by Thomas Ligotti
Ligotti assumes a pessimistic outlook from the outset of the book. Taking as a starting assumption the premise that "being alive is not all right," or that in general suffering outweighs pleasure, he argues that the existence of consciousness entails a tragedy: The more conscious one is of the meaningless and often horrifying nature of the world (which is referred to as being "malignantly useless"), the more one wishes not to be aware of this fact, and so overly conscious beings must constantly engage in exercises which limit their awareness of the negative aspects of existence, either intentionally or instinctively. This makes consciousness something that "should not be," and humanity's attempts at either coping with, ignoring, or actively suppressing this fact drive a significant portion of modern society's obsessions, such as the quest for healthy living (despite the fact that everyone dies regardless), art and horror (as acts of sublimation), and the desire to have children (as a futile attempt at a form of genetic immortality), among many other common behavioral norms. Ligotti argues that the only complete escape from the predicament of consciousness is either to undergo ego death, which very few humans successfully achieve, or for humanity to cease existing, preferably through voluntary human extinction (which Ligotti believes is highly unlikely to ever happen), but which may also be achieved on an individual level through death, although that may entail further suffering in the process, and is therefore not always worth the increased pain.
Ligotti posits that very few people would be willing to be born in the past (due in part to the inevitable increased suffering of inferior medical care), but that very few people feel bad about being alive in the present, despite the strong possibility that future generations will feel the same about us that we feel towards the past (that their lives were filled with more suffering than we would be willing to bear). Philosophical pessimism is not held or even widely considered by most humans, which, according to Ligotti, is because of its terrifying implications rather than the strength of the arguments for or against it.
