The Conspiracy Against the Human Race Read Free

they can choose their thoughts and feelings are nevertheless disabled from choosing what they choose to think and feel. Should they still believe themselves in control of what they choose to choose to think and feel, they still could not choose to choose to choose . . . and so on?2 Were there any choice on our part about what we think and feel, it would not be adventurous to conjecture that we would think only as needed and choose to feel good as appropriate. Some might choose to live in a permanent state of intense euphoria. With godlike power over your thoughts and moods, why hold back?
    Such control would permit us, by fiat of self-addlement, to be careless of every hideous fact that our consciousness may impart about life and death. What is more, those who say that being alive is all right and those who aver the opposite would become united rather divided: we all do what we can to lock out what being alive implies, whichever side of the issue we may be on. And since we have no power of veto over our birth, we could choose to be ecstatic about it rather than negative. We would all be on the same side if we had absolute control over any lethal knowledge that might come into our heads. But the best we can do is this: stay as stupid as we can for as long as we can. And some people can stay just so stupid for just so long.
    Of course, it could be argued—and probably has—that our “knowledge” that we are alive and will die is only a compound of flabby abstractions that coincide with no definite or 15

    uniform experience in human life. Practically speaking, this does seem be the way it is.
    “Being alive” encompasses such an abounding medley of feelings and sensations that it means nothing to say one knows anything about it. We may think of ourselves as “being alive” in moments of exhilaration or well being, yet we have no smaller portion of life in us when we are depressed or are suffering in some other style. And if we are not suffering at present—or at least not suffering noticeably—it is insurmountably difficult to know what suffering is like, or what it was once like for us in the past as well as what it will be like in the future. As for knowing that we will die, our ignorance is absolute, now and forever. We can only fear death without knowing anything about what we fear. Some people can short-circuit their jitters about public speaking by exposing themselves to it repeatedly. But no mortal can overcome the fear of death with practice. You can only put it out of your mind for the nonce, pathetically non-victorious over your fear and still unwitting of the feared inevitability. Therefore, we can have no conscious knowledge that we are alive and will die. This logic correlates to Zeno’s “proof” that nothing can move from one point to another because the distance between one point and another comprises an infinite number of incremental steps that in theory can never be completed. But just as things do in fact move from one point to another, so do we in fact have conscious knowledge that we are alive and will die. Everyone knows it, if only in a far off way. And the farther off it is, the more fluidly we can stay in motion and not lose our heads.
    Because even if we have conscious knowledge that we are alive and will die, the less we are conscious of this knowledge, the more we can keep doing what we do and keep being as we are, all things being equal. Luckily for us, or most of us, bringing to bear our consciousness on the subjects here under discussion is an uphill battle. Our brains do not seem to focus on these things very well or for very long. And should we manage to meditate on them for more than a few minutes, there really seems nothing to get excited about. “Yes, we are alive and will one day die. What of it? Pass those potato jobbies over to this side of the table, if you wouldn’t mind.” When the theme of life and death arises, that old warhorse, our minds go blank . . . unless we are