world-pain

Fragments in literary, artistic, and philosophical pessimism.

[weltenwellen]

Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

[weltschme-rz]

We are told that this earth was made for our inhabiting. Our dearly beloved brethren in the faith, our spiritual guides, philosophers and friends of the pulpit, never tire of pointing out the goodness of God in giving us so excellent a place to live in and commending the admirable adaptation of all things to our needs.

What a fine world it is, to be sure—a darling little world, “so suited to the needs of man.” A globe of liquid fire, straining within a shell relatively no thicker than that of an egg—a shell constantly cracking and in momentary danger of going all to pieces! Three-fourths of this delectable field of human activity are covered with an element in which we can not breathe, and which swallows us by myriads:

      With moldering bones the deep is white       From the frozen zones to the tropic bright.

Of the other one-fourth more than one-half is uninhabitable by reason of climate. On the remaining one-eighth we pass a comfortless and precarious existence in disputed occupancy with countless ministers of death and pain—pass it in fighting for it, tooth and nail, a hopeless battle in which we are foredoomed to defeat. Everywhere death, terror, lamentation and the laughter that is more terrible than tears—the fury and despair of a race hanging on to life by the tips of its fingers. And the prize for which we strive, “to have and to hold”—what is it? A thing that is neither enjoyed while had, or missed when lost. So worthless it is, so unsatisfying, so inadequate to purpose, so false to hope and at its best so brief, that for consolation and compensation we set up fantastic faiths of an aftertime in a better world from which no confirming whisper has ever reached us across the void. Heaven is a prophecy uttered by the lips of despair, but Hell is an inference from analogy.

Bierce, “Natura Benigna.” A Cynic Looks at Life.

[siesss]

[chromeus]

[weltschme-rz]

Savages cling to a local god of one tribe or town. The broad ethics of Jesus were quickly narrowed to village theologies, which preach an election or favoritism. And, now and then, an amiable parson, like Jung Stilling, or Robert Huntington, believes in a pistareen-Providence, which, whenever the good man wants a dinner, makes that somebody shall knock at his door, and leave a half-dollar. But Nature is no sentimentalist,—does not cosset or pamper us. We must see that the world is rough and surly, and will not mind drowning a man or a woman; but swallows your ship like a grain of dust. The cold, inconsiderate of persons, tingles your blood, benumbs your feet, freezes a man like an apple. The diseases, the elements, fortune, gravity, lightning, respect no persons. The way of Providence is a little rude. The habit of snake and spider, the snap of the tiger and other leapers and bloody jumpers, the crackle of the bones of his prey in the coil of the anaconda,—these are in the system, and our habits are like theirs. You have just dined, and, however scrupulously the slaughter-house is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity,—expensive races,—race living at the expense of race. The planet is liable to shocks from comets, perturbations from planets, rendings from earthquake and volcano, alterations of climate, precessions of equinoxes. Rivers dry up by opening of the forest. The sea changes its bed. Towns and counties fall into it. At Lisbon, an earthquake killed men like flies. At Naples, three years ago, ten thousand persons were crushed in a few minutes. The scurvy at sea; the sword of the climate in the west of Africa, at Cayenne, at Panama, at New Orleans, cut off men like a massacre. Our western prairie shakes with fever and ague. The cholera, the small-pox, have proved as mortal to some tribes, as a frost to the crickets, which, having filled the summer with noise, are silenced by a fall of the temperature of one night. Without uncovering what does not concern us, or counting how many species of parasites hang on a bombyx; or groping after intestinal parasites, or infusory biters, or the obscurities of alternate generation;—the forms of the shark, the labrus, the jaw of the sea-wolf paved with crushing teeth, the weapons of the grampus, and other warriors hidden in the sea,—are hints of ferocity in the interiors of nature. Let us not deny it up and down. Providence has a wild, rough, incalculable road to its end, and it is of no use to try to whitewash its huge, mixed instrumentalities, or to dress up that terrific benefactor in a clean shirt and white neckcloth of a student in divinity.

Emerson, “Fate.” The Conduct of Life.

