How very, very fascinating to see James Howard Kunstler, author of The Long Emergency and World Made by Hand, and one of contemporary America’s most visible, forceful, caustic, and eloquent prophets of doom (via peak oil, economic collapse, climate change, and more), turning to none other than H.P. Lovecraft for a properly evocative literary reference…
Author: Matt Cardin
Teeming Brain founder and editor Matt Cardin is the author of DARK AWAKENINGS, DIVINATIONS OF THE DEEP, A COURSE IN DEMONIC CREATIVITY: A WRITER'S GUIDE TO THE INNER GENIUS, and TO ROUSE LEVIATHAN. He is also the editor of BORN TO FEAR: INTERVIEWS WITH THOMAS LIGOTTI and the academic encyclopedias MUMMIES AROUND THE WORLD; GHOSTS, SPIRITS, AND PSYCHICS: THE PARANORMAL FROM ALCHEMY TO ZOMBIES; and HORROR LITERATURE THROUGH HISTORY.
Nietzsche: Loving existence even though it’s horrifying and absurd
A review of Keith Ansell Pearson’s How to Read Nietzsche (2005) at The Journal of Nietzsche Studies features the following paragraph, which, with its focus on Nietzsche and its description of a worldview based on tragedy and horror, is a quintessential example of the type of writing that has unfailingly arrested me with a hypnotic…
The Human Race at a Crossroads
Guy McPherson, professor of conservation biology at the University of Arizona, pulls no punches in his May 21 essay, “Humanity at a crossroads.” In fact, he begins with his punchline itself: The evidence is gaining increasing clarity: We’ve reached a crossroads unlike any other in human history. One path leads to despair for Homo industrialis….
Original music for Conrad Aiken’s “Silent Snow, Secret Snow”
A couple of years ago I composed some original music to accompany a recorded reading of Conrad Aiken’s sublime 1934 short story “Silent Snow, Secret Snow,” about a young boy named Paul who grows progressively more lost in the delusion of a silently falling snow that slowly envelopes his world. The music didn’t make it…
Frightening secrets of a deeper life
A dose of really astute psychological insight from Hawthorne: The mind is in a sad state when Sleep, the all-involving, cannot confine her spectres within the dim region of her sway, but suffers them to break forth, affrighting this actual life with secrets that perchance belong to a deeper one . . . . Truth…
Learning the value of pessimism from ancient Stoics and Christians
Here’s the perfect reality check for all of the current ill-conceived hopes for a swift economic “recovery,” defined as a return to our previous bubblicious state of unfettered (and, as it turned out, fake) economic growth and “greed is good”-induced cultural mania: “For a happier life, shake off your misplaced optimism” — Financial Times, April…
America’s Colleges at a Crossroads – Part 3
You might want to catch up on Parts 1 and 2 of this series before reading this final installment, although this one, like the others, can stand on its own. In the first post in this series, I talked about the economic crisis that will force and is currently forcing the realignment and, in many…
Glimpses of ultimate reality in Mozart and quantum physics
As somebody who A) adores the music of Mozart, B) feels positively overcome by the intimations of an agonizing ultimate beauty in Amadeus, and C) has been fascinated by the metaphysical and philosophical implications of quantum physics for decades, aided by such things as a love for Robert Anton Wilson‘s writings and worthy popular expositions…
It’s official: The human race is earth’s disease
Okay, so it’s not actually “official” (since, after all, what would such a claim even mean?). But the following represents an interesting progression of an interesting idea through modern-day media culture. 1961-1964 and 1981: William Burroughs and the human virus In his classic Nova Trilogy, published in 1961-4, William Burroughs famously developed the idea that…
America’s Colleges at a Crossroads – Part 2
If you haven’t read Part 1 yet, you might want to go back and catch up before reading this one. Trashing education A few weeks ago I posted a link to the article that forms the backbone of part one of this series — which, again, is “A Straight-Talk Survival Guide for Colleges” by Peter…