Brief Book Brief
The Conspiracy Against the Human Race: A Contrivance of Horror – By: Thomas Ligotti
I don’t think I read too much terrible stuff, but some algorithm recommended this to me…starting to wonder if I’m on a watch list somewhere. Anyways, was intrigued enough to give it a listen. Seriously ugly book, but I have to admit there are sections that are difficult to argue with given the state of the world we are co creating. What I found myself being struck by over and over was how a couple of clients I have known occupied this very dark and depressing headspace for prolonged periods and how exhausting and distressing that must be. It did spur increased desire to alleviate any portion of that possible.
A quote from the book:
“This is the great lesson the depressive learns: Nothing in the world is inherently compelling. Whatever may be really “out there” cannot project itself as an affective experience. It is all a vacuous affair with only a chemical prestige. Nothing is either good or bad, desirable or undesirable, or anything else except that it is made so by laboratories inside us producing the emotions on which we live. And to live on our emotions is to live arbitrarily, inaccurately—imparting meaning to what has none of its own. Yet what other way is there to live? Without the ever-clanking machinery of emotion, everything would come to a standstill. There would be nothing to do, nowhere to go, nothing to be, and no one to know. The alternatives are clear: to live falsely as pawns of affect, or to live factually as depressives, or as individuals who know what is known to the depressive. How advantageous that we are not coerced into choosing one or the other, neither choice being excellent.
Unrecommended. Unless you are looking to plumb the depths of despair.
