I know I listed my top five favorite books and two books that changed my life, but there’s another one that deserves recognition: Thomas Ligotti’s The Conspiracy Against the Human Race. I’d been wanting this book for a while after seeing the first season of True Detective and after considering myself an anti-natalist. I was looking for any kind of anti-natalist literature and lo and behold, I found it.
This book is a philosophical gut punch that argues human consciousness is a cosmic mistake. Ligotti draws from horror, neuroscience, and pessimism and makes the case that existence is inherently horrific, the self is an illusion, and the kindest act would be to stop reproducing.
It’s a deep but deeply thought-provoking exploration of pessimism, anti-natalism, and the horror of consciousness. A few take aways from it are as follows:
Consciousness is a curse. Ligotti argues that self-awareness–what sets humans apart from animals–is not a gift but a burden. We’re aware of our mortality, our suffering, and the meaninglessness of existence. “Being alive is like being a sentient tumor.”
Life is inherently horrific. He draws from horror fiction and philosophy and suggests that horror is the most honest genre because it doesn’t shy away from the ugly truth: life is terrifying, random, and cruel.
Anti-Natalism is a logical response. He builds on David Bentar (another man I admire)’s arguments to suggest that the kindest thing we could do is stop reproducing. He believes, much like Benatar and I do, that bringing someone into existence is always a harm. As he says in the book, “Nonexistence never hurt anyone.”
The illusion of self and meaning. Ligotti sides with thinkers who believe the self is an illusion and that the narratives we tell ourselves: religion, humanism, even optimism are coping mechanisms, not truth.
The book offers no comfort. There’s no “and yet” at the end. There’s no redemption arc. Ligotti commits to the darkness. The value is in the clarity it offers–cutting through hope to stare directly at what existence may really be.
It’s a cold shower of a book. It won’t give you hope, but it might give you clarity, or at least solidarity in despair.
Sisyphus Shrugged 
Excellent book and great review.
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Thank you so much. I’ve read it three times and loved it each time.
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Three times. Right on! That certainly indicates that you enjoyed reading the book. You might want to check out the large list of quotes from this text located in the comment section of my post titled Ultimate Will To Power. It’s a great way to review the material in a matter of minutes in order to keep it succulently preserved and available in the event that you may want and/or need an emotional hit or a juicey piece of flesh so that you may tantilize your readers. Feel free to add your fav quotes and/or passages to the comment section.
Oh, by the way, if Albert Camus, Emil Cioran, Arthur Schopenhauer, Ligotti, Stephen King and Noam Chomsky are truly your heroes, then for some bizarre reason you are overlooking Friedrich Nietzsche. He is a difficult trout to catch but once you are able to digest him, you will become something other than what you are; a bright morning star. 😉
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I like Nietzsche, just not as much as I did in my teen years. I haven’t completely disowned him like I did with Ayn Rand, but Cioran, Schopenhauer, and Camus shape my worldview more than Nietzsche these days.
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What views do Cioran, Schopenhauer, and Camus share most in common with each other?
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Life is inherently painful or absurd. All three reject traditional religious consolation and are skeptical about traditional meaning and religion. They all shared a certain pessimism toward human progress and history and had an admiration for artistic escape. They valued art as one of the few ways to transcend or cope with life.
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