The Conspiracy Against the Human Race by Thomas Ligotti
Authors: Thomas Ligotti
Tags: Criticism, Philosophy
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post-Darwinian insight that is as true in the twenty-first century as when Lovecraft penned it in 1926. All revisions of our “place in the universe” have served only as a partial antidote for religion, everyday superstition, and certain schools of philosophy.
Scientists do not set out to shake up the status quo. Their purview is that of trifling matters relating to the physical workings of the world. They also seek payment and maybe notoriety for their work. What prods a scientific head does not affect ordinary people, who by and large take their marching orders from their social environment and their bodies rather than from a compulsive desire for “truth” in a material, which is so often immaterial, sense. Knowledge of the origins and ornamentations of the universe, including those of organic life, changes nothing about how we live and how we die.
Buddha was purportedly incurious about how or why the universe and its inhabitants came to be. What possible difference could such information make to someone who had consecrated himself to a single end: to become liberated from the illusions that held his head to the grindstone of existence? In a very real sense, Buddhism was the prototype for the field of neuroscience, which may yet deliver a blow from which the self-image of humankind will not soon recover. What remains to be seen is this: will neuroscientists substantively modify our concepts about who we are and where we stand or merely cause our heads to make some pettifogging modifications. The reception of the research of a Canadian scientist name Michael Persinger may be a predictor of humanity’s genius for keeping its head locked into the old ways. In the 1980s, Persinger modified a motorcycle helmet to affect the magnetic fields of the brain of its wearer, inducing a variety of strange sensations. These included experiences in which subjects temporarily felt themselves proximate to supernatural phenomena that included ghosts and gods.
Atheists have used Persinger’s studies to nail close their argument for the subjectivity of anyone’s sense of the supernatural, while believers have written books contending that the magnetic-field-emitting motorcycle helmet proves the existence of a god who has
“hard-wired” itself into our brain. A field of study called neurotheology grew up around this and other laboratory experiments. Even if you can substantiate a scientific find with a cudgel of data that should render the holy opposition unconscious, they will be at the ready to discredit you—imprisonment, torture, and public execution having gone the way of chastity belts. The bonus of this deadlock for writers of supernatural horror is that it ensures the larger part of humanity will remain in a state of fear, because no one can ever be certain of either his own ontological status or that of gods, demons, alien invaders, and sundry other bugbears. A Buddhist would advise that we forget about whether or not the bogeymen we have invented or divined are real. The big question is this: are we real? This query may yet be taken out of the hands of enlightenment 46
religions such as Buddhism and turned over to neuroscience and its satellite disciplines.
But none should hold their breath for a verdict in this case, which will be in deliberation until the day that human beings cease to walk the earth, although not because they listened to the Last Messiah.
47
48
FACING HORROR
ENLIGHTENMENT
Like any system of thought that goes against the grain of regurgitated wisdom, Buddhism has enticed legions of the world’s choicest heads, or at least those in the cognitive vanguard. Aside from its lack of a god-figure, it sits atop two courageous and cogent observations, numbers one and two of the Four Noble Truths. The first is the equation between life and suffering. The second is that a craving for life is the provenance of suffering, which is useless and without value. (Pace C. S. Lewis [The Problem of Pain,
Scientists do not set out to shake up the status quo. Their purview is that of trifling matters relating to the physical workings of the world. They also seek payment and maybe notoriety for their work. What prods a scientific head does not affect ordinary people, who by and large take their marching orders from their social environment and their bodies rather than from a compulsive desire for “truth” in a material, which is so often immaterial, sense. Knowledge of the origins and ornamentations of the universe, including those of organic life, changes nothing about how we live and how we die.
Buddha was purportedly incurious about how or why the universe and its inhabitants came to be. What possible difference could such information make to someone who had consecrated himself to a single end: to become liberated from the illusions that held his head to the grindstone of existence? In a very real sense, Buddhism was the prototype for the field of neuroscience, which may yet deliver a blow from which the self-image of humankind will not soon recover. What remains to be seen is this: will neuroscientists substantively modify our concepts about who we are and where we stand or merely cause our heads to make some pettifogging modifications. The reception of the research of a Canadian scientist name Michael Persinger may be a predictor of humanity’s genius for keeping its head locked into the old ways. In the 1980s, Persinger modified a motorcycle helmet to affect the magnetic fields of the brain of its wearer, inducing a variety of strange sensations. These included experiences in which subjects temporarily felt themselves proximate to supernatural phenomena that included ghosts and gods.
Atheists have used Persinger’s studies to nail close their argument for the subjectivity of anyone’s sense of the supernatural, while believers have written books contending that the magnetic-field-emitting motorcycle helmet proves the existence of a god who has
“hard-wired” itself into our brain. A field of study called neurotheology grew up around this and other laboratory experiments. Even if you can substantiate a scientific find with a cudgel of data that should render the holy opposition unconscious, they will be at the ready to discredit you—imprisonment, torture, and public execution having gone the way of chastity belts. The bonus of this deadlock for writers of supernatural horror is that it ensures the larger part of humanity will remain in a state of fear, because no one can ever be certain of either his own ontological status or that of gods, demons, alien invaders, and sundry other bugbears. A Buddhist would advise that we forget about whether or not the bogeymen we have invented or divined are real. The big question is this: are we real? This query may yet be taken out of the hands of enlightenment 46
religions such as Buddhism and turned over to neuroscience and its satellite disciplines.
But none should hold their breath for a verdict in this case, which will be in deliberation until the day that human beings cease to walk the earth, although not because they listened to the Last Messiah.
47
48
FACING HORROR
ENLIGHTENMENT
Like any system of thought that goes against the grain of regurgitated wisdom, Buddhism has enticed legions of the world’s choicest heads, or at least those in the cognitive vanguard. Aside from its lack of a god-figure, it sits atop two courageous and cogent observations, numbers one and two of the Four Noble Truths. The first is the equation between life and suffering. The second is that a craving for life is the provenance of suffering, which is useless and without value. (Pace C. S. Lewis [The Problem of Pain,
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