Tag: nihilism and pessimism
Nihilism, philosophical pessimism, absurdism, fatalism, cynicism.
https://www.metaphysicalexile.com/2025/06/the-catastrophe-of-birth.html[š”] Continue reading
The Suffering of the Everyday Banalities of Life
r/Pessimism, u/forestofdoom2022 Continue reading
Maybe [doing X] really is the answer to it.
There is no answer. We just struggle along.
I donāt want to play the game of life
The most frustrating part is that there doesnāt really seem to be a real solution for this problem because every piece of advice people usually give is like, self-contained within the parameters of life if that makes sense, like every piece of advice people give still involves having to participate in life. Read the full page
u/defectivedisabled, r/Pessimism
Suffering when seen as a metaphysical force is just like a perpetual machine. It runs on the fuel that is suffering and generates suffering as the byproduct, which it then uses to fuel itself further and continue the cycle. There maybe some peak and trough in the amount of suffering but suffering can never be fully eradicated. Suffering is self sustaining and is basically like a pantheist āGodā. We are all part of it and it and it only exists through our suffering. Suffering is the essence of life, it is the reason for everything we do what we do. Suffering makes us perform actions to relief itself but would then create new forms of suffering as a result. A lion kills and eat a zebra so it may stay alive and procreate to further perpetuate this cycle in an ever increasing scale until the zebra population collapses and the lion population collapses as well. This cycle would then start afresh, it is an endless cycle with no end in sight.
We are all parts that made up of this āGodā and it is our suffering that gives ālifeā to it. What this means for we is that we are created to suffer and perpetuate suffering. All for the manifestation of this āGodā into the world. You can only do what is allowed within the limits of being a cog in this ungodly machine and any attempts to fight against the will of this āGodā is futile. An end to this metaphysical force is nothing to grieve for indeed.
And what do those philosophers who oppose our resenting life propose? The forging of new myths such as the Ć¼bermensch or the deification of human history. However, changing gods wonāt make a difference, just as returning to medieval or ancient times wonāt make a difference. Eventually, these new myths will die, too, because some of us are intelligent enough to see through them. Read the full page
https://www.metaphysicalexile.com/2024/09/excess-lucidity.html[š”] Continue reading
Is it actually possible to assert anything?
Is it actually possible to assert anything with 100% certainty? Read the full page
Can a pessimist have hope?
r/Pessimism, u/ajaxinsanity
Hope is expectation coupled with fear that something will not work out. As such it is almost the opposite of pessimism. Pessimism is about abandoning hope and expecting the worst, which is often closer to the truth.
Hopium is very bad for you in general because itās unstable, depends on imagination and ambition, therefore making you anxious. Be realistic and apply reason, not hope.
u/homebrandusername, r/Pessimism Continue reading
https://www.metaphysicalexile.com/2024/05/essay-about-giving-up.html[š”] Continue reading
Treading water
u/Critical-Sense-1539, r/Pessimism
I get a similar sentiment whenever I come across popular āself-improvementā content. Iāve never bought any promises that I could ever better my life or progress in any real sense, for no matter what I achieve, I will always be striving. I donāt get inspired whenever I see someone struggle really hard for wealth, influence, a big muscly body, a romantic relationship, or some other insipid marker of success.
I see a futility in these attmepts to attain āfulfilmentā or the āgood lifeā, a bit like the futility of treading water. You swing your arms and kick your legs to stay afloat, just so youāre able to breathe for a moment longer. However, no matter how hard you try, youāre not going to get out of the water. Youāre always sinking so to stay above water, you have to expend effort over and over and over again until youāve got none left to expend.
I see all pursuits for fulfilment in this sort of image; we are always lacking something. Living to try and satisfy all your desires is a game that you can only ever lose because for every desire that one satisfies, another shall show up in its place. Now, realizing this probably wonāt fix the pain associated with not achieving your desires but it might help alleviate feelings of self-hatred or guilt for having a ābad lifeā. After all, thereās no need to feel bad about yourself for losing a game that was impossible to win all along.
u/Kunigunde9467, r/Pessimism Continue reading
If one thinks about the (obviously made up) religious scenarios, or any other kind of hellish stories invented by humans, itās obvious that most real lives donāt even come close to that. Continue reading
(EN Wikipedia) Depressive realism[š”] Continue reading
I remember a middle school teacher telling us that the worst thing that you could say to someone is that he/she is useless (and therefore advising us to never say that). And I think thatās true.
But itās funny because at the same time thereās nothing more true that you could say to literally anyone.
Andrew McIntosh ā On the Drive Towards Death and the Drive Away From Death (Ineffectual Whinging)
Just throwing a hodge podge of ideas Iāve read about and find interesting together in the hopes of coming up with a synthesis that doesnāt mean much in the end anyway. Itās not like I believe there are such things as āDeath Drivesā and āthe Willā and all that, theyāre more metaphorical for what is probably more mundane, neurobiological stuff going on in our stupid brains. Read the full page
[1:52] for me, I donāt know, looks like Iām the only one thinking this but the saturation and the numbers of things they drive me insane the fact that weāre 8 billion, that thereās so much music you wouldnāt get through it in 7 lifetimes, etc. I donāt know, I think about it every day yeah, thatās why Iām sick lol but I do think about it every day like, nihilism resides in the numbers, you donāt even need to do philosophy
At the end of the day, 99% of the activity is data hoarding, 1% is making use. Music years ago, other things later. Because then, when you use it, youāll be fed up with it. Of course people like to work, because otherwise their brains explode; itās the same mechanism. Endless search for mechanical and repetitive distractions. Tergiversations around the core of desperation.
And this isā¦ when things are going well.
And then they say to the hoarder: Ā«You donāt need to accumulate everything. This thing X, you donāt need to hoard it, resist it.Ā» But if there is no need for me to save X, it means that there is no need for me to save Y, it means that there is no need for me to save anything, by simple syllogism.
And indeed, that is correct. But it only confirms the nihilism and the absolute meaninglessness of everything.
Applying āthatās subjective thoā to that rings very, very hollow. To criticise them, you have to take the claims apart; [ā¦] Read the full page
Andrew McIntosh ā The Point of Pointlessness (Ineffectual Whinging)
[ā¦] that whole insane āget up and goā mentality, starting with the obscenity of the work ethic, squirming as it did like soft stool out of the arsehole of Christianity, condemning us to mindless labour and activity simply for its own sake. Work for its own sake ā what kind of fucking numpty thought that was a good idea? Read the full page
One day is the time it takes to get bored of your new shiny toy.
So you then go back to either your life as a slave or your basic organic distractions.
Also see Fichte
Andrew McIntosh ā On Conspiracy Theories (Ineffectual Whinging)
One of the main reason for getting into conspiracy theories is to get the illusion that by doing so, youāre exercising some kind of agency in the world. Read the full page
The loner is the one who withdraws his presence so as not to distress or bother others, to let them live their illusion, because truth brings nothing but pain. The lover who steps aside to let the other live, the Oblomov who doesnāt even try to make things work because he knows they canāt. How absurd it would be for time to fall in love with a girl, or for death to write her a love poem. Continue reading
Who wouldāve thought, that after nihilism, there was a further involuntary step to take. In nullism, everything is different, and even more ridiculous when seen from the outside.
*Watching a scenery IRL*
Pia: Itās like something from a painting.
Davis: Thatās because people paint landscapes.
Black Mirror S06E02 āLoch Henryā
On responsibility as the solution
It were the old family men of the pre-nihilistic-era, that believed in a future, and that told their children their morals, their hopes, their beliefs. Read the full page
In his āAnalysis Terminable and Interminable,ā which was written in 1937, two years before his death, Freud expresses his deep frustration with the futility of the therapeutic attempts to cure self-destructive tendencies, āIn no phase of oneās analytic work does one suffer more from the oppressive feeling that all oneās efforts have been in vain and from the suspicion that one is ātalking to the windsāā (p. 404) The death drive reveals itself as incurable, it is a constitutive obstacle beyond which therapy is not capable of progressing. One can say that since the curse of the negative psychoanalytic insight, psychoanalysis has functioned as a breakdown of itself. It is a disappointment, a negation and rejection and a failure of itself. Psychoanalysis has thus become negative, an empty, meaningless huskāthe living dead.
