Posted on by qscrisp

We’ve Finished Our News

Hello.

It's possible that someone out there is wondering why I've been silent for such a long time, so I feel like offering some kind of explanation. Actually, I'm meant to be working today, so I don't want to make this very long. Also, I don't know exactly what I'm going to say. I mean, I know why I haven't been posting here, but there are actually various reasons, and some of them are not so easy to explain.

Let me start by saying that, for one thing, just about everything I say embarrasses me anyway. I don't really think any of it is true. It seems practically impossible to say anything that is true. If I have seemed to crusade at times in what I say, it's probably because I get fed up with other megolomaniacs stalking the world shoving their truths down the throats of others, and so want to counter that in my own small way. Some people are possibly surprised by my choice of targets, since I haven't been picking on religion a la Richard (Tedious) Dawkins, but have been mainly going for science, which seems to me far more POWERFUL, far more convinced of its own rightness, and therefore far more important as a target. Also, I think some 'truths' are more destructive than others, and the various 'truths' that bolster human materialism must be the most destructive of all.

However, I've never really considered myself to know the truth about anything, and it has been a source of considerable shame and embarrassment to me to spout opinions on this blog as if I know anything at all. I don't know anything. I am simply a dreamer. I no longer really know what to write here.

I haven't had much time to post on this blog either, since I've been busy trying to earn some money, since my financial situation is no longer funny. I've also been working on a number of writing projects about which I suppose I care more.

Something that has been occupying my thoughts very much of late is the content of something recently published on the Net. It is the latest work by author Thomas Ligotti, and it is called The Conspiracy Against the Human Race: A Short Life of Horror. It is being presented for free perusal (and free download for registered members) by Thomas Ligotti Online. I would urge people to read it here while it is still available without charge. It is a virtuoso essay dealing with the problem of human consciousness, and eloquently arguing that the only solution to human suffering is to cease from reproducing. I believe that this is a topic that should be brought out into the light of day, that it should not be marginalised. It is, after all, only the despair that is at the back of ALL OUR MINDS anyway, and if this were not the case, why would we be destroying the world in the manner that we are? It's the end; let us admit it.

This thread in the forums of the site was one that I started, and contains some commentary by me on the essay.

If we don't stop reproducing, it's quite likely that this job will be done for us, by Mother Nature, who spawned us in the first place, and who now seems to be protesting strongly against our attempted matricide. The latest report gives us ten years to drastically change our ways if human civilisation is not going to be destroyed. It's that simple. Anyone who claims to care about their children can no longer ignore this.

With all these considerations on my mind, and with other things to occupy me, I haven't been very keen to post here. On the one hand, it seems like there's nothing left to say except that we're all doomed, and everything else is hollow – the hollow scene at the end of the Holocene. On the other hand, it seems like, after all, the human race should simply let itself die out, anyway, since there is nothing here for us except pain and broken dreams.

But then again, I don't really want to write that kind of stuff. It's fairly easy for me to be nihilistic; I've had a lot of practice. More than that it's easy because that's what people want. If that were not the case, why would we be destroying the planet in the way we are? If I talked about the things that really mattered to me here, the things that really sustained me, I'm sure that people would find them far less acceptable than the idea of the end of the human race. So I won't talk about those things. I've had enough experience of human beings to know that anything precious would be torn to pieces out of spite.

My only regret in writing all this is that I have always had a sense of enormous potential in the human race. It's true that the potential seems thwarted at every turn, but that's the thing I can't quite stand the idea of throwing away. What is that potential? I sense it in the kind of dreams that children have about life. Yes, that's right, I would like people to think of the children. We're supposed to be the adults, after all. You wouldn't think it to look at the world that we have made out of our own despair. What do children have to look up to? Really, what? A bunch of liars and cowards and businessmen. It's enough to make you puke. Some people would say that it's people's personal dreams – in the form of rampant individualism – that have got us into this mess. But I wonder if there isn't some other element apart from selfishness in those dreams. Does being unselfish consist of negating yourself and imposing the same negation on others? Surely there should be some kind of mutual nurturing. This nurturing of children and their dreams certainly does not happen in our current pathetic education system. How could it? The system is only an extension of our society at large, which is fixated on the values of business, that 'respectable', 'useful' pastime that just happens to be destroying the world.

This might sound like I'm leading up to a conclusion, but, as I said, I haven't planned anything to write here. Perhaps the best I can do at the moment is to pose the question, should we cease, for their own sake, to bring children into this stinking cesspit of a world? Or should we somehow admit and face our own despair and go through it to something else, if, indeed, there is something else, so that children's dreams do have a place here? If they don't have a place here, then let's give it up as a bad job.

Thank you. I shall now plaster a smile on my face and continue with the sad cabaret. Or shall I?

7 Replies to “We’ve Finished Our News”

  2. Ha ha. Yes. Well, actually there’s more than one, so I can say that one of them’s going okay, anyway. I’ve been utilising a bit of personal experience, a bit of heartbreak, to, you know, make it more three-dimensional.Would I be wrong in thinking that you’re working on a novel, too?

