I didn't read anything by Ligotti until I was 50 years old. My life, my experiences are completely different from his and, at my age, I am pretty well complete as a person. I'm still growing and changing as a human being, but by now, as you can expect, it takes a lot to unsettle me. Ligotti did just that.

I grew up reading the Classics of Greek and Latin literature, 16th and 17th century English poetry and plays and much of modern literature. I can read Chaucer in the original. I am very familiar with 20th century French literature. Now, I don't say any of this to brag. I read all of these things because I enjoyed them and for no other reason. This is just to let you know I know what I'm talking about.

Thomas Ligotti's stories affected me more than anyone else I've read in the last 20 years. He is such a masterful story teller that he brings to life his dark vision in anything he writes. Even his weakest stories (and this is only in comparison to his stronger stories) - the first handful of stories in Songs of a Dead Dreamer - are better than most other writers best works. He is one of the masters of the short story. Though he will never get a Nobel Prize due to his subject matter he is a better writer than many Nobel writers that I have read (or, with some, tried to read).

Ligotti brings his worst fears to life in a way that is uncanny. He casts a spell with each story. In a sense it doesn't matter what he actually believes. It doesn't matter if he accurately describes the world we live in. He voices the fears of our age and that is his unique contribution. Whatever our own beliefs many of us secretly fear that the Universe is really a joke and that we are unimportant. Our secret fears may not be exactly like Tom Ligotti's, but his writing connects with our fears on a basic, non-intellectual level. How many other writers are like him in this way?

When I picked up a copy of Nightmare Factory in a library (Almost by chance. I liked the cover.) I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I was moved terribly and read everything that I could get my hands on. I've read most of his stories 7 or 8 times now and I haven't gotten tired of him. He is that good of a writer.

I wish that I could write as well as him.

Re: A Malignant Universe?
 

And that from no less a source than Mr. D Himself! (devil, haha)... I enjoyed reading your post.

Re: A Malignant Universe?
 

A malignant universe? Or a benevolent one? It probably doesn't matter in the long run. One may wake up (from sleep or flawed awareness) with a sense of responsibility within the universe, and a duty to one's fellow creatures. Or one may awake to become a purse snatcher, a website hacker, or a tyrant who can't distinguish the difference between his penis and a thermonuclear device. Dreams and nightmares are the constants. What is the medium through which they flow?

Barking at shadows,
Spotbowserfido

Re: A Malignant Universe?
 

i think this is probably the ultimate question. and i have created my own religion around my personal answer...

briefly, i believe it to be a malignant universe. not because it hates human beings, but because the universe is detrimental to our species. it suits the universe's plans to feed upon us and keep us at a sub-God level. fortunately, there is a way to escape: Awakening.

the longer version can be found here:

http://cultofcthulhu.net/I-am-the-way-cthulhu1a.htm


thanks,

darrick

Re: A Malignant Universe?
 

My current thoughts:

It's silly to qualify the universe in terms such as "malignant," "benevolent," etc. Truth transcends all these things; furthermore, "opposites" are not antagonistic, but symbiotic. That's important, because we can't fight our shadows. To struggle against Babylon is to become Babylon. (...where's my haze joint?)

I believe we exist because, through us, the cosmic consciousness achieves something that it cannot achieve otherwise. (And I think it is the universe's business, as a matter of course, to see through every creative possibility... I also stick by my earlier contention that cosmic creativity is inherently a positive thing, inasmuch as such a term can apply. God is the "eternal yes.")

Our purpose, in short, is to ascend. An ascension of spirit is only possible when that spirit has first descended into the mundane. We humans, then, are God as He appears in the Hermetic Below, and it is our destiny to make a movement of the soul that returns us to the Above. In a sense, this is all an illusion, a trick of the mind on a cosmic level. But, "seeming is everything," and many things are made possible through human experience: a wide range of idiosyncratic perceptions, thoughts, emotions... whole worlds unto each person... but, ultimately, these things are all symptomatic of the great process that reconciles us with the creative source. Once we "transcend," we realize we never really fell away in the first place.

The simplest, yet most difficult, part: the only obstacle in one's way is oneself.

In defense of what I sense is a minority viewpoint, :D
v.

Re: A Malignant Universe?
 

Hey V, we meet again...

