Archived from the original on 2 June 2019. "Your Introduction to the Cosmic Horror Genre". Lovecraft dubbed his view of the world ‘cosmicism’, in which all the achievements and inherently noble qualities of humans and humanism pale in comparison to the vast indifference of the rest of the universe. University News - A Weekly Journal of Higher Education. "Cosmicism, Eternal, Supreme, Scientific Theism-cum-Philosophy". " 'Cosmicism' the True Eternal Theism: Realising the Supreme Cosmic Reality through Basic Cosmic Education for Global Adults". Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. "Prehistories of Posthumanism: Cosmic Indifferentism, Alien Genesis, and Ecology from H. Though some of these beings have – and in some cases create – cults to honor them, to the vast majority of these beings the human race is so insignificant that they aren't given any consideration whatsoever. As a symbol, this is representative of the kind of universe that Lovecraft believed in. Indeed, they exist in cosmic realms beyond human understanding. These beings (the Great Old Ones, Outer Gods and others) – though dangerous to humankind – are portrayed as neither good nor evil, and human notions of morality have no significance for these beings. However, Lovecraft never conceived of them as supernatural, but extraterrestrials who understand and obey a set of natural laws which to human understanding seem magical. Though personally irreligious, Lovecraft used various "gods" in his stories, particularly the Cthulhu-related tales, to expound cosmicism. The incomprehensible, cosmic forces of his tales have as little regard for humanity as humans have for insects. His viewpoint made no allowance for religious beliefs which could not be supported scientifically. He believed in a meaningless, mechanical, and uncaring universe that human beings, with their naturally limited faculties, could never fully understand. Lovecraft thus embraced a philosophy of cosmic indifferentism. Lovecraft was a strong and antireligious atheist he considered religion not merely false but dangerous to social and political progress." As such, Lovecraft's cosmicism is not religious at all, but rather a version of his mechanistic materialism. Joshi asserts that "Lovecraft constantly engaged in (more or less) genial debates on religion with several colleagues, notably the pious writer and teacher Maurice W. This indifference is an important theme in cosmicism. In Lovecraft's work, human beings are often subject to powerful beings and other cosmic forces, but these forces are not so much malevolent as they are indifferent toward humanity. Lovecraft thought of himself as neither a pessimist nor an optimist but rather a "scientific" or "cosmic" indifferentist, a theme expressed in his fiction. Though cosmicism appears deeply pessimistic, H.P. This is possibly a reflection of his own personal views, which were often insular and paranoid. Lovecraft's work also tended to impress fear of the other onto the reader, such as in " The Dunwich Horror" and " Dagon", often portraying that which is unknown as a terrible threat to the rest of humanity. Lovecraftian characters notably become insane from the elimination of recognizable geometry. Common themes related to cosmicism in Lovecraft's fiction are the insignificance of humanity in the universe and the search for knowledge ending in disaster. In his fictional works, these ideas are often explored humorously (" Herbert West–Reanimator," 1922), through fantastic dream-like narratives (" The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath," 1927), or through his well-known Cthulhu Mythos (" The Call of Cthulhu," 1928, and others). Lovecraft's cosmicism was a result of his complete disdain for all things religious, his feeling of humanity's existential helplessness in the face of what he called the "infinite spaces" opened up by scientific thought, and his belief that humanity was fundamentally at the mercy of the vastness and emptiness of the cosmos. In Lovecraft's stories, whatever meaning or purpose may be invested in the actions of the cosmic beings is completely inaccessible to the human characters. Cosmicism shares many characteristics with nihilism, though one important difference is that cosmicism tends to emphasize the insignificance of humanity and its doings, rather than summarily rejecting the possible existence of some higher purpose (or purposes) e.g., in Lovecraft's Cthulhu stories, it is not the absence of meaning that causes terror for the protagonists, as it is their discovery that they have absolutely no power to change anything in the vast, indifferent universe that surrounds them. Cosmicism and human centric views of the universe are incompatible.
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