Oh I could've written something like that. Well, here's my backseat critique of points I deem critique-able. Which is just about all of it.

This is the great lesson the depressive learns: Nothing in the world is inherently compelling. — Thomas Ligotti, The Conspiracy Against the Human Race

Well of course not, "the world" its just rocks, dust, and chemicals interacting with one another in various states and mediums.

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. — Thomas Ligotti, The Conspiracy Against the Human Race

Sounds a bit like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Whatever it may be, emotions, thoughts, etc if it's "on which we live" .. that's called life. You can call a mountain a molehill while your standing atop of it but if it really were you'd be singing a different tune.

And to live on our emotions is to live arbitrarily, inaccurately—imparting meaning to what has none of its own. — Thomas Ligotti, The Conspiracy Against the Human Race

So, he's using wisdom, thought, philosophy, all of which were largely impactful of and impacted by, emotion. So there is something predating if not validating emotion, which is logic or at least whatever he expects us to assume gives this sentence any value, purpose, or yes even coherence than if I just mashed my keyboard and posted it. Otherwise, what the heck is he even talking about? We know what he's talking about. Therefore, meaning exists.

There would be nothing to do, nowhere to go, nothing to be, and no one to know. — Thomas Ligotti, The Conspiracy Against the Human Race

Sure there would. Chemical processes are never static, always dynamic. Entropy and negentropy. Heat rises. Water evaporates. Without heat, vapor turns to liquid, liquid turns to solid, and with heat it's the opposite. There's no "standstill" chemically or biologically.

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. — Thomas Ligotti, The Conspiracy Against the Human Race

Nice save there on his part with the caveat "or as individuals who know what is known to the depressive". Not much to explain with 5 seconds of cross-examining his statement without this bit, really.

One look at human existence is proof enough that our species will not be released from the stranglehold of emotionalism that anchors it to hallucinations. — Thomas Ligotti, The Conspiracy Against the Human Race

Again with the "nothing has meaning yet for some reason this does" paradox. I'm done :lol:

That's the end of the book, right? It would seem he'd have nothing more to say.

I agree with what he says. It's an Eastern thought, that when a person realizes The Truth, he feels neither joy nor sorrow, neither warmth nor cold, neither pleasure nor pain. In simpler words, he is no longer a slave to the chemical fluctuations in the brain that would otherwise drive a person to greed, lust, hate or sorrow. Or drive him on an eternal search for happiness or love. These fluctuations cease within him since he now has an understanding of who he is and how cosmic interplay has brought him here. He is on the Middle Path, just as The Buddha was. The people who find out their actions are determined by chemical imbalances and the need to satiate it, but haven't found The Truth, end up as depressives. They feel life is meaningless because they are stuck with a lesser truth (our physiology) but haven't realized the Highest Truth yet.

The thing I don't really like about this is that Ligotti's pessimism and antinatalism seems to translate into a kind of nihilism-but antinatalist pessimists aren't nihilists. They think suffering matters a lot and we ought to not have children to reduce it. I like Ligotti's writing style but I don't think people should look at this like a philosophical work like some people (not that you have done so) have claimed. A hard determinist moral nihilism doesn't seem to translate into antintalism and I've never found anti realist positions to be depressing

Well of course not, "the world" its just rocks, dust, and chemicals interacting with one another in various states and mediums. — Outlander

I think that is his point, so not sure where the disagreement.

Sounds a bit like throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Whatever it may be, emotions, thoughts, etc if it's "on which we live" .. that's called life. You can call a mountain a molehill while your standing atop of it but if it really were you'd be singing a different tune. — Outlander

I think he is taking the stance of the depressive here still. So its more descriptive (of this mode of being) rather than prescriptive.

So, he's using wisdom, thought, philosophy, all of which were largely impactful of and impacted by, emotion. So there is something predating if not validating emotion, which is logic or at least whatever he expects us to assume gives this sentence any value, purpose, or yes even coherence than if I just mashed my keyboard and posted it. Otherwise, what the heck is he even talking about? We know what he's talking about. Therefore, meaning exists. — Outlander

Again, he is trying to give you the "lens" of a depressive-type. In this perspective, emotions seem arbitrary and perhaps post-facto to existence. He's trying to convey the feeling here. Its a sort of dysthymia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dysthymia). But philosophically he may be alluding to depressive realism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depressive_realism).

