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Great, I love to start my day with a bit of existential horror. I had some stuff to do, but now I think I'll just stare into the middle distance and contemplat

Great, I love to start my day with a bit of existential horror. I had some stuff to do, but now I think I'll just stare into the middle distance and contemplate the pointlessness of it all.

lukeqsee 13y ago
Makes one wonder "why" and become very nihilistic. What's the point of anything? (Which obviously results in the answer of 'nothing'.) This was a very well-written story. Let's remember, it's just a story, just a conjecture, just a spinning of a tale. Perhaps it's logical or perhaps it's not, but in the end humans have tenaciously clung to the idea it all has meaning, and I expect we will until the end, for better or worse.
sedev 13y ago
There's a follow-up post[1] where he talks more about the reactions: "A vision of a future in which civilizations, species and worlds follow life cycles like those of all other natural things didn’t leave them furious or depressed. Their comments instead featured such words as “comforted,” “delighted,” and “awed.” It’s easy, and also common, to mischaracterize such feelings as simple schadenfreude at the failure of humanity’s overinflated ambitions, but there’s something rather more significant going on here. Not one of the readers who made these comments made gloating remarks about the fate of humanity or the Earth. Rather, what comforted, delighted, and awed them was the imagery of Nature’s enduring order and continuity that I wove throughout the narrative, and brought to the tightest focus I could manage in the last two paragraphs. " [1]: http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2013/09/a-sense-of-homecoming.html http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2013/09/a-sense-of-ho...
ddoolin 13y ago
I guess it's horror in a very wide sense. But me and any memory of me will be long gone before any of this even begins to happen. I had my time here, enjoyed it, and it'll come to an end, as all things eventually do.
api 13y ago
The spiritual tradition from which the author of this piece speaks -- and it's more warmed-over quasi-hippiedom than anything genuinely Pagan or Druidic -- is a repeated affirmation of precisely that.

Great, I love to start my day with a bit of existential horror. I had some stuff to do, but now I think I'll just stare into the middle distance and contemplate the pointlessness of it all.

lukeqsee 13y ago

Makes one wonder "why" and become very nihilistic. What's the point of anything? (Which obviously results in the answer of 'nothing'.) This was a very well-written story. Let's remember, it's just a story, just a conjecture, just a spinning of a tale. Perhaps it's logical or perhaps it's not, but in the end humans have tenaciously clung to the idea it all has meaning, and I expect we will until the end, for better or worse.

sedev 13y ago

There's a follow-up post[1] where he talks more about the reactions: "A vision of a future in which civilizations, species and worlds follow life cycles like those of all other natural things didn’t leave them furious or depressed. Their comments instead featured such words as “comforted,” “delighted,” and “awed.” It’s easy, and also common, to mischaracterize such feelings as simple schadenfreude at the failure of humanity’s overinflated ambitions, but there’s something rather more significant going on here. Not one of the readers who made these comments made gloating remarks about the fate of humanity or the Earth. Rather, what comforted, delighted, and awed them was the imagery of Nature’s enduring order and continuity that I wove throughout the narrative, and brought to the tightest focus I could manage in the last two paragraphs. " [1]: http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2013/09/a-sense-of-homecoming.html http://thearchdruidreport.blogspot.com/2013/09/a-sense-of-ho...

ddoolin 13y ago

I guess it's horror in a very wide sense. But me and any memory of me will be long gone before any of this even begins to happen. I had my time here, enjoyed it, and it'll come to an end, as all things eventually do.

api 13y ago

The spiritual tradition from which the author of this piece speaks -- and it's more warmed-over quasi-hippiedom than anything genuinely Pagan or Druidic -- is a repeated affirmation of precisely that.