Cosmicism makes perfect sense to me now

[seriously disabled]

Cosmicism is the literary philosophy developed and used by the American writer Howard Phillips Lovecraft in his weird fiction.

 

He was an American author of fantastic and macabre short novels and stories, one of the 20th-century masters of the Gothic tale of terror.

 

Howard Phillips Lovecraft was interested in science from childhood, but lifelong poor health prevented him from attending college. He made his living as a ghostwriter and rewrite man and spent most of his life in seclusion and poverty. His fame as a writer increased only after his death.

 

The philosophy of cosmicism states that there is no recognizable divine presence, such as a god, in the universe, and that humans are particularly insignificant in the larger scheme of intergalactic existence, and perhaps are just a small species projecting their own mental idolatries onto the vast cosmos, ever susceptible to being wiped from existence at any moment. This also suggested that the majority of undiscerning humanity are creatures with the same significance as insects in a much greater struggle between cosmic forces which, due to humanity's small, visionless and unimportant nature, it does not recognize.

 

Perhaps the most prominent theme in cosmicism is the utter insignificance of humanity. Lovecraft believed that "the human race will disappear. Other races will appear and disappear in turn. The sky will become icy and void, pierced by the feeble light of half-dead stars. Which will also disappear. Everything will eventually disappear. And what human beings do is just as free of sense as the free motion of elementary particles.

 

Cosmicism shares many characteristics with nihilism, though one important difference is that cosmicism tends to emphasize the inconsequentiality of humanity and its doings, rather than summarily rejecting the possible existence of some higher purpose (or purposes). For example, in Lovecraft's Cthulhu stories, it is not so much the absence of meaning that causes terror for the protagonists as it is their discovery that they have absolutely no power to effect any change in the vast, indifferent, and ultimately incomprehensible universe that surrounds them. Whatever meaning or purpose may or may not be invested in the actions of the cosmic beings in Lovecraft's stories is completely inaccessible to the human characters, in the way an amoeba (for example) is completely unequipped to grasp the concepts that drive human behavior.

 

Lovecraft's cosmicism was a result of his complete disdain for all things religious, his feeling of humanity's existential helplessness in the face of what he called the "infinite spaces" opened up by scientific thought, and his belief that humanity was fundamentally at the mercy of the vastness and emptiness of the cosmos.[3] In his fictional works, these ideas are often explored humorously ("Herbert West–Reanimator," 1922), through fantastic dreamlike narratives ("The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath," 1927), or through his well-known "Cthulhu Mythos" ("The Call of Cthulhu," 1928, and others). Common themes related to cosmicism in Lovecraft's fiction are the insignificance of humanity in the universe[4] and the search for knowledge ending in disaster.[5]

 

Cosmic indifference

 

Though cosmicism appears deeply pessimistic, H.P. Lovecraft thought of himself as neither a pessimist nor an optimist but rather an "indifferentist,"[citation needed] a theme expressed in his fiction. In Lovecraft's work, human beings are often subject to powerful beings and other cosmic forces, but these forces are not so much malevolent as they are indifferent toward humanity.[6] This indifference is an important theme in his philosophy.

 

The noted Lovecraft scholar S. T. Joshi points out that "Lovecraft constantly engaged in (more or less) genial debates on religion with several colleagues, notably the pious writer and teacher Maurice W. Moe. Lovecraft made no bones about being a strong and antireligious atheist; he considered religion not merely false but dangerous to social and political progress."[7] As such, Lovecraft's cosmicism is not religious at all, but rather a version of his mechanistic materialism." Lovecraft thus embraced a philosophy of cosmic indifferentism. He believed in a meaningless, mechanical, and uncaring universe that human beings, with their naturally limited faculties, could never fully understand. His viewpoint made no allowance for religious beliefs which could not be supported scientifically. The incomprehensible, cosmic forces of his tales have as little regard for humanity as humans have for insects.[8]

 

Though hostile to religion, Lovecraft used various "gods" in his stories, particularly the Cthulhu related tales, to expound cosmicism. However, Lovecraft never conceived of them as supernatural; they are merely extraterrestrials who understand and obey a set of natural laws, which to the limited human understanding seem magical. These beings (the Great Old Ones, Outer Gods and others)—though dangerous to humankind—are neither good nor evil, and human notions of morality have no meaning for these beings. Indeed, they exist in cosmic realms beyond human understanding. As a symbol, they represent the kind of universe that Lovecraft believed in, a universe in which humanity is an insignificant blot, fated to come and go, its appearance unnoticed and its passing unmourned.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmicism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._P._Lovecraft

Edited August 5, 2012 by seriously disabled

[tar]

seriously disabled,

 

And now that you understand it, do you subscribe to it? That is, are you convinced? Is that worldview forced by evidence and logic, or can one reasonably find in each of the realizations, basis for purposefulness?

 

For instance, though science opens up a rather infinite looking domain, that dwarfs a human in size and scale and duration and power, there is also the other direction to consider, that which puts a human and his/her domain on a scale that dwarfs the amoeba and even more so, the quark. Of the "smaller" domains, locally, we are the indifferent masters, unconcered with the morality of the ant, as we brush him off our sandwich. Yet we belong to both those domains indifferent to us, and those we are indifferent to, with the same substance, the same reality, and therefore, that we find purpose is a real event. Inconsequential to anything on the other side of the Milky Way for 300,000 years, but of immediate and immense consequences to local organisations of matter and form.

 

And there is life itself, which can be viewed as a victory over an indifferent universe, tending toward entropy.

And there is indifference itself, which requires an awareness of something making a difference.

 

Saw a nice saying once that pertains. "To the world, you are just some person, to some person, you may be the whole world."

 

Lovecraft, from your abstract, does not make any logical errors, or set up anything that could not be, or is not the case, but, in my estimation does not give himself credit enough for being a real part, of a real universe, in all the ways he describes, and STILL have the ability, to make such judgements and distictiions, and be "indifferent" to the whole ball of wax, that he is so clearly capable of containing, and interacting with.

 

Regards, TAR2