Experiment #69: Consider Humanity to be an Error
Duration: About an hour
Props: none
Effect: bracing
How often we have been told that we are exceptional! Center of the world, children of God, universal consciousness, salt of the earth, intelligence, language-beings, spirit of science, vector of progress. Our existence has been so celebrated by myths, religions, philosophies, smug ideologies, that it is hard to comprehend our failures, our vileness, our interminable wars and our endless filth. Naturally, there has been any amount of special pleading, to explain our fall, our malediction, and our two-facedness.
There is a way of experimenting with a more radical form of disillusionment, which is doubtless more beneficial. Rid yourself of anything that resembles a meaning to our existence. Consider humanity as a result of pure chance, a mistake, a biological accident. It developed without order, on some lost pebble in some small benighted corner. one day it will disappear forever, unremembered and unmourned. For the tens of thousands of years of its survival, our species stagnated. Then it multipled unreasonably, and plundered its own habitat. And before disappearing, it will have charged to its account a weight of suffering both unimaginable and futile, massacres and famines, enslavements and tyrannies.
Take a clear-eyed look at this absurd and violent species. Confront its lack of justification and its ephemeral, irrational existence. Train yourself to endure this vision of humanity as fundamentally meaningless and futureless. This should contribute to your serenity. For against this background of unmeaning and horror, every sublime thing shines out the more as a matchless gift. Perfect music, unforgettable paintings, the glory of cathedrals, grief-stricken poems, lovers' laughter ... Such are the endlessly surprising fruits of this aberration that is us.
Props: none
Effect: bracing
How often we have been told that we are exceptional! Center of the world, children of God, universal consciousness, salt of the earth, intelligence, language-beings, spirit of science, vector of progress. Our existence has been so celebrated by myths, religions, philosophies, smug ideologies, that it is hard to comprehend our failures, our vileness, our interminable wars and our endless filth. Naturally, there has been any amount of special pleading, to explain our fall, our malediction, and our two-facedness.
There is a way of experimenting with a more radical form of disillusionment, which is doubtless more beneficial. Rid yourself of anything that resembles a meaning to our existence. Consider humanity as a result of pure chance, a mistake, a biological accident. It developed without order, on some lost pebble in some small benighted corner. one day it will disappear forever, unremembered and unmourned. For the tens of thousands of years of its survival, our species stagnated. Then it multipled unreasonably, and plundered its own habitat. And before disappearing, it will have charged to its account a weight of suffering both unimaginable and futile, massacres and famines, enslavements and tyrannies.
Take a clear-eyed look at this absurd and violent species. Confront its lack of justification and its ephemeral, irrational existence. Train yourself to endure this vision of humanity as fundamentally meaningless and futureless. This should contribute to your serenity. For against this background of unmeaning and horror, every sublime thing shines out the more as a matchless gift. Perfect music, unforgettable paintings, the glory of cathedrals, grief-stricken poems, lovers' laughter ... Such are the endlessly surprising fruits of this aberration that is us.