thomas ligotti

l conspiracy-aganst-the-human-race

If you saw the mini-series True Detective (first installment), you might remember Matthew McConnaughey spouting weird, dark philosophy and Woody Harrelson responding with something like "Don't tell anybody else this but me, OK?"

Some of the ideas were loosely based on the above book, by horror fiction writer Thomas Ligotti. In a nutshell, it's the case for anti-natalism, that is, that humans should just stop having children, and thereby, ultimately, quietly remove our species from the planet. Not because we're an ecosystem-unbalancing viral plague, although there's that, but rather that we have an "excess of consciousness," beyond our capacity needed for survival on Earth, and it generates so much suffering it's got to be a mistake of nature.

The McConnaughey character was still "doing good things" while espousing dark shit but Ligotti would probably say that's his choice, as long as he wasn't breeding. Ligotti writes persuasively and well (and with great humor), and I recommend a few rounds with this book to help you polish your counter-arguments. He has anticipated most of them and they will sound like feeble apologetics, I'll warn you right now.