Mickdrew
Member
To borrow from the Wikipedia article on the Cthulhu mythos:
"Lovecraft believed in a purposeless, mechanical, and uncaring universe. Human beings, with their limited faculties, can never fully understand this universe, and the cognitive dissonance caused by this revelation leads to insanity, in his view."
One of the oldest criticisms of H.P. Lovecraft's stories - apart from the overt racism - is that the main protagonists always seem to be fragile and brittle in mind. This has led to many snide remarks about how characters in his short stories will collapse into babbling lunatics or resort to suicide when they see a flickering light in the sky.
Having read through a few of his stories (and planning to finish the rest, eventually), it does seem to be the case sometimes. Some of the narratives come off as melodramatic, and humans seem to be walking piles of barely restained psychosis, ready to spill over at the slightest provocation. Despite this, I mantain that it only seems absurd to those who do not grasp the full extent of the horror Lovecraft is articulating. It is so easy to look at his short stories from an outsiders' point of view and incredulously dissmiss what people within the story are experiencing, and this has caused many to unfairly see the ideas he presents as ridiculous.
This might have been a trap I would've fallen into also, had I not experienced similar anxiety in my life. If you'll excuse the self-indulgent reminiscencing, I found it fascinating that at one point in history, people thought that Earth made up all that existed in this universe. This soliphsistic view was superceded by the view that our solar system was all that existed; then our galaxy; then the universe as a hole. It's gotten to the point where our brightest minds are coming to terms with the idea that the universe itself is very possibly one of countless others. So goes our slow and gradual expansion of our place in existence - with a seemingly unending road stretching out before us, and the growing uneasiness with the realization that we might not just never reach the end, but will never know if it actually could end. What is to say there is only one "cluster" of multiverses? What lies outside this group of multiverse?
Growing up, this line of thought actually gave me panic attacks, and still has the potential to do so if put in the wrong place. When you consider how insignificant we are in this, you starting wishing that your existence could match even what a speck of dust is to us - and this is just what grounded speculation gives you. If you start injecting your imagination into the equation, it is enough to more than shake my sense of security when I was younger. If the amoung of space exceeds our understanding, who is to say there isn't a bring that does the same? We are not even talking about Cthulhu-type beings, but beings that see our multiverse itself as we see atoms. At any moment, everything we do know, or COULD know, might be blinked out of existence without the causing agent even taking notice of us. Our universe has lasted for 14 to 15 billion years according to scientists, but under what allowances has that been able to continue? There is nothing to saw we couldn't be swiped away in next microsecond by a gargantuan existence that we'd be unable to conceive of as an idea. Our imagination itself cannot reach far enough, because next to nothing in existence was meant to be coped with by us. The limits of our brains stretch only to what we encounter from earth, and our efforts to look outside this world might be less than feeble.
If you wish to know why I believe lovecraft was right, it's because my hands shake as I type this, and my brain starts swirling from the dizzying effects of adrenaline as I try my best to put these terrifying ideas into words while attempting to not fall too far down the rabbit hole. Even with my best efforts, my attempts to colour in the images of my imagination are likely insufficient. There really is no way to communicate the effect into words, and perhaps that is why many of the ideas that lovecraft writes about seem absurd to the uninitiated. His materialistic, irrleigious, and cold version of horror cannot be "talked into" someone. It must be experienced. If anyone has had similar experiences or has any idea what the hell I'm talking about, I would really enjoy hearing from you in the comments. Thanks for reading.
"Lovecraft believed in a purposeless, mechanical, and uncaring universe. Human beings, with their limited faculties, can never fully understand this universe, and the cognitive dissonance caused by this revelation leads to insanity, in his view."
One of the oldest criticisms of H.P. Lovecraft's stories - apart from the overt racism - is that the main protagonists always seem to be fragile and brittle in mind. This has led to many snide remarks about how characters in his short stories will collapse into babbling lunatics or resort to suicide when they see a flickering light in the sky.
Having read through a few of his stories (and planning to finish the rest, eventually), it does seem to be the case sometimes. Some of the narratives come off as melodramatic, and humans seem to be walking piles of barely restained psychosis, ready to spill over at the slightest provocation. Despite this, I mantain that it only seems absurd to those who do not grasp the full extent of the horror Lovecraft is articulating. It is so easy to look at his short stories from an outsiders' point of view and incredulously dissmiss what people within the story are experiencing, and this has caused many to unfairly see the ideas he presents as ridiculous.
This might have been a trap I would've fallen into also, had I not experienced similar anxiety in my life. If you'll excuse the self-indulgent reminiscencing, I found it fascinating that at one point in history, people thought that Earth made up all that existed in this universe. This soliphsistic view was superceded by the view that our solar system was all that existed; then our galaxy; then the universe as a hole. It's gotten to the point where our brightest minds are coming to terms with the idea that the universe itself is very possibly one of countless others. So goes our slow and gradual expansion of our place in existence - with a seemingly unending road stretching out before us, and the growing uneasiness with the realization that we might not just never reach the end, but will never know if it actually could end. What is to say there is only one "cluster" of multiverses? What lies outside this group of multiverse?
Growing up, this line of thought actually gave me panic attacks, and still has the potential to do so if put in the wrong place. When you consider how insignificant we are in this, you starting wishing that your existence could match even what a speck of dust is to us - and this is just what grounded speculation gives you. If you start injecting your imagination into the equation, it is enough to more than shake my sense of security when I was younger. If the amoung of space exceeds our understanding, who is to say there isn't a bring that does the same? We are not even talking about Cthulhu-type beings, but beings that see our multiverse itself as we see atoms. At any moment, everything we do know, or COULD know, might be blinked out of existence without the causing agent even taking notice of us. Our universe has lasted for 14 to 15 billion years according to scientists, but under what allowances has that been able to continue? There is nothing to saw we couldn't be swiped away in next microsecond by a gargantuan existence that we'd be unable to conceive of as an idea. Our imagination itself cannot reach far enough, because next to nothing in existence was meant to be coped with by us. The limits of our brains stretch only to what we encounter from earth, and our efforts to look outside this world might be less than feeble.
If you wish to know why I believe lovecraft was right, it's because my hands shake as I type this, and my brain starts swirling from the dizzying effects of adrenaline as I try my best to put these terrifying ideas into words while attempting to not fall too far down the rabbit hole. Even with my best efforts, my attempts to colour in the images of my imagination are likely insufficient. There really is no way to communicate the effect into words, and perhaps that is why many of the ideas that lovecraft writes about seem absurd to the uninitiated. His materialistic, irrleigious, and cold version of horror cannot be "talked into" someone. It must be experienced. If anyone has had similar experiences or has any idea what the hell I'm talking about, I would really enjoy hearing from you in the comments. Thanks for reading.
True, but when it comes to meaning, there can be more than one meaning. There really can be opposite meanings that are both true. This one of the bizarre things about logic, that the context matters. The universe has no context; so you can say it is meaningless and also that it is meaningful. Both are correct depending upon the context, but there isn't any.