It's pretty trippy, but there's some clarity in what you say here. Consciousness expressing through all kinds of experience and all. Sentient consciousness, eh? Well. This seems to line right up with some Alan Watts I "seem" to remember. When my bourbon and Sprite are done I don't know what will be remembered.

I think I said upthread that Life has tried and is trying its best, implying it may fail in this human experiment (or in any). I do remember that. Come to D.C. and let's get lost in our thoughts until, poor us, we're never heard from again.

By the way, here's the best definition of awareness I've ever come across:

"Awareness is being ever present, in full alertness, observing without judging, sensing whatever is." --Bernard Gunther

That does seem to help all...

Hello to all.

Re: A Malignant Universe?
 

Back in the middle ages some philosophers and rogue theologists were convinced the world was not the work of God, but the dream of a demon. Years ago I was convinced of a variant form of this old argument; the Universe was the dream of a serial killer or an insane specter. Today I'm certain the existence or non existence of this serial killer/god/whatever is of no importance. This is not a form of Agnosticism, but cosmic indifferentism. Agnosticism implies that both the existence and non-existence of god are important paradigm shift events; the Universe is dramatically changed if this entity exists or doesn't exist, and the ability of changing the nature of the universe gives this entity some form of importance or meaning… I don’t think this is the case, the human and universal conditions remain the same.

As someone (Dr. Bantham?) said earlier, malignant and benevolent are anthropocentric terms used to describe the greater idiot void, in no way different to a horny and loving, but easy to anger, Judeo-Christian god or Hellenic godly legend. We like to attach labels in order to have a sense of understanding and control, but they are just provisional and have no objective meaning outside of human societies.

I have a small story to tell:

I studied my elementary school in a private Catholic institution managed by priests who belong to the educational order founded by St. Jean-Baptiste de la Salle. I remember that back at the time I made friends with the priest who was in charge of the school's library, a brilliant mathematician with a degree in theology and philosophy. He was the man who introduced me to evolution, big bang, the scientific method and philosophy way before the standard educational programs. One day after I asked him if he had heard the recent rumors of a ghost that lived amongst the trees in the playground (I was nine years back then) he began to tell me about life and death from scientific and metaphysical perceptions. As if judging that I was going to understand his words, he told me a theory of his own, derived from some old Gnostic legend; according to him the Big Bang was in fact the fall of the Dragon (Shaitan, the devil, what have you) and all the processes involving order taking over chaos, such as planetary and star formation and the evolution of primitive and grotesque lower life forms into higher beings, was the process of the Dragon, in the form of matter and energy, taking shape and becoming whole again, a process that was inevitable. The implication of this theory, (and my nine years old child brain understood that terribly) was that there exists some of the Dragon's essence in everything that surrounds us, even inside of us.

I didn’t understand some of the things he told me back then, but as I grew and learned about various different things, the shape of his theory became clearer. It made a very strong impression in me back then (You wouldn’t expect a grandfatherly looking priest would tell you something like that), but what really has got me is the similarity between this man's theory, TL's own Netherscurial and the theologies hinted at in Matt's "Divinations of the Deep" story collection.

Perhaps we all just come from a rotten fleshy thing and life is just a brief distraction or dream of the dying meat cells...

Re: A Malignant Universe?
 

Hello again...

To clarify something in my earlier post: when I say we have a "purpose" in the grand scheme of things, I don't mean it in the sense that we are designed for some end. To get even more Alan Watts-y/quasi-Zen on ya, I'd say the purpose of things is purposelessness. Music and dancing are good metaphors; the "end" is not some temporal goal or some relation between events (that'd be silly, since there's no future and no past, but only the eternal now,) but rather the unfolding of each moment, each gesture, what have you.

I think the idea of "suchness" can point us in the right direction. Things just are, and that is their whole significance. That's what I mean by describing God as the "eternal yes." Everything exists in the affirmative when it is taken "as such." Negativity exists only as a relation, a mere concept, and concepts don't "stick" to reality when we're in the territory I'm describing.

On a side note, I find it curious that when people describe the universe as "indifferent," they often do so with notes of (as I perceive it) pessimism, bitterness, disappointment... in other words, they don't seem to like the very idea they're proposing. That idea, I guess, is that the "universe" is something objective, absolute, and distinct from us -- qualities that would certainly make it easier for us to say "the universe is" this or that. I'd argue, instead, that it's subjective, dynamic, and -- crucially -- a part of us just as much as we are a part of it. Maybe "the universe is" this, that, and the other, and none of these things, and something else entirely...!

