Duration: about one hour
Props: none
Effect: bracing
How often have we been told that we are exceptional! Centre of the world, children of God, universal conciousness, intelligence, language beings, spirit of science, vector of progress. Our existence has been so celebrated by myths, religions, philisophies, that it's hard to comprehend our failures, our vileness, our interminable wars and our endless filth. Naturally, there has beenany amount of special pleading, to explain our fall, our malediction, outwo-facedness.
There's a way of experimenting with a more radical form of disillusionment, which is doubtless more beneficial. Rid yourself of anything that resembles a meaning to our exixtence. Consider humnaity as a result of pure chance, a mistake, a biological accident. It developed without order, on some lost pebble in some small benighted corner. One day it will disappear for ever, unremembered and unmourned. For the tens of thousands of years of its survival, our species stagnated.Then it multiplied unreasonably, and plundered its own habitat. And before disappearing, it will have charged to its account a weight of suffering both unimaginable and futile, massacres and famines, enslavements and tyrennies.
Take a clear-eyed look at this absurb and violent species. Confront its lack of justification and ephemeral, irrational existence. Train yourself to endure this vision of humanity as fundamentally meaningless and futureless. For against this background of unmeaning and horror, every sublime thing shines out the more as a matchless gift. Perfect music, unforgettable paintings, the glory of cathedrals, grief-stricken poems, lovers' laughter... Such are the endless surprising fruits of this aberration that is to us.
From 101 Experiments in the Philosophy of Everyday Life by Roger-Pol Droit
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