The negative insight undermines psychoanalysis from within. Like a black sun that shines with darkness instead of light and, with this, dismisses its essence. A practical therapeutic dimension of psychoanalysis is its outer shell that remains from its original positive framework. As long as psychoanalysis maintains functioning in its therapeutic dimension, it betrays its negative insight and inner breakage, making the psychoanalyst a fraud. The psychoanalyst, in this case, is like a priest who lost his faith in God and fell into deep despair but still preaches, attending to the demand of the parish.
This internal breakdown can be considered a defeat of psychoanalysis, its failure, and its disability. From this, one might conclude that psychoanalysis should be relegated to the basement of history as a failed project, Freud should be declared a charlatan, and that various more empirically validated methods of comprehension and treatments that really help should now rightfully declare their victory over psychoanalysis, or that psychoanalysis has to be fixed, for example, by combining it with modern research. Such attempts have been made many times.
However, to me, this inner breakdown of psychoanalysis, its internal tragedy, which many adherents of psychoanalysis, including Freud himself, try to cover up, is the dearest in psychoanalysis. In this tragedy of the impossibility of psychoanalysis, in its curse, one can feel something painfully dear, absurd, and therefore sincerely human, and for the same reason, unbearable and repulsive. Perhaps in this personal tragedy of Freud and the tragedy of the breakdown of psychoanalysis, in their wretchedness, they coincide the most with the more profound deep pathetic and tragic truth about each of us. In this rupture with itself, psychoanalysis coincides with us, with our inner rupture, and with the inner rupture of the world.
Plunging into a black night of its soul, it meets the soul of each of us since the darkness of the soul is the only thing we genuinely hold in common. Our internal breakdown, brokenness, malfunction, tragedy, and absurdity encounter who we most genuinely are. This psychoanalysis coincides with life as such, as something doomed to failure and, in its essence, is nothing but a failure.
Julie Reshe, āNegative Psychoanalysis for the Living Deadā
They carry the weight of the world on their shoulders. Read the full page
William Shatner: my trip to space filled me with āoverwhelming sadnessā
William Shatner (Captain Kirk in Star Trek), after his trip in Jeff Bezosā Blue Origin space shuttle on Oct. 13, 2021. Continue reading
When you have money, but you donāt know what to do with it, then the gravity of your being becomes immediately apparent.
Underestimating Suffering & Suicide Thresholds
r/pessimism, u/CardinallyConsidered Continue reading
Life is a scam. And now weāve fallen for it. Not our fault, I mean, āfallen for itā in the sense that we happened to come into the world, but the result is the same.
Once you fall for the scam, what can you do? There arenāt, like, possible choices, those are subsets. The only thing we can do is what everyone is doing, that is to toss and turn in the shit weāve fallen into. Which then takes the form of various activities, but itās always about tossing and turning, plunged in shit.
https://dnamistakes.webcomic.ws/comics/pl/1569681[š”]
Against the idea that suicide is not worth it, like some important authors say instead
In reality, we donāt kill ourselves because the rationalized suicide is basically impossible for everyoneā¦ Read the full page
My take on the ending of āMartyrsā (2008)
Lots of discussions on the Internet. Continue reading
JAI @jaivcalla ā I have to fucking say this
Completely different ontological plane of existence compared to Peopleā¢.
Related: University of Utah Neuroscience Initiative ā The Unfixed Brain[š”]
Umberto Galimberti ā Interviews and conferences (excerpts)
Schopenhauer is considered a pessimist, of course: every time you donāt praise or exalt āthe individualā, you are pessimistic, of course, right?ā¦ ā¦ Even poor Leopardi is pessimistic, isnāt he? Those who say āpessimismāā¦ Iām like: are you looking at reality, goddammit, or do you really not want to see it? Read the full page
We contain the ending
Shape of Despair ā Return to the Void
Long after It was too late To find back All meaningful The glow long gone The spark faded
And though I saw The others Advance and vanish Into the distanceā¦
I chose to stay behind To wander astray To remain unfound To merge with these dark thoughts As I saw and felt this existence As mere reflection In slow time
Shape of Despair ā Reflection in Slow Time
The effect of feelings All lost their strength All lost their meaning
Sinking horizons Drowning the view
Shape of Despair ā Forfeit
These are the kind of people who live on the edge of life, so to speak, who are thrown into uncharted waters by their melancholy, and somehow manage to find the surface right before they are lost to the high tides. Anyone who has gone through debilitating bouts of depression knows what the feeling is like: you stand at the cliff of a mountain and gaze right into the abyss, whose gravitas is irresistible. During those times, it really helps to have something; anything at all to grab onto ā your job, your spouse, a family member, a promise made to someone, even a pet. As the years pass, however, you start to lose those things, everything feels old, repetitive, and it is not the case for melancholics to be friendly or even easy to be around to keep relationships. This results in the loss of personal meaning, and the fundamental truth of life hits the hardest when personal meaning is non-existent, for there is no cosmic one. The abyss pulls you in; you wade into the cold, uncharted waters, lost in its deep oblivion. This, to me, is suicide par excellence, and only a very contemplative few get to carry it out.
Selim GĆ¼re ā The Occult of the Unborn
And all the parties they fade And yes, my looks, theyāll go away Iāll just be left here in America But she never had a home for me
London Grammar ā America
Iām Thinking of Ending Things
Sometimes the thought is closer to the truth, to reality, than an action. You can say anything, you can do anything, but you canāt fake a thought. Continue reading
The principle of sympathy for intense suffering (ed. that is, the alleviation of intense suffering has moral priority over everything else) defended here stems neither from depression nor resentment. Rather, as the name implies, it simply stems from a deep sympathy for intense suffering. It stems from a firm choice to side with the evaluations of those who are superlatively worst off. And while it is true that this principle has the implication that it would have been better if the world had never existed, I think the fault here is to be found in the world, not the principle.
Magnus Vinding ā Suffering-Focused Ethics: Defense and Implications
There is no magical third act
I justā¦ I just cannot believe this is it. This is life. There is no magical third act where I am the star in some fantasy adventure. I wonāt suddenly gain superpowers and fight cartoonish villains. This is it. This is all it will ever be. The rest of my life, quiet and drab. Our one shot at consciousness is spent on something so unimaginably boring. My curse of sentience is spent wageslaving, consuming media, messing around with hobbies that will never fill the void, shitting, cleaning. Thatās all it will ever be. Sad and pathetic.
Popular chansā meme/copypasta
Once again, the children of the core think to change the inevitable. They do not see the truth, the futility of their actions. We bring purity to chaos, serenity to bedlam. All will be consumed. This is necessary and good. The children do not understand. The children believe their lives worth living.
The children are wrong. The worlds and the core of the worlds live in pain, agony, discord. We bring peace. Equality. Silence.
All are one within our embrace. The children resist what cannot be resisted. They fight a battle that cannot be won. Their actions are ultimately irrelevant. No matter how many times they rise, they will be destroyed. Their time is over. We will consume all.
The āRootā, via āDreamerā / āNightmareā, in āRemnant: From the Ashesā
ā [ā¦] Iād say youāre confusing suicide with self-destruction. Almost none of us commit suicide, and almost all of us self-destruct. In some way, in some part of our lives: we drink, or we smoke, we destabilize the good jobā¦ or the happy marriage. But these arenāt decisions, theyāreā¦ theyāre impulses. In fact, youāre probably better equipped to explain this than I am.
ā What does that mean?
ā Youāre a biologist. Isnāt self-destruction coded into us? Programmed into each cell?
Annihilation (2018)
Itās like with human life: if youāre lucky enough to reach old age, the phases of your life will be: birth, childhood, puberty, masturbation, masturbation with a partner, pathetic attempts at masturbation, and death.
Astutillo Smeriglia in his blog āIn coma ĆØ meglioā (āBeing in a Coma is Betterā) ā Come nasce una teoria del complotto (āHow a Conspiracy Theory is Bornā)
ā What I mean is that some people are born to suffer, and if theyāre made to suffer, it doesnāt matter because itās what they were born for.
ā Thatās horrible.
ā The world is horrible; the human being is horrible; but we canāt run away from it, because we are the horror. You have to accept it.