Sure there would. Chemical processes are never static, always dynamic. Entropy and negentropy. Heat rises. Water evaporates. Without heat, vapor turns to liquid, liquid turns to solid, and with heat it's the opposite. There's no "standstill" chemically or biologically. — Outlander

I think you are making his point. He doesn't discount that these chemical processes are happening. He even alludes to them earlier in the quote. Rather, as a person with motivation, goals, wants, etc. it sort of becomes meaningless, laid bare, "going through the motions" such that one is playing a farce of what is "supposed" to be what people normally do.

Nice save there on his part with the caveat "or as individuals who know what is known to the depressive". Not much to explain with 5 seconds of cross-examining his statement without this bit, really. — Outlander

I actually think this is being more complete in his analysis. Either you may be a depressive or you may be someone contemplating what it is like to be a depressive in regards to these conclusions.

Again with the "nothing has meaning yet for some reason this does" paradox. I'm done :lol: — Outlander

Honestly, this is why I think the whole book needs to be read to put it in context. If you want to set that up, I am cool with it. But again, here I think he conveying the conclusion from the depressive type. Its not meaning per se as much as values such as good, bad, desirable, undesirable. It's more to me about motivations. The feeling that there is "nothing to do, nowhere to go, nothing to be, and no one to know".

That's the end of the book, right? It would seem he'd have nothing more to say. — Ciceronianus the White

Not sure what you're getting at here.

I agree with what he says. It's an Eastern thought, that when a person realizes The Truth, he feels neither joy nor sorrow, neither warmth nor cold, neither pleasure nor pain. In simpler words, he is no longer a slave to the chemical fluctuations in the brain that would otherwise drive a person to greed, lust, hate or sorrow. Or drive him on an eternal search for happiness or love. These fluctuations cease within him since he now has an understanding of who he is and how cosmic interplay has brought him here. He is on the Middle Path, just as The Buddha was. The people who find out their actions are determined by chemical imbalances and the need to satiate it, but haven't found The Truth, end up as depressives. They feel life is meaningless because they are stuck with a lesser truth (our physiology) but haven't realized the Highest Truth yet. — OneTwoMany

Definitely an interesting positive spin on it. He mentions Buddhism and Schopenhauer as well. I'll try to get quotes on those.

I think you are making his point. He doesn't discount that these chemical processes are happening. He even alludes to them earlier in the quote. Rather, as a person with motivation, goals, wants, etc. it sort of becomes meaningless, laid bare, "going through the motions" such that one is playing a farce of what is "supposed" to be what people normally do. — schopenhauer1

I really dislike these kinds of arguments. Where people externalize parts of themselves to depress themselves for no reason. “I want to live” becomes “I am bound by the instinct of life this is so horrible”. “I enjoy playing soccer” becomes “I am a slave to the chemicals in my brain this is so horrible”.

I don’t understand why people sometimes choose to do this. When they can internalize these things as parts of their identity they choose to view them as alien impositions.

I think it’s motivated by the mistaken belief that just because something is more difficult to believe that that makes it somehow more correct. “The truth hurts” becomes “What hurts is the truth”

The thing I don't really like about this is that Ligotti's pessimism and antinatalism seems to translate into a kind of nihilism-but antinatalist pessimists aren't nihilists. They think suffering matters a lot and we ought to not have children to reduce it. I like Ligotti's writing style but I don't think people should look at it like a philosophical work — Albero

Ok. Not sure what to say. I think he has some interesting analysis and synthesis of an array of philosophical pessimistic and antinatalist literature and thus, if one is interested in these subjects, would be worth an analysis. I don't know where you get the impression that he is a complete "nihilist". I get the impression he is a philosophical pessimist and antinatalist, though he doesn't commit fully to anything.

