The Cheerful Nihilist (On Ligotti's The Conspiracy Against The Human Race)

by Foul Apparatus  

From the first pages of Thomas Ligotti's The Conspiracy Against The Human Race, I knew this author would have his place among my spiritual masters, alongside Nietzsche, Cioran, Camus or Heidegger. This is a book I'll come back to again and again, as it reignited a private argument which will only end when I crumble under dementia or am six feet under. Besides the philosophical content, one of the most original aspects of this work is the synthesis between philosophical pessimism and supernatural horror. As both philosopher and horror writer, Ligotti is able to draw connections between abstract ideas and the concrete stuff that scares us in horrors: creepy dolls, clowns from outer space, unknown monsters of the deep sea, The Old Ones, decrepit mansions, and so on.

Ligotti draws the distinction between optimists and pessimists about life. Pessimists think that the existence of the human race is a tragic anomaly and that being alive is mostly meaningless suffering. The evolution of consciousness is a terrible accident as it amplifies our torment, making us aware of our own mortality and the fact that we're basically meat in a meat-grinder. The universe is a cold, dark place where no one can hear our screams and our horizon is smeared with blood. For the pessimist, the faster this nightmare existence ends, the better it is for everyone, and we should lament every birth as a violation of blissful nonexistence. By contrast, for the optimist being alive is all right; he has no major complaints as he's likely under the spell of a grand narrative featuring God, Family, Nation or The Good, a fabrication that infuses his life with hope and meaning. For the optimist, consciousness is a wonderful thing as it allows us to know the world and gives us the power to plan and change it for the better. On his view, the human race is special and noble, it rises above the rest of creation as man alone was awarded the power of consciousness, and the freedom and responsibility that come with it.

Following Norwegian philosopher Peter Zapffe, Ligotti argues that optimists manage to stay optimistic because they're able to minimize their consciousness and zombify themselves. This trick can be achieved in four ways: isolation, anchoring, distraction, and sublimation. On Ligotti's view, these four methods constitute what he calls "the conspiracy against the human race," in the sense that by this process of more or less conscious self-deception we avoid facing the pointless cosmic butchery we're trapped in, and thus we miss our only salvation, which is our outright extinction as freaks of nature.

When we use the first method, "we isolate the dire facts of being alive by relegating them to a remote compartment of our minds. They are the lunatic family members in the attic whose existence we deny in a conspiracy of silence." According to the second method, in order to "stabilize our lives in the tempestuous waters of chaos, we conspire to anchor them in metaphysical and institutional "verities"—God, Morality, Natural Law, Country, Family—that inebriate us with a sense of being official, authentic, and safe in our beds." The third method aims at turning a blind eye to cosmic horror by "distracting our minds with a world of trifling or momentous trash. The most operant method for furthering the conspiracy, it is in continuous employ and demands only that people keep their eyes on the ball—or their television sets, their government's foreign policy, their science projects, their careers, their place in society and the universe, etc. The final method consists of us sublimating "our fears by making an open display of them. In the Zapffean sense, sublimation is the rarest technique utilized for conspiring against the human race. Putting into play both deviousness and skill, this is what thinkers and artistic types do when they recycle the most demoralizing and unnerving aspects of life as works in which the worst fortunes of humanity are presented in a stylized and removed manner as entertainment. In so many words, these thinkers and artistic types confect products that provide an escape from our suffering by a bogus simulation of it—a tragic drama or philosophical woolgathering, for instance."  

   

Ligotti's main message is not news to me, since I've been an Emil Cioran (whom Ligotti calls "a maestro of pessimism") fan since the tender age of thirteen. Furthermore, I'm deep into existentialism, have a couple of grim horror books of my own, and am also into Depressive Suicidal Black Metal, a subgenre of Black Metal aimed at conveying feelings of alienation, loneliness, despair, and at reminding people that suicide isn't such a bad idea. However, Ligotti's passionate and clear arguments, his beautiful and honest style, and the graphic way he portrays our sorry existence has made me revisit my stance on these core existential issues. I have two interrelated critical comments on Ligotti's book, after a first reading. The first one concerns the psychological type of the cheerful nihilist, and the second one describes one of the main challenges for the pessimist, the challenge of being a nobody.

