I regard the experience of most animals as being something like living in a slasher movie their entire lives, and Lovecraft’s work as coming closest to describing life writ large, stripped of pleasant lies.

… but I still think it’s a notable feature of humanity that we can escape much of that for long periods, yet always seem to invent problems for ourselves, can find trouble and discontent even when they don’t seek us out. A rabbit may contend with predators, with hunger, but it doesn’t seem they’ll drive themselves crazy with worry and want when sated and resting in their den. They deal with what’s in front of them, in rabbit-ways, and that’s that. What will they do today? Rabbit stuff. If they’re left to do rabbit stuff without external resistance, will they be content? Yeah. Tomorrow, will they be upset because they’re still going rabbit stuff? No.

▲

throwaway_2494 11 hours ago | parent [-]

I still don’t buy the “slasher movie” framing of nature at all, and the only function 'pleasant lies' serves here is just low effort dismissal. :shrug:

Alas, I'm ceding ground by even arguing within your chosen framing. It's all very self defeating.

▲

phantasmish 11 hours ago | parent [-]

Frequent risk of sudden violent murder. And, like, credible relatively-high risk, not the “well a person might be murdered at any time, too”. Like fictional humans in a slasher-movie universe.

The “pleasant lies” mostly involve pretending about meaning, and avoiding thinking about huge scales. That’s the lovecraftian bit. Large-scale reality dwarfs and overwhelms us. We eke out sanity by ignoring it, by even being able to forget about or never thoughtfully engage with it.

My point is just that I largely agree with the other poster on the “nature of nature” as it were, but still find insight in the quoted passages. I don’t think they demand we regard nature as particularly safe or easy, for them to work.

	▲	wat10000 10 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Don’t forget terrible diseases, constant problems from parasites, etc. There’s an ancient debate over whether wild animals age in the way humans do, or indeed at all. Of course they do, but this isn’t at all obvious since few wild animals live long enough to die of age, or even long enough for aging effects to become obvious.