Hi James, nice review

I found some sentences superfluous. Like in the exerpt you read here. Because they are dead. This happens a lot throughout this book. The tipic is of bad taste and terrible topic, grotesque

Nice review again, and I don't tend to prefer most genre fiction, including horror. I found your observation on the missing question marks interesting. I was thinking about this topic just recently. In one case, they are typically redundant...especially in English grammatical construction because we've got so many preliminary interrogative terms: how, why, when, where, and so on. On the other hand, if they are meant as intonation markers, the Spanish have it right. They spot them inverted at the start of the sentence to provide an immediate cue: 'What you are about to read is a question, so don't forget to lilt at the end'. I was pondering this because I use ElevenLabs AI voices to narrate much of my spoken audio output, and it rarely lilts at the end of sentences, so I figured, why bother? «« O! the irony. The content conveys the interrogative nature. In fact, One can't express 'why bother' as anything but a question, so the question mark is redundant. I like the approach even if I am not quite ready to adopt it. I have enough companions about my style of prose.

Great review as always James. Enjoyed your excellent interview with GC mckay. Fascinating to hear both your views on literature.

your book reviews area a gem on youtube.. too bad that if you are not animated or acting like a normie you wont get a lot of views lol thanks for your videos dude nice work

Spiritual Existence before the fall. The curse came and becoming mortal within the dimension of time ruled and regulated by the law of the finite.

Love your channel James. Been watching a lot of your videos this week. Keep up the good work mate.

This book is really tough, and the pessimism that it preaches is very much in vogue, but I think any reader would do well to avoid being entranced by Ligotti's mesmerizing style and try to apply plenty of critical thought to the arguments being made. The "humans as puppets" trope is a great one, but it should be mentioned that in the least it really can not be said that we do not have free will. Philosophers like Steven Horst are a great start here. Maybe this would lead some down the path of studying the works of Nancy Cartwright and other members of the "Stanford Disunity School", who provide arguments against any kind of unifying of the sciences needed to dismiss free will. I know that the pessimists would point to the complexity of all of these arguments as a troubling fact by itself, but surely anyone who can take the time to understand a book like, "The Conspiracy against the Human Race" can also spend some time working on philosophical arguments from another point of view. All of this is worth mentioning because the worldview of someone who think that depression is the correct human perspective is not the only one that should be considered!

Great review , James.I am a big fan of your channel.I have recently read Thomas Ligotti's book "conspiracy against the human race" and in the book he touches on Zapffe's work.Would you say that reading Ligotti's book is sufficient enough or does Zapffe's book bring something else to the table?I realize that Zapffe's book/essay is oly about 20 pages long...Wishing you all the best for the future.

Great review man! I hope you’re doing well.

I hated seeing all my fears spelt out so blatantly, I really love this book but God, I've never wanted a silver lining so badly. There's also beauty, drugs and cartoons in this reality too, its not that gloomy Mr Ligotti.

I personally found the book very funny at times. It took pessimistic ideas and presented them in an entertaining way. There's a lot to chew on, but it's not the only book with philosophical ideas that has stuck with me long after I'd finished reading.

For a better understanding of determinism, check out Robert Sapolsky’s new book on the subject.

Ligotti is a 14 y.o who never got the chance to grow up

Whay does not exist can not be deprived

Great short story, thanks for sharing 👍

One of the murder weapons is a kite. A kite. This book is ridiculous.

Definitely a great idea for a Short Story 👍

It makes no sense to attempt to take refuge from TCATHR in The God Delusion. The former is the latter taken to its logical conclusion.

Great concept. Reality is stranger than fiction.

Poor woman. I feel for her. Every one of us can finish in a mental hospital.

I see great sorrow in your eyes, James. I thought this would be somewhat darker than it turned out to be. I think you're well suited to telling unsettling tales.

Fake is the new normal

Entertaining story. I wonder what happened to her?

Hello James. How are you? That was an interesting story. I confess that when I read the title I imagined some kind of tragedy involving fatal victims. I'm glad it wasn't as tragic as I thought. Somehow I was happy that the woman was able to have some fun among you before eventually being found and taken back to the institution. Great history. Thank you for sharing with us.

That was an amazing story James! Would make an excellent novel, if you decided to write it. Quiet chilling in every respect.

I am currently reading the book but I keep thinking that there is way too much beauty on earth to say that we are just blind chance. How is it that conditions are so perfect to accommodate humans? Oxygen levels, climate, gravity, only to name a few of hundreds of examples. Intelligent design, God, there is a reason we exist. The earth is too beautiful to claim anything evil created it or it just came into existence randomly. Too many things aligned perfectly, otherwise we couldn’t survive. Something made earth inhabitable specifically for humans.