Skins (Pieles) ā Eduardo Casanova
When youāre suffering, thatās when youāre most real. Read the full page
Why āWe Are the Fleshā has a deeper twist ending than āThe Sixth Senseā
filmcolossus.com, review by Jordan C. Johnson Continue reading
ā No one really likes what they do.
ā Then why do we do it?
ā Because weāre driven. Maybe a bit insecure. We get into things when weāre young and because we think they mean something.
ā And then we find out that they donāt.
ā Oh, Susan, enjoy the absurdity of our world (ed. contemporary art business). Itās a lot less painful. And believe me, our world is a lot less painful than the real world.
āNocturnal Animalsā, the gay husband
There is no freedom/choice/option of an instant/painless/effortless/guaranteed/permanent way out of life (and existence), therefore, life (and existence) is prison/torture/slavery/rape, and therefore, life (and existence) is survival of the stupidest.
Ever Deeper Honesty ā Anonymous, https://www.everdeeperhonesty.com/[š”]
Also see:
- /thoughts/this-life-is-a-prison.html
- /images/smbc-this-life-is-a-prison.html
- My music track āThis life is a prisonā[š”]
The true, only problem, is not having the aptitude for suicide.
Someone on the internet, around 2016
It would have been so different Without this burden This sense of nothingness The lifelong defeat That took us here To a distance unreachable To a grey indifference Into these vast Monotony fields
Shape of Despair ā Monotony Fields
About the movie āMelancholiaā ā Florin Flueras
All other sorrow in comparison with this is a travesty of the real thing. For he experiences true sorrow, who knows and feels not only what he is, but that he is. Read the full page
Of course everyone knows, on an intellectual level, that they wonāt live forever. But that doesnāt mean that they really acknowledge it. Read the full page
ā I tell myself I bear witness, but the real answer is that itās obviously my programming. And I lack the constitution for suicide.
Rust in āTrue Detectiveā
The Crazy Woman Next Door ā Conversation with Alda Merini
Unfortunately, the soul, which by the way is what then writes and survives [ā¦], is the part that flies over matter and is the one thatās the most attentive and the most painful: namely, seeing the deterioration of the body, this soul distress itself, itā¦ above all, it loses its way. Continue reading
The Gift of Life ā Astutillo Smeriglia
https://incomaemeglio.blogspot.com/2013/09/il-dono-della-vita.html[š”] Continue reading
I want a simpler network, newborn, with few people living there. I want it monochromatic. I want that only a few are able to browse it. I want for it to hide something that only a few chosen ones can and want to find. Internet is boring instead. Thereās everything and so there is no curiosity. Even though thereās everything, there is nothing really metaphysical. Years ago I was dreaming of drifting with my body inside the cables. Continue reading
I told him, at that time already, that my ānot livingā was dissolving the fear of dyingā¦ Read the full page
Music is Art. Art is solace. But true Art must embrace the emptiness of everything, the bitterness of existence itself. The music must be as close as possible to Death, the ultimate salvation. Otherwise, it will just be entertainment, raw fun, ephemeral diversion.
Solace for the Vanity, album āAmaritiaā, 2011[š”]
All right, look, man, Iām cashing in. Iām done. Iām 40 shit years old, I got nothing, I got nobody. And I donāt want anything, I donāt want anybody; and thatās the worst part: when the want goes. Thatāsā¦ thatās bad. I mean, like, suffering is one thing, or ānot havingā is one thingā¦ But when you just donāt care anymore?
You know, Iāve gone soft in the last three pussies Iāve been in. You get to a point where you go āMaybe itās time to just put a period at the end of myā¦ whatever this was.ā
Louie, S02E09 ā Eddie (Doug Stanhope)
2000 ā Dialogue with The Dreamer
We have been in a mental crisis since 2000. Read the full page
Iām noticing that I have a skull inside my face. Read the full page
Youād be surprised by how many people aspire to be completely normal. Weāre a race apart. You have to fight to the teeth for not end up being one of them. Read the full page
Grey visions of today Every sight I see the same I can not break free I think Iām gone As though I never wake Always drawn into descent And my hope decays Just out of reach
Cursed through life and condemned to misery To be left with nothing
Woods of Desolation ā Somehowā¦
We have created so much material, so many movies, so many books. We have covered the Earth with works of hope, sadness, love. Today they mostly make garbage; the sirs of the past wrote about manās pain; now men enjoys themselves in the middle of the manure and those texts are seen more like work rather than pleasure. Continue reading
A spider walking on a vulva, is walking like if it were in a desert.
ā It seems that the only happy people in this movie by the end, are slightly crazy, and they are the course of future Mr. and Mrs. Wunch ā a lovely name ā and theyāre the ones who donāt believe that you may even need happiness in the present life. So, everyone else seems to be left miserable, and Iām curious if this is if you are being playful with this, or if this is a serious comic commentary on what life looks to you at this point.
ā This is my perspective, and has always been my perspective on life. I have a very grim pessimistic view of it; I always have, since I was a little boy, it hasnāt gotten worse with age or anything: I do feel that itās a grim, painful, nightmarish, meaningless experience, and that the only way that you can be happy is if you tell yourself some lies, and deceive yourself. And Iām not the first person to say this or the most articulate person on it: it was said by Nietzsche, it was said by Freud, it was said by Eugene OāNeillā¦ One must have oneās delusions to live: if you look at life too honestly and clearly, life does become unbearable because itās a pretty grim enterprise, you will admit. So, I do feel that those two people are the only two people that are happy: they are capable of deluding themselves; if I saw them at a party in real life I would think that they were foolish people, and dumb, and silly, and I would laugh at them, but they would be happier than me. So that is the way I feel about it.
Woody Allen at Cannes Film Festival Press conference for āYou Will Meet a Tall Dark Strangerā
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yVPS8XBoBE[š”]
It turns out that, even knowing about meaninglessness is meaningless.
We live in a decadent civilisation which robs us of our ability to shape and define our destiny and hence robs us of our spirit and identity. Western man has been gradually separated from his natural environment, his spirituality, his fellow man and finally from himself. Life has been reduced to an animalistic base as we drift from one empty satisfaction of technological convenience to another.
Art and culture no longer carry any grand or heroic ideals but rather seek to stimulate base emotions through ugly and abstract forms. Art and culture rarely serve as little more than distractions from the torment of perception ā no longer seeking to order, interpret or explain the world around us but preferring instead to excuse it, replace it or deny it with an increasingly less interactive and more atomised and abstract alternative.
We were promised technological salvation but have been led to an air-conditioned hell by the false idols of progress who sought to remove the struggle from existence, not stopping to think what would be left. For life in essence is struggle and the will to participate in that struggle and make it oneās own is the most sacred characteristic of man.
The Harsh Noise Wall[š”] is the soundtrack to our spiritually vacuous and culturally bankrupt age. There is no struggle here. There is no spirit. No personality. No society. There is nowhere else to go. Nowhere to progress. This is the end product. This is the end.
āA View From Nihilā in āTriumph of the Broken Willā
People think that life is something else, but thatās not true, life is not your coin collection, it only is by illusion, once you have a wife by your side. What about after? Afterwards, everything around you is as if it didnāt exist and never existed, it has less value than a turd. Continue reading
Doug Stanhope ā The sad reality of sex
Doug Stanhope ā 2010, live in Kansas City
Full show: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwkoItmdQj4[š”]
Type a personal message, drown in your baggage.
(MSN avatar-info parody)
The Conspiracy Against the Human Race ā A Contrivance of Horror ā Thomas Ligotti
The horror handed down to us will be handed down to others like a scandalous heirloom. Being alive: decades of waking up on time, then trudging through another round of moods, sensations, thoughts, cravingsāthe complete gamut of agitationsāand finally flopping into bed to sweat in the pitch of dead sleep or simmer in the phantasmagorias that molest our dreaming minds. Read the full page
And the radiation tells you things that are true and at the same time absurd, cold, and above all rough. Read the full page
We humans actually like to die. Because it is the only thing that gives meaning to our life, and that puts an end to that painful feeling of perceiving our existence (as well as ā but thatās obvious ā to physical and psychological suffering). But at the same time, death reminds us of emptiness and nonsense. And so, this strange paradox is created, and between the two paths, most choose to distract themselves.