  3. Robin Davies writes:I only wish I had the talent to write a novel! I’ve just finished reading Thomas Ligotti’s essay too so I just thought I’d spread a little humour around the world as an antidote to a MALIGNANTLY USELESS universe…Actually, although I found his comments on fiction to be quite interesting I wasn’t so convinced by the rest of it. Doesn’t it boil down to the old thing about pessimists finding the glass half empty and optimists finding it half full? And people like me finding it tasty but slightly sour (apologies to Jacques-jacques Liverot on THE DAY TODAY)?

  4. I think it is a matter of perception. I mean, there are some things in the essay that are more or less undeniable to do with the human condition. Our mortality, our ignorance and helplessness in the universe, that kind of thing. The question then is how you respond to these things. As he says somewhere near the beginning, these are not things to be argued over, but only mulled over. Personally I’m very sympathetic to the point of view that it’s always more merciful not to have children. I think I won’t be giving away too much personal detail if I say that I don’t have children. I have, in my life, encountered the attitude that it’s selfish not to have children. I find this quite incredible, as if there’s something noble about trying to guarantee your own immortality by dragging some poor thing into a world that no one can explain, that no one has answers to. But yes, it’s a matter of perception. I don’t really know where I stand if I have to limit myself to half-full and half-empty. I suppose my response would be something like, it would be very strange if the glass was completely full, and very strange if it was completely empty, therefore the glass is half-strange and half-strange, which is… quite strange.

  5. Robin Davies writes:I don’t have children either but most people I know who do have them seem to regard the experience of bringing them up to be very rewarding and life-changing. Of course one could say that is a selfish attitude and treats children as a sort of entertainment, but in most cases the happiness of the child is bound up in a feedback relationship with the happiness of the parents.I agree that it seems a bad idea to bring another pessimist into the world because it increases the sum total of human suffering, but true pessimists seem to be in a minority compared to optimists and what one might call “generallyokayists” (who I suspect are the majority). One can’t know in advance how a child will turn out – they may thoroughly enjoy most of their life – so I suppose an argument could be made for taking a chance and going for it.One thing that did disturb me about Ligotti’s essay was his comment that the data of positive psychology has revealed that a couple can expect newborns in their house to have a negative effect on their well-being. I find that very surprising and would be interested to read the source of the information.

  6. Well, you know, some of my best friends are parents, and only a few of them are transvestites. I think this is probably the first time I’ve ever publicly expressed any anti-procreation sentiments. It’s not like I have any kind of cause here. I’m not a member of the Gaia Liberation Front or anything. It seems a pointless view to express in many ways, as it’s not really any of my business whether people have children or not, and if the expression of such a view has any effect at all it will probably just be to alienate people. They will imagine that I am judging them, but that’s really not the case. It’s a bit like the fact that I don’t eat meat, although most people I know do. They probably don’t feel threatened by that or anything, because there’s a word for it (vegetarian), and it’s been integrated into what is familiar. But really, a view that procreation is cruel is not such a very different view from that eating meat is cruel. And I don’t feel righteous about either view. It’s just a crazy, messed-up world we’re living in, that’s all.I suppose I broach the subject now because there are more reasons than ever before not to breed. I really think that we’re facing the end of the world. Why have children on death row? Why do anything on death row, really? Well, maybe there’ll be a last minute reprieve, but we really can’t count on it. I think this is it, and I really don’t know how to deal with that. I suppose I’ll carry on pretty much as normal, because humans seem incapable of filling the great void of the universe in which they fleetingly take their place. It seems the best we can do to stick to a few diurnal rituals to try and take our minds off the impending darkness whose devouring maw is poised above us. Anyway, I pretty much give up… on everything. Or I aspire to giving up, which is, of course, a contradiction in terms. It seems pretty clear that there are no grounds for hope, that hope, which springs eternal, is the cruellest of spurs. Slightly digressing, I found myself really annoyed at the presenter of a ‘documentary’ called The Great British Sperm Crisis or some such thing. He was protesting the relatively recent law that sperm donors cannot be anonymous. Surely that’s a good thing. He seemed a nice enough guy in a way, but he never once – not once – questioned himself and asked whether his protest had any kind of foundation. So, he is fighting for the rights of single women to have children. What about the rights of children to have fathers? I realise that fathers are unfashionable and apparently to be sniggered at, but not once – not bloody once – did this guy ask whether the children might have a right to be able to trace their fathers. That kind of lazy thinking seems pretty typical to me of the way things are going. And just as some indication of how decayed this guy’s brain was, for his sperm-mobile, in which he hoped to collect donations, he asked a ‘sex expert’ whether he should put up pictures of babies to inspire the donors. I felt like slapping the soppy git. To her credit, the sex expert put him straight that this was a very stupid idea. But it wasn’t much more stupid than the rest of his thinking. Yes, we’ve heard a great deal about the rights of mothers and parents (usually mothers), but I hardly hear a peep about the rights of children. I think that when there are no more orphans in the world I might feel more likely to be persuaded that parenthood is not selfish.Anyway, sorry for rambling.

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