Thank you for reviewing this. Yes, the only positive thing about it is: I'm not alone, someone else sees what I see and feels what I feel. The fascistic tone of the book I feel is Ligotti's pushback against the fascistic tone of pro life/pro continued suffering crowd - they don't allow you to question the dogma: Being alive is a good thing. If you think and feel like Ligotti you will be in minority, because everybody else is busy trying to win the game in which there's nothing to win but illusion of success. It's all unnecessary suffering and every good thing is just a reduction of that suffering for the ones already alive. Buddha said life is suffering, break the cycle, but his students perverted his words and Buddhism became just another status quo religion that is indifferent to procreation. So the truth is bleak, it's very dark: there is no god, there is no grand plan, there is no justice and all this suffering cannot be justified, procreation cannot be justified. Tom doesn't like "happy enders" because they offer false hope that things are somehow ok, or will be ok, which is a lie. He feels these people are dishonest, they perhaps have good intentions, but they give people false hope, and this false hope and optimism is what leads people to procreate and continue this Ouroboros cycle. The truth is: life is suffering, we couldn't prevent our birth and we can't remove suffering from life: "there's nothing to do." So, the only thing I can do, that is ethically right is not to have children and try to be a decent person, even if these things won't change anything in the grand scheme of things, I still have to do what is right. About trying to be happy, even Ligotti himself said that it would be unbearable for him to think of this 24/7, and I agree, if you are here you should strive for some peace of mind, as long as you are here. The thing that I find most difficult to deal with is the fact that there are so few people who have the intellectual honesty and decency of heart to even contemplate this notion that being alive is not ok. I feel so lonely, like I'm in a tunnel, looking trough the grimy windows, hoping to see a kindred spirit. I wish there was more to life, I wish all the suffering would somehow be meaningful, I wish that there was something to fight for, I wish good would triumph over evil- but I just don't see it. It's always been a futile pursuit- It's not worth it. Why create a hunger that can never be satisfied, where is the wisdom in that?

Thank you!

Hey, mate. Whatever works for you. Live streams-or at least videos with no editing-are easier for the creator. Live streams also allow you to interact with your audience in real time. I don't tend to watch things on a schedule, but sometimes, I am coincidentally watching when a creator I am following is streaming. On the downside, a live stream is sometimes bloated with dead air and side topics. A remedy for this is to offer an edited/abridged version of a fraction of the time, though this involves the post-production work you are trying to avoid. I'm looking forward to your short stories of pessimism. I am more of a philosopher than a reader, but I enjoy your channel and reviews. I've done a couple reviews myself and am considering doing one when I finish Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian. It won't be live-streamed for sure.

Look forward to the pessimism short story video. There is a thread at Thomas Ligotti Online with the title Ligottian Listopia where members have listed stories similar to Ligotti's work.

Hey I visited your channel after watching your video and found your content very nice. But your video doesn't have enough views. Do you know why views are not coming even after publishing a lot of videos? Because your videos are not SEO done. Without actually doing SEO, your videos are not generating enough views.