First, I and many others I would imagine, don't consider ourselves either pessimists or optimists, but are cheerful nihilists. Being a true pessimist is pretty hard. In The Trouble with Being Born, Cioran claims "I do nothing, granted. But I see the hours go by—which is better than trying to fill them." Cioran here refers to the excess of lucidity the pessimist endures, which, however, brings him closer to the ugly truth of life, and he proclaims this to be better than being a busy self-deluded puppet invested in killing time. Be that as it may, not many people are inclined to just sit around and see the hours go by. Eventually, they'll start doing something. Off themselves? Maybe. But the "maestro of pessimism" is quick to point out: "Only optimists commit suicide, optimists who no longer succeed at being optimists. The others, having no reason to live, why would they have any to die?" So, do what then? Camus' point in The Myth of Sisyphus is that the absurdity of the universe, in and of itself, has no bearing on how we should live our lives. Whatever we do is of no consequence in the big picture. Now, some might find this depressing and just decide to see the hours go by and wallow in self-pity. But the cheerful nihilist sees this grim state of affairs as pretty liberating. The universe is a playground where you can do whatever, as there are no parents in sight (or gods). The world is an amusement park and why not have some fun before surrendering to infinite darkness? The cheerful nihilist is neither a pessimist nor an optimist, he's mostly agnostic and non-committal. While he's aware that consciousness amplifies suffering, he also knows that it makes possible higher pleasures, like reading and writing books, which even Cioran himself has indulged in most of his life, when sick of watching the hours go by. So, the cheerful nihilist is not prone to any extreme views as the total eradication of humankind. Also, his commitment to life doesn't involve the delusions the cowardly optimist clings to. The cheerful nihilist is not fully anchored in any values and keeps a critical, ironic distance toward any grand narratives with a happy ending. He is, after all, a student of postmodernism. The cheerful nihilist might engage in sublimation for the fun of it, not with the heroic, virginal fervor of someone like Nietzsche, but with more restrained enthusiasm. The cheerful nihilist floats in a universe of scepticism, uncertainty, and irony, but, despite his awareness of the ugly truths behind the scenes of daily life, he's trying to enjoy what existence has to offer till sickness and the Grim Ripper make their necessary appearance.       

Second, I think being a true, fully consistent pessimist is not only hard but almost impossible. It's really a tough position to hold, without appearing hypocritical. Martin Heidegger has argued that human beings, as beings-in-the-world, exist mostly in a state of inauthenticity. That is, simply put, they do what others do, what They do, what is done. We mostly live in the inauthentic human soup of The They, we do what's expected of us in a zombie-like fashion. We keep busy, plan for the future, always ahead of ourselves, absorbed by some job or another. This goes on, Heidegger argues, until our awareness of our own death hits us and our knees buckle. No one else can die in our place, we face death alone. This gives us anxiety, and only in this state of fear of death do we become authentic, because death forces us to see our lives as our own, and no one else's. However, Heidegger argues, humans don't linger in this state of anxiety for long. Eventually, they reach a decision about the trajectory of their lives and then succumb again, willy-nilly, to the force of The They. The They is our home. Authenticity is just a bad trip we normally forget about. Now, the options of what to do with our lives are provided on the public market as predefined social roles. Tired of your job? Go back to school. A recent injury doesn't allow you to have a career in hockey? Try an office job. You don't know what degree to aim for? Try traveling around the world to find yourself. It follows that, like most of us, the pessimist cannot sustain the state of anxiety for long. Eventually, he'll submit to the power of The They and just live like others do. Like in the case of Cioran, he gave up on watching the hours go by and became a famous writer. He was also a voracious reader. In the same vein, Ligotti points out Lovecraft's interest in architecture. Schopenhauer was a monarchist and professional Hegel hater. My point is that despite the dramatic posturing, most pessimists are just like the rest of us, subject to the force of The They, they live like most of us, enjoying some things, hating others. And if they de facto take part in this inauthentic communal life, then what right do they have to say life is no good? Isn't that a bit hypocritical? Like some emo youth with a Nocturnal Depression t-shirt shopping in the organic section and complaining about the poor selection or an antinatalist trying to become a nurse. This schizoid Dr. Strangelove-type appearance is not a good look for the pessimist. It raises doubts and questions. Moreover, pessimists can't kill themselves either because only optimists kill themselves. Suppose then that they decide to live like pariahs, losers, at the margins of society? After all, Cioran famously claimed: "Only one thing matters: learning to be the loser." However, this, on the face of it, is a project, something to strive for. Like being the town drunk, being the loser is a social role, still in the social space of The They, though, admittedly, on the margins of that space. Cioran was well-aware of this challenge the true pessimist faces, which is one of the reasons he turned down a handful of prestigious literary awards claiming that one cannot write a book like The Trouble With Being Born only so one can cash a literary prize.

