Position Four: Truth exists but there is no Revelation per se; it is revealed via experience. Some process or set of processes or practices lead to an understanding of truth. Truth, in this understanding, is not a belief, but an experience or the results of the fore-mentioned process/practice.
Ancillary to the Four Positions: I decide the Truth (or lack thereof), and so do you.
Ligotti’s Assertions
- Consciousness is an existential liability, and the source of all horror and suffering, due to the awareness of sickness, suffering, and death.
- Life, the Universe, and everything is MALIGNANTLY USELESS. All caps on that one, every time.
- Through various tactics, we are actors in the biological conspiracy against ourselves, compelling us to believe that life is worth living.
- We are not real. Consciousness fools us into believing that we are real instead of a puppet of our biology. We are akin to supernaturally animate puppets, who believe themselves real.
- Life is not worth living.
- Because existence is composed of suffering (mostly) procreation may rightly be deemed an act of violence against the unborn.
- And, all this in mind, the human race should stop procreating, at least, or perhaps engage in a species-wide suicide.
These points are paraphrased, but present the essence of Ligotti’s assertions.
Both Ligotti and the author of the foreword, Ray Brassier, make short order of the most obvious objection to Ligotti, that the mere act of writing is a life-affirming action in contradiction to his stated position. Essentially, Ligotti is mired in the same condition and, thus functioning, cannot be faulted for maneuvering that condition with whatever coping mechanisms at his disposal, especially if they shed light on our predicament.
Fair enough, but this is where the crack in his doctrine begins.
Jesus loves me?
“The modern hero, the modern individual who dares to heed the call and seek the mansion of that presence with whom it is our whole destiny to be atoned, cannot, indeed must not, wait for his community to cast off its slough of pride, fear, rationalized avarice, and sanctified misunderstanding. “Live,” Nietzsche says, “as though the day were here.” It is not society that is to guide and save the creative hero, but precisely the reverse. And so every one of us shares the supreme ordeal—carries the cross of the redeemer—not in the bright moments of his tribe’s great victories, but in the silences of his personal despair.” —Joseph Campbell
Ligotti presents the writing of Richard Double, Thomas Metzinger, and other cognitive psychologists, philosophers, and neuroscientists to make the argument that we are acting out “the tragedy of the ego” as mechanistic simulations of personhood.
In an aside of sorts, we are told in TCATHR that no one can really, fully be a determinist and remain sane. It is a constant hedging that grows tiresome.
I don’t have the time, space, or expertise to adequately cover the state of the art in cognitive theory. Peter Watts gives a great treatment of these ideas in his first-contact novel, Blindsight, and mentions Metzinger’s Being No One as the toughest book he’s ever read. In his Blindsight notes, Watts briefly and in lively fashion describes Metzinger’s hypothesis about the subjective sense of self and why ego would emerge in cognitive systems like us homosapiens. Watts suggests it would be easier to list those who haven’t tried to explain consciousness, and mentions theories from diffuse electrical fields, quantum puppet shows, and a range of conjectured physical locations of consciousness in the brain.
The question to Watts is: What good is consciousness? He provides examples where consciousness is effectively kept out of the decision process because it just isn’t as good at it (think of that drive home you can barely remember, and you have an example of this from everyday life.) Aesthetics might be an exception, an area where self-awareness is needed. Interesting, given Ligotti’s own sense that aesthetics represent a valid domain. But the cost of sentience? It may ultimately be that of extinction because aesthetics entails the ability to gain unearned rewards. Negative feedback loop.
It is, to my mind, a reductionist take on our situation as sentient beings, but when posed as a question of evolutionary adaptiveness, over Ligotti’s “Is life worth living?”/EVERYTHING IS MALIGNANTLY USELESS conceptual dyad, it is a more anchored and useful meditation on the subject. This idea of sentience as evolutionary liability is not new to readers of fantastic fiction (the Shaper-Mechanist stories from Bruce Sterling spring to mind, among others) and I suspect we’ll see more populist explorations of these ideas to come.