I wonder, then, why cosmic indifference ought to be considered a bad thing. I wouldn't want the universe to put any stock into trivial human concerns. I want it to do what it does, to dance, to speak the "eternal yes." The play of light casts plenty of deep shadows, but I can choose the extent to which I take them seriously.

(P.S. I obviously love talking armchair philosophy/theology/etc., and since this forum is frequented by intelligent folk, I enjoy and appreciate the feedback here... so, even if I start to sound like a naive hippie, know that I'm reading and considering with interest. :wink: )

Re: A Malignant Universe?
 

This is true, and I have noticed that as well, in me and others. I suppose it probably is a racial memory of sorts, the belief that there is a higher force or purpose looking over us, just to discover that such "force" is not even there, or doesn't care. Kind of when the kid finds out that his parents actually do not care about him, he cannot help it but be bitter about it.

Cosmic indifferentism is a long process that's been taking place since ancient Greece, if not earlier, and it goes hand in hand with the evolution of Cosmology. I think it was a Greek philosopher called Aristomano (Spanish version, and no, it's not Aristotle) the one who purposed the Copernican astronomical model centuries before Copernicus was born, something that made him fall from grace in the Platonic school. It is no coincidence that medieval Roman Catholicism embraced the Heliocentric model along with other ideas "from those Heathens" they found convenient for their credo. Conspiracy nuts like to claim that the Catholic Church knew the Sun was the center of the known Universe, but that they silenced Galileo because humanity was "not yet ready to know" it no longer had a place of honor and importance.

Knowing that nothing we do is of ultimate importance can be a moral relief (nothing that I do will have any lasting consequence) but it can also be depressing. I’m an architect and another architect friend of mine once told me that we humans like to build monuments because we don’t want to be forgotten. I told him that we like to build monuments because we are idiots… go figure.

Re: A Malignant Universe?
 

ventriloquist, there is no need to be even the slightest bit defensive within this thread (or universe, for that matter). From this vantage point, there are no wrong answers. There are only "answers" which are not necessarily compatible with one's outlook at any given time. Also, the only silly question is the one that goes unasked...

Re: A Malignant Universe?
 

Good point, my canine comrade.... (...that is Laika, isn't it?)

I am self-conscious about getting too murky here. Kind of ironic, since I wouldn't care so much if I took some of my own advice. :roll:

My question: Is it the lack of "ultimate importance" that depresses us, or is it the implicit knowledge that we are free to make of the world what we will? To take Oscar Wilde out of context, "Everyone is born a king; most people die in exile." I often think we simply grow to distrust/dislike ourselves too much to accept our own divinity. Or maybe we're just too lazy to do all the hard work involved in both A) reaching that level of realization, and B) holding up our end of the bargain after we do. In any case, I wonder how much "existential angst" can be chalked up to a sort of spiritual denial. One form of this denial would be to say "it isn't/I'm not important," when, in fact, everything is important, just because it is.

Re: A Malignant Universe?
 

(BTW, I wish we could have the previous message in sight as we Reply to these posts...)

Okay: Regarding your above POV, Ventriloquist, it occurs to me (simply) that this view is probably ever attained/realized by only a scant few individuals in human history. After a while, this makes everything, or most things we can see about the conditions of manifest existence, generally be felt to suck. So I suppose we may begin to wonder at that point (and even the Realizers may wonder) if we're all just a few delusion-inclined "adepts" amidst otherwise illusioned people, all swimming in...Suck.

Re: A Malignant Universe?
 

I don't know, I don’t think so highly of us humans to believe there is anything divine in us, but that's just me. I think that our problem is that we are animals who think too much and consciousness is a joke; we wouldn't be in such a deep pile of #### if we were just horny animals who didn't have such high egos as to feel we are somehow justified.

Not to say that I dislike myself, because I don't, but I cannot help it but think of myself (and all of us) as a hairless monkey with an overevolved brain. It often amazes me why storytellers such as Isaac Asimov would go as far as write stories about extremely advanced cybernetic life forms dying to be human, as if there was anything greater than life in that. I think Hans Moravec has pointed that one out as well.