Ligotti is aware of the power of the survival instinct and how it can blindside us even if consciously and intellectually we want to reject it. Then, given that humans, like all animals, are hardwired to be social, maybe it's best to look for the authentic pessimist in the ranks of the mentally ill, those malfunctioning brains that make installing the sociability program almost impossible. In this respect, Ligotti's description of depression is telling:

"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. One look at human existence is proof enough that our species will not be released from the stronghold of emotionalism that anchors it into hallucinations. That may be no way to live, but to opt for depression would be to opt out of existence as we consciously know it."

Thus, the depressive would be a good candidate for an authentic pessimist. From a Heideggerian perspective, a depressive is no longer a being-in-the-world. He's a puppet with its strings cut off, an existential abortion. As Ligotti puts it, depressives need not "apply for a position in the enterprise of life." There's a gaping abyss between the depressive and the world, a darkness that strips him of the luxury of an identity or a sense of will. For the depressive, saying or thinking "I" is nothing short of a miracle. There's usually telltale signs of depression, so that even when a depressive decides to participate in the enterprise of life, they give themselves away easily. They're awkward and out of synch with the others, they either talk too much or are too quiet, they laugh too hard as if to keep the inner darkness at bay and reassure themselves that they're really succeeding at playing the game of life like all the others, and that the game is real. However, deep down, they know that the trick won't work and the illusion will dissipate soon, like the makeup running down the face of an alien dressed as a clown. When it comes to parties or other social gatherings, the depressive either cancels at the last moment or leaves early as they feel they can't ignite their socializing engine. If the engine starts, the depressive is the last one to leave the party as he knows this is as good as it gets for him and the usual darkness patiently awaits at home. A few years ago I had this friend suffering from Borderline Personality Disorder. I've noticed that even when she'd take a stab at socializing, she would refuse to appear in group pictures. Later, she explained to me that she wants to live like a ghost. After she dies, she confessed, she wants people to wonder if she truly existed. 

This notion of being a living ghost reminded me of John Darnton's brief portrayal of someone suffering from Cotard's syndrome in his book Mind Catcher, when his character, neurosurgeon Kate Willet, visits a psychiatric ward for severely mentally ill.    

"The room was dimly lit and she could not see very well, but she didn't care to get a better view. There was one bed in the room and a young man supine on it. His wrists and ankles were tied to the sides of the bed with thick white straps, and he was lying totally stiff, as if he were a piece of wood. His eyes were open and staring straight up at the ceiling; they didn't move. Nor did he seem to blink. His skin was ashen gray. His shirt was off, and when Kate looked closely, she saw that his upper torso and his arms and his ankles and his face were covered with wounds—deep angry red gouges running in parallel lines. He had evidently inflicted them upon himself with his fingernails.

The administrative assistant came up behind them. When she spoke, Kate almost jumped out of her skin.

"That is an unfortunate man," the woman said. "He has an extremely rare illness called Cotard's syndrome. [...] In this case, the patient has no emotions whatsoever. He's totally without affect. The patient is stripped of all signs of life. In fact, he becomes convinced that he is actually dead, and it is impossible to rid him of this particular delusion. At times he will smell his own flesh rotting. And at other times he becomes convinced that worms are crawling over his rotting corpse, and he scratches himself without ceasing. For that reason, he must from time to time be restrained."

To sum up, the authentic pessimist, as opposed to the emo poser, is most likely to be found in the ranks of those suffering from mental disorders. Unable to fully dissolve himself in the forgetfulness of the They, his surplus of consciousness giving rise to a chronic alienation, the true pessimist is a master of killing time, time is the enemy as each second takes him closer to inevitable death, and also because time is the reminder he already is dead, but not yet buried. As Cioran says, "A book is a suicide postponed," a suicide that will always come too late, as the true pessimist, being already dead, sees no point in final gestures or affirmations.

Like I said, these are just two of the multiple thoughts and ideas I've had while reading Ligotti's marvelous book The Conspiracy Against The Human Race. His incisive style, clear argumentation, beautiful prose, and grim imagery will make me come back to his book and read his fiction work as well. As a cheerful nihilist, I hope Ligotti's dark fiction is delightful and that my ability to enjoy good books lasts for many years to come.