Ligotti cites valid sources. The function of consciousness is a valid talking point. To be clear: I don’t suggest a denial of the truths Metzinger and others like him discover. That consciousness is an emergent system, as opposed to a pit at the center of our individual avocados, is very likely true. Metzinger suggests a naive realism is our nature, but also says that we “can wake up from our biological history.”
Whatever our nature as sentient beings, cogito ergo sum. Furthermore, Ligotti never suggests the ultimate hell of being, that of solipsism. And he bases his affront at existence on the endless suffering of sentient beings.
The suffering is real. The sufferers are not.
This is meaningless.
Whatever systems give rise to these sufferers, within that system they are functionally real. We are real. Or, we are no more or less real than anything else. I invoke the law of the excluded middle. One could still say: the suffering is not real, and neither are we. I don’t agree, but it would at least be a logical position. It would make meaningless a statement like EVERYTHING IS MALIGNANTLY USELESS. Since we all, including Ligotti, believe in the reality of the suffering, then let us acknowledge this fallacy in the position that we are fake but our suffering is real.
What about warrantability? Most of what we regard as warranted is little more than things that we believe, like ‘Jesus loves me’ or EVERYTHING IS MALIGNANTLY USELESS. We can believe these things, but they are hard to prove, which relates back to our positions on revealed truth. I find a similar failure when talking about correspondence tests for the truth. The faithful Christian will say “Of course Jesus loves me,” and Ligotti will say EVERYTHING IS MALIGNANTLY USELESS. Both speak with equal conviction, and with assurances to their cogency. And both views (and many others besides) would pass a coherence test, even though they are diametrically opposed views and thus they cannot both be true. Warrants, correspondence, and coherence tests don’t help us much in this dialog.
When faced with a truth test based on pragmatism, though, the Ligotti position does not fare well. We could cite various pursuits that a reasonable person would deem worthwhile, and even Ligotti would agree that creative works appealing to a sense of aesthetics have validity and worth, and on this basis we can say that living as though today were the day, as Nietzsche said—as though we have work to do and a purpose to fill—carries with it a pragmatism that Ligotti’s pessimism lacks.
In Search of…
Any of the Truth positions could take a pessimistic, ambivalent, or optimistic mode. Ligotti’s is a pessimistic Position One (no revealed Truth.) For many readers, the conversation ended with the list of his assertions. These ideas are idiotic and wrong at a glance. This stance is particularly bolstered by a Position Two on the Truth question (there is a Revealed Truth.) These folks are often followers of a religious tradition, fundamentalist in their interpretation, though other backgrounds are conceivable. The defining characteristic of this mode is belief that one has access to Truth as revealed by an ultimate Source or Ground of Being. Typically this is God, Allah, Brahma, though nontheists like some of the more strident Nichiren Buddhist and more dualistic eastern traditions could fall under this mode.
These folks have found the Truth. They have the answers to the questions of the universe, provided them via a holy text or texts of divine origin. Perhaps some have living prophets who speak on behalf of the Absolute. Such a position, Ligot
ti notes, reflects the multifarious nature of Truth despite our tendency to believe Truth a monolithic thing. I don’t believe a revealed Truth exists, or at least it has not yet been revealed. But for the person who does, all this talk adds up to so much belly gazing and liberal pessimism.
And yet, Ligotti’s book was a finalist for the 2010 Bram Stoker awards, signifying that at least some significant portion of the community aware of nonfiction works related to the horror genre, considered this book among the most important of the year. Ligotti’s oeuvre to date suggests his place among writers like Lovecraft, Poe, and Beckett is assured. Ligotti has called us all on our ensnarement in a world of becoming and unbridled desire. Ligotti is, on these points, absolutely correct. If you have a Revealed Truth, then lucky you. You can toss aside this dour read and pursue some other pastime.
