Wow. I watched the link, and I was impressed. Yep, that's 99.9999% Ligotti ... almost verbatim. Very impressive ... Isn't it something how his co-worker pushes him to reveal his philosophy of life (his worldview, his Weltanshuung), and then ... maybe because it is so counter to anything he's been exposed to before, tells him to please shut the
**** up.
It's not actors that suck. Those actors are cool, doing some justice ... It's the industry that irks me. Sometimes I can't blame people for zoning out in front of the tube. I know that when I am living alone - and I never get a TV - there is a definite anxiety I experience ... which is most likely the "natural state" ... When at my mom's I can't help but overhear the tube ... I think that this show you point out, True Detective, would most likely hold my attention for awhile. My thing is that I find it difficult to commit myself to watching anything.
I get up and just spontaneously wander away from it ... Then again, if I saw George Carlin's face on the tube I would be glued to it ... Maybe it has more to do with the content than the medium itself.
Thanks for pointing that show out to me ... I mean, I'm not going to run out and buy a TV or look into subscribing to cable, but it is good to see Ligotti is influencing popular culture.
Lately I have returned to studying concepts of a technical nature and find that anxiety seems to decrease when I lose my "self" in abstract thought. Also, rather than "moving on" I have returned to things I may have went over too quickly ... 10 years later ... It took that long for interest in it to return.
While life in general may be an overall disaster and holds great potential for horror and despair, I have a tendency to find inner peace in studying things that have a logic to them ... that I can understand.
Maybe antinatalism is carrying logic to the extreme. Life is irrational ... it makes no sense.
When one values intellectual integrity and emotional honesty, one tends to isolate since this is such a rare quality in society. So much of society is just an outright farce and it is considered quite foolish to actually be honest, to display feelings, or to publicly scorn ideas that people literally kill one another over; and often it is foolish because it's not worth the trouble ... so we learn to hide ...
The world of logic is safe ... and consistent ... If a compiler tells me there is an error and I know there is no error in my logic, then there must be a typo somewhere ... I (the presence in the brain we call ATTENTION) has to inspect the code ... hunt down the "bug" ... While lost in such things, my mind is a million miles away from, say, being tormented by the image of a beautiful woman's face ...
Maybe "intellectual" or "technical" types of activities provide a spiritual sanctuary from the brutal facts of existence ... Is it a transcendent state?
And yet, when one is grieving over a loss or just in a terrible funk, it is nearly impossible to become interested in anything.
Maybe that is why I find watching TV depressing since I have experienced the magic that occurs out of nowhere when I am lost in studying. This is the enjoyment of our higher mental faculties that Schopenhauer was continually writing about. That's why a few of us here openly declare our favorite activities are solitary.
This is why books are usually so much more effective than films will ever be, since films always involve the external social world, where books are a better medium for reflecting the subjective world.
Then again, sometimes it is a relief just to zone out watching cartoons.
The group mind is a creepy phenomenon. Think of the obsession over sporting events ... the emotion ... what is that all about? Nation-states ... group-think ... It is quite frightening to witness the herd in action ...
I miss George Carlin's perspective. He hated groups. He said he could only relate to people as individuals and hated all the groups people "identify" with.
Anyway ... If one has ever been in the grip of an intense chemical addiction, whether it was to a drug or to another human being, one appreciates a state of satiation or "lack of yearning" ... to be calm enough and focused enough to try to understand something.
Maybe mechanics and other problem solvers are content as long as they have a machine to trouble-shoot and diagnose ... I can't help but wonder how many turn the laser beam of their attention inward and try to diagnose the very problem of existence itself ...
Does the brain think on different levels simultaneously? I mean, when one part of the brain is reflecting on memory segments and where variable values are stored in actual hardware, a higher part of the brain is observing still yet another part of the brain thinking of weapons that are exploding, animals that are at this very moment ripping the flesh off their cousin's bones, whether a loved one will once again avoid an almost inevitable vehicular misadventure, and all this chaos of mental life ...
Words give an illusion of one-dimensional thought ... What we type here is not even the tip of the iceberg of our mental life ... but, for now, if it helps us to scribble somewhere that is not affiliated with any corporate mind set, then this board will be just what it is. In a world where it is difficult to get a hearing or even taken seriously as a "Metaphysical Creature with very serious thoughts", at least here we can carry on like David Hume,
making any addition to our stock of knowledge in subjects of such unspeakable importance ...
“What though these reasonings concerning human nature seem abstract and of difficult comprehension, this affords no presumption of their falsehood. On the contrary, it seems impossible that what has hitherto escaped so many wise and profound philosophers can be very obvious and easy. And whatever pains these researches may cost us, we may think ourselves sufficiently rewarded, not only in point of profit but of pleasure, if, by that means, we can make any addition to our stock of knowledge in subjects of such unspeakable importance.”
“But as, after all, the abstractedness of these speculations is no recommendation, but rather a disadvantage, to them, and as this difficulty may perhaps be surmounted by care and art and the avoiding of all unnecessary detail, we have, in the following Inquiry, attempted to throw some light upon subjects from which uncertainty has hitherto deterred the wise, and obscurity the ignorant. Happy if we can unite the boundaries of the different species of philosophy by reconciling profound inquiry with clearness, and truth with novelty! And still more happy, if, reasoning in this easy manner, we can undermine the foundations of an abstruse philosophy which seems to have hitherto served only as a shelter to superstition and a cover to absurdity and error!” (Hume)
abstruse = “hard to understand”; “secret or hidden”