I’m a little concerned with my near obsession with the writings of the Romanian Philosopher Emil Cioran; he was a most egregious misanthrope who wrote with great profundity, drawing me into ideas I fear would feed the innate skepticism I harbor and would find not particularly useful in keeping my demeanor sunshiny. I try to keep in mind the post-WWII world he lived in, one he must have seen as a moral low point in the history of western civilization.
Anyway, in his aphorisms, E. C. vehemently condemns mankind’s false distractions (mainly religious idealisms) the obsession with which dooms man’s existence to inconsequence. Fear of the nothingness of existence, he writes, compels man to conjure beliefs, champion absolutes, to impose on others’ Truths in the hopes of gaining reinforcements sold on the delusions of life’s meaningfulness. What can man expect to gain were he to overcome such delusional thinking? Well, not a whole lot. Life will still be a painful experience, suffering the rule; slow physical deterioration and the realization existence has no meaningful worth must be expected.
As I process E. C.’s reasonable lines of thought I happened upon a big But: maintaining imagination, creating inventive scenarios, reveling in the beauty of nature will (while still a distraction) provide a means of surviving an otherwise disgusting existence. The fluidity with which the aesthetic mind can flow, travel between imaginings, provides the basis for hope. I’m sure E. C. wouldn’t agree.