Position Three on Truth says there is a Truth, but it has not been revealed. Functionally no different than Position One, but for one odd quirk a human being is capable. Faith. This is the faith of the Gnostic perhaps, the liberal Christian, Jew, or Muslim. It is the faith of the theist who claims no specific religious ties. This person of faith acknowledges the human origin of the given holy book (thus no revelation) but uses it nonetheless as a guide for living. She has faith, while knowing there is no way to know or to prove the object of worship is real or True. Some might say that it is the act of faith that matters.
This is, in my estimation, the most defensible western religious mode, when applied to one’s self and one’s life. When coupled with an evangelical zeal, it morphs into the most grating. Those folks think they’ve found the Truth, and think you should find the same. Because there really is no revealed Truth (unlike Ligotti, I will cry foul on the idea of unending relativism [which I understand is contradictory on the surface as I declare ‘there is no Revealed Truth,’ but bear with me...]) all traditional religious people fall into the type three position. Some of them just don’t know it.
Finally Position Four suggests there is a Truth, but it is revealed through experience. Here is the Buddhist path, where belief is only ever a raft to cross a river or stream, but not the destination. Truth is ephemeral, subjective, and given more to heuristics than commandments. Truth is not easy. But along that path lies the solution to suffering and its causes.
Carl Sagan’s might be a good example of an optimistic Position One. No revealed Truth, and yet his perception of the universe, its beauty, served him.
Ligotti says of Truth:
“Renowned for stating his convictions in the form of a paradox, as above, Chesterton, along with anyone who has something positive to say about the human race, comes out on top in the crusade for truth. (There is nothing paradoxical about that.) Therefore, should your truth run counter to that of individuals who devise or applaud paradoxes that stiff up the status quo, you would be well advised to take your arguments, tear them up, and throw them in someone else’s garbage.”
Ligotti here refers to the tendency of human optimists, in this case a Christian apologist, to treat logic as secondary, irrelevant, or as a liability, and once Truth is reached via paradox, metaphor, faith, intuition, or a myriad other contrivances, the conversation is at a close. Through inference, Ligotti may also suggest that logic followed without sentimentalism or irrational thought-structures would lead one to a pessimistic conclusion. Ligotti, while claiming a Pessimistic Position One (no Revealed Truth) in fact exposes himself as a Position Four seeker (Truth exists but is not Revealed except through experience) who has lapsed in the face of Revelation into a Position Two believer (Revealed Truth exists.)
I think he said ‘yo mama.’
“The unconscious is always the fly in the ointment, the skeleton on the cupboard of perfection, the painful lie given all idealistic pronouncements, the earthliness that clings to our human nature and sadly clouds the crystal clarity we long for. In the alchemical view, rust, like verdigris, is the metal’s sickness. But at the same time this leprosy is the vera prima materia, the basis for the preparation of the philosophical gold.” —Carl Jung, Dreams
We divided up our positions in our conversation with Ligotti based on the question: “Is there a Revealed Truth?” It would have been obvious to readers of TCATHR to instead ask, “Is life worth living?” and to general seekers after Truth (at least in the West), “Does God exist?” and perhaps secondarily, “Does He [sic] love us?”
Critically examined, our four categories have a problem, don’t they?
There is no Revealed Truth. Fair enough.
There is a Revealed Truth. Also fair.
There is a Truth but it is not Revealed. Ligotti won’t be the only one to roll his eyes. Basically here stands Chesterton and his derision of logic. Here is the faith that Christians speak of (the honest ones, at least.) We are prevaricating, our language lacks precision, our thoughts are not cogent. I suggest the stance is different enough from the certainties of the first two positions to warrant consideration. Even though so many who advocate for the position, as they become ‘stronger in their faith’ grow to believe that along with their faith, hope, and charity, they also received the Bat Phone.
Last there is Truth, but it is not Revealed and found only through practice. The objection is: if the Truth exists, at some point it is found. And thus we have our Revealed Truth and no need for a separate category. I suggest a different understanding of what Truth means gives rise to validity. This understanding of truth is purely experiential. The path may be defined but not the experience. The map written, but the journey must be undertaken by each who would have understanding. And that understanding is only ever provisional, incomplete, and never quite the encompassing Truth with a capital T that the first two positions deny or proclaim.