I really dislike these kinds of arguments. Where people externalize parts of themselves to depress themselves for no reason. “I want to live” becomes “I am bound by the instinct of life this is so horrible”. “I enjoy playing soccer” becomes “I am a slave to the chemicals in my brain this is so horrible”.

I don’t understand why people sometimes choose to do this. When they can internalize these things as parts of their identity they choose to view them as alien impositions.

I think it’s motivated by the mistaken belief that just because something is more difficult to believe that that makes it somehow more correct. — khaled

I think you are taking his quote out of context. I believe him to be taking the lens of someone who is a depressive-type. He is not saying it as a prescription of what you "should" do. It is a possible illusion to depressive realism.. That if in this mindset, it seems this way, and motivation is lost. Certainly, no one has to be this way.

He calls it “The great lesson the depressive learns”. Not “What things seem like to the depressive”. “The great lesson” seems prescriptive. Maybe he is just taking the lens as you say but it doesn’t sound that way to me.

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to live falsely as pawns of affect, or to live factually as depressives, — Thomas Ligotti, The Conspiracy Against the Human Race

What is said here implies that living as a depressive is as much living as a pawn of affect as any alternative.

There's a deep irrationality in thinking that being a depressive is somehow authentic, that being happy is inauthentic.

Grow up. Move past realising it's all chemicals and gets on with being alive.

a. Panglossian falsehoods convene the crowd, discouraging truths disperse it.

b. Whether you think consciousness to be a benefit or a horror, this is only what you think—and nothing else ... Nihilism is as dead as god. — Thomas Ligotti, The Conspiracy Against the Human Race (excerpts)

a. Sophistry or philosophy (i.e. satifisfied swine or sad socratics ... flattery or diagnosis ...)

b. Thinking that 'nothing matters' also does not matter.

I like the passage. It communicates very well how depression feels - while posing an interesting philosophical question about the nature of reality and experience. It's a conceit, of course - for the first thought of the reader must surely be that depression is just a different cocktail of brain chemicals, that give a different quality of experience of reality. But written as if depression reveals truth lends a sense of reality to the description, and that is how depression feels; that happiness is a lie.

b. Thinking that 'nothing matters' also does not matter. — 180 Proof

Yep.

He calls it “The great lesson the depressive learns”. Not “What things seem like to the depressive”. “The great lesson” seems prescriptive. Maybe he is just taking the lens as you say but it doesn’t sound that way to me. — khaled

But "learns" here doesn't mean one must learn it.

And to live on our emotions is to live arbitrarily, inaccurately — Thomas Ligotti, The Conspiracy Against the Human Race

No wonder he’s depressed. He’s trapped in a Cartesian nightmare of his own making. I’ d be depressed too if I bought into the idea of human experience as an opposition between mechanistic brain processes and an independent outside world. But human feeling is not an inner mechanism but our existential relations with a world that is anything but neutral , but instead is responsive to , and co-formed in its sense by the ways we reach out to it and make sense of it or fail to make sense of it. And depression is not an absence of meaning , but the sense of loss of a prior significance. You can’t feel depressed without having a feeling of losing something that was of value to you. That’s what the ‘de’ in depression indicates. So depression is in its own way a celebration of life in its comparison between what one had or wanted to have and what is now. But even in this feeling of loss, there is meaning, the having moved on from the loss to a strange and alien place with no familiar landmarks. This is depression , an unknown country, not vacuity but inarticulation that carries in itself its own significance.

You said this:

What is said here implies that living as a depressive is as much living as a pawn of affect as any alternative. — Banno

Which seems to contradict your statement here:

Grow up. Move past realising it's all chemicals and gets on with being alive. — Banno

But more to the point, a depressive doesn't just listen to Banno and snap out of it. And the point is, what does "snapping out of it" mean? What is one snapping into? And before you answer that, look at the whole quote and not Banno's hallucinations of it :D.

b. Whether you think consciousness to be a benefit or a horror, this is only what you think—and nothing else ... Nihilism is as dead as god.
— Thomas Ligotti, The Conspiracy Against the Human Race (excerpts)
a. Sophistry or philosophy (i.e. satifisfied swine or sad socratics ... flattery or diagnosis ...)

b. Thinking that 'nothing matters' also does not matter. — 180 Proof

But that is what Ligotti said.. So looks like you are agreeing with Ligotti.

