Why H.P. Lovecraft Believed Humanity Was Utterly Meaningless

Have you ever looked up at the star-strewn night sky and felt a profound, chilling sense of your own smallness? A feeling that you are just a speck of dust adrift in an ocean of time, and that the vast, silent cosmos doesn't hear your hopes or fears. What if that unsettling thought is the simple truth? This is the corner of the human psyche where the writer H. P. Lovecraft made his home, crafting a philosophy of horror that continues to echo in our modern minds.

His worldview, often called cosmicism, is built on a terrifyingly simple premise: humanity is a fleeting, insignificant anomaly in the universe. Our lives, our societies, our greatest achievements, and our deepest aspirations are utterly meaningless against the backdrop of an infinite, ancient, and incomprehensible cosmos.

The Cracks in a Human-Centered World

How did Lovecraft arrive at such a bleak position? He was a man of his time, deeply influenced by the scientific and philosophical earthquakes that were shaking the foundations of Western thought in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

As a staunch atheist and materialist, he rejected any notion of a higher power, a divine plan, or a universe created with humanity in mind. For him, the cosmos was a place of magnificent, chaotic indifference. This view was bolstered by the scientific discoveries of the era. Geological research by scientists like Charles Lyell revealed the concept of "deep time," showing that the Earth was not thousands, but billions of years old. This discovery alone shrunk human history to a mere blink of an eye.

Then came Charles Darwin. The publication of On the Origin of Species in 1859 dismantled the idea of humanity's divine creation. The theory of evolution positioned humans not as the pinnacle of a grand design, but as just another species, a product of blind natural selection. Lovecraft, a fervent supporter of Darwinism, used this to suggest that just as we replaced other species, we too could be easily brushed aside by older, more powerful forms of life.

The final blow to human arrogance came from the heavens. In the 1920s, astronomer Edwin Hubble proved that our Milky Way was just one of countless galaxies in a universe that was constantly expanding. The idea of being at the center of existence was shattered. We were not even in a special corner of the cosmos; we were on a tiny planet, orbiting an average star, in an unremarkable galaxy, lost in an ever-growing void. This scientific picture of our true place stunned Lovecraft and became the canvas for his work.

The Horror of Indifference

This is why the beings in Lovecraft's stories—the famous Cthulhu and other "Ancient Ones"—are not evil in the way a human villain is. They are not traditional gods to be worshipped or demons to be vanquished. They simply are. To them, we are what ants are to us: utterly beneath notice. Their lives and cosmic agendas are so vast and alien that our existence is a triviality. An accidental encounter with them doesn't result in a battle between good and evil; it results in madness, as the human mind snaps under the weight of comprehending its own utter insignificance.

In this worldview, knowledge does not bring power. It brings ruin. Lovecraft’s characters who seek to understand the true nature of reality are not rewarded with enlightenment; they are punished with insanity. In his story “The Colour Out of Space,” scientists confront a life form from another dimension that they can neither understand nor control. It is a mysterious, parasitic color that drains the life from everything it touches. Their attempts to study it lead only to decay and death, a perfect metaphor for the futility of trying to impose human logic on a fundamentally non-human universe.

A Dialogue with Despair

Of course, Lovecraft wasn't alone in pondering the void. The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer had argued that the world is driven by a blind, irrational will, making suffering an unavoidable part of existence. Friedrich Nietzsche proclaimed the "death of God" and wrestled with the meaninglessness that followed. Their ideas certainly echo in Lovecraft's cosmic dread.

Yet, there were crucial differences in their conclusions. Existentialists like Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus also saw the universe as absurd and meaningless. However, they didn't see this as a sentence to horror-struck paralysis. For them, the absence of a pre-ordained cosmic purpose was the very thing that made us free. They argued that humans create their own meaning through their choices and actions.

Lovecraft’s philosophy stands in stark contrast. It offers three dark truths:

1. Humanity is a small and insignificant part of a vast and indifferent universe.
2. The universe has no meaning or purpose, and its laws and creatures are completely indifferent to humans.
3. The more a person learns about the universe and its mysteries, the more their mind is destroyed.

It's a gloomy perspective, to be sure. It challenges our deepest-seated arrogance and the illusion that the world revolves around our plans. But there is a strange, paradoxical freedom in it. If the universe doesn't care, then perhaps our failures are not as monumental as they feel. Perhaps our purpose is not something to be found in the stars, but something to be built right here, in the love, work, and relationships we forge with one another, even if the cosmos remains silent. Lovecraft's philosophy forces us to confront our smallness, but in doing so, it also highlights the profound importance of the human-scale meaning we create for ourselves.

References

• Lovecraft, H. P. The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories. Edited and with an introduction and notes by S. T. Joshi. Penguin Classics, 1999.

  This collection contains some of Lovecraft's most essential tales, including "The Call of Cthulhu" and "The Colour Out of Space." The introduction by S. T. Joshi, a leading Lovecraft scholar, provides crucial context on how Lovecraft's personal philosophy of "cosmicism" was a direct response to the scientific and cultural shifts of his time, making it an excellent primary source for understanding his worldview as expressed through his fiction.

• Ligotti, Thomas. The Conspiracy Against the Human Race: A Contrivance of Horror. Hippocampus Press, 2010.

  This work of philosophical pessimism directly engages with and expands upon Lovecraftian themes. Ligotti analyzes the horror of existence, arguing that consciousness itself is the source of suffering. This book serves as a modern philosophical extension of the ideas presented in the article, particularly the view of life as a frightening and unnecessary anomaly. The chapter "The Cult of Grim Sincerity" is particularly relevant in its discussion of pessimistic authors, including Lovecraft.

• Harman, Graham. Weird Realism: Lovecraft and Philosophy. Zero Books, 2012.

  This book explores the deep philosophical implications of Lovecraft's writing, arguing that his stories are a literary entryway into a serious philosophical school of thought (speculative realism). Harman develops the idea that objects and entities exist independently of our perception of them, a concept he sees perfectly illustrated in Lovecraft's unknowable and alien creatures. Chapter 1, "Lovecraft's Unphilosophy" (pp. 1-26), directly addresses how Lovecraft’s fiction presents a universe that is fundamentally withdrawn and inaccessible to human understanding, confirming the article's core thesis.