I used to be a Transhumanist some five years ago, but left it. I no longer trusted science and technology to be ultimate saviors of humanity; it was like exchanging one god for another, different belief, same dependence. (Perhaps just a bit more practical) I still frequent my Transhumanist friends, though, and some of them are REALLY serious about uploading their personality in some quantum computer and becoming cosmic entities above all human notions of morality... for real.

Perhaps that's an ultimate end? I think it just falls into personal choice. Like one of those Transhumanist acquaintances of mine once said “we are currently in the less interesting and mediocre state of life… right now, we are nothing”.

Re: A Malignant Universe?
 

Overevolved according to whom? Isn't that yet another thought for those who think too much? And what is the nature of "mistake"? Are there really any, or are they too part of something we ourselves, divine or not, would have no other way than perfectly imperfect?

Re: A Malignant Universe?
 

Well, again, I think it's all a matter of perspective. My point of view is that existence itself is divine, in that all possible forms of experience (including, of course, those beyond human conception) are drawn from the same wellspring of consciousness.

I like this quote, from the Sufi Ibn Arabi: "The existence of all created things is His existence. Thou dost not see, in this world or the next, anything beside God."

The spectator and the spectacle are the same. And the spark of consciousness (whether or not we choose to call it "God") is never not there.

Also, I don't think it's our egos that make us feel "justified." If anything, then I'd say it's the opposite: the notion that the world can be divided into things of greater and lesser value, and the ensuing notion that the existence of "lesser" things needs to be rationalized, seems to arise from the doubting nature of the human ego and intellect. (Although, if we play the rationalization game long enough, then we can get smug and start patting ourselves on the backs for no real reason.) All the other horny animals justify their existence, as it were, by eating and rutting and doing what they do. They (and we) are justified because they (we) are here.

Re: A Malignant Universe?
 

That's one of the many ironies (and for added drama, “mysteries”) of being human, I guess. We just cannot stop thinking about these things, let them be "what am I gonna wear today" or "I think therefore I am?" We are animals, we are born in an animal way, and I say overevolved based on what I have observed in other animal and insect forms; mind you, I do think there are other high intelligences in the animal kingdom (Dolphins come to mind) and they probably have their own problems to worry about, but I often wonder at how detached many other life forms are in comparison to us and cannot help but think how simple life was for the primitive, half assed pre-men. Sure, maybe the world was even more dangerous and horrific than today, but perhaps they were not as sophisticated as us (over evolved) to have existential angst about it.

I'm afraid I don't understand the second question you made.

Judging by the way you think, Ventriloquist, you'll probably enjoy the writings of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin; he coined the term "Omega Point", latter on taken by the physicist Frank Typler as a basis for his acid-trip "The Physics of Immortality". Check him out (Chardin, and Typler too if you want a really weird read). He believed that all life was heading towards an infinite point of divinity, ahead in the far future, called "Omega". He also coined the term Noosphere to describe the "sphere of thought" that surrounds the planet's outer cortex, based on some previous ideas put forth by an Ukrainian-Russian chemist, Vladimir Vernadsky.

His books are really difficult to find (at least here) so you’ll probably have luck finding them in a used books store.




Frank Tyler's trippy take on the Omega Point

Re: A Malignant Universe?
 

On a related note, I'd like to throw something out there: What if, by means of sensory deprivation, all manner of mind-altering substances, and extreme meditation, that one could make one's physical form wholly subjective - ie. mediated by self-perception-cum-conception - then convince oneself that one does not exist?

*pop*

Re: A Malignant Universe?
 

A Brief History of Everything (1996), by Ken Wilber, explains noosphere and every other sphere, and was a good read for me. He's probably one of the better minds going on this stuff today.

I was asking above, Are there really any mistakes? If so, don't we want them here? -- i.e., would we really want things any other way? Failure, sin, darkness, pain, etc. If you sit down and let yourself imagine exactly how you would want things in your life...and really go for it, be honest, let everything flow into the next desire, trying to make all things fit...don't you actually come to the very point where you're at, that you would want to be just how you are now? Maybe not, it's been a while since I did that exercise, but when I did the answer was clear that I'd have it no other way than this.

Re: A Malignant Universe?
 