AN ABSOLUTE HORROR SHOW!!! This from a Query about the most Important Book in the Bible: The Book of Job! The one Clerics never go into detail about! Hidden in Plain Sight!; “If I gaze deeply into the abyss that the Book of Job potentially opens up, here is what I perceive: I see the foundations of religious belief and humanity's conceptions of meaning and value utterly undermined. Job presents a vision of God as an inscrutable, amoral force whose choices in allowing or inflicting profound suffering transcend all human ethical frameworks. This severs any coherent connection between God's actions and human notions of goodness, justice or moral meaning. In this abyss, the biblical narratives of God revealing Himself as a personal, morally perfect being working toward ultimate redemption and victory over evil become arbitrary linguistic fictions. They are mere human perspectives and coping stories disconnected from any grounded truth about the divine reality operating beyond good and evil. The very idea of humans having a genuine personal relationship with God or making sense of His purposes through ethical reasoning is called into radical doubt. We are left with an utterly inscrutable divine force that renders prayer, worship, spiritual practices and religious truth claims incoherent - empty exercises in projecting human values onto an indifferent universe. In this abyss, even our most fundamental concepts of meaning, purpose and value become conceptual fictions lacking any metaphysical grounding or divine source of objective goodness. All religious beliefs rooted in moral meaning are exposed as self-delusions, mere anthropocentric constructs unable to glimpse the divine reality. Ultimately, when I gaze into the abyss opened up by Job's theological vision, I perceive a philosophical void where God's true nature is radically unknowable. All religious narratives, teachings and systems of belief are reduced to incoherent human perspectives, unable to comprehend the inscrutable force behind reality that transcends all moral and personal categories. It is an abyss that threatens to deconstruct the very foundations of religious thought, the human conceptions of meaning and value that underlie it, and our entire philosophical framework for making sense of God through moral, personal or truth-oriented lenses. An existential abyss that, if fully embraced, potentially obliterates the possibility of genuine religious belief itself. This is the profoundly disorienting vision I perceive when staring unflinchingly into the theological abyss that the Book of Job could lead us into - an abyss that fundamentally undermines our ability as humans to have any ultimate understanding of the divine reality behind the universe we inhabit.” “If we accept the Book of Job as depicting God's sovereignty as utterly transcending human notions of justice, goodness, and moral meaning, then it deals a seismic blow to traditional Christian atonement theology centered on the cross. The idea that Jesus died as a "propitiation" to satisfy God's wrath toward sin, or as a "substitutionary atonement" bearing the just penalty humans rightly deserved - all of this is predicated on an understanding of God operating within a moral framework defined by human concepts of justice, righteousness, sin, and wrath. However, the Book of Job seems to dismantle and call into question this entire basis for making sense of Christ's crucifixion. If God is portrayed as the inscrutable force who inflicts or allows what humans would consider profound evil and suffering on a righteous person like Job, then classical atonement categories become incoherent. How can Christ's death be explained as "satisfying" God's justice or "turning away" divine wrath, if Job has already deconstructed those human-conceived principles as inapplicable to the true nature of God's sovereignty? On what grounds could Jesus' sacrifice be considered a "propitiation" for sin, if sin itself is reduced to a meaningless moral construct? The theology of the cross is typically framed as God's own self-substitution - the innocent dying for the guilty out of an unfathomable love that fulfills divine justice. Yet if Job has dismantled human moral reasoning about innocence, guilt, and just punishment, then this entire framework falls apart. Christ's death cannot be explained or given meaning through human-conceived principles of sin, atonement, justice, and the need for propitiation - because Job has already profoundly deconstructed and called into question the validity of those moral categories when applied to God's supreme sovereignty. So if one fully embraces the vision of divine inscrutability presented in Job, the cross of Christ is essentially rendered unintelligible and incoherent when interpreted through traditional Christian theology. It becomes a brutal, meaningless act of suffering that cannot be mapped onto human moral frameworks in any comprehensible way. This potentially reduces the cross to an arbitrary event as inscrutable as the suffering Job endured - devoid of meaning except through the very human moral lenses that Job methodically deconstructs. The theological paradox this creates is profoundly unsettling. Perhaps the cross can only be understood through a similar admission that its meaning transcends human moral reasoning, as Job was forced to conclude about God's purposes. Or perhaps Job's vision is simply incompatible with making any ultimate spiritual sense of the crucifixion through traditional atonement lenses.”

The book hasn't been translated to Arabic so I'm watching your review and it's really helpful so thanks for the video

Sounds similar to the aussie movie bad boy bubby from 1993.

In essence, Hollywood is propaganda. Hi-tech and an extension of American imperial soft-power,

Great review James. Always enjoy your videos. Its such a refreshing change to the usual turgid book tube videos you normally see. I want to read this and Cows for definite 👍

•The 3 marks of existence Everything is suffering, impermanence, and non self,, •Suffering - all living beings suffer in different ways, mental and physical suffering, mental suffering like stress, depression, worry, etc. and physical suffering like disease, skin or organs problems, wounds, etc... •Impermanence - nothing last forever except change, everything or everyone will die or will change, like people, house, plants, possession, gadgets, perspective etc... •No self - everything is made out of 4 elements, fire water earth air, example is the house, how to build a house? Need stone blocks, how to create stone blocks? Need some earth or dirt, combined with water, then shaping to blocks after that need heat to be cooked and steady then need air to make the blocks dry and finish product, and humans and other living beings too are created by the 4 elements, People have heat in their body to not get cold, and water like blood, and air to breath, and earth is the physical form of humans and other organisms (living beings), Humans are just like cars, humans have organs, 6 senses, hormones, chemical reactions to the brain and the nature of mind, nature of the mind is greedy for sensual pleasure to the 5 senses, and car have engine, wheels, fuel, lights, windows, etc.. That's why humans are just like animals, humanity just invented sense of self, the sense of "me" "mine" "I'm this" "I'm that" but in reality all living beings are just an organism in the environment, So everything are just organism trying to survive everyday, name, labels is an illusion it's not real because truth is beyond words and beyond ordinary people and ordinary living beings understanding What do you think?

Je ne sais plus comment j'ai découvert cet auteur, il y a bien longtemps, mais j'ai tout de suite aimé son univers étrange. Vermillion sands, IGH, le monde englouti, l'île de béton, Crash, l'empire du soleil levant, ces deux romans ayant donné deux films, etc, et même la Foire aux Atrocités. Il y a de l'art dans son œuvre, qui côtoie la sociologie et la fiction. Son inspiration est étrange, proche de celle de peintres surréalistes comme Dali. J'étais très heureux quand je trouvais une traduction française d'un de ses livres. Petit à petit cet auteur est devenu pour moi un peu comme un membre éloigné de ma famille. Je crois que pour l'apprécier il faut une tournure d'esprit non conventionnelle.

Well that will save Islam a whole lot of time and trouble.

are you in indonesia btw?

"everybody" in our tribe was our friend, but everybody out of our tribe an potential enemy

love it. Thanks. I was looking for an audiobook version of it, but could not find it