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Hey, James. This feels trope-y, don't you think, or is that just part of the genre to not escape tropes?

I find Benatar's philosophy no more applicable to the world than religion. Well, maybe not. At least antinatalism seeks to look at the world realistically. There's a problem with the simple diagram, and it's the claim that the absence of pain through nonexistence is good. That would suggest that the absence of pleasure through nonexistence is bad, which is not what he states. It's like a black & white view that is set on nihilism, and not from a realistic angle. This doesn't mean that he wants to be nihilistic, but it's a noticeable flaw.

I read this book for a school project in 10th grade

Sure its better never to have been, but kinda late to talk about it since we all are 😀 We have to do the best we can, thats all we earthlings can do.

Your review misses the most important thing. The reason why consciousness is a mistake is because it gives us a mistaken sense of self that we think has its own independent volition and makes things happen. When you realize there is no one to make things happen, you can either accept that and move on (he talks about Buddhists), or react with horror and revulsion (logic-seeking Western philosophers). The paradox is this- why would the universe create something which is tricked into believing things are totally different from what they are? Why create a bunch of meat puppets dancing on stage, screaming, "I'm a real boy" over and over? His comments on depression and horror and anti-natalism all follow from this point. I feel it wasn't something you (or anyone in the comments section, really) explained very clearly

I liked how Vaughan from Crash appeared in Atrocity Exhibition. 🎉

It's interesting to cast this into Schopenhauer's idea that suffering is the positive concept/feeling and pleasure is just the negation of that, just like darkness is the absence of light. So if you put it that way the reasoning for the matrix' entries is explained easily. The presence of pain is bad. The absence of pain and presence of pleasure are actually just equivalent statements and are termed good. The absence of pleasure can be rewritten as the absence of the absence of pain, so it's the absence of bad i.e. not bad. However I'm not sure I can accept Benatar's ideas, because a significant majority of people give their life a sufficient grade or higher. So wouldn't that count as evidence that this way of reasoning is mistaken? Sure it doesn't discount his logic, because it doesn't really touch upon punching holes in the logic, but it does count for something. These are rational people who say their life is worthwhile. As Benatar says himself for existing people there is reason to take responsibility for their life because their being here is a given, but for an unborn we cannot say that same thing. But isn't that odd? So we say that once life 'gets going' so to speak it is defensible to keep it going, but the decision to start it is not defensible. I feel like that's an odd stance, I could make an analogy with sustenance from food. If I can decide to bring into existence beings that would be able to exactly sustain themselves by harvesting food then surely if I were in charge of the food supply of a village I wouldn't conclude that from a food supply standpoint it would be a bad idea. You could say it's arbitrary or you could say it depends on your stance on the aesthetics of it, but to say it's bad would go quite far.

I became aware of Ligotti and this book after viewing the first, and by far the best, season of True Detective.

Evolution is made possible by the ability to adapt, our loss of hair has to have been a process over time.

Usually I love books that make me disgusted (like Cows) but I can't support this author. This author has been copyright striking and threatening small youtubers who make videos about the book claiming they are violating the fair use act when they don't. The book is beautifully gross but the author is just plain gross for doing this.

I watched your review of The Great Conspiracy against all Human Life, and it robbed my perceived essence, meaning evacuated leaving the deluded and its desperate ways. Bravo... Purchased this, and it's on the same vain of meaninglessness. Great work, and continue exploring pessimism that spirit of void. Cheers!!

A very bad movie.

This information is empowering. Throughout life there are veils, pageatries that dress up the will to live, procreate and fight for limited resources. Civilization is quelling our shared savagery and establishing a pecking order so we always have an outlet for savagery, in a civilized manner. I want more pessimism on this channel. Horror ties very well with pessimism. Chickens on the line to be decapitated after getting a fattening. "A painted puppet with jointed limbs, sometimes suffering and covered with ulcers, full of imaginings, never permanent, forever changing." -Dhammapada

I agree. I loved this book

I think man is the only insane animal. Darwin's ideas are always relevant. I saw The Island of Lost Souls on the big screen at our main library. Thank you for the honest review.