Karnos: Thanks for the tips (no pun intended)... de Chardin rings a bell, but Tipler and Vernadsky also seem to be worth investigating.

TSO: I've had experiences approaching what you describe. :wink: In fact, I'm positive that "I" don't exist; everything I associate with "myself" (physical form, memories, personality traits, etc.) is basically a façade that the cosmic consciousness has decided to assume.

To get even trippier, I once held a dialogue of sorts between my "ego" and "true" selves, during which it was made clear that everything I experience truly is the "decision" of an active, higher intelligence. After a while, I felt the vestments of my ego descending upon me again, and I knew it was the choice of my true self to "return to the world," since there was "still a lot for me to do as you." Even when I'm not aware of it, even when I fall into despair and do things that I consider to be mistakes (and no, I don't think there really are any,) there is a higher will fulfilling itself through me. These revelations and others were given to me, in effect, to improve my performance on the human stage. It is likely that I'll receive "further instructions" at appropriate times. :D

Re: A Malignant Universe?
 

My mom used to tell me that if I desired something too much then it would eventually happen... then again, I want so much to get laid with Scarlett Johanson, so fat chance there :D All jokes aside, I suppose it depends on the person's will; however this does not take in consideration that, well, #### happens. Maybe I want to be the world's leading swimming pool champ, but I have a terrible accident and end up quadriplegic... I guess we can afford as much as our capabilities and our environment allow us to.

I think it was William Burroughs the one who did a similar experiment using nothing but a large wall mirror while staring at it all day long, but I really don't know much about it, I just read it somewhere in the Net.

There is a very interesting experiment, though. Repeat your name while looking at the mirror for as long as you can stand it. By the end of the experience, both your name and your image will come to mean nothing to you; you'll perceive your name as a random configuration of sounds and yourself as a random configuration of atoms and flesh no more different than a meat bag. It's very bizarre, actually. I did that experiment once while listening (over and over) to Paul Mauriat´s "L'Amour Est Bleu" (one of the most horrid pieces of elevator music ever) and the end result was... remarkable, to say the least.

Re: A Malignant Universe?
 

The statement "Things are the way they are because you want them to be that way" strikes a clear, intriguing note in me, much more than "Why does it have to be this way" or somesuch. It seems a premise worth playing with, sort of fresh. And if the statement is true, think of the responsibility and sense of power it might bring as a useful mental attitude: I can now set about finding what's possible to change, create, etc. St. Francis's Serenity Prayer is a damned clear bell to hear now and again.

I think the dark secret of Thomas Ligotti is that he is standing in front of the light. (As in the silhouette photo of him at the back of IAFTIAFL; thus he is in darkness, his back to any light-source.)

The above comment is something that came to my mind a few weeks ago and I've hesitated to use it. What it means is that the worldview of malignacy may be just another one to adopt among many, but we like to forget how and when we make our choices. And if this is the condition of things, why, I can already hear someone saying, "Then, you see? It's not worth it, 'cause that sucks." Great! I, for one, might like to read a book set in a world where everything sucks...(!)

Re: A Malignant Universe?
 

Yes, I think our worldview depends largely (if not entirely) on our point of focus at a given time. Look at a photograph under a magnifying glass, and you'll see a bunch of dots, and you might say, "This is nonsense," and nonsense might be undesirable to you. Or, you might say, "There's a pattern emerging from the spatial relations of these dots," though it might strike you as being purely impressionistic, since you still wouldn't be able to see the, erm, big picture. (The cheap and easy metaphors are sometimes the best. :P )

To a certain mind, though, an abstract series of dots can be just as valid and as interesting as what the photograph represents when taken as a whole. Furthermore, from such a perspective, there would appear to be "accidents of perception," but not "accidents of composition."

re: Ligotti "standing in front of the light"... well, obviously, eclipse imagery comes to mind. (Time for another convenient metaphor.) The darkness falls at midday, the animals go quiet and we worry that the world might even be coming to an end, but we can still see the penumbra, and if we were only to change the position of the occluding body slightly, then it would reflect the light.

Re: A Malignant Universe?
 

Above all, I'm pretty sure we don't want to be bored.

Ahhh...so it's all settled.

Re: A Malignant Universe?
 

"...a blinding eclipse of the many terrible shapes of this world."

