeling like a "biological automaton" sounds so nice. I feel like I am the universe torturing itself.

No philosopher has ever shown indeterminism is needed for epistemic justification. Brainlets love to make the argument that determinism undermines knowledge, but the truth is that a cognitive apparatus that is unreliable won’t produce justified beliefs just because you add indeterminism into the mix, and a cognitive apparatus that reliably produces justified true beliefs doesn’t need “free will”, whatever the fuck that means, to be justified in trusting its cognition.

They wouldn't want me telling you this, but you're right, they put you in here for a reason, and it pisses them off somewhat that you know it, it affects the whole experiment. Either way, they're not going to let you out. You know what you have to do.

weirdly enough, this doesn't phase me very much beyond the fact that no one will explain to me how they manage to not feel the way i do

youtube.com/watch?v=8z70V7K7GUU

These experiences of synchronicity are fabricated delusions by your own perception of reality. They're part of many schizo disorders and constitute not philosophical insights but psycho-pathological symptoms. You are the universe torturing itself, because you are YOUR universe torturing itself. This does not mean solipsism is correct, but only that you are your own frame of reference. Seek psychological and/or spiritual help. I'm serious.

look at these dubs and tell me some more how i'm supposed to just be fine with this experience. i have been to therapy and the hospital in several contexts and heard it all before, but nothing helps, and i still feel mocked by the inanity of people telling me over and over to just be fine when my experience tells me otherwise.

didn't even see my own dubs, wow.

You're not just fine, obviously. Are you not medicated? If yes and that still doesn't help, honestly, go seek some spiritual guidance from a wise yogi or Buddhist meditation master. I've heard of cases like yours before that were resolved through intense practice.

And just for reference, you don't see any of us losing our minds over dubs in a Yea Forums thread. That should point you to the ridiculousness of your own mind's operations and how it malfunctions at assigning meaning.

lmao maybe you're right

if this is ligotti it's insanely brainlet to care what other people look like

This. I've been thinking about this lately. The loneliness of human condition is dreadful. I feel like a worm writhing at the bottom of a pit. How can I ever connect with any other being? How is that everybody carry their lifes without meditating about this? Reading Pessoa is making me going insane.

it's because other people don't get lost in their own self created neurotic delusions but instead open up to the world and experience it freely

im aware that im not the first "schizoposter" to say shit like this about dubs, i know that i'm a living meme, which in itself feels like a cheeky little cosmic wink-wink-nudge-nudge. it is just enough of a pinch to be infuriatingly in-my-face. i want an answer that isn't drugs or just refusal to participate in worldly life. tried taoism and some hindu stuff, various attempts at syncretic neopagan practices. the rare occasions when i can calm down enough and have free, alone time to lose myself in playing guitar or reading beautiful things are the only moments when the spiritual sensation changes from "in flames" to "falling from the building but hey its kinda like im flying"... for any of you DFW fans.

Cioran and Yeats are soothing.

Well, I was thinking more along Nietzsche, but sure. Camus is good as well.

THIS
anons need some of that Gay Science

you think that was crazy? check these puppies out

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checked

Very bland materialism

the dubs that rocked the very foundations of my beliefs

checked

>thats just begging the question because you believe humans are merely biological computers. How would you know computers can work in a deterministic universe when you might not actually be in one?
You're being disingenuous. If you understand what determinism means and how computers work, it is safe to assume that computers can work in a deterministic universe, even if we weren't in one. If you're willing to question even such a basic assumption, then you're the radical skeptic, even though you accused determinists of that.

>We can have a self in a universe where there are really existing immaterial concepts.
How would you go about proving the existence of an immaterial "concept"? Also, what's your definition of "concept"? Concepts are things that exist within the mind, yet you somehow think that the mind itself is an immaterial concept? How does that work?

>I agree they do tend to believe that, my point is that if they were really honest about it they would admit they have no basis to say they "believe" anything. How can a computer believe something?
What better basis do you have to believe anything? Or do you concede that you're just a skeptic and you don't really believe anything?

