Insignificance

[MR. Macabre 666]

I'm not sure where this topic would fit into this forum, so I thought I'd try it out here. Are any of us really aware of how completely and utter-ably insignificant we all are in the cosmos? 

I've been a fan of the work of H.P.Lovecraft ever since discovering him in high school, and I've read his stories and poems multiple times. If you're not familiar with him, he's the E.A. Poe of the 20th century, a purveyor of horror and dread until he died of stomach cancer in 1937 at the age of 46. Just like Poe, he wasn't very well known until after his death, and lived an impoverished life.

The reason I've mentioned his work is because in his stories, he reminds us of how small and insignificant we are in the grand scheme of things. He pit's us against the OLD ONES, a race of deities or gods who have inhabited the cosmos for billions of years, and have ruled here on the earth since before we even existed. 
There are secret cults that still worship and perform rituals in their honor scattered around the globe, and if/when they return, when the stars are aligned properly, will return and destroy the human race. Not because they're evil, or because we pose a threat to them, but because they're totally indifferent to our existence. We're not even a speck of dust in the history of the cosmos. 
There won't be anyone/thing to remember us when the human race goes extinct, which is going to happen, it's only a matter of time.

[Silver]

I never think of myself in relation to the universe, but I often feel insignificant at work.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

I disagree completely. I am the single most important Being in the universe. Every thing that exists is fully dependent on me - when I die, the universe ends.

Boru

Edit: equating Lovecraft with Poe is just silly.

[Belacqua]

I'm not sure where this topic would fit into this forum, so I thought I'd try it out here. Are any of us really aware of how completely and utter-ably insignificant we all are in the cosmos? 

I've been a fan of the work of H.P.Lovecraft ever since discovering him in high school, and I've read his stories and poems multiple times. If you're not familiar with him, he's the E.A. Poe of the 20th century, a purveyor of horror and dread until he died of stomach cancer in 1937 at the age of 46. Just like Poe, he wasn't very well known until after his death, and lived an impoverished life.

The reason I've mentioned his work is because in his stories, he reminds us of how small and insignificant we are in the grand scheme of things. He pit's us against the OLD ONES, a race of deities or gods who have inhabited the cosmos for billions of years, and have ruled here on the earth since before we even existed. 
There are secret cults that still worship and perform rituals in their honor scattered around the globe, and if/when they return, when the stars are aligned properly, will return and destroy the human race. Not because they're evil, or because we pose a threat to them, but because they're totally indifferent to our existence. We're not even a speck of dust in the history of the cosmos. 
There won't be anyone/thing to remember us when the human race goes extinct, which is going to happen, it's only a matter of time.

Oh man, I used to love Lovecraft. I remember getting the whole series of paperbacks that were available in the '70s, and reading them all fast. One memorable night during summer vacation I stayed up most of the night during a thunderstorm and read through two or three of them. That made an impression!

At the time I didn't know about the good solid tradition that he's working in. As original as he is, his work has its roots.

I think the key term here is "sublime," which has evolved since it got started in ancient times, and has a special meaning in literature. It used to mean just really really beautiful, but from the 18th century the sublime was defined as something fundamentally different from beauty -- an overwhelming feeling of one's smallness against something unimaginably great. It could leave a person with a positive, religious sense, but more and more it was seen as a kind of terror which could change you permanently. 

The Romantic poets particularly valued this experience, to the point of doing crazy stuff. Byron famously climbed a mountain during a thunderstorm so as to feel it. Shelley went out to sea in a storm and died from it. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sublime_(literary)

Lovecraft was good at inducing sublime horror by refusing to describe too much. As I recall he repeatedly just says that what the character in the story saw was so horrible that it can't be expressed in words, but that seeing it left the character mad for life. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ineffability

This is why I think people's efforts to make pictures of the Old Ones, or show them in movies, are misguided. It's not possible for us to show something so horrible that it would drive the viewer crazy, and if we show something that doesn't drive him crazy then it isn't a proper illustration.

[brewer]

I'll take the Animal House position.

[Paleophyte]

I'm not sure where this topic would fit into this forum, so I thought I'd try it out here. Are any of us really aware of how completely and utter-ably insignificant we all are in the cosmos? 

I've been a fan of the work of H.P.Lovecraft ever since discovering him in high school, and I've read his stories and poems multiple times. If you're not familiar with him, he's the E.A. Poe of the 20th century, a purveyor of horror and dread until he died of stomach cancer in 1937 at the age of 46. Just like Poe, he wasn't very well known until after his death, and lived an impoverished life.

The reason I've mentioned his work is because in his stories, he reminds us of how small and insignificant we are in the grand scheme of things. He pit's us against the OLD ONES, a race of deities or gods who have inhabited the cosmos for billions of years, and have ruled here on the earth since before we even existed. 
There are secret cults that still worship and perform rituals in their honor scattered around the globe, and if/when they return, when the stars are aligned properly, will return and destroy the human race. Not because they're evil, or because we pose a threat to them, but because they're totally indifferent to our existence. We're not even a speck of dust in the history of the cosmos. 
There won't be anyone/thing to remember us when the human race goes extinct, which is going to happen, it's only a matter of time.

That depends entirely on how you measure it. In terms of almost any physical metric that you can name we don't even show up as a rounding error even when only compared to our own planet. On the flip side, if our species evolves into something further up the Kardashev scale then we might reshape the entire universe.

It's a bit like looking at any given molecule and wondering at its significance. Probably pretty low unless it just happens to be the prebiotic autocatalyzing entity that gave rise to all life.

[The Valkyrie]

[brewer]

[MR. Macabre 666]

I disagree completely. I am the single most important Being in the universe. Every thing that exists is fully dependent on me - when I die, the universe ends.

Boru

Edit: equating Lovecraft with Poe is just silly.

I beg to differ, I'm a fan of both Poe and Lovecraft, their stories can create an atmosphere of dread and madness, unlike other writers. Each author had their own distinct writing style, and they are both considered the greatest creators of horror fiction during the centuries in which they lived. 
A lot of others consider Stephen King to be the best, but I've never been a fan of his novels, they're too long and drawn out, with mostly 'cliche endings. 
Just my opinion.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Meh, Lovecraft's a crap writer. Long passages of purple description, verbose to a shitty point, cardboard characters who cannot pull anyone in.