Emptiness ā Distraction ā Dream ā Desireā¦ Read the full page
Dark ambient moment.
Iām carrying the white flag, and it only makes sense that the music I listen to adjusts to that.
There are three deaths. The first is when the body ceases to function. The second is when the body is consigned to the grave. The third is that moment, sometime in the future, when your name is spoken for the last time.
David Eagleman ā āSum: Forty Tales from the Afterlivesā
Everyone was staying confined to those narrow mental spaces. And I, like them; I only knew that small world. And everything was goddamn gorgeous. There was passion, challenge, dialogues, workaholism, and satisfaction. Continue reading
You love playing with that. You love playing with all your stuffed animals. You love your mommy, your daddy, your nature pajamas. You love everything, donāt ya? Yeah. But you know what, buddy? As you get olderā¦ some of the things that you love might not seem so special anymore, you know? Like your jack-in-the-box. Maybe youāll realize itās just a piece of tin and a stuffed animalā¦ And the older you get, the fewer things you really love. And by the time you get to my age, maybe itās only one or two things. With me, I think itās one.
The Hurt Locker ā James speaking to his son
ā The ceiling is probably the last thing people see. At least for 90% of the people who die. Probably. And if you die, the last thing you see will be printed in your eye. Like a photograph. Imagine all those people with ceilings in their eyes.
Water Lilies / Naissance des Pieuvres
No Love, No Hate, No Faith, No Memory
Mayhem ā Ordo ad Chao
The Instinct of the Wolf ā The Law of Lone Wolf ā Massimo Lugli
I grabbed a newspaper from a trash bin and read it from top to bottom to pass the time. Politics, sports, entertainment. I couldnāt understand why people cared so much about all that bullshit. Read the full page
You know, Kyonā¦ have you ever realized just how insignificant your existence on this planet really is? [ā¦] It happened to me. And Iāll never forget it. Back when I was in the sixth grade, my whole family went out to go watch a baseball game at the stadium. I didnāt really care about baseball, but I was surprised by what I saw when we got there. Everywhere I looked, I saw people. On the other side of the stadium, the people looked so small, like little moving grains of rice. It was so crowded. I thought that everyone in Japan had to be packed in there.
So I turned to my dad and asked him, āDo you know how many people are here right nowā? He said since the stadium was full, probably fifty thousand. After the game, the street was filled with people and I was really shocked to see that, too. To me, it seemed like there was a ton of people there. But then, I realized it could only be a tiny fraction of all the people in Japan. When I got home, I pulled out my calculator. In social studies, Iād learned that the population of Japan was a hundred some odd million. So I divided that by fifty thousand. The answer was one two-thousandth. That shocked me even more. I was only one little person in that big crowded stadium filled with people, and believe me, there were so many people there, but it was just a handful of the entire population.
Up till then, I always thought that I was, I donāt know, kind of a special person. It was fun to be with my family. I had fun with my classmates. And the school that I was going to, it had just about the most interesting people anywhere. But that night, I realized it wasnāt true. All the stuff we did during class that I thought was so fun and cool, was probably happening just like that in classes in other schools all over Japan. There was nothing special about my school at all. When I realized that, it suddenly felt like the whole world around me started to fade into a dull gray void. Brushing my teeth and going to sleep at night, waking up and eating breakfast in the morning, that stuff happened all over the place. They were everyday things that everybody was doing. When I thought about it like that, everything became boring. If thereās really that many people in the world, then there had to be someone who wasnāt ordinary. There had to be someone who was living an interesting life. There just had to be. But why wasnāt I that person? So, thatās how I felt till I finished elementary school.
And then I had another realization. I realized fun things wouldnāt come my way just by waiting for them. I thought when I got into junior high, it was time for me to make a change. Iād let the world know I wasnāt a girl who was happy sitting around waiting. And Iāve done my best to become that person. But in the end, nothing happened. More time went by and before I knew it, I was in high school. I thought that something would change.
Haruhi in āThe Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiyaā
Gavazzeni: āMusic worsens the manā
Alberto Sinigaglia (āttLā, La Stampa, insert) Continue reading
I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and donāt let anybody tell you different.
Kurt Vonnegut ā A Man Without a Country
Big city life Here my heart have no base And right now Babylon de āpon me case
People in a show, All lined in a row. We just push on by, Itās funny, How hard we try.
[ā¦]
Soon our work is done, All of us, one by one. Still, we live our lives, As if all this stuff survives.
[ā¦]
I find myself in a big city prison Arisen from the vision of mankind
Designed, to keep me discreetly Neatly in the corner
[ā¦]
Mattafix ā Big City Life
No matter what one does, there is never enough time.
Invisible
Civilization has no appeal to me. The Eastern Peoples seem to live their lives more sensibly. Because they donāt have such distant goals as us, the white brotherhood. The East isā¦ Ā«If you are moving, then you are on the right path.Ā» While for us, the path doesnāt matter ā only reaching the goal. I want to go to the East, because there I will feel well. Iāll be able to enter the Present time.
The point is ā to stop thinking. These days, we have too much information about everything. Internet, TV, radioā¦ You can find out what goes on in the States at any given point.
For me drugs arenāt a specific substance: theyāre anything that youāre addicted to. When you lose what youāve been addicted to, you have to accept something different. Iāve accepted that all these āgodsā we have, theyāre all teachers. There is one god ā they all serve him! Like in Hinduism: Vishnu, Brahma and Shiva ā they are one god, who creates in three different ways.
I think we are on this planet for too short a time to waste it. And so, I live every day. From beginning to end, I experience it. I try to do everything I possibly can, take every kind of drug I could, toā¦
WIth opiates you have the sense that you are wasting your life. Sleeping. Then you say to yourself: Ā«Iām sleeping!Ā» So you get up, and try to do other things, other drugs; I do all sort of drugs, but I remain active. Thatās why I wonāt quit until I find a steady girlfriend: otherwise Iāll die of boredom. But I donāt have a sense of security, stability, that I could have a lasting relationship, with a future. A junkie pays more attention to himself. All of us are little āNarcissiā, blooming here in this canal. Everything is always uncertain, you are always alone, so you say to yourself: Ā«Whatās the point?!Ā» If you had a wife, kids, TV, a newspaperā¦ Itās kind of idyllic. Thatās why there are movies to experience another life. More or less, thatās why there is art.
Kamen Petrov in āInvisibleā
Her [ed. his motherās] life was a failure, her marriage was a failureā¦ And Iām a part of that failure. Thatās probably how she sees it. And she wants to start over, but she doesnāt know how. You know what she does? She got an apartment, and she started decorating it in white and pink. Tsk! Why!? Total utopia.
What I mean isā¦ She is starting with the things that should come last.
Invisible
Arisen in vain to a life, Bleeding inner to suffer with time. Endlessly lost and still searching For something; somedayā¦
Obsession & deceit
To burn a mark for a lifetime.
Boundaries to brake,
Reached from the edge of time.
To rebuild the past
For something that will everlast.
Just searching for to find itself
In still-motion.
[ā¦]
Serve the frail mind, Escape through the lifetime To glance for your dismal youth.
Get closer, Closer to your own faith.
Shape of Despair ā Still-Motion
People always end up the way they started out. No one ever changes. They think they do but they donāt. If youāre the depressed type now, thatās the way youāll always be. If youāre the mindless happy type now, thatās the way youāll be when you grow up. You might lose some weight, your face may clear up, get a body tan, breast enlargement, a sex change, it makes no difference. Essentially, from in front, from behind. Whether you are 13 or 50, youāll always be the same.
Palindromes; also quoted in Morgondagen by Apati
Old people, they look back at the good old days, and it was good because they were young. But they act like it was āthe dayā. No, it was ācause youth is good: thatās gone, youāre fucked; itās not the day. And then they reject anything thatās new, itās like we do with fucking hip-hop, if youāre in your 30s: Ā«Oh, fuck that, that aināt music, we had music back when 38 Special was aroundā¦Ā» What? No. Letās all fucking kill ourselves for the hypocrisy, right?
Doug Stanhope ā Deadbeat Hero
The worst thing that can happen to a man who spends a lot of time alone, is to lack imagination. Life, already dull and repetitive in itself, becomes, without fantasy, a morbid spectacle.