The only escape is denial, the only way to deny is to ignore totally. Experience is a drug, slowly hissing into your veins from an unseen needle. The sensory apparatus is merely a wall with an aperture.

"And I swallowed the one yew berry..."

Re: A Malignant Universe?
 

Funny -- I've been very absorbed in the world of Dark Shadows the past month on DVD. But I don't think I'd quite call it escape. DS was the daytime melodrama that ran on ABC-TV from 1966 to 1971.

--Barnabas

Re: A Malignant Universe?
 

"Experience is a drug."

That reminds me of something an acquaintance of mine once said, which was funny to me because he's a bit of a "lad," in the sense that he's basically an English equivalent of a stereotypical American frat boy. Anyway, he's a chemistry student, and he was talking about how people shouldn't worry so much about doing drugs, since it's "just good chemical reactions," and we are, after all, just series of chemical reactions that happen to think of themselves as humans. I thought it was an admirably expansive rationalization for all those spliffs and rolls.... (speaking of potential escapes....)

...and that, in turn, makes me think of how people sometimes talk about psychedelics, i.e., the experience of "seeing through the (whichever plant/fungus/chemical)'s eyes," which sounds less like metaphor if we consider these experiences in terms of a dialogue between organisms.

Of course, I think if we were to see who was administering the proverbial needle, then we'd see an astonishingly familiar face... does your right hand know what your left hand is doing?

Re: A Malignant Universe?
 

Your friend is a cool guy.

Speaking about drugs, anyone here familiar with Terence McKenna? Search for his Timewave Zero theory and see what a great acid trip that is. I was going to post a three part video of it that I found on Youtube, but I just found the whole thing was removed for Copyright infringement. : o

Re: A Malignant Universe?
 

I know some McKenna. I once had a theory that we all (the race) set up certain drugs in like manner to an alarm clock ages ago in our history -- to awaken us here, now, whenever... I don't know; seems a tad facile nowadays. But again, if there's such a place as "the god part of the brain" (see book of same title), anything's posssible.

Re: A Malignant Universe?
 

Yeah, McKenna speculated that magic mushrooms were extraterrestrial in origin, which even explained the purplish hue and high electron density of the spores (so they could travel through space and absorb UV radiation!)

And, of course, he also posited that we made the leap from proto-human to human by munching on a bunch of mushrooms in the African wilderness, sort of an internalized, organic equivalent of the monolith in "2001." It doesn't seem wholly far-fetched, especially when we think of the mystery schools of Egypt and Greece, the use of cannabis and hashish in the Mid-East and the Asian subcontinent, peyote and ayahuasca in the Americas, etc. -- it seems that the meat of most spiritual traditions can be traced back to someone doing drugs somewhere!

Anyway, I don't buy into a lot of McKenna, especially the Timewave/novelty theory. I'm skeptical of all this "2012" stuff; it seems like more wishful thinking for people who don't want to accept their complicity in the (apparent) dissolution of civilization. Better to leave our fate to the aliens or some other agent of Apocalypse. Of course, we might have to do so, since we can't get our collective act together enough to do deceptively simple things like preventing genocide or poverty. It's why I'm a humanist in spirit and a misanthrope in practice. :wink:

Re: A Malignant Universe?
 

Hahahaha -- I love that last line!

Listen: I've never heard that theory about MMs being extraT in origin, and check this out: the first time I did them -- back in 1992 -- things started getting a little dark and paranoid after an hour or so. Well, I close my eyes and I see in my mind these purplish UFOs zooming in from who-knows-where, up above me/us...and it's only when I hear something from them like "Let us take over..." that I really thought this may be some malevolent astral force out there. It sounded like a benevolent dictator about to stage his cosmic act for us, but damn, did it feel evil. Mushrooms were my most diffcult trips.

Re: A Malignant Universe?
 

That's pretty wild! From what I recall, McKenna had a similar experience, in which the mushrooms basically gave him a briefing on their (and his) place in the cosmic scheme (they tend to do that, don't they?) The possibilities are fun to imagine: are the shrooms themselves aliens? Or are they more like intergalactic walkie-talkies, connecting us to some far-off intelligence... or perhaps they're "programs" simulating an alien intelligence, and which we can download using our mysteriously compatible nervous systems? Organic software that we can use to patch/debug our own consciousness...?

