Posts Tagged ‘Cosmicism’
On Lovecraftian Cosmicism
I recently read a series of short informational articles about a certain Howard Phillips Lovecraft, the famous author of the Cthulhu mythos of weird fiction, and that eventually led to another article about his worldview, Cosmicism. Besides the fact that the name itself is captivating, I think that it the conclusion would could have before reaching existentialism if one has rejected the idea of a deity as the absurd invention of man at a primitive level of superstition and some would say, manipulation.
Cosmicism is, to summarize, the philosophical idea that humanity is a microscopic presence in a vast, impersonal universe, a miniscule phenomenon of conditions subject to being destroyed at any given moment by cosmic forces of any given number, such as alien intelligences of indifference, meteors, and general impact or intense heating of any kind, going on to say things like the Big Freeze or the Big Rip as the result of universal expansion following the Big Bang.
The progress of human science is baffling as we see it, but it is in this philosophy, this cosmic perspective that I find our progress is nothing to the vastness of what could lie even beyond our universe, such as other universes, or any matter of forces or places that we could not fathom. The greater our light shines, they say, the greater we understand the darkness to be.
The link between Cosmicism, which excludes any religious belief of dogmatic form (such as a loving, caring God as evidenced enough to be real) and existentialism is that once we realize how small we are in the cosmos, we understand how fragile our existence is on Earth and how it is best that we are authentic and not subject to moralistic or ethical ideas that we do not agree with, because they are essentially human constructs used to protect the rest of society.
Yes, I know I will have some statements here regarding how that could be seen as nihilistic, but this is REALITY. You have to find your own peace. Externals be damned. Cosmicism does not imply that life is meaningless, simply insignificant in regards to the galactic scale of things.
Lovecraft said, “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 disappear. And what human beings do is just as free of sense as the free motion of elementary particles. Good, evil, morality, feelings? Pure ‘Victorian fictions’. Only egotism exists.”
What I believe Lovecraft means by this is that good and evil are conventions of society, and by going out of their way to help people, they are acting more out of the principle than out of concern for the person. I am not indifferent, myself, to the problems of others.
Existentially, while I see humans as only a tiny part of existence, it is the only part I have any influence on. That, and myself. While I will not go completely out of my way to do a kind act, I will do it when it comes to me to do so, when it feels natural. Or I may do it to gain allies to keep loneliness at bay by gaining new friends. I won’t die for someone else unless I know that is the authentic thing to do, as I don’t know how the situation will turn out.
My worldview includes slicing the ego in two. That doesn’t only mean acting kind to others. It also means not trying too hard, not to do things for the principle when we are all struggling in this life. And that may seem unbearable at times. We all wish we could save everyone. But being sane means knowing that you cannot always save those less fortunate than you.
Our bodies grow memes, or infectious ideas and categories of information, that try to control the way we live. Cutting them at the source makes us real individuals. We are not some idealized beings. We are sentient beings. We feel. We hurt. Our emotional realities and physical realities mean more than a thousand speeches, or any wise thing a man will ever say. If we relax and don’t attach to ideas, we will be really existent, because we will be aware of how they pass. Of how we pass. How all things will pass and how all things will come. We are conditional. Don’t take those conditions for granted, because you will eventually lose them, as they were never yours.