The Consequences of Love, Paolo Sorrentino
Umberto Galimberti ā The success of philosophy
But for those who, adapted to the world, and with a moderate self-awareness still do not find a meaning of their existence, and therefore come into contact not with this or that pain, but with the essence of pain, for those there is no remedy in the pharmacy and perhaps not even in psychotherapy. Read the full page
The age-old development of consciousness Drives us away from the essence of life We meditate too much so that our instincts will fade away They fade away
Whatās the point of life And whatās the meaning if we all die in the end? Does it make sense to learn or do we forget everything?
Epica ā The Phantom Agony
Chance doesnāt exist But the path of life is not totally so predestined Time and chronology show us how all should be In the ways of existence To find out why we are here
Being conscious is a torment[š”] The more we learn is the less we get Every answer contains a new quest A quest to non existence, a journey with no end
No one surveys the whole, focus on things so small But lifeās objective is to make it meaningful Only searching for this That which doesnāt exist Although our ability to relativize remains unclear
Iām not afraid to die Iām afraid to be alive without being aware of it
Iām so afraid to, I couldnāt stand to Waste all my energy on things that do not matter anymore
Our future has already been written by us alone But we donāt grasp the meaning of our programmed course of life Our future has already been wasted by us alone And we just let it happen and do not worry at all
We only fear what comes And smell death every day Search for the answers that lie beyond
Epica ā Sensorium; lyrics by Mark Jansen
Out of the womb, into the tomb.
Translated from Italian by me (WTFPL).
Madness is simply pain.
Vittorino Andreoli
Despair is madness. Madness, the perception of the impossibility of living: being there, but as if not being there. Despair as an experience of madness is incompatible with life. It sees death, plans death, and kills the self and the other. Despair is a form of madness possible for man, for all men; it is, in fact, a human perspective, tied to his need to be with others, to the fact that he cannot live alone, because human life is not solitude but sharing, belonging, attachment.
Vittorino Andreoli, Il lato oscuro (āThe Dark Sideā) (2002)
Final Fantasy X ā Auron talks about āthe spiral of deathā
Tidus: Why is itā¦ everything in Spira seems to revolve around people dying?
Auron: Ahh, the spiral of death.
Tidus: Huh?
Auron: Summoners challenge the bringer of death, Sin, and die doing so. Guardians give their lives to protect their summoner. The fayth are the souls of the dead. Even the maesters of Yevon are unsent. Spira is full of death. Only Sin is reborn, and then, only to bring more death. It is a cycle of death, spiraling endlessly.
Final Fantasy X ā Tidus and Auron during the imprisonment in Bevelle
You say the drinking is better than a woman And you say the thinking takes too much time Well God save your children should you have them For, to you, thereās nothing if thereās no wine
BĆ“a ā Drinking
Waking Life ā Richard Linklater
A thousand years is but an instant. Read the full page
Nothing left to feel nor to understand.
I did not want to live my life. Nor did I even want to live for my deathā¦
Shape of Despair ā ā¦To Live for My Deathā¦
Nothing left to feel nor to understand.
Shape of Despair ā ā¦To Live for My Deathā¦
[ā¦]
You stand before the final dimension, and I am the darkness of eternityā¦
[ā¦] All life bears death from birth. Life fears death, but lives only to die. It starts with anxiety. Anxiety becomes fear. Fear leads to angerā¦ anger leads to hateā¦ hate leads to sufferingā¦ The only cure for this fear is total destruction. Kuja was a victim of his own fear. He concluded he could only save himself by destroying the origin of all things ā the crystal.
[ā¦]
ā¦Now, the theory is undeniable. Kujaās action proves it. All things live to perish. At last, life has uncovered this truth. Now, it is time to end this world.
[ā¦]
I exist for one purposeā¦ To return everything back to the zero world, where there is no life and no crystal to give life. In a world of nothing, fear does not exist. This is the world that all life desires.
[ā¦]
Foolish creatureā¦ Your fears have already deluded you. One day, you will choose destruction over existence, as Kuja did. When he sought to destroy the crystal, the purpose of life ended. Now, comeā¦
Necron, Final Fantasy IX
There are no more barriers to cross. All I have in common with the uncontrollable and the insane, the vicious and the evil, all the mayhem I have caused and my utter indifference toward it, I have now surpassed. My pain is constant and sharp, and I do not hope for a better world for anyone. In fact, I want my pain to be inflicted on others. I want no one to escape. But even after admitting this, there is no catharsis; my punishment continues to elude me, and I gain no deeper knowledge of myself. No new knowledge can be extracted from my telling. This confession has meant nothing.
Patrick Bateman in American Psycho
I am Ultimecia. Time shall compress, all existence deniedā¦
Reflect on your childhood: your sensation, your words, your emotionsā¦
Timeā¦ It will not wait.
No matter how hard you hold on. It escapes you.
Andā¦ [And youāre going to die. / And everything will be destroyed.]
Ultimecia (Artemisia), Final Fantasy VIII
Anyway, I can try anything, itās the same circle leading to nowhere, and Iām tired now. Anyway, Iāve lost my face, my dignity, my look, everything is gone and Iām tired now. Donāt be scared: Iāve found a good job and I go to work every day on my old bicycle you loved.
I am piling up some unread books under my bed and I really think Iāll never read again. No concentration, just a white disorder everywhere around me, you knowā¦ Iām so tired now. Donāt worry: I often go to dinners and parties with some old friends who care for me, take me back home, and stay.
Monochrome floors, monochrome walls; only absence near me, nothing but silence around me. Monochrome flat, monochrome life; only absence near me, nothing but silence around me.
Sometimes I search an event or something to remind me, but Iāve really got nothing in mind. Sometimes I open the windows, I listen people walking in the down street; there is life out there.
Yann Tiersen ā Monochrome (ft. Dominique A)
ā Would you still love me if I couldnāt play?
ā What?
ā Would you still love me if I couldnāt play?
ā You wouldnāt be you, if you couldnāt play.
ā No, I want to know.
ā Our bodies sway to music. Ā«Oh, brightening glance, how can we know the dancer from the dance?Ā»
ā But donāt you wish, sometimes, that you couldnāt play, that you could just be ordinary?
ā Like what? Live in the country? Making bread? Feeding chickens? Playing once a year with a bunch of amateurs?
ā How dare you insult my sister like thatā¦
ā I wasnāt insulting her.
ā Well, at least she chose her life. Not like you and me. Weāre just trained freaks.
Hilary and Jackie, the movie about Jacqueline du PrƩ
On the Highwind, near the ending
Cloud: Iāveā¦ been thinking too. About the universeā¦ planetā¦ ocean. How wide and bigā¦ No matter where I go and what I do it wonāt change a thing.
Cid: Maybe youāre right. But I came up with something different. I always thought this planet was so huge. But lookinā at it from space, I realized itās so small. Weāre just floatinā in the dark. Kind of makes you feel powerless. [ā¦] Thatās why I say this planetās still a kid. A little kid sick and trembling in the middle of this huge universe. [ā¦]
Vincent: City of the Ancientsā¦ The Ancientsā¦ after a long time that is probably what others will come to call usā¦ Hmmā¦hwa ha ha haā¦ Itās only a matter of time for us.
Final Fantasy VII
Lying On the Couch ā Irvin D. Yalom
But Marshal had not been swayed by these new developments. At sixty-three, he had been a psychiatrist long enough to have lived through several such positivistic swings. Read the full page
You know how I know itās the end of the world? Because everythingās been done, every kind of musicās been tried, every governmentās been tried, every fuckinā hairstyle. How you gonna make it another thousand years, for Chrissake?
Max Peltier in āStrange Daysā
The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst, and disease. It must be so. If there ever is a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in the population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored. In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you wonāt find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.
River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life, by Richard Dawkins
Translated from Italian by me (WTFPL).
Already from our dusk of birth, begins a destiny. Ruthless, for most human beings: if you are not born a billionaire, you are doomed forever. You have to give in to the everyday, procure stimuli for the project; instead of de-projecting, you are damned to the drawing.