[weltschme-rz]

Death is not an evil, because it frees us from all evils, and while it takes away good things, it takes away also the desire for them. Old age is the supreme evil, because it deprives us of all pleasures, leaving us only the appetite for them, and it brings with it all sufferings. Nevertheless, we fear death, and we desire old age.

Leopardi, Thoughts.

[gypsyastronaut]

[weltschme-rz]

When shall I be dead and rid Of the wrong my father did? How long, how long, till spade and hearse Put to sleep my mother’s curse?

Housman, “The Welsh Marches.”

[weltschme-rz]

While I still lingered on that river-walk,    And watched the tide as black as our black doom, I heard another couple join in talk,    And saw them to the left hand in the gloom Seated against an elm bole on the ground, Their eyes intent upon the stream profound.

“I never knew another man on earth    But had some joy and solace in his life,    Some chance of triumph in the dreadful strife: My doom has been unmitigated dearth.”

“We gaze upon the river, and we note The various vessels large and small that float, Ignoring every wrecked and sunken boat.”

“And yet I asked no splendid dower, no spoil    Of sway or fame or rank or even wealth;    But homely love with common food and health, And nightly sleep to balance daily toil.”

“This all-too-humble soul would arrogate Unto itself some signalising hate From the supreme indifference of Fate!”

“Who is most wretched in this dolorous place?    I think myself; yet I would rather be    My miserable self than He, than He Who formed such creatures to His own disgrace.

“The vilest thing must be less vile than Thou    From whom it had its being, God and Lord!    Creator of all woe and sin!    abhorred Malignant and implacable!    I vow

“That not for all Thy power furled and unfurled,    For all the temples to Thy glory built,    Would I assume the ignominious guilt Of having made such men in such a world.”

“As if a Being, God or Fiend, could reign, At once so wicked, foolish and insane, As to produce men when He might refrain!

“The world rolls round for ever like a mill; It grinds out death and life and good and ill; It has no purpose, heart or mind or will.

“While air of Space and Time’s full river flow The mill must blindly whirl unresting so: It may be wearing out, but who can know?

“Man might know one thing were his sight less dim; That it whirls not to suit his petty whim, That it is quite indifferent to him.

“Nay, does it treat him harshly as he saith? It grinds him some slow years of bitter breath, Then grinds him back into eternal death.”

Thomson, “The City of Dreadful Night.”

[pinewood-to-hollywood]

[weltschme-rz]

Leukemia is the garden where God blooms.

Cioran, “Time and Anemia.” All Gall Is Divided.

[weltschme-rz]

‘I’m not having children,’ she said with a sigh. ‘I've pondered my reasons, and thought about why. The future’s uncertain - the world’s full of fear - I'm hoping to fix it for those that are here.

‘We're crowded with people - we're stuffed to the hilt - And maybe it's time we reviewed and rebuilt. Reflect on the spreading of struggle and strife - Remade what it means to be lucky in life.

‘There's plenty of parents, but if I'm in doubt - Adoption's an option for children without. And that way,’ she finished, ‘I’m helping a bit.’

He angrily whispered:

‘You self-centred shit.’

Garland, “It’s not selfish to not have kids.”

[gypsyastronaut]

[the-night-picture-collector]

[sovietpostcards]

[antigonipapantoni]

[weltschme-rz]

Once Darwin fathomed natural selection, he surely saw how deeply his ethics were at odds with the values it implies. The insidious lethality of a parasitic wasp, the cruelty of a cat playing with a mouse—these are, after all, just the tip of the iceberg. To ponder natural selection is to be staggered by the amount of suffering and death that can be the price for a single, slight advance in organic design. And it is to realize, moreover, that the purpose of this “advance”—longer, sharper canine teeth in male chimpanzees, say—is often to make other animals suffer or die more surely. Organic design thrives on pain, and pain thrives on organic design.

Wright, “Evolutionary Ethics.” The Moral Animal: Why We Are The Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology.

With respect to the theological view of the question; this is always painful to me.— I am bewildered.— I had no intention to write atheistically. But I own that I cannot see, as plainly as others do, & as I sh[ould] wish to do, evidence of design & beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent & omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidæ with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice. Not believing this, I see no necessity in the belief that the eye was expressly designed.

Darwin, letter to Asa Gray.