#17 From the Twitter archives, part 3: Decade of Disillusion

The ‘79 poetic.

Zipper blues

In its latter half the 70s turned into the Decade of Disillusion. And ‘79 was probably peak disillusion: Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures, Alien. These two share a sensibility that could be called ‘Schopenhauerian Gothic’. It’s not mainstream goth, which is morbid yet romantic.

The world as will

Schopenhauer’s philosophy is the original black pill. He presents an indifferent universe in which a blind & senseless Will is the motive force behind everything. Our obsessions & desires have no meaning: they are largely just a product of our inbuilt drive to reproduce.

The bodies obtained

“This is the room, the start of it all”—on an album of bleak songs, Day of the Lords is maybe the bleakest, and most Schopenhauerian. An ominous grind through some lived crisis, progressing steadily towards a terrible, anticipated resolution. ”Where will it end, where will it end?”

No one can hear you

Much of the horror of the alien comes from the fact it’s an animal, not a demon. If Nature can produce this, what does that say about Nature? Though there is the question of whether the species is a bio-weapon, created by the race the unfortunate Space Jockey belonged to.

Cain’s son

The alien doesn’t kill out of malice, only to survive and reproduce. Besides this it has no purpose. It’s a perfect expression of Schopenhauerian Will. Its parasitism, which ends in the violent death of the host, disturbs because it seems like a cruel mockery of human pregnancy.

Black lyricism

Schopenhauer’s:

Scott’s:

Curtis’s: