No one gives up on something until it turns on them, whether or not that thing is real or unreal.
Thomas LigottiWhile a modicum of consciousness may have had survivalist properties during an immemorial chapter of our evolution โ so one theory goes โ this faculty soon enough became a seditious agent working against us โฆ we need to hamper our consciousness for all we are worth or it will impose upon us a too clear vision of what we do not want to see โฆ Consciousness has forced us into the paradoxical position of striving to be unself-conscious of what we are โ hunks of spoiling flesh on disintegrating bones
Thomas LigottiFor optimists, human life never needs justification, no matter how much hurt piles up, because they can always tell themselves that things will get better. For pessimists, there is no amount of happinessโshould such a thing as happiness even obtain for human beings except as a misconceptionโthat can compensate us for lifeโs hurt.
Thomas LigottiPersonally, I'm afraid of suffering and afraid of dying. I'm also afraid of witnessing the suffering and death of those who are close to me. And no doubt I project these fears on those around me and those to come, which makes it impossible for me to understand why everyone isn't an antinatalist, just as I have to assume pronatalists can't understand why everyone isn't like them.
Thomas LigottiTo be sane, he held, was either to be sedated by melancholy or activated by hysteria, two responses which were 'always and equally warranted for those of sound insight'. All others were irrational, merely symptoms of imaginations left idle, of memories out of work. And above these mundane responses, the only elevation allowable, the only valid transcendence, was a sardonic one: a bliss that annihilated the universe with jeers of dark joy, a mindful ecstasy. Anything else in the way of 'mysticism' was a sign of deviation or distraction, and a heresy to the obvious. (โThe Medusaโ)
Thomas LigottiBut even if ego-death is regarded as the optimum model for human existence, one of liberation from ourselves, it still remains a compromise with being, a concession to the blunder of creation itself. We should be able to do better, and we can. To have our egos killed off is second-best to killing off death and all the squalid byplay that flitters around it. So let all lands be small, and grower smaller and smaller until no lands are left where any human footstep need press itself upon the earth.
Thomas Ligotti