Ligotti never comes right out an states as much, but from his criticism of Chesterton’s flippancy toward logic, it is fair to infer that Ligotti views himself as a champion of logic in the question of ‘Is life worth living?’ Using logical deduction, studying the work of others who seem to see what he also perceives, and applying the true-state experience of the depressed mind, Ligotti has followed a path leading to Revelation. Ligotti holds the Truth of the entire universe. He has dropped anchor, as all believers are wont, and after some consideration as to its merits, chosen to share with the world the Truth that he has found.
Now read that last paragraph over again with this understanding: not sarcastic in tone and written by a man that is no believer in any theological dogma; who is, in fact, an atheist.
I no more agree with Chesterton than I do with Ligotti but I will give Chesterton this much more credit over Ligotti: though he may be the sort that evangelises a doctrine he surmises to be True (something I have nothing but contempt for) on the face of it he at least realizes that logic cannot justify his position. Ligotti contrariwise would have us believe that he exposes the meat grinder Truth. There is no path ahead, there is no uncertainty, and there is no room for disagreement with this John the Baptist of Pessimism. One cannot argue or disagree with Ligotti’s position without essentially proving his premise, that we are unwitting automata working against our own best interest—aka our annihilation.
Because, recall, Ligotti believes himself to be a wooden puppet, come to life: a ‘not real’ thing, realizing itself in the stage of horror that is consciousness. As a Buddhist, I don’t believe in an immortal soul. According to the doctrine of Dependant Origination, which in its most basic form states ‘because of this, that’, we are aggregate things, us sentient beings. From all the non-human components the universe brings to bear, humans are formed, consciousness included. Buddhism allows for a clear understanding of the suffering and its causes that Ligotti perceives and uses as the basis for his doctrine of hopelessness. But Ligotti, like many Christian critics of Buddhism (strange bedfellows, indeed!), stops short of a full and honest account of the picture this philosophy of the mind (that sometimes plays at being a religion) offers.
I don’t want to ‘go all Buddhist on ya’ and in par
ticular I intend this to remain foremost a humanist document. Nonetheless, Ligotti singles out Buddhism, and in this point only will I follow suit. Buddhism is based on suffering and its causes, but does not stop there. The last two of the Four Noble Truths are: The cessation of suffering and the causes of that cessation. In other words, this doctrine does not try to paint a happy face on the disatisfatoriness of the world, but offers a prognosis and a prescription that suggests while life may have no cure, there is a treatment.
With that I’ll return to my humanist-orientation by offering a counter to his living puppet analogy. Instead of the stark uncanny-valley puppet-on-its-strings, lurching about an empty stage, screaming a silent scream, one presumes, I suggest human beings—perhaps any sentience that arises in the universe—are more akin to that other genre trope of emergent intelligence: the AI, born; the life that arises out of software and wires and a billions connections. Such an intelligence might pursue any sort of existence it chooses; it might find the universe a place of wonder or horror. It could posit for itself any role.
And, thus, humanity.
Can you see the real me?
“‘One must go further, one must go further.’ This need to go on is of ancient standing. Heraclitus the ‘obscure’ who reposited his thoughts in his writings in the Temple of Diana (for his thoughts had been his armour in life, which he therefore hung up in the temple of the goddess), the obscure Heraclitus had said ‘one can never walk through the same river twice.’ The obscure Heraclitus had a disciple who didn’t remain standing there but went further and added, ‘One cannot do it even once.’ Poor Heraclitus to have such a disciple! This improvement changed the Heraclitian principle into an Eleatic doctrine denying movement, and yet all that disciple wanted was to be a disciple of Heraclitus who went further, not back to what Heraclitus had abandoned.” —Soren Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling
One must ask of Ligotti, “what does real mean?”
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