Note: The title art for this post is ‘Ouroborous, Cosmic Loveheart’ by Silvana D. You can see more of her work on Etsy.
A few posts ago, I tried to illustrate the profoundly dark mindset that human beings can fall into during the most extreme moments of suffering and resentment. This attitude, which I associate with the ‘extinction-drive’ (the yearning to put an end to life itself in the face of overwhelming suffering), can be captured in a single term: Invidia Fati. Literally meaning the ‘hatred of fate’, this life-negating maxim has been a major motivator in countless acts of death, destruction, and mayhem throughout human history.
In essence, it is nihilism-turned-activism; the result of a process by which evil is perversely elevated to the status of the Highest Good. Faced with a world too painful to endure, some poor wretches become genuinely convinced that the only solution to the problem of life is to tear the whole damn thing down and stamp it into oblivion. ‘Burn down the circus, kill all the clowns, and end the great cosmic joke forever’. This is the cynical, even genocidal impulse which motivates such characters.
Continue reading “Stray Thoughts: The ‘Ultimate Fidelity’”