he rotting God - Mainlnders Metaphysic of Entropy

On the Origin of the World

It might be surprising to some, but there actually is a god in Mainlnders philoso
phy. Or to be more precise, there was a god. Before our universe was born, the o
nly thing that existed was the basic unity*, a being in a state that can only be
described by negations: It was not bound to time or space or matter. It existed
in a transcendental world that has nothing to with the laws of physics or anyth
ing else that we know from our world. All we can say about the basic unity, is t
hat is has been and is no longer, it vanished with the birth of our universe, wh
ich is the only miracle that ever happened. Everything that happened after that
miracle, the very second the universe was born, is our world where our laws of p
hysics make sense. After defining the basic unity as a being that is absolutely
different from us and is furthermore the cause of the birth of our entire univer
se, we can now give that being the name it deserves: God. But we can not try to
describe this God any further, because that would mean leaving our reality, proj
ecting logics that only make sense in our world, into another world. The only th
ing we know is that the basic unity must have been killing itself, because it wa
s the only thing existing before the universe and therefore it couldn't have bee
n killed by anything else, because there wasn't anything that could have killed
it. Therefore the universe, as we know it, was born through the suicide of God.
God decided that he can't bear his existence anymore and that he wishes to turn
into Nothingness. But he was not able to reach that goal without thereby creatin
g our world, because the path from his over-being** to Nothingness required a tr
ansition, which is being as we know it, our universe. This entire world is there
fore nothing more than God's "body", that is in all its components rotting into
nothingness now.

The Universal Law of the Weakening of Power

The course of the universe is therefore defined as a movement from the over-bein
g (God) through the being (our universe) into nothingness. The world itself is t
he decay in the plurality, that means in egoistic individuals that are fighting
each other. This path is predestined and it couldn't have been any other, any sh
orter or any longer than exactly how it is. The universal law of the weakening o
f the power (entropy) causes the world to decay in a large amount of unorganic a
nd organic individuals that are all weakening the power of other beings and thei
r environment and the same time getting weakened themself by the overall course
of the universe. The purpose of every natural force, every form of matter and ev
ery form of life is exclusively to weaken the power sum of the universe by livin
g the path through the state of being into nothingness. Every part of nature is
desiring for absolute death, because that is the ultimate goal of every form of
matter and life - to turn into nothing.

Teleology of Annihilation

The universe is in a state of harmony, despite all the fighting and slaughtering
that is going on in it. It is in harmony, because every part of it origins from
the basic unity, the God that killed himself and therefore created the universe
. Each individual once was a part of the basic unity, therefore it is exactly wh
at it decided to be, when it was part of God. All the individual beings, no matt
er if organic or unorganic, are now representing Gods will to die. Therefore, th
e will to die is the driving force of the universe. In the unorganic kingdom we
have gases, liquids and solid substances. The gas only has one striving: to sepe
rate in all directions. If it could unimpededly exert this striving, it would be
come weaker and weaker. If it truly fulfilled its striving, it would be annihila
ted. Liquids only have one striving: It wants to flow apart, to an ideal point,
that is outside of itself. The striving for an ideal point outside itself is obv
iously a striving for annihilation, nothingness. Every solid substance or body h
as only one striving: to an ideal point, which is outside of itself. On our eart
h this point would be the center of the planet. If it would reach this goal, it
would be annihilated the moment it reached it and turn into nothingness.
In the unorganic kingdom we have seen the will to die in its blunt form. Now we
move to the organic kingdom, where things are getting a little bit tricky. A pla
nt grows, procreates and dies. While in the unorganic kingdom "life" only meant
a repression of the will to die by chemical processes, the plant obviously wants
life, because it grows and procreates to turn its absolute death into a relativ
e death, by spreading it's "idea" into the future. Therefore, what we see here f
or the first time, is the will to live. The plant also has the will to die, but
it can't reach it in the straight way, therefore its life is a medium for the pu
rpose to reach death. Animals are initially plants and all we said about plants
also goes for them. But what seperates them from each other, is that the animal
instinctively fears death. If it realizes any threat for its life it either flee
s or fights for its life. Obviously, what happened here is that the medium (life
) is putting itself in front of the purpose (death). The animal is, just like th
e unorganic individuals, will to die. While plants developed the will to live as
a medium for the purpose to reach the goal, which is death, the animals will to
die is now completely masked by the will to live. On the surface the animal onl
y wants life and fears death, but that doesn't change the fact that it will even
tually die and therefore deep down it is also the will to die, which is the driv
ing force of everything, because reality itself is nothing more than a rotting G
od. Humans are initially animals and all we said about animals also goes for the
m. But what seperates humans from the all the other individuals that repesent th
e will to die, is that this basic universal will not only gets completely masked
like with the animals, but it truly sinks down into the deepest abyss of oblivi
on and the only thing that seems to be left as the driving force is the will to
live. Humans compasionately love their life and even the slightest thought about
death disturbes them. The medium coompletely covers the purpose, life is abnorm
ally loved , death is abnormally hated.