As it began, it was over already, as in all Lorenzaccesque misadventures. If I had been the billionaire Schopenhauer, I certainly would not have written āThe World as Will and Representationā. I would have been careful not to: one is not born to work, to explain oneself, to think; one is not even born to un-think, because even that is engaging with thought. One is not born to manage, to act-suffer: all this is inflicted upon us by circumstances.
Just as we passively endure every prenatal perception, we will also endure the signifier. In the recurrence of life, discourse will never belong to the speaking being.
The registry office, the studying to survive, condemn us to in-forming ourselves, to form ourselves, deform ourselves, to become hunchbacked like Leopardi, just to have a part, when we would want nothing more than to put aside art, and life itself too. A true curse.
Carmelo Bene, Autografia di un ritratto (āAutograph of a Portraitā)
Translated from Italian by me (WTFPL).
Any so-called āknow-it-allā expertise is bullshit, and any problem is a false problem. For once, on this show, weāre really talking about bullshit, finally! Itās about time!, to recognize that weāre always talking bullshit. Tonight weāre saying itās not just tonight that itās bullshit, but that weāre always just talking words ā that is, bullshit.
Carmelo Bene at the Maurizio Costanzo Show (āUno contro tuttiā special)
And time will destroy all those as well. Why do people insist on creating things that will inevitably be destroyed? Why do people cling to life, knowing that they must someday die? ā¦Knowing that none of it will have meant anything once they do?
[ā¦]
Bleh! You people make me sick! You sound like lines from a self-help book! If thatās how itās going to beā¦ Iāll snuff them all out! Every last one of your sickening, little happy reasons for living!
Kefka, Final Fantasy VI, in its GBA translation by Tom Slattery
Whatever ā Michel Houellebecq
Early on certain individuals experience the frightening impossibility of living in itself. Read the full page
Angels of the Universe ā Einar MĆ”r GuĆ°mundsson
No, this grave is not deep enough to accomodate the feelings of us all. Read the full page
Thereās no such thing as life without bloodshed. I think the notion that the species can be improved in some way, that everyone could live in harmony, is a really dangerous idea. Those who are afflicted with this notion are the first ones to give up their souls, their freedom. Your desire that it be that way will enslave you and make your life vacuous.
Cormac McCarthy, The New York Times Magazine, interview
Under neon loneliness everlasting nothingness
Manic Street Preachers ā Motorcycle Emptiness
Mitch: You ever been in love?
Curly: Once. I was driving a herd across the panhandle. Texas. I donāt knowā¦ Passed near this little dirt farm right about sundown. Out in the field was this young woman, working down in the dirt. Just about then, she stood up to stretch her back. Ahā¦ Ahā¦ She was wearing a little cotton dress, and the settinā sun was right behind her, showing the shape that God gave her.
Mitch: What happened?
Curly: Ah! I just turned around and rode away.
Mitch: Why?
Curly: I figured it wasnāt gonna get any better than that.
Mitch: Yeah, but you could have been, you knowā¦ with her.
Curly: Iāve been with lots of womenā¦
Mitch: Yeah, but you know, she could have been the love of your life.
Curly: She is.
[ā¦]
Curly: Do you know what the secret of life is?
Mitch: No, what?
Curly: *points index finger skyward* This.
Mitch: Your finger?
Curly: One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and everything else donāt mean shit.
Mitch: Thatās great, butā¦ whatās the āone thing?ā
Curly: *smiles and points his finger at Mitch* Thatās what you gotta figure out.
City Slickers
That one passion, that all-encompassing passion that saves a lot of men, whatever that happens to be for a given individual, and that a lot of unlucky ones will never find in all their life.
And so with just a touch of our fingers We could make our circuitry explode All we ever wanted Was just to come in from the cold
[ā¦]
We really thought we had a purpose We were so anxious to achieve We had hope The world held promise For a slave To liberty
[ā¦]
When I thought life had some meaning Then I thought I had some choice (I was running blind) And I made some value judgments In a self-important voice (I was outa line) But then absurdity came over me And I longed to lose control (into no mind) Oh all I ever wanted Was just to come in from the cold
Joni Mitchell ā Come In From The Cold
Life is an effort that deserves a better cause.
Karl Kraus
Hope is the last thing to dieā¦ but itās always the first to fuck you over.
Italian saying
Iām not interested in solving the ills of society. I donāt want to save the world. I donāt even want to save meā¦ I think most talk is so boring; I mean: save this, do that, do thisā¦ I think weāre all so boring saying everything we donāt even wanna save ourselves, weāre so boring talking about it. Thereās nothing left to save, weāre so fucking boring. Let it die, I say. Let there be a new beginning. Itās awful. Goodnight.
Charles Bukowski ā Let There Be A New Beginning
Idealism is what precedes experience; cynicism is what follows.
David T. Wolf, as quoted by Robert Byrne, in The Third ā And Possibly the Best ā 637 Best Things Anybody Ever Said
The Annunciation ā AndrĆ”s Jeles
We exist, and yet we do not exist. Read the full page
ā What is the Nothing?
ā Itās the emptiness thatās left. Itās like a despair, destroying this world, and I have been trying to help it.
The NeverEnding Story
Erich Fromm ā Normal people are the sickest
I think itās a common fiction that people share, that the modern person is happy. Read the full page
We are survival machines ā robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes. This is a truth which still fills me with astonishment.
Richard Dawkins ā The Selfish Gene
Becoming aware of the oblivion of Being means witnessing the collapse of all that has been built upon its forgetting: God and world.
Umberto Galimberti ā Heidegger, Jaspers e il tramonto dellāOccidente (āHeidegger, Jaspers and the Decline of the Westā)
ā I saw the ocean, and I saw a mountain, and there were many people climbing up the mountain. It was like a procession. There was a lot of fog. I couldnāt see it very clearly, but at the very top was Death.
The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser
The unforgettable days in a manās life number only five or six. The rest just fill up space.
Ennio Flaiano, Autobiografia del Blu di Prussia (āAutobiography of Prussian Blueā)
SatietyāI have just now uttered this word, and already I no longer know apropos of what, so readily does it apply to everything I feel and think, to everything I love and loathe, to satiety itself.
Emil Cioran ā The Trouble With Being Born
As a general rule, men expect disappointment: they know they must not be impatient, that it will come sooner or later, that it will hold off long enough for them to proceed with their undertakings of the moment. The disabused man is different: for him, disappointment occurs at the same time as the deed; he has no need to await it, it is present. By freeing himself from succession, he has devoured the possible and rendered the future superfluous. āI cannot meet you in your future,ā he says to the others. āWe do not have a single moment in common.ā Because for him the whole of the future is already here.
When we perceive the end in the beginning, we move faster than time. Illumination, that lightning disappointment, affords a certitude which transforms disillusion into deliverance.
Emil Cioran ā The Trouble With Being Born
When you know yourself well and do not despise yourself utterly, it is because you are too exhausted to indulge in extreme feelings.
Emil Cioran ā The Trouble With Being Born
ā¦to see the world as it really is is devastating and terrifying. It achieves the very result that the child has painfully built his character over the years in order to avoid: it makes routine, automatic, secure, self-confident activity impossible. It makes thoughtless living in the world of men an impossibility. It places a trembling animal at the mercy of the entire cosmos and the problem of the meaning of it.
Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death
Words ruin oneās thoughts, paper makes them ridiculous, and even while one is still glad to get something ruined and something ridiculous down on paper, oneās memory manages to lose hold of even this ruined and ridiculous something. Paper can turn an enormity into a triviality, an absurdity. If you look at it this way, then whatever appears in the world, by way of the spiritual world so to speak, is always a ruined thing, a ridiculous thing, which means that everything in this world is ridiculous and ruined. Words were made to demean thought, I would even go so far as to state that words exist in order to abolish thought, and one day they will succeed one hundred percent in so doing. In any case, words were bringing everything down, Konrad said. Depression derives from words, nothing else.
Thomas Bernhard, The Lime Works
That Day on the Moon ā Oriana Fallaci
[āā¦] And on their return, rest assured, they wonāt be writing poetry. If they were capable of it, after all, they wouldnāt be going to the Moon. And, most importantly, they wouldnāt be coming back.ā Continue reading
Aldrin: Beautiful view.
Armstrong: Isnāt that something? Magnificent sight out here.