>But to say that it is the only ground for knowledge doesn't work. Did you come to know that through empirical evidence?
Of course it isn't the only ground for knowledge. As I said, unless you believe in the uniformity of Nature you can't even begin the process of empirical induction. But why do we believe in the uniformity of Nature? We are exposed to regular phenomena and we come to see patterns in those phenomena. This is something that even AIs can learn to do. In the last instance it is a matter of identifying structures so you could say that our belief in the uniformity of Nature is due to our innate aptitude for logic and mathematics. This does not imply the existence of immaterial souls since even AIs can do this and nearly nobody seems to believe AIs have souls: it's more plausible to assume we're just biological machines.

wow sure am glad i came back to check this thread. an hero 5 real.

but seriously guys don't worry about me. i am very determined, just frustrated. i promise i will live at least long enough to write something i'm happy with.

>Why do so many find this materialism/nihilism/determinism yada yada more "existentially terrifying" than solipsism?
In a practical sense, there is no point in discussing solipsism since you would just be talking to yourself if you seriously believed it. Solipsism is an impenetrable and powerless fortress: nobody can prove it, nobody can disprove it. It is eminently unfalsifiable since everything falsifiable relies on intersubjectivity of experience but solipsism denies the very existence of other subjects and thus it can never be put to the test. If you genuinely believed in solipsism, you would just shut up or you would keep talking as if nothing were, accepting that you're just talking to yourself. Determinism is more interesting as a topic of conversation because we're all involved in it, whereas solipsism is a one-man party.

Yes, but he didn't. He mostly just mouthed Akutagawa's hatred of heredity but through the mouthpiece of a 50's bubblegum-chewing kid with an attitude. The best part of the book is the bibliography (which is phenomenal)

which is the better path;
>try "spirituality" again and decide to view my experience as divine and deal with solipsism by believing in the "beautiful interconnectedness and grand design of god" etc etc
>go to a psychiatrist and ask for drugs, fight against my experiences as delusional products of something wrong in my nature/nurture

> tried taoism and some hindu stuff, various attempts at syncretic neopagan practices
Try harder and preferably a Buddhist tradition as you need a radical no-self therapy

something about buddhism has always turned me off. but that probly means you're right and dubs decides my religion, cool

zen buddhism seems the best, should i trust this impulse?

>So you're saying his worldview is born ultimately from his terrible particular cirmustances that he tried to generalize to the whole human condition?
This is 100% my take on it. His worldview makes sense if you were born with pain nerves constantly firing or something.

I have bipolar disorder and this user is spot on.

Fuck Cioran, he is a cheeky edgy chad motherfucker who writes just for shit and giggles.

No brainlet. He just side steps the problems.
Do it.
Seethe. Its the only reason worth writing.
Not an atheist. The world is the meaning and there is more suffering than pleasure. Basic pessimism.
This is why skepticism.
>radical skepticism.
Crito what have I been telling you this whole time? I know nothing.
Stupid schizo cope.

This thread got boring fast. I want coffee and sandwich. Cope lords aren't as entertaining as filling my belly.

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*burps*

How do you disprove determinism without disproving causation as a concept?

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If you're the only one that's real how come you're so limited and powerless? And you can explain that away by saying the universe is torturing you, but that implies there is something other torturing you. I don't consider solipsism very seriously because it's logically inconsistent, one has to keep coming up with possible explanations that conform to the world around oneself.

Ligotti is based and hilarious.

>“One cringes to hear scientists cooing over the universe or any part thereof like schoolgirls over-heated by their first crush. From the studies of Krafft-Ebbing onward, we know that it is possible to become excited about anything—from shins to shoehorns. But it would be nice if just one of these gushing eggheads would step back and, as a concession to objectivity, speak the truth: THERE IS NOTHING INNATELY IMPRESSIVE ABOUT THE UNIVERSE OR ANYTHING IN IT.”

OHH NO NO NO

Pretty sure that's that anti-natalist woman (though I'm stretching the limits of the word "woman") on YouTube. She asked her viewers to make videos on how they became anti-natalists and in the playlist with these individuals you will find the most laughable, absurd collection of soulless chinks, satanic druggies, and depressed morons you will ever find on the internet (aside from Yea Forums). I implore you to watch these videos, it really opened my eyes on the nature of these anti-natalist freakazoids.

An unsightly appearance seems to draws people to atheism, anti-natalism, nihilism, and misanthropy. Their mind has cracked from all the stress of being around people they suppose hates them and they start delusionally believing in all sorts of chimeras that their favorite depressed authors

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Oh no no no

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