I like the passage. It communicates very well how depression feels - while posing an interesting philosophical question about the nature of reality and experience. It's a conceit, of course - for the first thought of the reader must surely be that depression is just a different cocktail of brain chemicals, that give a different quality of experience of reality. But written as if depression reveals truth lends a sense of reality to the description, and that is how depression feels; that happiness is a lie. — counterpunch

Interesting observations.

Not sure what you're getting at here. — schopenhauer1

I was obscure.

It seemed from the quote that he had come to certain conclusions regarding which there was no more to be said that wouldn't be repetitious.

I was obscure.

It seemed from the quote that he had come to certain conclusions regarding which there was no more to be said that wouldn't be repetitious. — Ciceronianus the White

I think that is the risk of taking any quote rather than doing a thorough reading.

having a feeling of losing something that was of value to you. That’s what the ‘de’ in depression indicates. So depression is in its own way a celebration of life in its comparison between what one had or wanted to have and what is now. But even in this feeling of loss, there is meaning, the having moved on from the loss to a strange and alien place with no familiar landmarks. This is depression , an unknown country, not vacuity but inarticulation that carries in itself its own significance. — Joshs

Interesting observations and commentary.

Well I find nothing much to quarrel with ...

Well I find nothing much to quarrel with ... — 180 Proof

Oh, cool then.

Here's one:

Within the hierarchy of fabrications that compose our lives—families, countries, gods—the self incontestably ranks highest. Just below the self is the family, which has proven itself more durable than national or ethnic affiliations, with these in turn outranking god-figures for their staying power. So any progress toward the salvation of humankind will probably begin from the bottom—when our gods have been devalued to the status of refrigerator magnets or lawn ornaments. Following the death rattle of deities, it would appear that nations or ethnic communities are next in line for the boneyard. Only after fealty to countries, gods, and families has been shucked off can we even think about coming to grips with the least endangered of fabrications—the self. — Thomas Ligotti, The Conspiracy Against the Human Race

Interesting observations. — schopenhauer1

Thanks, but it looks like you made much the same argument before I did - so it's like you're saying your own observations are interesting. A little self serving, n'est pas?!

What I find interesting are the comments of those who almost certainly haven't experienced depression, and have less than no sympathy for it.

Is Banno incapable of the literary analysis necessary to an appreciation that the writer is writing from the perspective of someone with depression? I don't know. But depression angers people. They don't understand that it becomes the suffers' truth - more, the suffers' very identity. Variations upon the 'snap out of it' theme are ubiquitous - and not at all helpful.

Thanks, but it looks like you made much the same argument before I did - so it's like you're saying your own observations are interesting. A little self serving, is it not?! — counterpunch

Well shit, no one can give a compliment anymore! :wink:.

What I find interesting are the comments of those who almost certainly haven't experienced depression, and have less than no sympathy for it.

Is Banno incapable of the literary analysis necessary to an appreciation that the writer is writing from the perspective of someone with depression? I don't know. But depression angers people. They don't understand that it becomes the suffers' truth - more, the suffers' very identity. Variations upon the 'snap out of it' theme are ubiquitous - and not at all helpful. — counterpunch

Agreed full-heartedly. You would have to ask Banno. People get a kick out of feeling superior I guess. The "well-adjusted" just "have" to let the complainers know their place. If they know what's good for them! Pick yourself up by the bootstrap! Get out of your bubble! All the rest and contemptuous mumblings ayayada.blahblah

Well shit, no one can give a compliment anymore! — schopenhauer1

No-one can take a compliment anymore either!

Agreed full-heartedly. You would have to ask Banno. People get a kick out of feeling superior I guess. The "well-adjusted" just "have" to let the complainers know their place. If they know what's good for them! — schopenhauer1

I don't know him all that well, and I'm not particularly diplomatic at the best of times. I don't know how I'd ask if a need to express a lack of sympathy overrode an ability to parse the passage - or if he's actually intellectually incapable, without it coming across as an insult.