Mankind, Civilisation and the Ideal State

The movement of mankind as a whole isn't any other and can't be any other than t
he movement of the universe. It's the movement from the over-being through the b
eing into the nothingness. Every action of a human, the most nobel just as the l
owest, is egoistic. Because just like the devil can't see his fellow people bein
g happy, the saint can't see them being unhappy or suffering. Therefore, the dev
il and the saint, both act for egoistic reasons and both contribute to the overa
ll movement of mankid. This movements final goal is nothingness of course, but f
or mankind in special, it is the reaching of the ideal state. The ideal state wo
uld be the ultimate utopia, a socialistic paradise to which all efforts of human
ity will finally lead. It will be a world without war, hunger and any sufferings
beside the sufferings of birth, age and death. All sicknesses will be cured, an
d people will have lifes of joy with just a very small amount of work, because w
ork will almost completely be deported to machines. So let's take a closer look
on the citizens of that ideal state. Are they happy? They would be, if they woul
dn't suffer from horrible boredom and an everlasting emptiness in their lifes no
w. If they even manage to live such a pointless life until natural death, they w
ill not be willing to force new people into this mess by procreating. They have
no hope left, because they know that they already reached the ideal state. There
fore, they will come to the conclusion that human life has to end or maybe even
that all life has to end, because they finally realized that there is nothing to
accomplish for sentience and that it would be better if they never had existed.
This will be the point where the movement of humanity (or even the movement of
all life on earth) will be fulfilled and the universe would now have to move on
without (human) life on earth, to reach its own final goal, which is exactly the
same: Turning into nothingness.

Apologia of Suicide

The enlightened human being, equipped with the knowledge about the course of the
universe and its movement into Nothingness, should now overcome all fear of dea
th. Only who truly discarded that basic fear, created by the illusion of the wil
l to live, which is just a mask of the true will of all beings - the will to die
, is really free. What should contest an individual in that state of mind? Pover
ty? He has no fear of starvation. Enemies? They could in the worst case kill him
, and death has nothing horrible anymore for him. Pain? If pain gets unbearable
he gets rid of his body without hesitating. One can reach that state of enlighte
nment by always remembering that deep inside he wants death, because he is, like
everything else, the result of a decision to die, which was the reason for the
existence of our entire world. In fact, everyone was once part of the basic unit
y, therefore anything that happens now to an individual is the result of that ve
ry individuals decision that it made back in the basic unity. That means: That n
othing in life can hit me that hasn't been chosen by myself before the world got
created. Our will to die was created by the suicidal god who decided that not t
o be is better than to be. Therefore, if one can't take his existence any longer
, he should throw it away and turn into nothingness, which is the movement of th
e entire world.

