Misanthropy

[Andrew McIntosh]

Had a problem with the link to the note from the web page. Would it be possible to upload of file of it somewhere?

[Andrew McIntosh]

Thank you, and my apologies for being so dense.

For a long time I've thought this site needs a function that show a link. I've been meaning to request it for some time.

I propose opening your mind towards the liberation of
death; towards exposing this blind faith in life as a myth, a
bias, and an error. To overcome this delusion, the "magic
spell" of pious reverence for life over death must be broken.
To do so is to examine the faith in life that has been left
unexamined; the naïve (sic) secular and non-secular faith in life
over death.

Nice.

[cr]

The Antinatalism Hall Of Fame may be of interest.

Not that I'd necessarily want to conflate antinatalism and misanthropy, but a lot of the same names tend to crop up- preeminent among them the Norwegian philosopher Peter Wessel Zapffe.

Zapffe's The Last Messiah essay

Thanks for mentioning Zapffe! In the last weeks I thought a lot about his strategies to minimize our consciousness: ISOLATION, ANCHORING, DISTRACTION, SUBLIMATION. Also plays a big part in Ligotti's Conspiracy against the human race

[Andrew McIntosh]

I'll take sublimination any day. Not that there's much of a choice, but the same can be said for living anyway.

[cr]

Yeah, if there would be a choice, I'll take sublimation too. But I also think those strategies are all somehow intervowen. Within a year, a month, a week, a day, ... it can change from sublimation to distraction to anchoring or isolation, without your conscious decision.
Sorry, my English is not good enough to describe it any better and not to sound like a total twat.

What I like is, that there was somebody who 'hit the nail on the head' with four simple words.

[Andrew McIntosh]

No, you're English is adequate enough. Suffice to say such choices are very seldom if ever conscious. Usually people come up with some kind of fluff to fill the void that is in everyone as a matter of course. I'd say it's even instinctive - after all, people need some kind of linear "reason" to exist that is both emotionally satisfying and comprehensible.

Ligotti points out in "The Conspiracy..." that Tolstoy actually came up with four similar coping strategies for existence. So I think Zapffe was onto something.

[cr]

I think German writer Ulrich Horstmann should also be mentioned here. It's been quite some years since I read 'Das Untier, Konturen einer Philosophie der Menschenflucht' ('The Beast, Contours of a philosophy of human flight'), but I remember liking it a lot. Not sure if his books are  also available in English.
He also edited a book with texts from Philipp Mainländer some years ago.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulrich_Horstmann

"The final aim of history is a crumbling field of ruins. It's final meaning is the sand blown through the eye-holes of human skulls."