Aldrin: Magnificent desolation.
Also see William Shatnerās trip to space.
I know what you must be saying to yourselves. If thatās the way she feels about it why doesnāt she just end it all? Oh, no. Not me. Iām in no hurry for that final disappointment. For I know just as well as Iām standing here talking to you, when that final moment comes and Iām breathing my last breath, Iāll be saying to myself:
Is that all there is, is that all there is If thatās all there is my friends, then letās keep dancing Letās break out the booze and have a ball If thatās all there is
Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller ā Is That All There Is?
Writing becomes not easier, but more difficult for me. Every word is like an unnecessary stain on silence and nothingness.
Samuel Beckett, 1969 Vogue interview
Our Lady of the Turks ā Carmelo Bene
He who has never thought about death is perhaps immortal. This is how you can see the Virgin Mary. Read the full page
Translated from Italian by me (WTFPL).
He who has never thought about death is perhaps immortal. This is how you can see the Virgin Mary.
Carmelo Bene ā Our Lady of the Turks
Were (say) Frankl to attempt to cure (say) Zapffe from his āexistential frustration,ā āontological despairā or āmetaphysic-melancholic clairvoyance,ā the chances are that Zapffe (rather than ācuredā) would be baffled by Franklās sophomoric philosophizing. āYou may be psychologically healthier than I,ā Zapffe would gladly admit, ābut I must insist that I am a better philosopher. A lifelong search for a meaning of life in general, and of my life in particular, has led me ā reluctantly, but with cataclysmic consistency and sleepwalkerās certainty ā to realize that itās all fantasy and delusions, divinely subsidized to put us at peace with our āsituation.ā You are certainly right that psycho-pathological explanations of my biosophical pessimism would be totally irrelevant; but I also fail to see what you can possibly accomplish with your naĆÆve, maladroit metaphysics, behind which ā if you will permit me to speak your language for once ā I see but the profoundest, most fundamental trauma, and that great universal repression which prevents all fatal insight into man and his ācosmic conditions,ā the mysterious, grotesquely absurd origin and genesis of body and mind, their inalienable interests, and their final and complete obliteration, the return of the synthesis to the absolute zero.ā The biosophist is fully aware of the many marvellous metaphysics offering āpeace in heart,ā āreconciliation with the worldā and āatonement with the almighty,ā or the like, to anyone who is willing to join this or that suificating sect, and replace intellectually honest experience with fictitious world views. The spiritual vacuum is often so painful that if the fiction is sufficiently permanent, it does not seem to matter if it should turn out not to be so terribly pleasant.
Happiness Is for the Pigs: Philosophy versus Psychotherapy ā Herman TĆønnessen
(Giuliana and her son, in front of the factories)
ā Why is that smoke yellow?
ā Because itās poison.
ā But then, if a little bird flies through it, it dies.
ā Well, by now the little birds know, and they donāt fly through it anymore.
Red Desert (āIl deserto rossoā) ā Final scene
ā I havenāt recovered. I never will. Neverā¦
[ā¦]
ā Donāt say that. Calm down. What are you afraid of?
ā The streets, the factories, the colors, the peopleā¦ everything!
[ā¦]
ā Thereās something terrible about reality and i donāt know what it is. No one will tell me. Even you donāt help me, Corrado.
Giuliana in āRed Desertā (āIl deserto rossoā)
Time Stood Still ā Ermanno Olmi
Peopleās feelings have changed. Read the full page
Philosophical Investigations ā Ludwig Wittgenstein
Where does our investigation get its importance from, since it seems only to destroy everything interesting, that is, all that is great and important? (As it were all the buildings, leaving behind only bits of stone and rubble.) What we are destroying is nothing but houses of cards and we are clearing up the ground of language on which they stand. Read the full page
Life is a sexually transmitted disease and the mortality rate is one hundred percent.
Ronald Laing
Life is a sexually transmitted disease that slowly leads to death.
A different version, from the Internet
In this game that weāre playing, we canāt win. Some kinds of failure are better than other kinds, thatās all.
1984 ā George Orwell
Do normies suffer?
In other words, you might say that I still have no understanding of what makes human beings tick. My apprehension on discovering that my concept of happiness seemed to be completely at variance with that of everyone else was so great as to make me toss sleeplessly and groan night after night in my bed. It drove me indeed to the brink of lunacy. I wonder if I have actually been happy. People have told me, really more times than I can remember, ever since I was a small boy, how lucky I was, but I have always felt as if I were suffering in hell. It has seemed to me in fact that those who called me lucky were incomparably more fortunate than I. I have sometimes thought that I have been burdened with a pack of ten misfortunes, any one of which if borne by my neighbor would be enough to make a murderer of him.
I simply donāt understand. I have not the remotest clue what the nature or extent of my neighborās woes can be. Practical troubles, griefs that can be assuaged if only there is enough to eatāthese may be the most intense of all burning hells, horrible enough to blast to smithereens my ten misfortunes, but that is precisely what I donāt understand: if my neighbors manage to survive without killing themselves, without going mad, maintaining an interest in political parties, not yielding to despair, resolutely pursuing the fight for existence, can their griefs really be genuine? Am I wrong in thinking that these people have become such complete egoists and are so convinced of the normality of their way of life that they have never once doubted themselves? If that is the case, their sufferings should be easy to bear: they are the common lot of human beings and perhaps the best one can hope for. I donāt knowā¦ If youāve slept soundly at night the morning is exhilarating, I suppose. What kind of dreams do they have? What do they think about when they walk along the street? Money? Hardlyāit couldnāt only be that. I seem to have heard the theory advanced that human beings live in order to eat, but Iāve never heard anyone say that they lived in order to make money. No. And yet, in some instancesā¦ No, I donāt even know thatā¦ The more I think of it, the less I understand. All I feel are the assaults of apprehension and terror at the thought that I am the only one who is entirely unlike the rest. It is almost impossible for me to converse with other people. What should I talk about, how should I say it?āI donāt know.
No Longer Human / A Shameful Life ā Osamu Dazai
[ā¦] After the horses came Muriel, the white goat, and Benjamin, the donkey. Benjamin was the oldest animal on the farm, and the worst tempered. He seldom talked, and when he did, it was usually to make some cynical remarkāfor instance, he would say that God had given him a tail to keep the flies off, but that he would sooner have had no tail and no flies. Alone among the animals on the farm he never laughed. If asked why, he would say that he saw nothing to laugh at. Continue reading
All human activities are equivalent and all are on the principle doomed to failure. [ā¦] Thus it amounts to the same thing whether one gets drunk alone or is a leader of nations.
Being and Nothingness ā Jean-Paul Sartre
As far as I am concerned, I resign from humanity. I no longer want to be, nor can still be, a man. What should I do? Work for a social and political system, make a girl miserable? Hunt for weaknesses in philosophical systems, fight for moral and esthetic ideals? Itās all too little. I renounce my humanity even though I may find myself alone. But am I not already alone in this world from which I no longer expect anything?
Emil Cioran ā On the Heights of Despair
The Last Messiah ā Peter Wessel Zapffe
Ā«Know yourselves ā be infertile and let the earth be silent after ye.Ā» Read the full page
The worst part is wondering how youāll find the strength tomorrow to go on doing what you did today and have been doing for much too long, where youāll find the strength for all that stupid running around, those projects that come to nothing, those attempts to escape from crushing necessity, which always founder and serve only to convince you one more time that destiny is implacable, that every night will find you down and out, crushed by the dread of more and more sordid and insecure tomorrows. And maybe itās treacherous old age coming on, threatening the worst. Not much music left inside us for life to dance to. Our youth has gone to the ends of the earth to die in the silence of the truth. And where, I ask you, can a man escape to, when he hasnāt enough madness left inside him? The truth is an endless death agony. The truth is death. You have to choose: death or lies. Iāve never been able to kill myself.
Louis-Ferdinand CĆ©line, Journey to the End of the Night
[ā¦] that mutilation in which life loses something it never hadāthe futureācertainly simplifies our lives, but also renders them so senseless that I might be tempted to use the brief present to tear out the few hairs remaining on this crooked head.
Italo Svevo ā A Very Old Man
As soon as man comes to life, he is at once old enough to die.
Heidegger ā Being and Time
The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true.