McKenna has talked about experiences with the "Other" in psychedelic space, and the similarities to descriptions of near-death experiences, alien abductions, etc. Obviously, these phenomena result in lots of talk about little green (or grey) men, angels, God -- the usual suspects. Well, McKenna proposed that we're actually coming face-to-face with our own souls in these scenarios, only we've become so alienated from ourselves, that we appear as the Other; we don't even recognize these experiences for what they are. I tend to agree.

Re: A Malignant Universe?
 

That's what I grok about crop circles...except those done by those idiots Doug and Dave.

Re: A Malignant Universe?
 

Ah, Aristarchus, I believe. Interesting stuff. I think it was more that he proposed that the world was an orb... Still, quite a daring thing to say.

Re: A Malignant Universe?
 

Having read a few books by Richard Dawkins, I have become interested in biological determinism in behavior. I recently finished the book The Darwin Wars by Andrew Brown and found this excerpt to be relevant to this thread. It is about a scientist who killed himself after discovering a mathematical equation for altruism.

http://www.darwinwars.com/wdhessay.html

Re: A Malignant Universe?
 

bendk, your link's true-life story is astounding. It is said that "the truth will set you free." A useful suggestion from the lore of carpentry says that checking measurements twice is prudent and practical. One of my favorite songs is "I Wanna Be Your Dog" by The Stooges. But I am now beginning to wonder about the sense in this, considering human motives and impulses. If the term "alfalsism" doesn't exist, I coin it now. The future will dictate my attitude.

For now, three wags of an altruistic tail to all beings who suffer,
Rover

Re: A Malignant Universe?
 

Woof!

Re: A Malignant Universe?
 

The first time I started to think about the idea of a "malignant universe" was when I started reading Nietzsche in graduate school (I think the work was Genealogy of Morals). I was reading Poe and Shakespeare's tragedies even before that but never thought of the universe as malignant until then.

Later, I would look at Nietzsche in relation to Darwin, Freud, and Marx, as all of them offered sobering views of reality. I also recall Hobbes short statement from Leviathan, the reference to "little odious vermin" from Gulliver's Travels, Voltaire's Candide, Faulkner's works, and others. For film, I keep thinking about the movie Hud (1963) and Night of the Hunter (1955).

Finally, I thought of two recent articles that talk about this issue in contrasting manners: "E.T. & God" by Paul Davies and "Spirituality and the Fine-Tuned Cosmos" by Rich Heffern. Both works won awards and you might find copies of both online using search engines.

Re: A Malignant Universe?
 

Expressing the idea of being a god, even though you do not believe that, is something I find very interesting.

The idea that I am but a lone figure in this world, that all of existence is simply a creation of my own mind. The idea that I am the only one living and the rest of life, human or otherwise, is only a figment or a contrived force that has no real definitive reason for thriving, let alone existing, in such a state.

What if the one who feels this way is, indeed, God? An undoubtedly pretentious belief but interesting nonetheless. Is it possible to be the only thing that actually exists or has the ability to exist? Could it be that a consciousness could develop its own world entirely inside its own thought process and by its' thought process, and this single consciousness being all that there is? This brings about many questions when dealing with the meaning of loss and the idea of meaning itself. The one who feels this way, the one who is its own creator, could likely abandon all affirmations made by the ideas brought forth from everyday life. When dealing with death and loss it would only take convincing itself that such things are empty, they are only a part of the void that is existence because the only thing that exists is the consciousness of the being in question. So, fundamentally, that being needs nothing in life because there is no life. There is only the being itself and its thoughts.

This idea is based around the notion of pantheism, "referring to philosophical and metaphysical theories of the divine as existing and acting within the mind or the world," the only difference being that it is strictly existence within the mind. A world completely designed, structured, and inhabited by a single thought-form that is only living, and surviving, in a subconscious state. Completely alone, yet manufacturing life itself.

Re: A Malignant Universe?
 

It seems to me meaningless to regard the universe as either benevolent or malignant. To do so, surely, is to judge the universe in terms of something that transcends it. And what transcends the universe? The universe just is.

Re: A Malignant Universe?
 

Does not religion (if one is religious) transcend the universe?

Regarding the universe being one's own mind and nothing else - an interesting concept with which I have tussled all my life. But it's only that - a philosophical concept.

Coda: I am not religious. Or do not think I am religious.
des