The Conspiracy Against The Human Race by Thomas Ligotti

Author:Thomas Ligotti [Ligotti, Thomas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-08-10T02:18:46+00:00

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Your own death, or the death of your near and dear ones, is not something you can experience. What you actually experience is the void created by the disappearance of another individual, and the unsatisfied demand to maintain the continuity of your relationship with that person for a nonexistent eternity. The arena for the continuation of all these “permanent” relationships is the tomorrow—heaven, next life, and so on. These things are the inventions of a mind interested only in its undisturbed, permanent continuity in a “self”-

generated, fictitious future. The basic method of maintaining the continuity is the repetition of the question, "How? How? How?" "How am I to live? How can I be happy? How can I be sure I will be happy tomorrow?" This has made life an insoluble dilemma for us. We want to know, and through that knowledge we hope to continue on with our miserable existences forever.

__________

I still maintain that it is not love, compassion, humanism, or brotherly sentiments that will save mankind. No, not at all. It is the sheer terror of extinction that can save us, if anything can.

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I am like a puppet sitting here. It's not just I; all of us are puppets. Nature is pulling the strings, but we believe that we are acting. If you function that way [as puppets], then the problems are simple. But we have superimposed on that [the idea of] a “person” who is pulling those strings.

2. A similar case is that of Suzanne Segal, who, like U. G. Krishnamurti and John Wren-Lewis, suddenly found that she had become bereft of an ego (self). After years of seeking a cure to the unease this experience incurred in her—it would seem that not everybody is at peace with being nobody—she wrote Collision with the Infinite: A Life Beyond the Personal Self (1996). The following year she died of a brain tumor at the age of forty-two. Although no link was established between her diseased brain and the disappearance of her ego, cerebral tumors presenting altered states of consciousness and changes in personality are not unknown. (Ask Charles Whitman, who left a written request that an autopsy be done on him that might explain why he ascended a tower at the University of Texas to shoot at and kill strangers before he himself was shot and killed by policemen.

Whitman did have a brain tumor, but neurologists could not establish a link between his tumor and his actions, possibly because he was dead. In a note written a few days preceding his murderous rampage on August 1, 1966, Whitman stated that in March of the same year he had consulted with one Dr. Jan Cochrum, to whom he confided his

“unusual and irrational thoughts” and “overwhelming violent impulses.” Cochrum gave Whitman a script for Valium and referred him to a psychiatrist, Dr. Maurice Dean Heatly.

In his one session with Heatly, Whitman said that he had an urge to “start shooting people with a deer rifle.” While no link was established between

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