The Cosmic Horror in Psalm 8
And the cheap humanism that dispenses with existential dread
“When I look up at the heavens, which your fingers made, and see the moon and the stars, which you set in place, of what importance is the human race, that you should notice them? Of what importance is mankind, that you should pay attention to them?
You made them a little less than the heavenly beings. You crowned mankind with honor and majesty. You appoint them to rule over your creation; you have placed everything under their authority, including all the sheep and cattle, as well as the wild animals, the birds in the sky, the fish in the sea, and everything that moves through the currents of the seas.” (Psalm 8:3–8).
Although the psalmist doesn’t seem to meditate on the ramifications, this passage from the eighth psalm in the Hebrew scriptures anticipates HP Lovecraft’s insight that scientific discoveries entail cosmic horror.
Presumably, the reason the psalmist only disposes of that rhetorical question as soon as it’s raised is because of ancient ignorance about the universe’s inhuman scale.
If you presume that our planet is central to all that exists, or rather that our planet is the only world that exists because the stars are deities or angels instead of being suns like ours, hosting…