Its true we use 16% only

I didn't think Ligotti was saying that consciousness separates us from nature because it's not natural (he would agree it came about naturally), but rather that the ability to reason abstractly - almost certainly unique to humans amongst all animals - creates a gulf between us and the rest of nature.

Here after lily philips, she jusy recently did 100 guys and its wrecked her

The puppet idea is basically determinism. Oh you actually touch on this just after. Your a very well informed human : P I don't come across alot of people that understand these concepts.

Please keep up the book reviews, one of my favorite channels on TH-cam

We would practice absurd devotion to the absence of ourselves and the meaningless of our existence. We would collectively mourn and collectively laugh at how pathetic and messed up we are.

Harari is a historian and storyteller. Sadly, he's not a futurist, though he seems to be accepted as such by the likes of the WEF. His ideas in Homo Deus and Nexus are somewhat risible and not well-grounded except to people who aren't tuned into the improbability of his predictions.

Yuval Harari is characteristic of our meaningless world. A pathetic devotee of technology and techno-hubris. What he imagine will never come true. Never manifest without mass violence and sacrifice. Worse the pathetic writer serves the Zionist regime of Israel responsible for a Genocide currently ongoing.

Harari's book themselves are instruments of fabricated history and are more of a story books. After reading his earlier books, for many times, I realized there is a hidden agenda, if not by Harari himself, but most definitely by his "editor" to promote certain subtle "ideas" ... I prefer Nexus by Henry Miller. At least he was "real" :o)

Just listening to this now after rereading Cows and about half way through High Life which is great. He's such a great writer, thanks for picking his brain for us.

Fully have to appreciate our fairly recent predicament . . in regards to depression & cross roads before suicides due to affairs above . . we are climbing out of a hole recent & should't be . . be laboring our shoulders flog style with whips etc . . there is a back story natural not super natural . . cause of our trauma predicament . . calm your tits & don't shoot yourselves . . everything told is a lie to make you suicide

There is more to things than meets the one eye natural not supernatural . . there are reasons why we are what we are . . it's called foundations actual catastrophism recent past Pavlovs dog to attack others recent & not that sold on Sesame St happy days . . mainstream lies . . a whipped cur recent is not even minded . . remember the megaliths old

Great review. 👍 I would also highly recommend checking out Ernest Becker, if you haven’t already. Take care 🙏

What country do you live in now James?

Hey mr flynn love your reviews, i would love to hear your take on true detective season 1, a character is based off a lot of the books youve reviewed. Im sure im not the first person to mention it. Anyways love ya thanks

Hey James, bit of a personal question but I hope it’s okay. Do you have a lot of friends IRL or are you more of a loner?

Splendid interview! I've read High Life a few times and the Basic Instinct influence never occurred to me before. Also, I'm not surprised Mr. Stokoe liked the movie, Happiness. I can see alot of similarities between endings of Happiness and High Life. Great point about The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Such a great movie--first horror movie that actually scared me.

A good analysis and says it exactly how it is.

True Detective got people reading The King in Yellow again, but it got me to check this one out as well

Really excellent analysis of this book. You’ve done it more justice than anyone I’ve seen. Honestly perfectly articulated.

One IMO excellent thing I seem to get from reading TCATHR, as well as from Zapffe, Schopenhauer and Tolstoy is that I lose my addictions. I had addictions in the past because I was subconsciously running away from life’s inherent meaninglessness. But now that the subconscious fear as turned into conscious recognition, I seem much more content with living a life free of addiction. I was a food addict specifically, and I used trips to restaurants (on my own, sad as it sounds) to escape my subconscious resistance to the truth. It’s great for me to have the cognitive dissonance of thinking life should be an “amazing adventure full of meaning” lifted, especially since it doesn’t at all present itself as such.

It would be fun if you did an interview / discussion with David on these two books.

stokoe is a legend

Clearly and cohesively explained

Religion says that if you're depressed you need a higher level of delusional horsecrap, found often in scriptures