
Infinite Resignation

Sometimes I’m asked if I’m a pessimist. I need to find a clever answer to this question. Or make up a good joke. But the truth is that I am a pessimist… except when writing about pessimism. I’ve managed to make pessimism a form of therapy.
Eugene Thacker • Infinite Resignation
We are the species that has sacrificed breath for speech.
Eugene Thacker • Infinite Resignation
Morbidity. I used to be afraid of exercising. That was before I was dealing with these health problems. Now I’m afraid of not exercising. The fear is the same.
Eugene Thacker • Infinite Resignation
If enthusiasm is the weakness of pessimists, then procrastination is the weakness of optimists. Stanisław Lec: “Optimists and pessimists differ only on the date of the end of the world.”
Eugene Thacker • Infinite Resignation
For optimists, the most perplexing question is how one becomes a pessimist – if one is not born one.
Eugene Thacker • Infinite Resignation
Pessimism is the most generous of thoughts; it includes everyone, if only by virtue of their existing. ~ * ~
Eugene Thacker • Infinite Resignation
Askesis. A paraphrase of Schopenhauer: what death is for the organism, sleep is for the individual. Contrary to what many may think, pessimists sleep not because they are depressed, but because for them sleep is a form of training.
Eugene Thacker • Infinite Resignation
“What can be usefully postponed can be even more usefully abandoned” (Epictetus).
Eugene Thacker • Infinite Resignation
The more I talk to people, the less I see the point in conversation. I’ve often been in the midst of a conversation and have suddenly, unwillingly, been extracted mysteriously from it, as if I were observing the whole thing with a strange sense of detached melancholy, like an out-of-body experience.