The View into the Void

The pessimistic philosophy will be for the coming period of history what the pes
simistic religion of christianity was for the past. The sign of our flag is not
the crucified saviour, but the death angel with huge, calm, mild eyes, carried b
y the dove of the redemption thought. Redemption of the individual idea one repr
esents, can be reached by not passing the core of this idea to the future. In ot
her words: by not procreating. Who doesn't live on in his progeny, will be absol
utely redeemed from existence. And if this form of secure redemption isn't enoug
h for an individual, it has always the possibility of resigning from its life by
ending it. The course of the universe has now been proven as the movement from
a over-being through a being into nothingness, and therefore it is secure, that
redemption will come for everyone and everything. It's that a matter of time, an
d that timespan is exactly as long as it was decided to be by the basic unity. I
f an individual wants to phantasize about an Garden of Eden or whatever kind of
paradise after death, we should let them, in the deep conviction that they simpl
y can't see that the one and only true paradise is nothingness, which was chosen
by the suicidal God as a better state than "somethingness".
* german: "Einfache Einheit" (I couldn't find a perfect translation, but "basic
unity" is close
** german: "ber-Sein" ( I have seen the word "ber" being translated as "uber" in e
ngslish sometimes, but it looks weird to me, that why i translated it directly t
o "over")
The Assembly Line of Death
Before I move on to the philosophy of Ulrich Horstmann, another great german pes
simistic thinker, I will answer some questions that have come up here, on facebo
ok and other communities, and will go more into detail with some points about Ma
inlnders philosophy I haven't pointed out yet:
"I have a problem with the GOD-part"
Some people seem to be detered by the word "god" so much that this word alone ma
kes them question the entire philosophy of Mainlnder. I guess what I didn't point
out good enough in the "rotting god"-essay, is that Mainlnder only uses the word
"god" as another word for "singularity" or "basic unity" or however you want to
call it. It is not an actual "god" and that god is also not actually committing
suicide - you could also say: The singularity destroyed itself instead of "god
committed suicide". So all in all: GOD is just a metaphysic symbol, to make the
philosophy more poetic.
"I don't get how the will to die can be the driving force of a universe that cre
ated life"
Since entropy seems to be the driving force of the universe, it's actually possi
ble. Like you can say "singularity" instead of "god", you can also say "entropy"
instead of "will to die". If you keep the picture of the rotting body of god as
our universe in mind for one moment, then all the unorganic individuals (gases,
liquids, stones etc) are the dead body parts rotting into nothingness, while WE
, living beings, are the maggots in the rotting body of God, which is the world.
So yes, we are something special in some way, but we are just rotting to noting
ness in a different way than the rest of the dead body.
"If god wanted to kill himself, why couldn't he reach his goal, nothingness, imm
ediately"
Mainlnder states that the fact, that the world exists, is proof enough that the o
bstacle for god was his own existence, his essence. He couldn't turn into nothin
gness just like that, because he was in his way, his own essence was stopping hi
m for leaving his existence without thereby creating a world, that has now to fu
lfill the will to die. Imagine, that we are not living, but dying all the time.
life is just a dying process, but what is in the way of reaching the goal of dea
th right now? Right, we are in the way ourself, our essence is the obstacle of r
eaching nothingness, which is the goal of every life, immediately. This is repre
senting gods own obstacle before the world was created.
"How is Mainlnder a pessimist/antinatalist when there is a meaning in his world"
That's right, in Mainlnders world there is a meaning. The meaning however, is sol
ely to die for everything and everyone. The antinatal part develops from his phi
losophy simply as a consequence, because why create more food for the slaughter
machine? You can imagine Mainlnders cosmos as a assembly line of death, and the m
ovement of that assembly line is the only meaning there is to it all. All the th
ings that are transported on the assembly line, like stones, plants, animals and
humans are absoltely worthless and are only there to be chopped at the end of t
he line, to reach gods goal of nothingness.
"The ideal state is the absolute utopia. It's beyond pollyanna. How does that fi
t in"
It fits in perfectly, because it would theoretically be the ultimate goal of hum
anity, something that has been worked on since the first caves where lightened u
p by torches. It is, however, just an abstract thought, not something that will
ever be reached in reality, at least it's very unlikely. But the ultimate goal o
f humanties movement would be that state and the only thing left to do after rea
ching it is indeed to end it all, because 1. life is still pointless and futile,
even when it's perfect and 2. the movement of the universe can't be stopped, th
erefore a stagnation in the ideal state would not be possible for humanity, beca
use it is part of the overall movement of the world.
Some information on the person Philipp Mainlnder:
Mainlnder was influenced very strong by Arthur Schopenhauer and his will-metaphys
ic and for someone who isn't familiar with Schopenhauers work, Mainlnders "sequel
" might seem complete nonsense. I can only suggest anyone who wants to read the
actual book of the Philosophy of Reedemption to read Schopenhauers mainwork "The
world as will and representation" before that.
Mainlnder has also written some dramas, novels and poems. His death wish shines o
ut of all of them here and there, however the creation of "the will to die" is o
f course the peak of this development. Mainlnder joined the army several times, b
ecause he wanted to die at the battlefield on purpose to fulfill his death wish.
Several attempts failed, before he got to write his 1.300 pages strong Philosop
hy of Redemption. After doing so, he used a pile of copies of his own books as a
pedestal and hanged himself in his residence in Offenbach. He was 34 years old
when he left the assembly line of death and entered the eternal kingdom of absol
ute nothingness.