James Branch Cabell ā The Silver Stallion
Natural law does not entitle us to happiness, but rather it prescribes wretchedness and sorrow. When something edible is left exposed, from all directions parasites come running, and if there are no parasites, they are quickly generated. Soon the prey is barely sufficient, and immediately afterwards it no longer suffices at all, for nature doesnāt do sums, she experiments. When food no longer suffices, then consumers must diminish through death preceded by pain; thus equilibrium, for a moment, is reestablished.
Italo Svevo ā Zenoās Conscience / Confessions of Zeno
Life does resemble sickness a bit, as it proceeds by crises and lyses, and has daily improvements and setbacks. Unlike other sicknesses, life is always fatal. It doesnāt tolerate therapies.
Italo Svevo ā Zenoās Conscience / Confessions of Zeno
Short Stories for a Year ā The Wheelbarrow ā Luigi Pirandello
When thereās someone around, I never look at her, but I feel that sheās looking at me, sheās looking at me without taking her eyes off me for a moment. Iād like to make her understand in private that itās nothing, that she should relax, that I couldnāt allow myself to perform this brief act in front of others, that for her itās of no importance, but for me itās everything. I perform it every day at the right moment in utmost secrecy and with frightful joy because, trembling, I experience the delight of a divine, conscious madness that for an instant frees me and allows me to get even with everything. Read the full page
[ā¦] that power of accurate observation which is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it; [ā¦]
George Bernard Shaw
God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.[š”]
Friedrich Nietzsche ā The Joyous Science
An old legĀend has it that King MiĀdas hunted a long time in the woods for the wise Silenus, comĀpanĀion of DionyĀsus, withĀout beĀing able to catch him. When he had fiĀnally caught him the king asked him what he conĀsidĀered manās greatĀest good. The daeĀmon reĀmained sullen and unĀcomĀmuĀnicaĀtive unĀtil fiĀnally, forced by the king, he broke into a shrill laugh and spoke: āEphemeral wretch, beĀgotĀten by acĀciĀdent and toil, why do you force me to tell you what it would be your greatĀest boon not to hear? What would be best for you is quite beĀyond your reach: not to have been born, not to be, to be nothĀing. But the secĀond best is to die soon.ā
The Wisdom of Silenus as told by Friedrich Nietzsche in The Birth of Tragedy
Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.
Hector Berlioz
Listen to the cry of a woman in labor at the hour of giving birth ā look at the dying manās struggle at his last extremity, and then tell me whether something that begins and ends thus could be intended for enjoyment.
SĆøren Kierkegaard, journals
That human life must be some kind of mistake is sufficiently proved by the simple observation that man is a compound of needs which are hard to satisfy; that their satisfaction achieves nothing but a painless condition in which he is only given over to boredom; and that boredom is a direct proof that existence is in itself valueless, for boredom is nothing other than the sensation of the emptiness of existence.
Arthur Schopenhauer ā Parerga and Paralipomena; also in āEssays and Aphorismsā
[ā¦] deep, deep, and forever, into some ordinary and nameless grave.
Edgar Allan Poe, The Premature Burial
Translated from Italian by me (WTFPL).
Two truths that men will generally never believe: one, that they know nothing; the other, that they are nothing. Add a third, which is closely related to the second: that they have nothing to hope for after death.
Leopardi, Zibaldone, 4525-4526
Translated from Italian by me (WTFPL).
Eleandro. Therefore those are greatly mistaken who say and proclaim that the perfection of man consists in the knowledge of truth, and that all his ills arise from false opinions and from ignorance, and that mankind will at last be happy when each man, or most men, shall know the truth, and according to that alone compose and govern their lives. And this is said by nearly all the philosophers, ancient and modern. Now according to your judgment, those truths which are the substance of all philosophy ought to be concealed from the majority of men; and I believe you would readily agree that they ought to be ignored or forgotten by everyone: for, once known and kept in the mind, they can do nothing but harm. Which is the same as saying that philosophy must be extirpated from the world. I am not unaware that the final conclusion to be drawn from true and perfect philosophy is that one must not philosophize. From this it follows, first, that philosophy is useless, because to this end of not philosophizing, it is not necessary to be a philosopher; secondly, it is most harmful, since that final conclusion cannot be learned except at oneās own cost, and once it is learned, it cannot be put into practice; it being not in manās power to forget the truths once known, and it being easier to lay aside any other habit than that of philosophizing. In short, philosophy, hoping and promising at the outset to cure our ills, ends by vainly wishing to remedy itself.
Giacomo Leopardi ā Small Moral Works ā Dialogue between Timandro and Eleandro
The World as Will and Representation
[ā¦]But, besides all this, death is the great opportunity no longer to be I;āto him who uses it. During life the will of man is without freedom: his action takes place with necessity upon the basis of his unalterable character in the chain of motives (ed. cause-effect chain). But every one remembers much that he has done, and on account of which he is by no means satisfied with himself. If now he were to go on living, he would go on acting in the same way, on account of the unalterable nature of his character. Accordingly he must cease to be what he is in order to be able to arise out of the germ of his nature as a new and different being. Therefore death looses these bonds; the will again becomes free; for freedom lies in the Esse, not in the Operari[ā¦]
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, as found in āgeneric_gnostic_01_shardā in the video game āCyberpunk 2077ā (2020)
There is only one inborn error, and that is the notion that we exist in order to be happyā¦ So long as we persist in this inborn error, and indeed even become confirmed in it through optimistic dogmas, the world seems to us full of contradictions. For at every step, in things great and small, we are bound to experience that the world and life are certainly not arranged for the purpose of maintaining a happy existenceā¦ hence the countenances of almost all elderly persons wear the expression of what is called disappointment.
Arthur Schopenhauer ā The World as Will and Representation
Life as a repetition of the same dull, insipid routine of insignificant actions of buttoning and unbuttoning, of sleeping and waking, of eating, and hunger returning, and these ditto, ditto repeatedā¦
āOn Lifeā by G. S. ā āThe Public Advertiserā of London
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow Creeps in this petty pace from day to day To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Lifeās but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury Signifying nothing.
The Tragedy of Macbeth (Act V, Scene V) ā William Shakespeare
The Imitation of Christ ā Thomas Ć Kempis
Truly it is misery even to live upon the earth. Read the full page
See the gulf of time behind and another infinite time ahead. What difference is there in this respect between an infant who lives three days and someone who lives three times as long as Nestor?
Marcus Aurelius ā Meditations, 4.50
Out of the womb, into the tomb.
(and variants)
Also see the crazy Xbox ad.
CHORUS (Str.) Who craves excess of days, Scorning the common span Of life, I judge that man A giddy wight who walks in follyās ways. For the long years heap up a grievous load, Scant pleasures, heavier pains, Till not one joy remains For him who lingers on lifeās weary road And come it slow or fast, One doom of fate Doth all await, For dance and marriage bell, The dirge and funeral knell. Death the deliverer freeth all at last. (Ant.) Not to be born at all Is best, far best that can befall, Next best, when born, with least delay To trace the backward way. For when youth passes with its giddy train, Troubles on troubles follow, toils on toils, Pain, pain for ever pain; And none escapes lifeās coils. Envy, sedition, strife, Carnage and war, make up the tale of life. Last comes the worst and most abhorred stage Of unregarded age, Joyless, companionless and slow, Of woes the crowning woe.
Sophocles ā Oedipus at Colonus (transl. by F. Storr)
Vanitas vanitatum et omnia vanitas.
Vanity of vanities, all is vanity. (Every thing is ephemeral, everything is transient.)
Qoheleth/Ecclesiastes
I said to myself concerning the sons of men, āGod has surely tested them in order for them to see that they are but beasts.
Surely the fate of human beings is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath; humans have no advantage over animals. Everything is meaningless.
Both go to the same placeāthey came from dust and they return to dust.
For who can prove that the human spirit goes up and the spirit of animals goes down into the earth?ā
Qoheleth/Ecclesiastes, 3:18 ā 21
Omnia fui, nihil expedit.
Roman emperor Lucius Septimius Severus
Iāve been all things, but all was worthless.
Nihil sub sole novum.
Qohelet, 1,9-10
Nothing new under the sun. (Everything has already been said or done before.)