Directory of Lost Causes (By Quentin S. Crisp)

We've Finished Our News

Hello.

It's possible that someone out there is wondering why I've been silent for such a long time, so I feel like offering some kind of explanation. Actually, I'm meant to be working today, so I don't want to make this very long. Also, I don't know exactly what I'm going to say. I mean, I know why I haven't been posting here, but there are actually various reasons, and some of them are not so easy to explain.

Let me start by saying that, for one thing, just about everything I say embarrasses me anyway. I don't really think any of it is true. It seems practically impossible to say anything that is true. If I have seemed to crusade at times in what I say, it's probably because I get fed up with other megolomaniacs stalking the world shoving their truths down the throats of others, and so want to counter that in my own small way. Some people are possibly surprised by my choice of targets, since I haven't been picking on religion a la Richard (Tedious) Dawkins, but have been mainly going for science, which seems to me far more POWERFUL, far more convinced of its own rightness, and therefore far more important as a target. Also, I think some 'truths' are more destructive than others, and the various 'truths' that bolster human materialism must be the most destructive of all.

However, I've never really considered myself to know the truth about anything, and it has been a source of considerable shame and embarrassment to me to spout opinions on this blog as if I know anything at all. I don't know anything. I am simply a dreamer. I no longer really know what to write here.

I haven't had much time to post on this blog either, since I've been busy trying to earn some money, since my financial situation is no longer funny. I've also been working on a number of writing projects about which I suppose I care more.

Something that has been occupying my thoughts very much of late is the content of something recently published on the Net. It is the latest work by author Thomas Ligotti, and it is called The Conspiracy Against the Human Race: A Short Life of Horror. It is being presented for free perusal (and free download for registered members) by Thomas Ligotti Online. I would urge people to read it here while it is still available without charge. It is a virtuoso essay dealing with the problem of human consciousness, and eloquently arguing that the only solution to human suffering is to cease from reproducing. I believe that this is a topic that should be brought out into the light of day, that it should not be marginalised. It is, after all, only the despair that is at the back of ALL OUR MINDS anyway, and if this were not the case, why would we be destroying the world in the manner that we are? It's the end; let us admit it.

This thread in the forums of the site was one that I started, and contains some commentary by me on the essay.

If we don't stop reproducing, it's quite likely that this job will be done for us, by Mother Nature, who spawned us in the first place, and who now seems to be protesting strongly against our attempted matricide. The latest report gives us ten years to drastically change our ways if human civilisation is not going to be destroyed. It's that simple. Anyone who claims to care about their children can no longer ignore this.

With all these considerations on my mind, and with other things to occupy me, I haven't been very keen to post here. On the one hand, it seems like there's nothing left to say except that we're all doomed, and everything else is hollow - the hollow scene at the end of the Holocene. On the other hand, it seems like, after all, the human race should simply let itself die out, anyway, since there is nothing here for us except pain and broken dreams.

But then again, I don't really want to write that kind of stuff. It's fairly easy for me to be nihilistic; I've had a lot of practice. More than that it's easy because that's what people want. If that were not the case, why would we be destroying the planet in the way we are? If I talked about the things that really mattered to me here, the things that really sustained me, I'm sure that people would find them far less acceptable than the idea of the end of the human race. So I won't talk about those things. I've had enough experience of human beings to know that anything precious would be torn to pieces out of spite.

My only regret in writing all this is that I have always had a sense of enormous potential in the human race. It's true that the potential seems thwarted at every turn, but that's the thing I can't quite stand the idea of throwing away. What is that potential? I sense it in the kind of dreams that children have about life. Yes, that's right, I would like people to think of the children. We're supposed to be the adults, after all. You wouldn't think it to look at the world that we have made out of our own despair. What do children have to look up to? Really, what? A bunch of liars and cowards and businessmen. It's enough to make you puke. Some people would say that it's people's personal dreams - in the form of rampant individualism - that have got us into this mess. But I wonder if there isn't some other element apart from selfishness in those dreams. Does being unselfish consist of negating yourself and imposing the same negation on others? Surely there should be some kind of mutual nurturing. This nurturing of children and their dreams certainly does not happen in our current pathetic education system. How could it? The system is only an extension of our society at large, which is fixated on the values of business, that 'respectable', 'useful' pastime that just happens to be destroying the world.

This might sound like I'm leading up to a conclusion, but, as I said, I haven't planned anything to write here. Perhaps the best I can do at the moment is to pose the question, should we cease, for their own sake, to bring children into this stinking cesspit of a world? Or should we somehow admit and face our own despair and go through it to something else, if, indeed, there is something else, so that children's dreams do have a place here? If they don't have a place here, then let's give it up as a bad job.

Thank you. I shall now plaster a smile on my face and continue with the sad cabaret. Or shall I?